NEWS IN BRIEF

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 91, 11 January 1935, Page 11

NEWS IN BRIEF

Many Gorse Fires

The Wellington Fire Brigade was kept busy yesterday suppressing gorse fires. Eight calls were received between 12.57 p.m. and 3.20, the fires being at Moxham Avenue, Hataitai; Connaught Terrace, Brooklyn; Tarikaka Street, Ngaio; Rodrigo Road, Kilbirnie; Chelmsford Street, Ngaio; Lower Pitt Street, Wadestown; and Khandallah Road. Khandallah. In /idition, fires at Karamu Street and Khandallah Road, in the Onslow district, were extinguished by the men who were out answering calls to other fires. A number of the fires in Wadestown, Ngaio and Khandallah were in the vicinity of the railway and possibly were caused by locomotives. No property was involved in any of the outbreaks. Auxiliary Police Appointments.

Becatise of the absence of any great extra call on the police force in New Zealand in connection with the tour of the Duke of Gloucester, members of the special auxiliary police force, which it had been stated was to be organised for the present occasion, have been sworn in only in very small numbers. According to a statement made in Wellington by the police yesterday, the full complement of the auxiliary force has been made up in all the centres, but apart from Auckland, where a few have been sworn in, in none of the cities has anything been done further than the regular training work.

New Zealand’s Missed Opportunity. "The attractions of the thermal region at Rotorua are justifiably made a great deal of, and It is right that they should be advertised to the fullest extent as the central point of interest; but I think New Zealand is losing a splendid chance by not advertising more the beauty of the surrounding country,” said captain J. J. Cameron, of London, when interviewed yesterday on his visit to Wellington. “I was quite prepared for the thermal wonders and so forth, but the rest of the country in the district took me by surprise,” he added. Captain Cameron was for more than three decades in the New Zealand Shipping Company, but he remarked that at that time he saw little more than the coast, and his present visit has given him the opportunity of seeing some ofAvhat he had missed. He was at Rotorua recently for the first time.

National Band Advocated. “I have been in consultation with musicians all over the Dominion, and they freely admit that the military band is the finest expression of musical art to the masses,” said Major Miller, of the Grenadier Guards band, to a Dunedin “Star” reporter. “Others have gone so far as to say that the time has come when New Zealand should find expression of its dignity, its pomp, and its circumstance by placing among the institutions of the country such a military band as the Old Country possesses. One hundred years have gone by, and this country is assuming its place among the nations. The band could be primarily supported by the four great cities, which it could visit in turn, and it could represent the country when necessary in the Dominion, or in Europe, or wherever such representation was fitting.”