Local and General

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 146, 25 August 1941, Page 4

Local and General

Mid-Winter School Vacation.

Schools closed last Friday for the usual fortnight's vacation. They reopen on Monday, September 8.

Convalescent Hospital,

Within the next few days the framework of the £90,000 soldiers' hospital on the lakefront at Rotorua will begin to rise on the eastern side. Much of the foundation work has been carried out, and the heaviest of this, also on the eastern side, is largely completed. The I'ublic Works Department is still engaged in levelling operations on the shore of the lake, where trucks are dumping loads of spoil and a tractor is spreading and consolidating the material.

The Song "Maori Battalion."

The popularity of the New Zealand song "Maori Battalion" in Sydney, is.mentioned in a letter received from Mrs Nell Cooley, formerly of Dunedin. She is honorary secretary of the NeAV Zealand Auxiliary War Unit, "officially recognised by; the New Zealand Government as the centre for all New Zealand troops either going overseas or returning home." Of the song she writes: "Maori Battalion is a great favourite. I shall never forget the first time I' heard it. We were entertaining some hundreds of New Zealand troops going overseas, arid after the first dance they rose in a body and sang it lor our unit members. By the time the night was over we could all sing it, but nobody could play it. However, we are set now that you have sent us

the music."

New Hospital

Plans for the proposed . new hospital at Rotorua were produced at the meeting of the WaLkato Hospital Board, when a report from the board's architects, Messrs Edgecurnbe and White, was under discussion. Yhe report stated that the estimated cost of the proposed new building, complete with all services, was £88,000, and the estimated cost of the nurses 1 home was £40,590. The architects recommended that the lower ground floor be of reinforced concrete, and the upper ground and first floorfe of wooden framing sheeted externally with asbestos and plaster, the interior to be a liard>-sunac-ed composition wallboard. The primary reason for that recommendation In lieu of rcinforced concrete throughout was due to the opinion of the Ministry of Supply that sufficient steel would not be available for the whole job.

An Old-timer Rat.

A recent paragraph appearing in these columns regarding the *at

nuisance at Thornton has led a reader to forward us the following paragraph culled from another papen Over twelve inches in length, a rat trapped by a Rotorua businessman in his store-room was. responsible for a considerable amount of damage and numerous prodigious feats before meeting its well-merU-ed demise. First effort was to gnaw through one and a-half inches of concrete (mixture one in three) and take away approximately six square inches of the material. When the hole so made was filled with broko.n glass, it carted that away also, lis next appearance waa through the floor of an adjoining room. Thf**i came the rat's star performance. Working with a patient persistance. in three nights it gnawed a hole one and a-half inches in diameter through a six-inch concrete wall, but this proved, its undoing, for right at its new front entrance wus a luscious piece of cheese—attached to an outsize in rat traps.. That vat

will gnaw no more