WINTER IN OUR FAR SOUTH

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23121, 20 August 1938, Page 1 (Supplement)

WINTER IN OUR FAR SOUTH

Central Otago Cold

By KOTARE

AUCKLAND very 'easily per* suades herself that her winters have something of an Antarctic severity. That is among friends, of course. To the outsider she will always refer to her climate as sub-tropical. Probably to impress the same outsider, she refuses to make adequate provision for heating her homes and public buildings. We will shiver through a concert rather than admit that often our ajjjte. bites shrewdly. Our schools can give a creditable imitation of a freezing chamber. But we put our trust in the power of imagination. - 0, who can hold a fire in his hand By thinking of the frosty Caucasus? Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite By baro imagination of a feast? Or wallow naked in December snow . By thinking on fantastic summer's heat? The answer is: Auckland.' To maintain our reputation as the winterless north we have our houses in winter so bleak and chill that visitors from Canada long to get back to a good northern winter to "get warm again. But among ourselves, honour having been satisfied and our face saved before the outsider, we are persuaded that we too know what winter is. The long hot summer that had made most of us weary of the sun before it ended some four months ago must have sapped our powers of resistance. I have heard more complaints this winter of penetrating,, marrow-disturbing cold than in all the twenty-one years I have known of Auckland and her ways. Official Figures Actually the official figures gaily report our morning temperatures as well above freezing-point. I have wakened on several crisp mornings to a world white as snow with hoar-frost. The standing water in the pools is coated with ice. My estimate from long experience of colder regions in other days is a thermometer reading of at least six degrees of frost. But the official statement always crpdits us with a minimum" of 40 degrees. Such are the variations within the narrow range of the Isthmus. For my suburb runs right up to the citv boundary. - The humidity of the atmosphere must have something to-do with the penetrative power of our cold. Every wind except the southerly comes to us over thousands of leagues of wild sea. An atmosphere impregnated with moisture impinging on us without interference from any large and elevated land-mass makes both heat and cold harder to bear. I have climbed mountains in Central Otago with the thermometer climbing up toward the hundred. But so,xlear and exhilarating was the air that there was no discomfort, but only the thrill of vigorous exercise under perfect conditions. And I have set forth over the same ranges on a winter's morning, my breath to heaven like vapour going, the earth like iron beneath mv feet, and with a sense of physical well-beine such as they presumably experience, who on honey dew have fed and drunk the milk of Paradise. And the thermometer was down into single figures. But actually Auckland does not know what cold can be like, humidity or no humidity. There are many of our fellow citizens in New Zealand, not the winter sporters seeking the. snow and ice for tneir recreation, but the ordinary men and women setting about their daily work, that have to adapt themselves to conditions and temperatures that would appal those :of us tnat have been nurtured in our own mild and usually genial climate.;--Not that these hardy southerners complain. They love the conditions and would not change them.

Snow and Ice The coastal towns in the south are not particularly afflicted with snow, and heavy frost. I suppose Dunedin on an average only a couple of light snowfalls a year. The snow is rarely more than a few inches deep. I have travelled over Mount Cargill, only a mile or two out from Dunedin, when the snow-drifts on the road were above my head, but that sort of experience is very uncommon. I have played hockey in Dunedin when, the ground was several inches deep with snow, and when the game had to be stopped every few minutes to chip out the ball, whicn had begun to assume the dimensions of a Soccer ball. >'• I seem to remember, as an echo of my youth one great occasion when the edges of Otago Harbour showed signs of ice. But tbat must be very infrequent. I used to see as a boy helpful housewives running out with kettles of hot water on steep main suburban highways to melt the frost-bound earth Deneath the hooves of the butcher's or baker's horse. But one has to go inland in Otago to frost can do. Ota,go Central's own poet has thus described it in winter: J Wild winter on the frozen hills, The rocky peaks, the ice-bound rills. The lowering red of early mom, The even with its misty chills; The feathery snowflakes earthward flying,' The wintry sunbeams faintly dying, The icy fingers in the gorges, Tho harsh-voiced birds on low wing crying; Below, the mist-enshrouded plain, The winds that wail like men in pain, Beyond, the everlasting mountains. The glacier and the. wild moraine. Work and Sport Alexander Don, in his " Memories of the Golden Road," pictures the oldtime doctor in the Central setting forth on his fifty-mile round. " The cold winter temperatures presented a problem which he endeavoured to solve by thrusting his feet encased in warm felt slippers into a half sack of chaff, where a porcelain hot-water bottle provided further warmth. Then with a Russian hat pulled well down over his ears and with well-nadded driving gloves he ventured fortn by day or night to answer the call of distress, be it near or far." Tlio modern doctor has to fill his radiator before leaving and empty it on his return, and if his call is lengthy, he may find tho pipes burst when he returns to the car. For remember that) often the thermometer shows ,over twenty degrees of frost, that sometimes there are zero temperatures and in one year there is a record of fourteen below—llo less than 46 degrees of frost. It was not unusual for the water in a bedroom ewer to freeze in the night, shuttering its container and presenting in the morning a jug-shaped block of ice. Workmen in the camps have told me that it was impossible to wash their faces on a very bitter morning. The water formed into icicles on the bearus the conditions -made it advisable to cultivate. . , Tho magnificent ice 'surfaces provided for a considerable part of the winter, with the dryness of the winter air, make Central Otago the; .New Zealand headquarters of the old Scottish game, curling. There is no game more friend!v and democratic, giving more uproarious fun for keen sports, men or all ages. The curling stone weighs from 301b. to 50ib., and is projected over the ice to the mark by a handle fitted in the top. It is a sort of ice-bowls. I believe they have in troduce<r ice-hockey, the fastest of all games. But that u since my time. y7 \ ; i. 7 . .\, . I must say I like my winter to be-a winter.