THE Hauraki Plains Gazette With which is incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE. Motto: Public Service. MONDAY. WEDNESDAY. & FRIDAY. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 2, 1922. LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4448, 2 August 1922, Page 2

THE Hauraki Plains Gazette With which is incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE. Motto: Public Service. MONDAY. WEDNESDAY. & FRIDAY. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 2, 1922. LOCAL AND GENERAL.

The Community Singing opens in the Central Theatre to morrow evening at 8 o’clock.

The usual monthly meeting of the Qhinemuri County Council takes place in the County Chambers tomorrow (Thursday).

One of the coldest mornings yet experienced on the Hauraki Plains this winter was this morning. The frost was exceptionally thick, apd many watei-taps were frozen.

Three broken ribs were Injuries sustained by Mn J. Kidd, of the Kerepeehi ■senior football team, in the match against Waitakaruru at Kerepeehi last Saturday. The accident was caused by a collision with an opponent. Mr Kidd was medically treated, and is now progressing favourably. Another Kerepeehi player was badly cut over the eye.

In football line umpires should, like the referee, be impartial, and keep watchful eyes on the trend of the game, but at a recent match on the Hauraki Plains both line-umpires were so excitedly interested in a very close contest that they occasionally forgo’; their duties and were now and then seen to be engaged ip little heated arguments with the spectators when they should have been streaking along with: waving flag ready to direci the locality of a line-out.

America’s famous Brooklyn Bridge, the cablegrams tell us, is reaching the end of its days. It is thirtynnine years ago since this famous structure was completed after having been thirteen years building. It cost, £3,000,000, almost the same amount as the Forth Bridge, opened in 1890. Until about eighteen years ago, when the Williamsburg Bridge was built, it was the largest suspension bridge in the world. It is a mile and a furlong in length from- end to end, and the distance between the piers is 1595 feet. The bridge carries two railway tracks, two roadways over which ordinary traffic and stneet cars run, and a footway. It is supoprted by four 16-inch cab'les anchored at either end of 35,000 yards of solid masonry. The cables contain 14 360 miles of wire, and weigh 3600 tons. The bridge is 85 feet w-’de, and the deck' ing is 135 feet above higli-water mark. Besides being one of the most remarkable engineering structures ! n the world, Brooklyn Bridge is universally regarded as one of the most beautiful. However, the same modern developments in heavy traffic that arc knocking New Zealand roads to pieces are relegating it to the scrapheap. The difference seems to be that- in America they try to meet changed traffic conditions, and we don’t.—Dominion. '

A grand ball, organised by tilie employees of the New Zealand Dairy Co., Ltd., is to be held in the Ceptral Theatre on Thursday, August. 17. Mr Farrell’s jazz band from Morrinsville will be in attendance.

“Drive slowly and see our town, or drive quickly and see the gaol,” was an apt street notice seen in America by the Rev. Hammond.

The good old days seem to have had a few defects of which we hear only occasionally. Take this little extract, for instance, from the London “Times” of Saturday, June 15, 1822: “It is a singular and perhaps an unprecedented fact that within the last week not less than eleven horses attached to the stage-coaches between London and Cheltenham sunk beneath the extreme heat and dropped lifeless on the road.”

Captain W. H. Hawkins, the Alliance lecturer, will open the Prohibition Campaign in the district, and will give a series of lectures, beginning in the Netherton Hall on Saturday, August 5. On Wednesday he will give an open-Jair address in the Paeroa band-stand. Captain Hawkins will also give addresses in the Presbyterian Church on Sunday at 11 a.m., in the band-stand at 2.45 p.m-, and in the Methodist Church at 7 p.m.

The Levin Chronicle states that a piece of land at Kuku, comprising about 17 acres, has been leased at the high rate of £ll per acre for a market garden.

Among the passengers by the Tahiti, which arrived in Wellington on Sunday from San Francisco, were Messrs F. Bentley and F. Frank, underwater photographers. Messrs Bentley and Frank have with them their apparatus for taking moving pictures under water, and are oh their way to Nelson to join the Annette Kellerman Company.

The Dunedin Star states that before the end of the year the Post-master-General. will announce his decision to reduce the charge tor inland postage to l%d.

The only denominations of “Victory” stamps now remaining on sale in New Zealand are 2d (half-penny stamps reprinted), Id. and l%d. Further supplies of* “Victory” stamps are not being printed by the Post and Telegraph Department. Fivepenny stamps of the King George series are about to be issued.

Tenders are invited by the engineer to the Hauraki Plains County Council up to noon on Saturday, August 12, for the removal of a dwelling from Waihi and the re erection of same on a site at Waitakaruru. Specifications for the work may be seen at, the County office, Ngatea, the Thames Star Office, and at the office of this paper. The engineer will meet intending contractors at the Waihi post office at 11 a.m. on Monday, August 7.

Recently a score of lost telegrams, including a costly cablegram for dispatch, led to the suspension of a telegraph official nearly a hundred miles away from Palmerstnp North. After many months it was discovered that the elevator shute used to carry telegrams from the counter to the telegraph operator op the upper floor, in passing through the ceiling, was unlined. In the space of six inches between the ceiling and the floor above it lay the missing telegrams. The suspended officer received an apology.

After 19 days’ sojourn in the pound the horse which, attached to a dray, was found on the bank of the Waihopai River, Invercargill, was sold by the The horse realised £6 153, but. the expenses incurred in keeping it amounted to £3 Bs. The borough is required to keep the money for 12 months, when, if not claimed, it is forfeited to the borough. The dray is still in possession of the poundkeeper.

Five of New Zealand’s blinded soldiers are masseurs, stated Mr. Clutha Mackenzie, M.P., in a lecture, at Napier. Eight or nine are poultryfarming, and two are doing shorthand and typing. One man in Southland, besides working eight hours a day in an office, ;has two acres of land on which he grows vegetables and keeps poultry. On Sundays he gives addresses in church.

The Postal authorities have received advice from Vancouver that the RMS. Niagara left Vancouver on July 21 for Auckland. She carries about 2500 bags of mail for New Zealand.

A story (says the ‘‘Rotorua Chronicle”) which, if not true, is at any rate "ben trovato,” comes frbm Taupo in illustration of the alleged state of “nerves” into which some persons there were thrown by the recent seismic disturbances. It is to the effect that a visitor at a certain hotel on going out one night saw a reflection of the moon’s rays on the snows of the mountains across the lake, ami rushed back into the house in a state of excitement, declaring that a volcanic eruption had broken out.

A licensed carrier was charged at the Magistrate’s Court ip Palmerston North with having refused to accept hire when offered. His defence (states an exchange) was that the turn for the next, job belonged to another carrier, who,’ having a motor conveyance, was ’ound the corner and not on the stand for horse vehicles. The magistrate dismissed the information, but pointed out that, under the by-laws, carriers must accept a hire when offered and private arrangements must not supersede the by-laws. W.hat is the limit of the flight of a pigeon ? There are some fanciers who hold that even the 800-mile race from Marseilles, which' is being organised by the Great Yorkshire Amalgamation, will, not be a final test. Some years back 5000 miles was held to be impossible, but toqday there are numerous pigeons in England whicn have exceeded that distance. T-’.e last great test was a 750-faiile journey, from San Sebastian but there were also many flights by war carrier pigeons of extraordinary length and precision. Probably the confidence that English-bred racers can do the journey from Marseilles in a day is justified.