The main county road here is not yet formed in places, and though large sums have been expended, there was very little in the way of solid, substantial work to be seen until the last few months. Matakohe belonged to the Hobson County Council, which has existed for over ten years; it now forms part of a new county called the Otamatea.
County Councils have power to levy rates and taxes, and to borrow money from the Government under certain conditions, and they take care to exercise all their privileges in these respects.
When the chairman of a County Council is a large employer of labour and a man of influence, his part of the county generally shows the best graded and best metalled roads. Besides the County Councils, many of the ridings—of which Matakohe is one—possess Road Boards, also empowered to levy rates, and with the money carry out works on branch roads.
It is very commonly believed that the country would progress far more rapidly if County Councils were abolished and the different districts represented solely by Road Boards, which would determine the works considered most desirable, and draw up half yearly reports to be laid before a Government engineer, who, after examining into the merits of the schemes proposed, would finally decide on those most likely to be beneficial to the county, and which could be undertaken with the funds in hand.
Enough, however, for the present of County Councils. The Matakoheans can certainly have no wish to uphold the system, as very little indeed has been done for their district by the county to which it, until quite lately, belonged. Its misfortune in this respect may have been due to its situation; it certainly was not due to its size, for Matakohe formed one of the largest ridings in the county.
It boasts of between forty and fifty private houses scattered over a somewhat large area; a good-sized public hall where concerts, tea and prayer meetings, dances and theatrical performances are held from time to time; a chapel used on alternate Sundays by the Wesleyans and Church of England people; a cemetery, a Government school-house, a public library, &c. &c.; three general stores (or shops, as they would be called in England); a saw-mill, a tremendously long wharf in a tremendously inconvenient place, and a capital racecourse, here the Matakohe Racing Club holds an annual meeting.
Horse-racing is one of the great national amusements of New Zealanders, and there are very few settlements in the Northern Kaipara which do not number owners of racehorses among their inhabitants.
In England racing is associated with betting, blacklegs, welshers, suicides, and other disagreeable things: out here, as far as small country meetings are concerned, it means genuine, honest, legitimate sport, and should be encouraged, as calculated to improve the breed of horses in the colony, and to do a great amount of good to the districts in which the meetings are held.
A sort of betting-machine called the "Totalisator" has indeed been legalised by the New Zealand Government, but may only be used at race meetings where prizes of thirty pounds and upwards are given. It therefore does not affect in any way small meetings like ours, and the Matakohe Racing Club have no desire that it should.
For the benefit of my readers who are unacquainted with the betting-machine, I will endeavour to describe the manner in which it is worked. The intending speculator enters small office and buys his ticket, or tickets, according to his rashness, and then proceeds to examine a board on one of the walls of an inner chamber, where are displayed certain variable numbers arranged in the following manner:—