A GREAT TRENCHER-MAN

Taranaki Daily News, 27 August 1930, Page 7

A GREAT TRENCHER-MAN

NEW ZEALAND APPETITES VISITOR’S FRANK IMPRESSIONS. NATURAL BEAUTY APPRECIATED. Miss Dora West, whose recent visit to ‘ New Zealand 1 will be remembered by many people, has been writing of her experiences in English newspapers. The Yorkshire Evening News on July 17 published the following article, which will ' especially interest Taranaki folk:— To see New Zealand having been a - lifetime’s dream, it was with eager anticipation that 1 rolled on my cargo ship into New Plymouth one wet and stormy April afternoon when the weather seemed entirely home-like and the White Hart Hotel opened hospitable doors to welcome the stranger, its very name seeming to smack comfortably of an English country town. Its dinner, praise God, did not! All over New Zealand, - this producing country of plentiful good food, one may ’ get royally fed for three shillings or half a crown, and that first night ashore after eight weeks of sea, I fared sump- , tuously on oyster soup and schiiapper. fis,x,'lamb and chicken, peas and sweet potatoes, peach pie, ■.. passion fruit and cream—such bowls of cream!—for this . is the rich green country of the Tara-'' naki Province, noted as a dairy land. • The New Zealander is a. great . trencher-man, and all dinners being .served at six or six-thirty p.m., a generous .buffet supper is spread at . nine, o’clock, when rounds of beef and ox tongues appear,- flanked by piled-up ’ plates of scones and butter, and mighty • * pots of coffee and tea. ■ ... • . : How they ever manage to sleep on it - I cannot imagine, but everyone looks -■_ burstingly well. Tea must indeed be - beneficial, for. it is drunk from early . • morn until last- thing at night,. after ' every meal as a matter of course, and id between. ' • ‘ A LAND OF FERNS. Behind New Plymouth towers Mount • Egmont, a solitary snow-clad cone, ' rising ‘8,260ft into the clouds. Newfound friends motored me. to its mountain hostel, 3000 feet above sea level ' as' far as the road goes, in curving .' gradients through’ virgin bush, with majestic, tree ferns thick on either side. . New' Zealand, is the' laud of ferns, and their varied beauty is a constant joy. The Black Punga is a tree fern with a trunk as thick as the leg of a man, while the graceful fronds of another are vivid green on their out- ' ward face and silver at the back. This Silver Fern is the badge of the All ’ Blacks; and a man’making his way through untrodden bush \ turns back the , fronds to make his path. ’ T have seen the giant Kauri trees of the primeval forest of the northland —■ .mighty 1 majestic things, 20C0 years Old, with straight grey trunks as tall as ship’s' masts, towering up into the sky, ’ the height unbroken by any, branches, - the leafy crown being far above. ; New Zealand is a young country as far as the white man is’ concerned. * Only some. odd 80 years ago the first .. settler reached her shores, and : . the traveller from home is being constantly.

' surprised by'the newness of everything. ' : When I' expressed admiration at the * wonderful mountain road through the bush over Mount Messenger, on my ; long service car 'journey to the north, “Opened three years ago,” said the driver proudly. And as 1 stood on the golf links at . Takapuna, an ocean . suburb of Auckland, and surveyed what Lord Jellicoe declared to be one of the world’s finest views, my host remarked, - “Five years -ago this was all manuka

. buslu” , :■ ■ ■■ ' • •;<ln the Dargaviile country I met / Mr. Coates, ex-Reform Prime Minister, - a farmer on the sunny side-of 50, who

. took me jumping dikes and climbing - fences to - see. his yearling Hereford ; bulls. .: We walked through a herd of . some 80 of' the' pretty ..creatures, ’’and I . thought as we went; “This is a land ; tha x should surely prosper,’ where her Prime Ministers'are found on the soil,” and I recalled the mighty days of the . Roman Empire, where a leader of the . people—-was it Cincinnatus? —was call;' fid to the Forum from the plough. ' JOY OF THE MAIL. On the Bay of Islands I am spending , sunny autumn days going round with . the launch that delivers the mail and collects the cream from the . outlying homesteads scattered around its numberless inlets and beaches. ’ This oncc-a-week boat is their only link with the outside world, and as the - little launch puffs in close to the shore - someone from the ■ homestead - strolls - down to the waterside—ho one hurries ? in New Zealand—and putting out in a - rowing boat dump their cans of cream ‘ on board for market, and perhaps a • -bunch of fish or a sack of kumaras ‘ (sweet potatoes) and always there - comes the same hungry question, “Have ; you any mail for me I” and .faces lighten ■’ and eager hands are stretched for. the • weekly budget of papers and precious letters from “home.” . ... Some of these homestead beaches are badly surf-swept, and a man lias great . difficulty in getting his sacks of proyend.r ashore—hour for himself and oats for his horse., which stands at the water’s edge watching the proceedings . and waiting to pull up the load on a sledge, while the sheep'dogs race around - and assist by barking. A horse may have all he can manage to pull the load up the heavy beach, yet ; I noted that the man does not think to - lighten the load by walking, and adds his weight to the sledge as well. Brought up in the saddle, it does not. occur to him to make use of his own feet. Or , perhaps since his boat had overturned , on mm the previous week, and he had . lost his stores and nearly his life in the surf, he feels that in a pioneer land °Kbe horse must bear all burdens, too, .