ARAPUNI—BY NIGHT

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 86, 2 July 1927, Page 24

ARAPUNI—BY NIGHT

(Written (or THE SUN ~by J. G. McLean) ■ by day is a prosaic sort of place. Hidden in the folds of the wrink-iM'-xled landscape, the M Waikato does not reveal its beauty, nor the giant works which line its banks, unless a close inspection is made. To see the majesty of the Arapuni Gorge, guarded by sentinel columns of imperishable rhyolite, the stranger must venture to the brink of the chasm. Thence, his ravished senses lead him to the swing-bridge, hung high above the foaming stream, and there bursts upon his vision a finer perception of the river’s glorious vista. Rock and forest- shade the waters, jade inlaid with ivory, and admiration for the audacity that is man’s—for the effrontery wherewith he is taming this monarch among rivers—is touched with regret that its loveliness must forever be marred by structures as purely utilitarian as the hutments of “Tin-town,” perched upon the hill. The Hand of Man Already the processes of conquest have laid their hands upon the landscape. Rock-wall and forest are scarred by excavations; the clatter of concrete-mixers echoes down from the dam, where masonry has grown like some strange, massive fungus; and across by the spillway stand the latticed towers of the relay station, pattening the slopes of Mount Maungatautari with a tracery of steel. All this is a contrast to Tin-town. Clean and courageous effort is represented by the hydro-electric works, planted in a country still showing the scars of epochal geologic movements, and not created for mild submission, but over in the township, one at the main dam, the other above the swingbridge, daylight searches a lowlier picture. The few permanent houses serve only to accentuate the primitive character of the rest, and the nakedness of galvanised iron is only relieved where an open doorway frames a wall plastered with presspictorial cuttings, or a bunk on which j a coloured cug gleams bravely. Night descends, and the village is encompassed in its compassionate cloak. The iron shanties lose their stark outlines, and electrics glow behind the grimy windows, so that the j traveller afar, on the distant plains | out Matamata way, can pick up the j diadem of lights, striving against the black upland, and say to his com- j panion: “Behold, that is Arapuni.” j Night at Arapuni, in the strike i week, was memorable. jsTo pale satellite was the moon, in that atmosphere of crystal. Rather it was a convincing kind of moon, backed like a golden flame against the purple sky, and under its magnificence Tin-town was shot with shafts of yellow light. I Borne on the frosty air—for once J

unburdenqd by the shattering din from the river-bed —came the tremulous notes of fiddle or guitar. Men lay and listened,, or talked over stacked fires. The workers at Arapuni discuss many themes. Two of half a dozen, clustered round a brazier, may bend, absorbed, above a chessboard. “Move the prawns, George,” urges a jocular counsellor. Memories of Achievement Spurred by the strike, and their idea of justification, the toilers of the river told tales of high achievement, fortitude and courage—the incidentals of an undertaking so colossal and so difficult as the Ajapuni project. How the rhyolite roof of the diversion tunnel collapsed after a hood had miraculously driven tile workers away; of the day when falling rock in that soundless gut known as tile east wing missed two tunnellers by a hairbreadth ; of the desperate moments when the Insley chutes, to which two men were clinging, swung loose above the river-bed. Of these they talked, and laughed at the recollection. To descend to the dam. or cross the gorge, perpendicular ladders gummed to the cliff-face must be traversed, and the men prefer to ride in the buckets on the elevated ropeways. AS many as ten are hoisted from the riverbed in the sand buckets, aud on such occasions men are even perched upon the rim. Once a “skip” was crossing the gorge on the ropeway when a trolley-wheel missed the wire, and for agonising minutes the men clung to their tilted car, while the rope was “jiggled” until the wheel re turned to its place. i

Three lives is the toll of Arapuni to date. One man was electrocuted, another killed in a collision with a “lociq,” and a third crushed by falling earth. Narrow escapes, where the dice in the desperate gamble favoured the endangered men, have not been infrequent, but they are now only subjects for jests. The company’s engineers, as well as the men, have faced risks for the sake of the job, and for some of the staff-men the workers have only the highest praise and admiration. Fettered to Arapuni by the bonds of circumstance, decreeing that their living be earned in a place that can be viciously cold, wet and unpleasant, the men on the spot lose sight of the beauty of the river, and see no wonder, weave no fancies, about Tintown under the moon. But for eyes fresh to the scene there is magic in the mist, footed firmly in the river’s cleft, rising like a wall in the still night. Down by the dam the lights, and the moon, and the mist create a fairy picture. The tall metal bins are partly veiled. Ropes and wires, taut across the gorge, drift iuto infinity. Below are the shadows cast by ancient buttresses, the wide, white sweep of the dam, and a mass of scaffolding which assumes a mystery in the strange half-light. And all the time is heard the Waikato, protesting as it plunges into the diversion tunnel. Down below the dam it emerges into a field of foam. Across the gorge looms the encroaching wall of mist, and into it the river hastens—away from Arapuni, and the magic, and the loon.