QUEENS ON PARADE

Hokitika Guardian, 6 November 1929, Page 1

QUEENS ON PARADE

(Auckland “Star.”) The great heart of Wellington city saw its strangest sight for many a day on a recent afternoon when two selfpossessed dairy cows came leisurely strolling down Molesworth Street into Lambton Quay. One was a ibrindle and one was a brown; they may have strayed from Ariki-toa or from the slopes of Northland; anyhow, there they were, deliberately pacing side by side down the tramway track, their udders swaying, contemplatively chewing an imaginary cud, or quid, or whatever it is that cows chew. Nothing perturbed them; everyone and everything reverently made wav> for them. When a rash motorist honked his raucous honk one of them turned and fixed him with a pair of large, calm eyes and then dismissed him from her mind as a thing of no importance. Oh, for bovine temerity!

The pair descended the slope past Parliament House, ignoring all the curious folk on the footpaths and all the traffic around them. They might have been a couple of Tin'akori Road dames' going to town for shopping and afternoon tea. Brindled Phyllis looked Parliament House up- and down and, mayhap, remarked to her companion, “That’s the place, Gladys, where they make the laws that build up this glorious young Dominion.” Gladys, shifting her cud snorted: “Don’t you believe it may dear. Not on your life! It’s we who make the country wha!t it is. Politicians he blithered! Where would they be but for us?” There was a policeman on duty at the Hotel Cecil corner of Moleworth Street where it meets Lambton Quay. People wondered what the Law would do about those strollers on the tramway track. But the Force is always equal to an emergency. He looked for oiie long moment, then, with splendid presence of mind, he turned his back on them, and contemplated the far Orongorongo Ranges. Phyllis and Gladys continued their stroll. They crossed Lambton Quay, avoided by everything on wheels or afoot, had a look at the Big Wooden Building and went on towards the Railway head office. . The last we heard of them was a frantic shrieking of railway engines shunting at the head of the line. Gladys and Phyllis held np that section of the traffic awhile, and then they vanished from present ken. Maybe some of the railway staff rounded them in for tea; at anyrate it is likely Northland’s milk supply was a bucket short that evening. But the impressive thing about it all was the reverent courtesy the populace showed the suburban queen’s of the dairy on their town stroll. In the public’s respectful demeanour there was an echo of the tribute that came from one of Australia’s Brownings once upon a time: Let us .mutter blessings o’er her Let us love her like a mother, Let us house her like a brother, Throne her like the Calf of Aaron, Prize her like the Rose of Sharon— Her—the Cow! —TANGIWAI.