GALATEA REQUEST

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 39, 11 June 1947, Page 5

GALATEA REQUEST

URGENT NEED FOR BRIDGE A request put forward by Cr ; Cawte for the construction without delay of a bridge with a 20 foot span over one of the creeks at Qalatea was considered by the Minister to be an urgent matter. There were 60 settlers on this road, said Cr Cawte, all of them with young families, and it was important that they should be able to take their children to the doctor or district nurse. The rural mail driver and the road services had refused to go over the road unless this creek was bridged. Even when the creek was dry it was difficult to negotiate because of the boulders.

To a suggestion that a temporary bridge of timber might be built to last even only for one year Mr Semple replied that he objected to timber bridges. Timber today was not what it was 60 years ago. It was a thousand times better to build bridges of concrete that would stand any test.

On learning that it was only one of the several creeks on the Galatea road for which bridges were planned that was in urgent need of being bridged and that the span was only 20ft., Mr Semple said that he would instruct his engineers to inspect the site and see if a concrete bridge could be built in the next few months. “But we are not going to use timber,” declared Mr Semple.