From the Catlins district the Otago Education Board last month had no fewer than five requests for assistance in this connection, and a committee, consisting of the chairman of the board (the Hon. T. Fergus) and the members of the Southern Ward, was deputed to visit the localities and report.
On Tuesday therefore the sub-committee proceeded by passenger train to Houipapa, and thence by ballast train to Puketiro (the present terminus of the ballast line).
Here the party was met by a trolley and conveyed to M'Lachlan's store at Caberfeidh.
From that point the members of the party journeyed by wagonette to Kahuika and the Papatowai railway site, where they took a boat to the Papatowai township.
On Wednesday they returned by Lawson's coach, via the main trunk road, from Papatowai to Catlins station, and visited Pounawea in the afternoon.
On Thursday they met the settlers at Glenomaru, returning to town in the evening.
Mr C. R. Richardson (chief inspector), who was with the party, interviewed as to their experiences, said that on ordinary roads this outing might be looked upon as a very pleasing jaunt, but with the extraordinary roads of the district it really was an experience.
Seven miles, much of it down hill, in four hours, with a pair of strong horses in the shafts!
The members of the deputation were all men who had a knowledge of the early days of Otago, but they were agreed that the Catlins roads are simply indescribable.
"This is winter," said Mr Richardson, "and we were assured by one of the deputations which waited on us that the roads have been in their present condition since last winter.
They are not side roads, but main routes.
When the main roads are in this condition, what must the side ones be like?
The whole system of settling this district has been a gigantic bungle.
The railway should have been made the pioneer of settlement, so that the settlers, while making their homes, could have reaped the reward that Nature had placed there for them in the vast timber reserves they find on their lands.
Instead they have been forced to burn this timber and eke out a scanty livelihood in the clearings they have made."
On the journey from Caberfeidh to Papatowai the horses were knocked up on the road, and would not face the seas of mud.
The waggonette at last became bogged, and the party had to get out to lighten the load. Both the horses and the members were covered with mud.
"Nobody,"said Mr Richardson, "had any conception of the conditions unless they had an experience of the journey.
The Hon. Thomas Fergus, who has a wide and varied knowledge of the roads in this and other counties in the early days, said he had never seen anything to equal the road we went over that day."
Mr Lawson, the coach driver, stated to some of the party that he has had to refuse to take passengers during a considerable part of this summer owing to the state of the main road from Catlins to Papatowai.
• Among Taupo fish stories is one of an English visitor who, having experienced the advantage of a particular fishing ground, was disturbed one morning at finding a Maori in possession.
The Englishman sent his valet to give the man a shilling as an inducement to retire.
The Maori promptly produced a florin and proffered it as still greater inducement for the pakeha to go away and leave him in peace.
- ODT, 13.5.1912.
