HISTORIC KERIKERI.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20593, 18 June 1930, Page 8

HISTORIC KERIKERI.

HONGI'S PA DESERTED.

AN EXPERIMENT'S MEMORIAL.

PROSPECTS OF A NEW SORT.

BT A. WOLSELEY EUSSELtNo. IV.

The Maori population fluctuated, bub never regained its old force. The pa was deserted, and is now so overgrown that Hongi's mighty fortifications are barely distinguishable. Even in recent years the native population has dwindled, and now most of the native labour hereabouts is not strictly local—though there are still descendants of Hongi here. It was not so long ago, according to an old inhabitant, when one might see a dozen Maori girls in home-made white bathing suits, running hand in hand down the slope and jumping off together from the rock into the water; and tha little brown boys jumped off the Kemps' old wharf in swarms. There was one twelve-year-old, they say, who seemed to think that the longer run he took tfie further into the water he would get, so he used to start a hundred yards up the road, in his birthday suit, dashing right down the hill and off the wharf! An event of considerable importance to Kerikeri was the introduction of gorse,, which seems to have taken place in the forties or fifties, though it is difficult to arrive at the exact date. It was brought in by an optimistic agriculturist, not, as in Canterbury, for hedges, but to cut as chaff for feed! Before long it had infested the whole countryside, so that' now gorse is as much a feature of the local waste lands as the native scrub. Although gorse of long standing improves the soil, not many farmers who hava tackled it would bless it, and unfortunately it has grown better in the fertile plain of Kerikeri than on the surrounding gumlands. It has become a byword. In two places the gorse may still be seen from a long distance, growing in the original lines on the hillside—a queer memorial to a runaway experiment that years of labour have not checked. Getting a Bridge. The church was demolished about 1875 and a new one built, an unpretentious little place, in the iron-roofed, country style. The post office was, till last year, when it suffered the same fate, the smallest in New Zealand, and was not without people to regret its passing. The bridge is supposed to have had an amusing origin. The previous crossing of the I river was by fording the curious narrow outcrop of rock which bars almost the whole mouth. It is just rock; and, looking at it now one marvels that a horse, j let alone a wheeled vehicle, could ever have crossed it.

But they did; and if you were coming in on foot you just had to stand on the opposite bank and shout till someone took ' it into his head to row over and ferry you across. This sufficed for almost ICO years; but the story has it that before tho war a certain Minister of Public Work 3 was crossing and the axle of his buggy broke. Since then Kerikeri has had a bridge. New Occupiers of the Land.

Kerikeri's original 13,000 acres of land have had a chequered career. A considerable portion was cut up by the C.M.S. for the missionaries' children, and bought in by one of the later Kemps. From the beginning, it was farmed iu a small way, but it was not till Mr. T. C. Williams, son of Archdeacon Henry Williams, bought up a large block in the nineties that much of it was brought in. ' Successive owners, the Bulls and Riddells, had different areas, and the present homestead grew as country houses do. On the death of Mr. Riddell, two or three years ago, a company was formed to buy the station, and the North Auckland Land Development . Company wa3 formed, with the novel scheme of cutting it up into small sections for fruit farming. Overseas settlers have been attracted in numbers, and the character of Kerikeri has completely changed. The population now consists largely of retired men, from business or the services, from China, India and the tropics generally. One old local farmer expressed the thought of many. "What tickle? me," he said, "i« all these here captains going round in short pants."

And so it seems that Kerikeri is stretch, ing itself and waking up again—to a very different dawn. The new adventure •« not yet history, but it may be. Who knows but that Kerikeri may prove to be more historic in the future than she has even been in the past.