FUTURE OF PUMICE LANDS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19742, 15 September 1927, Page 14

FUTURE OF PUMICE LANDS

TREES IE AD THE WAY.

HUGE FOREST IN THE MAKING

PROBLEM OF TRANSPORT.

VARIOUS PROJECTS REVIEWED.

BY E. O. M.

The pumice country at the heart of the j North Island includes the greatest undeveloped area of ploughable land in New Zealand. Before the war, in 1912, Mr. Massey, in the course of a tour in the Rotorua-Taupo area, formed guarded hopes of its development. But the war handicapped all development, and since the war a new problem has arisen in the shape of high farming and railway construction costs Afforestation development has, however, proceeded rapidly. The area north and north-east of Lake laupo is drained by two rivers, the Waikato and the Rangitaiki, the former draining Lake Taupo toward the Waikato Plains, and ultimately to the west coast, while the Rangitaiki, collecting its waters more to the eastward, runs to the Bay of Plenty. The Rangitaiki intersects the East Coast railway near Edgecumbe station, and the Waikato first touches the Government railway system at Cambridge, though in its course thither the Waikato also intersects, at Ongaroto. the Taupo Totara Timber Company's light - railway that connects with the Government system at Putaruru. Three Traffic Arteries. Three arterial traffic lines have their respective advocates: (1) The Taupo Timber Company's light railway, from Putaruru to Mokai. the proposed extension of which to Taupo has been before the country for nearly twenty years; (2) extension of the Government standard railway from Rotorua to Taupo, via Waiotapu and Eteporoa; (3) transport by railway or otherwise down the valley of the Rangitaiki to the East Coast railway at Edgecumbe, thence to one of the ports of the Bay of Plenty, which at Tauranga offers deep water facilities. In 1922 a commission reported on No, 2, and in the preceding year a commission reported on No. 1. Since those reports were added to the Parliamentary appendices, the situation has been altered in one or two respects. The rapid development of private and company afforestation (by joint stock companies working on shareholders' capital, or by companies expending capital entrusted to them by investors under a contract) has created a number of new plantations, and a big proportion of these are on or near the Taupo Totara Timber Company's light railway. The area which companies in this district are committed to plant must be not far short of 200,000 acres.

The State Plantations. But the afforestation development has not been confined to the sphere of the Taupo Totara Timber Company's light railway or to that zone of the Waikato Valley. While the afforestation companies have been busy there, the State Forest Service has been busy on the Kaingaroa Plains, and the State plantations have been extended in country between the route of the proposed Government railway extension from Rotorua to Taupo (No. 2), and the suggested Rangitaiki transport route (No. 3) According to some observers, the bulk of the country covered by the State's Kaingaroa plantation dips toward the Rangataiki, and to drag the timber westward toward the Government rail way extension (Rotorua -Taupo) would be to pull the timber against the grade. According to this view, the Rangitaiki River and its tributaries provide the natural drainage outlet for at least 75 per cent, of the Kaingaroa tree-growing area, and the Rangitaiki-to-Bay of Plenty route would be the natural transport outlet for the great bulk of the State's plantations; in fact, such portion of the State's Kaingaroa and Waiotapu plantations as is not drained by the Rangitaiki would be so small as to btj capable of being served by motor-lorry. The question of connecting the Kaingaroa plantation with the East Coast railway at Edgecumbe might be affected by the proposal of a sawnfilling company to build a tramway up the Rangitaiki Valley to Matahina. Should this be done, the rails will come within about 15 miles of the north eastern portion of the plantation, and the gap between it and the Bay of Plenty outlet will be propor r.ionately reduced—provided, of course, that suitable terms of transport over such a urivate tramway could be arranged But while the location and topography of the State's Kaingaroa plantation, and the fall of the country toward the Rang! taiki River, might provide an argument for the Bay of Plenty route, that consideration would hardly avail if the

Government, on general grounds—such as development of the pumice soil, emphasised by the Prime Minister in his reply to a recent deputation—were to decide to push on with the Rotorua to Taupo railway. The Department of Railways would no doubt expect to "secure for this new line all the timber traffic from State plantiitions within range. Its claim would be hard to resist,, so far as any Government traffic is con-

corned. In the long run, however, economic considerations will prevail, and some observers who claim to be looking ahead predict an important future for the Rangitaiki Valley as the outlet for the northern and north-eastern pumice lands At one tune, the Taupo Totara Timber Company had ideas of floating timber down the Waikato to Cambridge, and such floatage is still occasionally advocated. It may be mentioned, in passing, that the commercial practicability of timber floatage is, according to the Forest Service's annual report, now under luvestigation. But it is contended that, when natural obstacles like bends and rapids are compared, the Rangitaiki is a far better timber-floatage proposition than the Waikato. Apart from the afforestation areas, the Rangitaiki Valley contains, between the river itself and the Urewera country, about 100,000 acres of indigenous forest, drained chiefly by the Rangitaiki tributaries called Wheau and Whirinaki.

Timber in the Pumice Belt. At March 31, 1926, the areas planted by the State at Whakarewarewa, Waiotapu. and Kaingaroa, totalled 55.053 acres, as compared with less than 25,000 acres in 1921. In 1926-27 the Forest Service added 19,924 acres, bringing its total plantations to 98,891 acres; while in the same year the tree-planting companies and syndicates established 51,242 acres of new plantations, bringing thentotal to approximately 70,000 acres. It may be assumed that the Forest Service has since then been planting, and will continue to plant, on a still greater annual scale, while the companies and syndicates, many of them being in their infancy, must necessarily increase very greatly the scale of their planting.* A great deal of this afforestation work must obviously be done in the valley of the VVaikato west of the proposed RotoruaTaupo railway, and a great deal of it in the Kaingaroa zone; some of it probably between the two Thus the eco nornic resources in the pumice belt are being increased at a very rapid rate, but the fact may not be generally recognised till the timber crop, which is a deferred crop, nears realisation. And if the demand, including the pulp demand, fits in with anticipations, the question of transport to and from the pumice belt will impress the public much more vividly than it does to-day. Some Broad Issues.

The map that accompanies this article gives some idea of the pumice belt, its transport its diminishinng idigenous forest, and its increasing exotic planta tions. On the east side, the dip of the State plantations toward the Rangitaiki River is indicated, along with the timbei tramway which, it is thought, may one day figure as a transport link between them and the Bay of Plenty. On the opposite (west) side is the course of the Waikato as it tlows down toward Arapuni, and She intersecting line of the Taupo Timber Company's light railway, with many company tree-planting areas in its vicinity; there are in this zone still some considerable blocks of native bush, but in the last 25 years much has been cut out. In the middle is the proposed extension of the State railway from Rotorua to Taupo, touching the big State plantation at its north-western end, airid some projected company plantations. Eastward, beyond the confines of the map, are the East Coast (Poverty Bay and Hawke's Bayj, which is connected by two roads (Taupo-Napier and Opotiki Gisborne), but no railway; westward is the North Island Main Trunk railway. Access From North and South. It will be seen that a piece of the Main Trunk railway is shown in the south-west corner of the map, and at the north-east end is the Bay of Plenty section of th-3 East Coast railway so fa'r completed These railways, and the suggested connecting railways (Kakahi l'aupo and Rotorua-Paengaroaj, bring into the discussion a north and south interest. They Tsise this question: If the next step is to connect Taupo by rail with Auckland via Rotorua, will not the ultimate development be a shorter connection with the sea by rail from Rotorua to Paengaroa or by some alternative route to the Bay of Plenty; and, concurrently, will not the southern portion of the North Island seek communication with Taupo by a railway from Kakahi to the lake's southern shores? The Kakahi Taupo railway shown on the map as "proposed" is the line projected for many years by the Tongariro Company, to tap one of the largest of the Dominion's remaining indigenous forests. An offshoot of this line is the "suggested" State railway to link Kakahi with Taupo. The exotic plantations north and northeast of Lake Taupo, and the indigenous forest south-west and west of the lake, are magnets whose pulling power will not fair if the world's softwoods timber famine attains anything like the propor tions that independent experts predict. These influences, and a better apprecia tion of the possibilities of the pumice land, will compel a solution of the prob lems of economic transport that appeal on the surface of the map. The wonder land and tourist factor need not be em phasised. With the development of Waikato hydro-electric power, the electrification of railways may play no small pari in adjusting the new balance of power between rail and road.