NEW ROAD TO RUSSELL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20767, 9 January 1931, Page 8

NEW ROAD TO RUSSELL.

MOTORIST'S IMPRESSIONS.

PICTURESQUE SCENERY

- MAORI AS DAIRY FARMER.

BY CECIL THORNTON.

A rugged peninsula stretches out froin Whangarei to Bream Head. When we heard that a new motor route had been opened up by the coast to Russell, we hoped it would be in the shadow of those mighty hills, by the wondrous seascapes, the pohutukawa groves, the hundred hays and coves that we had loved to view from the deck of a launch.

But last Boxing Day, at 3.15 p.m. we drove away from that point and ran by the beaten track near Otonga, beyond Hikurangi, striking off into the hills that lav between us and the sea. In military parlance we had turned the Man in Peninsula. We were speeding through a pleasant land. On our left, herds of milch cows placidly swung down tta cattle tracks to their byres. The grass, though short, was sweet and green. Ft was Maori land and the Maoris have tnken up dairying with a zest that promises well for them and the country. The hills bend down to our right.

We turn to the north in following the windings of the road. A low range of hills, showing the red of red gums and the dark lines of pines, catches the eye. It is the State afforestation area. Planted with red gums, it was devastated with fire and then were planted pines. Both are doing splendidly.

W« are in the hills now—great clay" masses rising up on each side. In the valleys and often by the roadside itself are clumps of native bush. We mount upward. The saddle is almost attained when a motor-cyclist sweeps round the bend with lightning speed—on the wrong side of the road. Our driver tries to pull up but skidding, and spattering stones right and left, the daring or stupid man just escapes—it seems by the fraction of an inch—a collision that might have proved fatal so fast was he going, such little command had he over his machine. The Blue of tha Sea. At the top we pause. Before us lies the blue of the sea. White sails of yachts steering north are visible. We catch vietas of little bays far beneath us—little bays sejb in arcs of glowing trees. As we sweep down, each' corner opens up some new vi3ta —some fresh beauty. Here is an old homestead, gabled as in the olden days, painted whites with green roof. Before it are beautiful puriri trees, domed totaras, while the pohutukawa, late this year in its flowering, is showing its earliest patches of rich crimson to the est and the north. Here is the lighter green of the English ash and willow. Green is the grass of the home fields. An old white horse stands under a puriri and watches us speed past. i The road hitherto has not been good. It has been the old road, and when the New Year has come the Public Works are to widen its narrow places and straighten its many bends. We are in Helena Bay. the picnicking place of old Whangarei residents. There is the-perfect beach and there (lie old island where once there was a store anil Maoris and settlers paddled across to eel their goods. _ The passing sunlight lingers on tli< golden beach. On we go. The -ni'Moi makes short time between Helena Bay and Whangaruru. Here on a sandy brach there was once an old sawmill. Ihe mill has vanished, piles of sleepers, mighty trunks of trees and baulks still lie on the beach between the sea and the lagoon Native Settlements. in the cutting, the new road to Russell begins. A Maori informs us that the land round us is mostlv Maori owned, that it runs 1000 cows, that there is plenlv, of feed, that yearly the clearing process is bringing more and more land in and there will b<s more and more cows. Then we naus on up the widened road. The country is not very inspiring. The land on the>ft is fern land, broken here and there by heavv scrub. But to the right we get pictures of sea and hill and sky that would delight an artist's eye " We pass by Maori settlements and note that here too there are signs of clearing "There are cows grouped round byres that perhaps are the simnlesfc known—an open bail. But the cattle all look well and there are eood beasts among them. Great forest heights confront us and we ascend. We look down the coast to Cape Brett. We sec the site of an old whaling station, then we enter a forest and then we pass a camn. Oh would some Minister of Public. Works decree that when such a camp is broken up all signs of hnman occupancy be swept away, that no more-shall ragged .coats and gar ments assail the eve, or heaps of tins or rnlibish destroy the native beauty of such a place. We see the Bav of Islands beneath and rush down toward its waters. We pass by mangrove flats and wooded coves and running over a saddle bv a church strike down to the wharf, where in the fading twilieht. the people are resting on the beach, the children are. •paddlinsr m the water, the yachts are lying at their moorings. Russell is reached and our journev is over.