THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS WEDNESDAY, MAY 27, 1936 PROGRESS OF THE WAIKATO

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22429, 27 May 1936, Page 12

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS WEDNESDAY, MAY 27, 1936 PROGRESS OF THE WAIKATO

The Waikato Winter Show has longsince outgrown the need to say much about the value of its purpose. It has proudly become its own justification. Year by year, through good times and times not so good, it has made for itself a larger place in the estimation of those it was planned to serve—a greater company than the dairy farmers, for traders of divers activities have had a considerable share in its success, and as a truly social institution it has fulfilled every hope. Now, after thirty useful years, it is both monument and beacon, a memorial of progress and an inspiration to achieve new triumphs in every avenue of industry. A few stalwarts of its pioneers remain to compare notes with each other as the venture of 1906 is recalled and to encourage another generation to build well upon the foundation then laid. There need be no misgivings about the future of what has become an annual national event. In its new premises, extended and made permanent beyond the limits of the original design, and particularly enhanced by its Bledisloe Agricultural Hall opened last year, the show radiates again the wholesome optimism that first gave it being and has continually been embodied in its development. The fact that this development has been soundly and securely financed from resources of its own multiplying is not the least impressive proof of the wisdom of its promoters; this is the sort of evidence that unshakenly bears witness to their apt seizing of an opportunity presented by the potential pastoral wealth of the district, and it promises well for the immediate and the distant future.

Looking back over the thirty years now reckoned in the history of the enterprise, the present generation of Waikato folk can glimpse a yet earlier beginning from which all their prosperity has sprung, a beginning as full of courage and determination as was any in New Zealand's pioneering past. Forty-two years before the show came upon the scene, Hamilton was born amid the difficulties of war. Thereabouts, at that time, was scarcely a touch of civilisation. Except for the entry of daring travellers and the patient toil of lonely missionaries, the region was almost an unknown hinterland. Happenings in 1863 threatened to make it still more difficult of access, and the thought of commercially profitable husbandry there must have seemed strange if it ever had voice. The trouble that was long to vex a great tract of this island and to hamper its settlement had broken out in Taranaki over a land | transaction at Waitara. This spread to the Waikato, and soon there was a state of tension that produced nervous anxiety even in Auckland. A native force, as was feared, marched north to attack the city. Governor Grey felt compelled to adopt .strong measures, and an unhappy conflict ended in a no less unhappy confiscation of Maori lands. Then, in order to secure the peace that had been enforced, locations were chosen for the placing of military, naval and militia men, as well as of others accepting defensive obligations, and one of these locations was Kirikiriroa on the Waikato River, within the area whence the threat had sprung. Out of this strategic move came British settlement, there and elsewhere; such outposts became growing-points of a new life, eventually to be enjoyed by both races. The feud has gone, and in its stead a better order is established, making possible the industrial and commercial growth characteristic of the area centrally served by Hamilton, even as the creation of the town has been its gift,

A reminder of that almost forgotten past, when the first settlers sowed and reaped in uneasy dread, although fears of the worst were fortunately never reaiised, should be salutary. Stout hearts they had who set about the difficult farming of those days and afterwards, as they tried to woo to productiveness their outlying acres, distant from the centre of relatively assured safety; and that they did it so well in many an instance stands as a rebuke to all fainthearted doubts when things go ill. The essential elements of a like success, but one immeasurably greater in material rewards, belong still to the natural resources of the district; and to turn them to good account requires most of all the spirit of the men and women of that arduous time. Their bequest to generations following has no more vivid reminder than the Waikato Winter Show. It speaks of an accumulation of modern amenities of which the pioneers •never dreamed, but it tells also of a progress, rooted in their endeavours, that can yield ever greater fruitage. Past and future focus in this annual event.