Weekly Review 441

Rope Making

New Zealand's rope making industry uses native flax fibres and imported hemps from the Philippines, Java, and East Africa.

In the first of many processes, emulsion is played on the fibre to assist its passage through the machine where it's first prepared by cleaning and combing. This removes all knots and lumps.

After cleaning and combing, the fibre emerges in continuous ribbons which are coiled automatically in bins to make handling easier during the next process. On the way to the draw frames, several ribbons, or slivers as they're called, are put together and are passed slowly under rollers and through a system of combs, which evens out the thickness and makes the fibres lie parallel.

The product is beginning to look more rope-like and pours steadily out into the containers, which must next be placed behind the spinning machine.

Entering the delivery ducts in the final stage of converting fibre into yarn, still more combing thins out the slivers ready for spinning.

Contra-rotating rollers do the actual spinning and produce the correct weight of yarn required. Channelled guides remove the surface fluff and the yarn is wound onto bobbins. It takes many yarns to make a strand and several strands to make a rope. The strands are compressed by the four board[?] and the traveller draws them out, twisting as it goes down the rope walk, which is 1150 feet long.

The six strands are now ready to be made into two three-strand ropes.

Hooked up in two groups of three, they're run through wooden guides which ensure even lay.

Twist is applied at both ends of the rope walk. As the traveller moves along, it leaves behind two evenly twisted ropes. This is the final stage of rope manufacture.

The demand for different varieties and weights of rope is heavy. New Zealand tradesmen are proud of their craft and it will not be long before this rope is doing a useful job in town or country.

Sheep Drive

Between Cape Terawhiti and the boundaries of Wellington city, only a few miles away in the background, lies the Happy Valley sheep station. Its five and a half thousand acres include some of the most difficult country farmed in New Zealand. The sheer slopes, which rise from Cook Straight, are frequently crossed by deep water courses cutting their way down to the sea.

Though it's at the city's back door, the country is so steep and broken that all stock moving to and from the sheds has to be driven around the coast to the end of the road at Ōwhiro Bay.

Struggling against the high wind, which is funnelled between the South Island in the distance and the North, the station shepherds are mustering for shearing.

Each man brings the sheep from his section into central holding pens set in one of the few areas of flatland on the farm.

From the holding paddock, the mob is driven down a steep and rocky ravine to the beach. The sheep are wary of the track and have to be pushed every foot of the way. Occasionally one breaks away and has to be left.

Once on the beach, a three-hour drive along the coast to Ōwhiro Bay begins. Before a coast drive is made, tides must be studied as the beach is impassable at high water. Even so, valuable stock has been lost in the past when heavy seas have sprung up unexpectedly.

On the road now and the last lap begins. Through Ōwhiro Bay and up Happy Valley to the sheds where the sheep will be shorn and wethers selected for fattening up country. The farm is entirely hemmed in by the city and to get to the railway yards the sheep must be taken right through it, down the main thoroughfare, Willis Street.

To avoid holding up traffic, the mob will, as in the past, be driven through in the early hours of the morning. Here Mr Dorman, the station owner, is handed a permit to do this by the traffic officer whose job it will be to escort the mob through the streets.

At Manners street there's a hold up. They must be waiting for the traffic lights to change.

Few Wellingtonians ever see this sight but some partygoers who have seen it, have received a severe shock and signed the pledge.

For 50 years this drive has taken place each summer. Bringing a touch of the country into the city streets but this is the last time it will happen.

In this mechanical age, it's cheaper and quicker to use transport and in future the sheep will travel in trucks.

The old will make way for the new and another picturesque feature of Wellington life will come to an end.

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