Pioneering In New Zealand.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 37, 10 September 1892, Page 898

Pioneering In New Zealand.

CARVING OUT A HOME.

TO those of our readers far afield who may be unacquainted with the nature of the work and the difficulties which the pioneer settler in New Zealand has to encounter in his efforts to make the wilderness blossom as the rose, some explanation of the labours of bush-clearing and bush-life in the colony, will, no doubt, be of interest. The verdant stranger, locally known as the new ‘chum, more especially, wou'd benefit by a little enlightenment as to the ways and method of ‘settling in New Zealand, and the toil which he mu«t inevitably encounter in a new country. The popular opinion in the Old Country regarding life in New Zealand seems to be that existence in the land of the Maori and the morepork is one huge picnic, diver sifted by sundry skirmishes with tattooed cannibals and amorous alliances with beauteous Maori maidens. Accordingly, the British youth who has spent his patrimony, or who is a hopelessly bad lot. is shunted off to New Zealand by direct steamer, provided with a most elaborate and wonderful outfit — tents, waterproof clothing, high patent leather top hoots—an amazing wardrobe, and a most formidable armoury of firearms, wherewith to beard the Maori in his native lair. The awakening of that youth —and in every case the youths resemble one another as closely as two Chinamen as regards eye-glass and other garments—when he lands on Auckland or Wellington Wharf is a painfully rude one. He either goes sheep farming eventually—that is, hired drudge on a sheep-run at 20s a week and found —or else he ekes out a living at odd jobs after his money fails him. He quickly finds that life in the colonies is not quite the idyllic romance his fancy painted

it. If he has any grit in him he accepts the shattering of his dream in a philosophical spirit, and goes to work in earnest. It is in forest-cl earing life and hard work in the bash that the perseverance and courage of the settler are most severely tried, but it is only fair to say that a moderate amount of time and hard labour expended

on his land is rewarded by a very comfortable living for the enterprising settler, with the boon of free edocation for his children, and only slight handicapping in the way of taxation. It is in the northern portion of the colony almost exclusively that the -reniM bush settler is met with. In the Auckland, Taranaki and Wellington provinces more especially a great deal of bush settlement has taken place of late years. In Taranaki and on the East Coast especially, many thousands of acres of hush land have been cleared and are in process of clearing, the country being denuded of its forest growth far ami wide to tit it for the plough. It is in

life on these bush clearings that the vicissitudes and toil of the settler are to be tasted to the full. The first thing the embryo settler does when he buys or leases his section of land, and is fortunate enough to find it with the assistance of the Survey Department, is to run up a rude‘shanty' or whareof the most unpretentious description,

as shelter for himself, his companions (if he have any), his food, and his tools. The whare is, as often as not, roofed with fern-fronds and toi-toi for a start, and walled with rough slabs from the handiest tree. There must be a spring or a running stream close by for water supply, but these are not few and far between, but the reverse, for there is no better watered country than New Zealand. The bushman gets in a supply of Hour, tea, sugar, and other necessaries of life from the nearest township, and if he is anything of a shot his gun supplies him with frequent variety of fare in the way ot pigeons, kakas, and wild pigs to give a relish, a kinaki, as the Maoris say, to his otherwise monotonous men u.

Then he sets to work in real earnest to clear his selection, and convert it, by the sweat of his brow and the strain of his muscles, into ‘ a little farm well-tilled.' He is generally fortunate enough to get some mates with him until the tree-felling work is completed. With axes and a cross-cut saw the major portion of the work is accomplished. If the bush is what is termed heavy, with the trees close and of very large size, the task of felling is correspondingly laborious, but if the bush settlergeta sectionpartlyclearorwith forest of comparatively light growth, then he has some cause for jubilation for his land will be all the sooner under cultivation and yielding him a living. The daily round of axe and saw work, the felling of the forest giants, in slow succession, and the nightly damper and tea and inevitable mosquitoes, pall on many after a while, and the work is as laborious as that of any navvy ; but to the genuine settler, who loves a free and independent life, the fresh bracing air, the fragrant smell of the busb, the healthy occupation, the comparative freedom from carking care, more than compensate for the inconveniences snffeied. If it rains he need not turn out of his whare; if it doesn't rain he need not turn out unless he pleases, and his hours of labour are such as commend themselves to his feelings of the hour. Life in the bush is not without its advantages. The more arduous portion of bis labours over, the settler starts * burning off, an operation which reduces the mass of fallen trees, the kauri, the rimu, kahikatea, matai, rata, and the hundred and one other denizens of the New Zealand bush into ashes. The big stumps left in the ground when the tree 9 are felled give the settler liis most harassing work. Fire and axe have to be applied dozens of times before the section begins to present a civilised appearance. Nothing more

desolate can be imagined than a partly cleared valley or hillside covered with thousands of burnt tree stumps. Recently the writer rode through over twenty miles of bnsh track in the vicinity of Stratford, in the Taranaki district, which was being gradually bought under tire and axe, and then the plough, and the desolate effect of thousands of acres of stumps and half-burnt trees, fresh from a big ‘ burn,' could not be imagined unless it were seen. But this scene of desolation does not always exist. Gradually the unsightly stumps and fallen tree trunks vanish, clover and grass seed thrown in just after a ‘ burn-off' produce a most luxuriant crop of feed for horses, cattle, and sheep, and theuthewayissoon clear forthe plough. The transformation effected in a few years’ time is magical. The dense forest has disappeared entirely, and in its place is a smiling homestead, fertile fields, flocks, and herds, and last but not least, a crowd of healthy colonial children with hearty parents in the aforesaid homestead. Thus it is that the bush settler conquers Nature in his colonial home so that he may tickle the soil to make it smile with a bountiful harvest.

Alorton,

photo.. Auckland.

3/ orfoß,

ph>to.. Auckland.'