HOLIDAY MYSTERY: CARNIVAL BANNER DISAPPEARS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 46, 26 January 1949, Page 5

HOLIDAY MYSTERY: CARNIVAL BANNER DISAPPEARS

Remember the Calico banner that stretched across the Strand to announce the Carnival? The same one that was across the road at Ohope on the occasion of the Carnival sports, New Year’s Day? Well, it seems someone has souvenired it.

No doubt quite a nice thing to stretch above the mantel shelf (it was only 40 feet long), but a bit hard on the Ohope sports committee, who had borrowed it from the Whakatane Carnival Committee. There is a slender chance that the souvenir hunter is a citizen of this district, who perhaps thought the banner would be no use after the holidays and therefore did not see anything wrong with picking it up for a souvenir. .

In that case, when it 'is made clear that his thoughtless action is going to cost the organisers of the sports hard cash he might do the decent thing and bring it back. On the other hand, there is more than an even chance that the banner has been taken home by a visitor as a holiday memento of Ohope In that case, the prospects of getting it back look very thin. So far, despite exhaustive inquiries, no one has been able to trace it; nor has anyone been able to throw any light on the manner of its • disappearance. It was last seen hanging across'the road at the gateway to the Caledonian Sports ground and, whoever took it down was certainly not authorised to do so by the committee, who did not find until the check up after the sports that none of their officials had taken charge of it.