NEW ZEALAND’S CAPITOL.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 33, 23 September 1911, Page 2

NEW ZEALAND’S CAPITOL.

the city of taupo. A PROPHECY. (By James Cowan.) Mr Laurenson’s prediction that some day our political capital will be removed from Wellington and set up anew in some inland district was laughed at hy several unbelmvsng members of Parliament in the House the other night. But Mr Laurenson has the gift of prescience, in far gieater degree than the average member of Pai'liamont, whose range of vision is too often bounded by the requirements of his own little constituency. Mr Laurenson’s idea is hy no means a now one, but it is a good thing ro ding it into the ears of members every now and then. Half a century acnca, perhaps, it may make some impression.

Wellington’s central geographical position is its only real claim to the privilege of being New Zealand’s capital. That advantage, however, is not so all-important as it was once, when all New Zealand journeys of any length had to lie done by sea. When the capital was shifted from Auckland to Wellington in the sixties the annual trip to Parliament was a serious undertaking for members. Now, however, most parts of the two islands are easily accessible by rail, and a few hundred-miles cither way makes little difference The city of Wellington, moreover, as Mr Laurenson pointed out, is very badly planned—if it was planned at all. Its area is circumscribed by the steep hills that hem it in, and its very advantage of geographical position, in the funnel of Cook Strait, will have the disadvantage of making it an overcrowded and congested city. The removal of the seat of government from Wellington would therefore come as a great relief, considered quite dispassionately and apart altogether from questions of “vested interests.” The removal of several thousands of Civil Servants would probably bo bad for trade, at the outset, but it would give Wellington a breathing while, and would enable it to reconstruct itself on lines that would in the end make it a far more attractive city than before and a no less busy one, and there are the strategic and military considerations which make it undesirable that the capital of a country should be in such am exposed position, open to raids from any piratical ship of war, which could lie out in Cook Strait and shell the city with perfect ease and safety to itself.

Of course it is no use suggesting anything of the sort to Wellington members of Parliament. But in a big national question of this sort Wellington members of Parliament and members of the Legislative Council and their purely local interests need not be given exaggerated importance. Then where shall we place our future capital, or Capitol, ! which you pleatee ?• Mr Laurenson, with some enthusiasm, drew a picture of a model city on a ten-thousand acre clock, up in the Wairarapa or the Manawatu, or the back of Blenheim—why the ’back' of Blenheim ?—with a lake in the centre and Parliament House on the water’s 'edge. But Mr'' Laurenson, in my opinion, doesn’t go far enough Why not go to Taupe'?'

Lake Taupo is the natural and geographical heart of the North Island. Indeed the great lake is roughly heart-shaped ; Nature evidently had an eye to the fitness 'of things when she shaped the land and filled these lakes. There is no one part of the South Island so admirably designed as a central meeting-place. It is equi-distant from either coast and equi-distant from Auckland and Wellington. A colossal reservoir of blue, it drains the greatest mountains of the island and it supplies our greatest river. Long ago its shores were the meet-ing-place of Maori tribes from all quarters of the Ika-a-Maui, and there was a spirit in the place and in the grand, life-giving tonic air of the plains that made the Taupo Maoris t ie most free and independent in New Zealand. To Hcubcu, the great chief whose homo was on the southern shore of Trvupo, whs about the only Maori of any importance who refused to sign the Treaty of Waitaugi, when it was brought to him to affix his tatoomark. “Hu!” he said, “Am I going to place my head beneath the thighs of a woman P Take your puka-puka iway!” Perhaps a similar spirit of pride and independence may ho developed in our white legislators when they make their laws at Taupo! Look at the map of the island and observe Taupo Moana how it lies fair in the middle. Remember, also that its surface is L'fOOft. above sea-level, that it has an area' of more than two •inndrod square miles, and that its vlimato is probably the best in Now Zealand, bettor even than the muchpraised Hanmer Springs. It is already becoming a health resort; dne;ois say that residence there is a certain euro for consumption except in the worst cases. This germ-free air m new life to the sick. Hero, too, are lealthy springs of wonderful efficacy, :o dth-giving mineral waters that cure irotty well any disease with which you •.in fit yourself from a medical hook. \ ml. the scenery is the grandest in Ac North Island, and more interesting in its combination of snow and ice and volcanic- activity, than any '.'.it of Now Zealand. Timid people .•.no shudder at the mention of a volcano, and who live in apprehension :F earthquakes, need have no fears. I’ho volcanoes arc perfectly harmless; von may climb to the top and picnic ;n the craters with perfect safety, if ton keep well to windward-—and as lor earthquakes, Wellington lias more in the course of the year. Hero, somewhere on Taupo Moana’s chores, is. the site of our Dream City, our Garden City of the future, our Washington, our Berlin. Picture it., as it may he in 19G!, A.IV The Capitol, with its white stone Purlin-

meat House with its dope.: tmcntai buildings and its ohurclics and the .itrcs and dwellings, lies on a gentl slope of the eastern side ot' Tatip Moana, overlooking the blue inlarn sat. (No need lor Mr Laurenson - eircnl.tr artificial lake here!) Tit town is a real garden city, for it ha: been laid otit in accordance with ; rational town-planning scheme, base-, rn the infant measure which the Hon Clcorgo Fowlds introduced in the fat nick days of 1911. (See “The Life am limes of the Hon. George Fowlds,’ in the Taupo Parliamentary Library., j'here are great plantations of trees t; shelter the wliite city from the colo breezes off the Kaimanawa: Rangec and the snows of Ruapehu. There are parks and fountains and healthftil .gardens; each residence has it; shade trees and its orchards and iP flowers. These pumiccous shores of liiupo may no grow wheat, but the,' will grow trees and fruit and flower: equally as well as the once condemnec lands around Rotorua. Pure spark ling, cold streams through the towi into the lake. Away to the north, looking for the Capitol Park, you sec the lofty wooded extinct cone of Tanka ra, and far away beyond the wide Kaingaroa Plains, and southwards is the most wonderful view in the island —the, lake and its woody shore-hills, aid then the great trinity of high olaces—Tongariro, Ngauruhoe and Ruapehu—all three snow-capped in winter, and Ruapehu all the year round, it was under the shadow of that inspiring mountain Ruapehu that Sit George Grey camped when he made hu first draft of New Zealand Constitution. In front of you the lake stret ches away, twenty-five miles long am sixteen miles wide. It is lively witl steamers and electric motor boats am white-sailed schooners, and smallei sailing craft, for villages have grown up all around its shores, and it is a famous yachting-ground. And you art not isolated from the big trading ciiie, on the coast, for trains run in hen from Wellington in the south am. front Auckland, via Rotorua, in the north. The honourable member fo. Lyttelton—l am afraid it wont lie Mi Latirenson in 1961—can reach Taupe in ten or twelve hours from the time he leaves his home. (Flying machines do it in less, hut so many members ,)f Parliament have been lost, in Cook Strait or carried out into the Tasman Sea that the air route is not pop nlar amongst the more conservative members, for Wellington and its vicinity is as windy as ever.) The Garden City is self-contained and selfsufficing; it does not need to go beyond its own lake and its own,forests and mountains and trout streams fov its recreations; and it has its newspipers and its national museum and art gallery and its own circles of art and culture. Well, all this is but a dream for the present. But dreams have a way of coming true. And, anyway, you capital-planning legislators, why not go up and see Taupo and see its huge open spaces and breathe its brand free air of mountain and desert, inch sail on its fresh-water sea; and mark out your ten-thousand acre site before thesyndicates grab all the choice blocks of the Maori’s unused land. You won’t talk about Palmerston North or the back of Blenheim if you only come to know the Taupo country, from Tauhara to Tongariro, and the banks of the blue Rotorua.