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Updated: June 16, 2025
The worst of it is they will not leave the grapes alone, and if they would the crickets won't, which is a difficulty in the way of vine-growing. But notwithstanding that, some of us are convinced that wine-making is the coming industry of the Kaipara. Then there is the olive, and the mulberry for serici-culture. Both these things are to come.
Here it is the light bush, woods of young trees that have grown over what were once the sites of Maori cultivation; there it is the heavy bush, the real primeval forest. One great feature of the Kaipara tidal estuary is the quantity of mangroves. Immense tracts are covered with water at high tide, and are left bare at low tide.
When one is blowing, as it sometimes does for two or three days at a time, the Lily lies snugly at anchor in some sheltered cove, and settlers have to wait as patiently as may be for their mails or goods. She knows her deficiencies, and will not face stormy weather, if she can help it. Three times a week she visits certain of the Kaipara settlements, returning from them on alternate days.
Four families live here at this time; and besides their abodes, there are a row of three cottages, called immigrant barracks, a boatbuilder's workshop, and an assembly hall. The neatest, fairest, best, and to-be-the-most-progressive of all the Kaipara townships. We say this "as shouldn't;" but it is so.
The immense piles of sawn timber lying here give to us new-chums some notion of the vast timber-trade of Northern New Zealand, especially since we learn that much which goes to the South Island and elsewhere is shipped direct from Whangaroa, Hokianga, the Kaipara, and other ports in the north.
Right out on the western boundary a line of hills shuts out the sea, and their summits glisten with a strange ruddy and golden light the effect of the sun shining on the wind-driven sand that covers them. To the north the river widens and winds, until, far away, we get a glimpse of the expanding waters of the Kaipara Harbour.
Here, indeed, as we shall find, no one walks to his township, or rides to see a neighbour, he jumps into his boat and rows or sails wherever he wants to go. As the Lily steams down the Kaipara, we get a better idea of the bush than our previous day's coach-ride had given us.
That was about the sum of what we could learn of our destination, except that there were very few settlers in the Kaipara, and that communication between it and Auckland was not very good. Somewhat later than this date in fact, to be precise, in 1875 an Auckland newspaper wrote of the Kaipara under the title of Terra Incognita.
The next morning after our arrival at Helensville, we go down to the wharf, close behind the hotel, and embark on board the steamer Lily. This vessel is the only regular means of communication, at present, with the young settlements lying round the Kaipara. She is a much larger craft than the Gemini, but she is of the same ancient and ruinous character.
Successive hills and rolling ranges, clothed with primeval forest, close in upon the valley. About the centre of the broad-stretching vale, we discern a little patch of what looks like grass and cleared land. There is here a cluster of houses, whitely gleaming beside the river, and that hamlet is Helensville the future town and metropolis of the Kaipara.
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