“SUCH THINGS WERE”

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 60, Issue 4233, 19 January 1940, Page 4

“SUCH THINGS WERE”

HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE DISTRICT.

The Cambridge District Centennial Memorial Committee made a happy decision when it chose the publication of a book covering the history of the Cambridge district as a cen. terinial memorial.

Months and months ago Mr C- WL Vennell, proprietor of the Waikato Independent, set about the task of collecting the facts, involving long and intensive search in many places, and the active co-operation of older residents of the town and district; and just before the Christmas holidays the volume made its appearance.

One part of the plan was to supply a complimentary copy to each child attending the Cambridge and district schools, the cost of this being borne by local bodies such as the Wfaipa and Waikato County Councils and the Cambridge Borough. Council. The book was' also prepared for general sale and circulation, and it has met with universal acceptance and appreciation.

A volume which traces the earliest known life and conditions of the district down through the periods when Maori tribe fought tribe for possession of the beautiful and productive countryside, through the period of the Waikato War of three-quarters of a century ago, and dealing very interestingly with events of settlement and development up to about twenty-five years ago. Present-day development is left for a later period, but the historian has included in his volume much that is new, and what is not so new is presented in a form that is attractive and convincing. Parts of the district on the west western side of the river—such as Pukerimu, Pukekura, Maungatautari, and Roto-o-Rangi—naturally take up a lot of space, for it was in those localities that the Maori was domiciled in greater number than on the eastern side of the river, unless one looked beyond the Miaungakawa range to Matamata, Peria, and W!aharoa, or northward to Tamahere and Tauwhare.

Readers in this district will appreciate to the full the revelations concerning the changefulness of ownership of the slopes of Maungatautari, particularly the rich lands of Pukekura right down to the present-day township of Leamington and extending right to Puahue. Indeed, there is the story of the breaking in of the Monavale and Panehakua lands of Mr B. Walkex- and Messrs Grice and Parker, the mux-dex- of the man Sullivan, the warnings and alarms of attack by marauding bands of Maoris from below the aukati line, the subsequent patrolling of the border by parties of the Armed Constabulary and the Waikato Cavalry, etc. Mr Vennell has told a grand story in “ Such Things Were,” and the volume deserves to become a classic of its kind, as it perpetuates the histoi’y of a fine district in colourful manner. A copy should be in the home of every present-day settler, and in the home of every former settler, too, foxreference and fox- entertaining and interesting reading.