Local & General

Chronicle (Levin), 18 August 1949, Page 4

Local & General

Stadium Improvements. The raising of a £9700 loan for the work at Western Springs Stadium by the Auckland City Couneil has been authorised by the Local • Government Loans Board. The work includes the provision of public conveniences and dressing sheds and change rooms for competitors. , An immediate start will be made with the work, so that it will be completed in time for the Empire Games. Level Crossing Smash. An addition to Ashourton's long list of crossmg accidents. occurred yesterday morning when a slow train from Christchurch ' stru'ck 'a car at the Racecourse Road crossmg. The car was thrown 48 feet and was completely wrecked. The driver, Mr. Gordon Meredith, a tractor-driv.er, had a remarkable escape and was admitted to hospital with injuries described as "moderately serious." Te Rapunga's Cruise. Mr. George Dibbern, well known m New Zealand yachting circles, in a letter to a Whangarei yachtsman, says that he is wintering in his yacht Te 'Rapunga at Aitutaki, 140 miles north-west of Rarotonga. He adds that he is planning to carry on to Rarotonga and then decide on one of two trips, veither through the islands to Australia and Tasmania, or north to Honolulu and the Pacific Coast. Case For More Cars. A brochure setting out the case for increased importations of motor cars has been prepared for submission to the Minister of Finance, Mr. Nash, by the New Zealand Motor Vehicles Importers' Association. It is urged that a minimum of 30,000 new cars should be imported in 1950. Estimating a car's normal life as 10 years, it is shown that, because of the war and restricted imports, the Dominion has dropped behind in the normal replacement of cars by 102,811 in the last decade. In* 1938, 28,382 cars wiere imported, compared with 11,010 last year and an estimated 12,000 this year. Americans Interested. "Americans are avid for information about New Zealand — they are most interested in the countries down under," said Dr. Strathmore R. B. Cooke, a New Zeaiander who has returned on leave after 20 years to visit his parents, Mr. and Mrs. C. R. Cooke, of Hamilton. Dr. Cooke said, that when more shipping was operating between New Zealand ahd the United States he was sure tourist traffic would increase considerably. He was frequently asked to lecture on New Zealand. American servicemen who had been in the Dominion during the war gave it a great advertisement;' New Zealand social legislation was also interesting Americans. Vultures Advqeated. Hundreds of sheep carcases left lying in varying stages of decomposition along streams in the lower hill country of Hawke's Bay are a menace to public health, in the view of Dr. J. T. Kingma, geological surveyor, who advocates the introduction of n vultures into the province to solve the problems. Vultures, though far from pretty birds, could make a big contribution in cleaning up rotting carcases, said Dr. Kingma, who is carrying out a geological survey of Hawke's Bay in conjunction with Dr. D. A. Brown. • The spectacle of children playing in streams which he knew to have been polluted by decorhposed sheep farther upstreaih had i perturbed him, he said.