WHAT ABOUT NEW YEAR’S EVE ?

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 70, 8 January 1947, Page 4

WHAT ABOUT NEW YEAR’S EVE ?

SIX years ago Whakatane staged one of its brightest street Carnivals on New Year’s Eve. Since that date owing mainly to the intensification of war conditions, the whole happy event, together with its parade of decorated vehicles, its fancy dresses and its entertainment has been allowed to slip into the limbo of lost enterprises, of which this town can boast a goodly crop. It has been left to Taneatua to take the lead, and it would appear that for organised street entertainment, that township is the brightest spot in the Western Bay, and is attracting increasing numbers of visitors and residents as time goes on. Apart from the parading of the Pipe and Citizens Bands, Whakatane on New Year’s Eve, the accepted night for jollification, may well be described as ‘dead.’ We wonder how long this sort of thing will be allowed to go on. We have a broad-paved street in the Strand, excellently suited for carnival programmes; we have the harbour-front which could readily be spruced up for aquatic events; we have a. dozen organisations, readymade for the job of decorating floats, and providing street entertainment. All these assets are wasting while the present apathy exists, and now that peace is in its second year there is no reason in the wide world why we should not combine forces once again and put our town further on the map with a Carnival at New Year which will give visitors and residents something to look forward to. Well, what about it, Whakatane ?