BUSH SETTLEMENT

New Zealand Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 5728, 25 October 1905, Page 6

BUSH SETTLEMENT

THE ROAD TO NOWHERE. A WOUNDED COUNTRYSIDE. BURIED WOMEN. No. 111. “This has all got to come down,” said the Backhlockcr cheerfully, as ho scanned the ragged flank of a spur, and ■tapped with his boot the papa stratum 'lying obliquely on the side of the track. It would break the heart of a new chum to travel across the main road from Stratford, and then ho set down to make a living out of one of the State holdings into which the country is divided. The hills are not high. The greatest elevation falls considerably below tho lowest in tho Awarua block, and tho general level of the roads in tho valleys is about 400 ft. Wherever tho Townsman looks ho sees that as toon as tho scrub and bush is cleared elf tho hills tho .surface slides away down into tho valleys below. In the foreground of tho wooded spurs that rise one after another right back to tho foot of Ruapehu there aro innumoriihlo scars and slips standing up to tho gaze, and looking more hideous than tho wounds in tho side of Orongorongo, which arrest the eye from Lambton quay. From tho centre of tho wound fho papa rock peers out, gloaming in tho sun. It is bine grey, but it is not slate, although to-day you can scarcely break it with a hammer. Half the face of tho country has slid away thus, demolishing fences, burying stock, and leaving a track of ruin behind it. The new chum would wring his hands and fly in horror from such a country. But if lie waited, he would find that to-morrow tho hare papa face will soften in tho weather, and dissolve into dust or pug under tho feet; next day it'will take seed from stock* or wind, and within twelve months of tho slip ■there will bo stock'fattening on the richest and sweetest of papa swards. That is what keeps the Ohura pioneer pinned down in faith to his holding, lie knows that tho slide is only a stage of evolution. Ho has learned to run his fences along tho spurs and sky-line, so that they will not be left hanging in mid air, and ho is content to wait for tho day when tho “general post” will bo over, and his holding has become a succession of richly swarded ■downs. A FRINGE OF SETTLEMENT. Tho Ohura Alain road stretches in pride as a highway ,of mud from Strathmore to tho King Country. There is a fringe of settlement right through, and those who hold the land know too much of its possibilities to allow it to slip away from them without a struggle. They aro unanimous that there is not a moic i i .urt oi the colony For settlement. The flat land is limited in area, but there is a good deal of downy land and uplands leading up to gentle hills,- which aro going to be the ideal wintering country of this island. There is nothing that will nob carry sheep or cattle, and there is a very largo 'proportion which will be ploughable. Tho number of cattle carried by tho different valleys which debouch on tho Main road is surprising. Practically the whole of tho Tongarakau basin leads down to Whangamomoniv by tho valleys of thoMoki, Manmirei, Whangamomona, Kohurapahi, and Whitianga; and the catchment includes, perforce, the Mangaowata basin towards tho Waitara, and tho Tangarakau coalfields to the north. Although at this time of year they are scaled up, every one of these valleys already carries a considerable number of cattle, and tho land is not yet nearly clearedThe Country is paralysed in the winter, simply because freo movement of stock or stares is impossible. Scarcely a wheel has been seen beyond Whangamoraona for months Shearing is at hand; but settlers are afraid to muster, if it means leaving the paddocks. This is tho kind of thing that happens; A settler mustered four or five hundred sheep, and started for the woolshed. One day ho travelled two miles. Tho road was impossible, and ho bad to got tbo sheep across a river one by one on a totara log, travel along behind the hush, and get on to tho road again where it was navigable. Sheep that come off this sort of travelling have to ■go through tho dip before they aro fit to shear. As for fat lambs travelling, say, thirty miles to the rail, it is out of the question. These men aro cheated out of every margin of profit that offers, but they pay the same taxes as Manawatn and Wairarapa. Yet one always hears the same remark: “I am thoroughly satisfied witii my section.” EXILE AND SERVITUDE. ‘Whangamomona commenced its civilised existence as an improved farm gottleraont. “I was working in the streets in Wellington, between the Government Buildings and the police station,” said one of the first selectors. “They were putting down the drains. Things were pretty bad then, and Air Mackay, of the Labour Department, said, ‘Why don’t von go on the land, Paddy?’ I asked where I coukl .get land, and ho said, ‘ln Taranaki.’ There were seventeen applicants for thirteen sections. I got my money from tho Alayor that night, and loft next morning.” This puts in a nutshell tho history of tho earliest settlement ten years ago. It shows tho principal class of selectors, and their utter unprepared new, and explains many of tho things that have happened since. When tho dweller in the city knows what is to follow he will say that the planting of inexperienced ■men in this isolated spot was a crime. But when ho reflects on the labour conditions of ten years ago, ho may say it was Justifiable. Tho sections wore 100 acres, stretching along both sides of the road, and 1503 of them woro taken up either at first or shortly afterwards. To-day there aro only thirty-five of tho original settlers loft. It is a cruel thing to hear of men who have stuck to thoir holdings for year after year, looking for the day when a railway or a road would bring them hope, being finally compelled to surrender, and go out heartless and penniless; to seo neat cottages empty or the well-grown macrocarpa hedges sheltering someone else’a calves. It is happening to-day. Tho Townsman mot a derelict riding out with everything in a saddle-bag—heart and all. "•

“ There’s a new man just come in there,” says the settler, nodding to one aside of the road; “ and this poor chap’s in low water too.” But the sections are not deserted. Those who hare hung on to others are only too willing to get a larger area,

and all arc occupied. It is a matter of capital. Alcn cannot lie taken off the streets and planted down penniless far from tho sound of a railway. It is only good for their character. LOOKING FOR A BAOK-DOOR.

The oppressive expense of transporting stores through to Whangamomona by way of Stratford induced the set-, tiers a few years ago to look tor another way. Eight miles from the Ohura main road there is a full tributary of tho Wanganui, tho Tangarakau. Two so-called roads lend down to it. Let us try one. The Vera road, which branches off the main road a mile or so above The Clearing, inijghl deceive anyone as it strikes off at full width across a bridge. Half a mile lately it is lost. Even the truck disappears in a creek and it is only after travelling amongst logs for a while and climbing a precipitous hillside that it is found again Hero are navvies tit work burying money. Tin's road has been surveyed six times. Theoretically, it is six feet wide “on the solid”: actually it rarely roaches that over all. A horse cannot follow it, because a huge totara tree fell across it in the last gale. . The hillside is too steep to get round, and tho navvies aro now engaged (Sunday morning) burning the log away out of tho road

Higher up, when wo reach tho track on foot, having driven the horso-s up in front, another obstruction appears. Tho papa subsoil shelves 'obliquely, and thousands of tons of earth aro coining down at leisure. Each little slide carries tho road away, and although there is a camp of navvies at tho corner the track is liable to disappear at any hour. Even when open tho chances arc that the horse, stepping too near either side, may start an avalanche of screes that will carry him headlong over tho hank. It is not so dangerous where tho hor.so can follow a row of mud-cups liko a cattle track, but for miles the rider’s knee is brushing against the cliff. NOBODY’S ROAD. By and bye, for no conceivable reason. tho road becomes sixteen feet wide. It is grown over with grass, showing that it leads from nowhere to nowhere eke. “ Oh,” says the Settler, “ this was to pack the stuff up from the Tangarakau, but they began at the wrong end, and did not go through lo the right one. This is wasted. It’s no good to anyone.” It was quite true. The sixteen-foot road ran in splendid isolation through good country that could only bo used by being linked on to something. It was getting overgrown. At one place more than a chain of it had been carried away into tho river, and we had to creep down a cliff and wade round it. And eventually it joined tho Putikitnna road, and reached tho Tangarakau river opposite a Alaori clearing. A pataka on tho flat showed that there were surveyors in tiro silent bush in shirts and rapakis getting ready more land to exile men on. . From this point the Tangarakau had been snagged down to the Wanganui, and Hatrick and Co. ran up provisions in an old canoe with an oil-engine, and landed them in a store-house, which a later flood washed off the shelf of rock on which it stood. Stores were carried at the ordinary railway mileage rate from Wanganui, but the cost of packing over the eight miles of tho Vera and Putikituna tracks landed the goods at Kohuratahi and Whangamomona liko an evil conscience. The pioneer had to turn his eyes back to the Ohura Main road, and live on hope. “Somebody ought to bo in gaol for this,” said the settler, as ho bewailed tho burying of treasure in the still unfinished Vera road. If that money had been planted in the Waitomo caves it would have been as usefully secreted. WOAIEN BURIED ALIVE.

“There are four married women with families down that road,” says the settler, nodding towards a gully whore a horse-track, loses iteelf in the bush. ‘■They have not been out all the winter.”

But that is nothing out of tho way. Tho wife of one of tho most well-to-do settlers on tho road, has only been in Stratford once in twelve months, and only in the Clearing throe times. There aro many women who have not been out of the settlement since they went in. There arc children who have not seen a railway train. Tho isolation is inconceivable to a city dweller. In tho early days the person who left Stratford eastward said ho was going “into” the bush, and returning ho was coming out. It is the same to-day—Stratford goes “in” to Whangamomona, and Whangamomona “out” to Stratford, although tho significance has to a large extent been cleared away with slashers at 25s an acre. But the terrible gap that has not been cleared away or bridged is that between tho sick-bcd and help. Fifty-one miles from Stratford a settler’s wife became ill with a malady that promised her death in a few hours There was a telephone at the Clearing, and a settler galloped down and called up Stratford. Relays of horses were in wait along the mudway, and the doctor covered the whole distance at tho rate of sixteen miles an hour. He was there just in time. If the roads had been bad he could not have done it. Another settler’s wife, approaching her confinement, mot trouble on Alarco’s road. A young pioneer was horn on tho roadside, and mother and child were carried by the settlors on an improvised litter to a convenient wbare. Time after time sick people have to bo carried on litters to points where vehicles can bo obtained. If they cannot be moved, the anxiety of nursing in this crying isolation is terrible. Most of the serious cases are carried “out” as soon as possible for better nursing, and that is why the percentage of natural deaths in tho roll of Whangamomona is only about fifteen of the whole. THE MAILS. It is because the population of the back-blocks has a common interest in honesty that the system of delivering letters and provisions is a safe one. “The King’s mail” struggles through twice a week in a Courtland waggon Behind two horses. Strangely enough, it is in ,the summer that the coach is covered in, in winter tho cover and anything else of weight have to bo left at the stables.

But the King’s mail is only a circumstance compared with the service of the candle-box. It is only the elite of the back-blocks who can ride down to the Clearing twice a week with any regularity. Besides, many live half a day’s journey from the post offices, and could not afford to spend two days a week on horseback collecting letters. The surest sign that there is a settler living somewhere at the back of the bush is a candle-box, a nail-keg, or a tin fastened on a tree or post, with its mouth away from the weather. Few have lids; none are locked; and there is a system' of pioneer’s freemasonry whereby men going to or from the Clearing deposit or lift letters for set-

tiers on tho way. Tho moat for the siu uh-cutlciy camp, tho tinned stuff for the bachelors on the back sections, tho bi-weekly loaf of bread arc all delivered in the same way. Tho owner lifts it when it suits him, and if he does not happen to see his neighbours for a few days on end he knows things aro all right. The directions and regulations to which the hack-blocker is amenable are not so aggressively übiquitous as in towns. Ho can sleep at nights without worrying about his correspondence. His posting-box is a tin two feet square hung on a bridge or a fence and weighed down with the proclamation “E.R., etc.” His regulations arc posted on a hoard at the cross-roads, with another hoard to keep the rain off, and they only apply to “Aloney Letters.” Those aro the only things that aro not committed to the candle-boxes.