PATETONGA BUREAU.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4403, 19 April 1922, Page 1

PATETONGA BUREAU.

• QUESTION OF BUILDING. TEMPORARY’’ OR PERMANENT ? DEPUTATION TO MINISTER. Many moons ago, in the Gays when golden sovereigns occasionally gladdened the eyes of the industrious, the shrewd, and the lucky ones, when Government departments were wondrous kind, and before gold coins were all quietly stowed away by the banks and shipped (and beastly dirty scraps of paper substituted), a grant was placed on the Estimates —a cool thousand or so—’for a telephone bureau at Patetonga. The folk in that coming city of the Plains, or the south-western portion thereof, speculated—no, invested —in copper wire, porcelain cups, homegrown telephone poles, and, tp cap all, telephones, some sixty all told. Bub, alas for suffering humanity, 'true telephone-love never did run smoothly I A miserly cry was heard throughout the length and breadth of the land, a wailing about gent financial conditions,” my lords gallant and ladies fair. And the High and Mighty Men who hold the nation’s telephonic destinies in their waistcoat pockets sewed up the said pockets, and. Patetonga’s glorious grant was “struck out” of the Estimates There was much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth but no telephone bureau.

But, after all, the wise ones of the Legislature have what the good old Book calls "bowels of compassion,” and in answer, to the cries pf the people of 'the Plains' they have decided to erect a temporary bureau. The building is going to be erected on the site originally purchased by the settlers at a cost of £7O for a quarter-acre, and which site has been approved of by the Deaprtment as being the “most suitable and central” f br the bureau, But, being fully aware pf the great future ahead of the township .and district, the residents much desire that a permanent and better structure, such as was planned in the first place, should be erected, and an opportunity is to be

taken of placing the matter before the Hon. J* G. Coates next week, when the Minister will he in the district.