Realisation of a Dream-The City After Ninety Years

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21647, 13 November 1933, Page 12 (Supplement)

Realisation of a Dream-The City After Ninety Years

fWTvj T wants faitli to found a city—faith i n its ability to live and prosper, &|v£/ faith in its power to endure. Some men found cities that never grow SL JE out of the village stage, others establish cities that grow to greatness and then crunible in the dust. The city of Auckland is fortunately of neither type; its roots are too firmly established ill the ground. It is no freakish incubus imposed upon a servile people to satisfy the whim of an irresponsible dynasty, but a utility which has grown up naturally to serve the commercial needs of a rich agricultural province bountifully supplied with the gifts of Kature—a province Made fri'con with the running of riverß And gracious with tempi-rnte nir. When D'UYvillc sailed into the sunlit shelter of the Waitemata Harbour 105 years ago lie found the site of the future city of Auckland a wilderness of scrub and fern, devoid of habitation except for a few brown-skinned people who fled at his approach. Captain liobEon laid the foundations of the city 13 years later, at a time when the jungle of vegetation on the hillside slopes was of such impenetrable

A UCKLAND and Mount Eden were both named by Captain Hobson after George Eden, first Earl of Auckland, who at the time was Viceroy of India. Lord Auckland, as First Lord of the Admiralty, had appointed Hobson in 1834 to the command of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, in which he first visited New Zealand. Prior to this Hobson had been idle for teoeral years, despite notable services he had rendered against pirates in the Indies, and he continued to cherish gratitude to his benefactor.

thickness as to cause many a man to turn back before reaching the summit of Mount Eden. Since Sir John Logan Campbell, " the father of Auckland," pitched the first white man's tent on the beach 9.'5 years have passed, and from the virgin soil has sprung a beautiful city of well-planned streets and buildings, its red roof-tops and green gardens splashing the land with colour. In this Imperial city of the South, whose population has grown to 220,000 inside the century, dwell a people sprung from British stock, whoso civilisation derives from English, Scottish and Irish ancestry and whoso future is iridissolublv linked with the fortunes of the British Commonwealth of Nations.

It took the capitals of Europe from 500 to 2000 years to attain their present size and status. London was a trading town in the first century A.D., Glasgow is at least 800 years old and Birmingham was a manufacturing town 400 years ago. Yet in the brief span of 9.'5 years Auckland has become a city of importance, a great seaport and the commercial capital of .Now Zealand. Governor Hobson selected its site because of its central position, the facility and safety of its port, its proximity to the inland waterways of the Waikato Biver and the Manukaii and Kaipara Harbours, and the fertility of its soil, and nobody to-day has cause to regret Hobson \s choice.

Like otlior fair jewels in the Imperial sceptre, Auckland was planned and built through the far-seeing vision of a groat nationbuilder. When, iu 1787, Admiral Arthur Phillip sailed to wild, unexplored Australia and discovered what he called the finest harbour in the world, naming it after Lord Sydney and drawing up plans in a temporary wooden hut at the harbour's edge, he laid the foundations of the second largest city in the British Empire. Cape Town traces its ancient origin to 1(552, when the Dutch East India Company founded a naval station in Table Bay and brought out shiploads of orphan girls to marry the Dutch soldiers and settlers. Ottawa had an even humbler beginning, when, in 180(), an intrepid settler named Philemon Wright built a log cabin at tho foot of the Chaudiere portage on the Ottawa lliver. But Auckland was born under a far more luminous star, for before ever a courthouse, post oflice, prison or other public building was built it was proclaimed the capital of the colony. When Captain Uobson, acting on the advice of the Rev. Henry Williams, the missionary, chose tho isthmus of Tamaki whereon to build tho capital of New Zealand h<j> well and truly laid the foundation for his own monument. For, as it lias been frequently pointed out, be not only chose a site of European resideneo which strategically cut the hostilo Maori tribes almost in half, but lie selected n trading centre whoso situation iiot oven our present-day knowledge of tho Dominion's topography could improve upon. No city at its birth was so graciously endowed with Nature's promising advantages. Its climate wa9 temperato, in winter warmer than Devon and

Cornwall and totally devoid of snow or ice, in summer as warm as Spain and Jtaly. it had a liberal rainfall, conducive to an abundant growth of vegetation and a rapid germination and ripening of crops, and navigable streams and rivers permitted easy penetration into tho interior. Kncrgetic and hopelul settlers flocked to the land, and, after one or two setbacks caused by ill-managed land settlement schemes, replaced forest with grassland, produced wealth from the soil and built up, with steadily-grow-ing annual increments, what is to-day a substantial export trade in butter, cheese, meat, fruit and gold. Few more progressive cities have been built south of the line. A rigid ban against skyscrapers (there is a' height-limit of 102 ft. for buildings) has had the effect of regulating traffic in the busy areas, preventing congestion of population and simplifying tho transport problem. Zoning of the city into residential, business and factory areas is developing further expansion on town-planning lines and efforts made by the civic authorities to prevent the creation of a smoke nuisance, such as mars the amenities of many an Old World city, have been happily successful. Auckland has led the rest of the Dominion in modern road construction. There aro 60 miles of concrete roads, permanently-paved highways feeding large residential and farming districts 22 miles south and 14 miles north of tho city. An up-to-date tramway service provides comfortable transport for town and suburban population, while air, rail and

INDUSTRY IN A SETTING OF BEAUTY

steamer services link the city with every other town in New Zealand. Hydro-electric energy is available in cheap abundance from the great power station at Arapuni, with the result that Auckland is not only adequately supplied with industrial energy, but is one of the best-lighted cities in tho Southern Hemisphere. To appreciate to the full the beauty of the city—its fine buildings (surmounted by tho great War Memorial Museum, whose perpetually flood-lighted facade is visible many miles out to sea), its spacious streets in which 10,000 trees have been planted in avenues, the architectural variety of its homes, each standing in its own plot of ground, its public gardens, playing fields and racecourses, and, above all, its unrivalled sunny aspect —one needs to view the scene with the unaccustomed eye of the stranger within its gates. \\ ho but the visitor can best revel in its warm sunshine, enjoy its clean yellow beaches, admire its blue bush-clad hills and marvel at the coloured landscape stretching as far as the eye can see from the vantage point of its unique volcanic hills? Fringing the picturesque cliffs a magnificent boulevardo has recently been built, giving an eight-mile marine drive, while smooth-surfaced motor-roads are now being constructed to tap the glorious surf beaches and rugged coastal scenery of the West Coast. Down the broad sea-lanes of the Pacific the ships of to-day ply in fleets that have grown annually larger. While ocean-borne traffic in other parts of the world has suffered severely

by comparison during the of depression, the port of -Auckland lias been busier than ever, due principally to the high level of primary production in the Dominion and tho consequent maintenance of the export trade. Last February the Harbour Board reported a record amount of tonnage at the wharves. In the past two years the fleet of passenger liners plying between Auckland and the American seaboard has doubled, a result largely of the check administered to the American tourist invasion of Europe and the American traveller's search for other worlds to view and conquer.

As an essential link in the world-chain of Imperial communications, Auckland's destiny becomes clearly evident. With a double seaboard facing two oceans, a sheltered deep-water harbour that is admittedly one of the finest in the world, and a network of under-water cables and wireless communication that span the seven continents, her place in the Empire's broad avenue of trade is vital and strategic. She is three and a-half days' steam from Australia, her sister guardian of the Western Pacific, she is the natural port of distribution for Britain's island dependencies in that ocean, and IB days' sail to tlie east lies the great American continent. With the opening of the Panama Canal

! . I [1 //HEN Auckland was named alter him, ; ! ' Lord Auckland was at the height of his j fame as Viceroy of India, and had just been ' 11 granted an earldom in recognition of the j | victorious entry of a British army into Kabul, j i whereby the usurper Dost Mohammed had j been deposed and Shah Shaja placed on the | throne of Afghanistan. Late in 1841 the British 1 garrison at Kabul was virtually annihilated, and this disaster led to Auckland's recall in j February, 1842.

in ]914 London was brought within 34 days' steam and now over 100 cargo-carriers take Auckland produce annually to the United Kingdom by the Panama route. Every j'ear New Zealand sends overseas some £35,000,000 worth of foodstuffs and raw materials to feed and clothe the teeming millions of Europe, approximately a third of those exports, including butter, cheese, wool, hides, Meat and gold, corning from the Auckland Province. But this is only playing with the potential yield of the soil. The province can, and assuredly one day will, support a population of millions, producing agricultural, pastoral and mineral wealth vastly surpassing the present scale of output. Immense tracts of land in the province are untouched and that which is in use is producing only a third or a tenth of what it could be made to produce. Intensive cultivation of the soil is an unpractised art and the province does not know its own strength. Like the goklmining industry, farming has scratched the surface for the more obvious pickings; there remains the vast field opened up by the application of intensive methods of production. But to realise such ambitions the province must be more generously peopled. It has been said that in the last resort the greatest asset of a nation is its population. England is one of the smallest nations into which the earth is territorially divided. It is her 40,000,000 men and women who constitute her driving power, who set the march to progress and who have achieved dominion over a quarter of the globe. Population means markets and power, and power is proportionate to the size and cohesion of the population. Increasing unemployment, consequent upon world depression, has put a stop to the progressive schemes of migration until recently sponsored by the New Zealand and Home Governments, but such, a suspension cannot be regarded as anything init temporary. Empire growth and solidarity depends, as the Auckland Province must depend for its prosperity, upon increasing population. For a young country to discourage immigration is to stifle advancement and to court disaster.

Upon the sturdy shoulders of our people rests a great responsibility. Opportunity has been kind in good times; in adversity it fades away to a shadow, leaving disappointment and despair. Yet for a young city to mark time, fearful of its future and forgetful of its destiny, is to let prosperity slip through the fingers, to be snatched up eagerly by otheis more hopeful and daring. .All greatness has modest beginnings. Without the spark of hope, a city, like the soul, languishes and dies. To dream, plan and aspire is to achieve. Only thus will Auckland reach the goal intended! for her and win greatness and riches beyond her present dreams. Like Ler mountains, ft pillai» mg the perfect sky," she will then worthily hold aloft the spreading structure of British dominion in the Annth Seas.