FIFTY YEARS AGO

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21879, 15 August 1934, Page 8

FIFTY YEARS AGO

POSSIBILITIES OF THE NORTH SUB-TROPICAL CULTIVATION In view of the progress being made today with the cultivation of sub-tropical produce in North Auckland, it is interesting to notice that the possibilities of the North for this purpose were being actively canvassed 50 years ago. A company was actually formed in South Canterbury, inspired by encouraging reports from Mr. G. D. Federli, a gentleman with wide experience of sub-tropical products, with the object of developing an area of about 5000 acres in the North for the cultivation of subtropical fruit. The following extract from the Canterbury Times on the formation of the company, is quoted in the New Zealand Herald of August 15, 1884: —" Mr. Federli, may his shadow never grow less, has at last succeeded in awakening some enthusiasm on the subject of the cultivation of sub-tropical fruits. His late visit to the far and unknown regions of the North has not been unproductive. If he has not found a land Bowing with milk and honey, he has at least found a land where the inhabitants are asleep and dead to the privileges conferred upon them by their soil and climate.

" It may seem satirical, but it is true, that a Canterbury company is about to develop the resources of the Hokianga district, some 150 miles north of Auckland. The Hokianga sun will ripen the* soft bananas and the juicy orange. The acid cooling fragrant lemon grows in the North as it grows in few other places that the" sun shines on. Tho sweet and luscious green fig comes there to perfect maturity and the oil olive will flourish too, and so will the wattle and the grape. With inconceivable supineness the people of Auckland have not permitted their knowledge of these facts to benefit themselves. A little money and a little enterprise was all that was needed and the Fiji and Islands trade in fruits could have been in their hands. " Tho warm climate and fertile soil permits of the cultivation within a small compass of the wattle, the banana, the orange, the lemon, the olive and the 'grape. Let one crop wholly fail during one bad season and the fruit-grower can fall back on the other five. The man who has two strings to his bow is proverbially a wise man, but what about the cautious person who keeps six on hand?" Although the optimistic prophecies made in the article have hardly been fulfilled, the project at least served to make the possibilities of the North, more widely known and to awake Aucklanders to a realisation of the opportunities the country offered.