Local & General

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 98, 13 June 1949, Page 4

Local & General

Farewell Social

A large crowd attended the farewell social evening tendered Mr and Mrs F. Skelton by the Whakatane Citizens’ Band on Thursday night. The guests of honour, who. are leaving shortly to live in Auckland, were t presented with a number of gifts, j

Children’s Ward To Ee Opened Preparations for opening the children’s ward at the Whakatane District Hospital are now well advanced, it was revealed at the monthly meeting of the Bay of Plenty Hospital Board. At present work is proceeding fitting in new equipment. Booking At Hotels

Some hotel licensees do not know o'f an amendment to the Licensing Act which makes them liable to a fine of £SO if they continue to follow the present practice of booking guests. Hotel guests must now record their full postal addresses when booking in instead of merely stating their home town. N.I. Electricity Saving ' *

A saving of 1,224,112 units of electricity was made. by. Nortel Island supply authorities last week. The allocation was 33,776,525 units, and the consumption 32,552,-413 or 3.63 per cent below the allocation. The power situation in the South Island remains satisfactory.

Work Well Advanced Work on the additions to the nurses’ home at the Whakatane District Hospital are now well advanced. Much of the exterior, walls and the roof, have been completed and now the contractor is proceeding with interior work. It ,is not known yet when the building will be finished.

N.Z. Ripened Bananas It is very rarely that bananas are ripened in New Zealand but a crop of trees which have been cultivated at Cape Colville for the past two years have recently produced their first ripe fruit. The bananas were about eight inches long and quite edible, although they were somewhat different from the type sold in shops.

Population Increase New Zealand’s population increase in 1947-48 owed something to immigration, according to statistics released by the Census and Statistics Department. Passenger arrivals during the year were 33,144 and departures 27,388. Dealing with immigrants expecting to be permanent residents, the. population gain was 3879, compared with 2055 the previous year.

Edgecumbe Mails As from today the Edgecumbe mail service, which has been disrupted through the deviation in the service car route during the building of the new bridge, will be hack to normal. Following the reecnt public meeting at Edgecumbe, arrangements have been made to restore the service, by the appointment of the Rangitaiki Plains Dairy Co. as mail custodian and the meeting Ojf mail cars at the bridge. Hails will now leave the Edgecumbe post office direct as they used to do.

He Was “Befogged” Fog played a mean trick on a t visitor who arrived in the Bay Plenty on a recent morning. It was , the visitor’s first experience of seal fog—which he had not thought to ' exist in the Dominion—and it was not an inexpensive introduction. . Though well aware of the necessity of leaving the express at Frankton Junction, he fell into a comparatively untroubled sleep towards the smaller hours, awaking to find the express stationary, his watch telling him he should be at Frankton. Clutching his luggage, still sleepyeyed, he leapt from the carriage into the fog. The express moved off. The visitor found himself 18 foggy miles from Frankton and the service car on which his seat awaited him.