36 YEARS AGO.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5460, 12 August 1929, Page 4

36 YEARS AGO.

(From the “Ohinemuri Gazette” of August 12, 1893.) As Mr W. G. Nicholls, of Paeroa, has had private business at Wellington to transact, before leaving he had a conference with the county chairman regarding the interests and needs of the district, and it was arranged that Mr Nicholls should represent our position to Ministers and others Yesterday a telegram was received by the council from Colonel Fraeser, M.H.R., to the effect that our member, with Mr Nicholls and possibly Messrs McGowan and the Hon. Mr McCullough, would use his best influence with the Hon. Minister for Public Works with a view to obtaining much-needed assistance for our roads. That the County Council and their successors have a huge difficulty to face in the maintenance of the main roads is, unfortunately, but a truism. The culverts and bridges, no mean item in a country reticulated by creeks and streams arid rivers, are all decaying, having been now erected from 10 to 15 years, and, in a word, the county revenue is not sufficient to cope with the increased traffic and destructive weather we have experiencea for the past 18 months. Mr Nicholls is an ex-chairman of the County Council, and will be able to put the matter fairly to Ministers ; and we have hopes that the conference may lead to our position being appreciated by the powers that be at Wellington. PASSING NOTES. Landslips and stoppage of communication, floods and damage, are the order of the day. In Waipa the damage has been enormous, as also at Mercer. Between Pokeno and Mercer the big swamp is turned into a lake, and houses, factories, gnd cultivation have been destroyed.” K At Birkenhead ' 200,000 tons of earth’ have slipped, and the state of the roads generally throughout the province is worse than it has been for 10 or 12 years. Ohinemuri, so far. has escaped without serious damage, and it is proposed, so soon as a lucid interval occurs to the elements, to expend as much :'.s can be raked together on good, lasting work. To do anything more than simply patch now would be only throwing money away. j Thirty years ago last Wednesday ; the ship Queen of Beauty came t<y anchor in the Waitemata. This was during the, time the American civil ' war was ir. progress, and when off Rio de Janeiro the vessel was one fine evening bailed up and boarded by the Confederate cruiser Alabama, which • fired 'two' blank cartridges at intervals of a few minutes. A third gun fired from her bows proved the whizz unmistakably to be a cannon-ball, when Captain Chapman thought it discreet to round his ship to. The cruiser’s second officer came on board, and aiter examining the ship’s papers and d> inking a glass of brandy, spoke jestingly of the havoc they had made in the United States mercantile maI rine during the preceding year. The I passengers gave three cheers for the cruiser and three more for her buccaneer captain (Raphael Semmes), I when he took his departure. Among the passengers on the Queen of Beauty were Mr’ John Phillips and his family, also Mr and Mrs S. T. Smardon, of Te Aroha, with many other still living Auckland identities. WAIHI NE'.'S. News is a very scarce commodity here, and with the ex'-entior. of the stand-un fight for ascendancy between mud and measles there is nothing moving. In mining, the Martha is still on good ore, and, from all one can see, is likely to continue on for many y°ars to come. The county chairman and engineer paid a visit here on Monday and had a tour round, which I hope will bear fruit. ' Certainly the roads are very bad, but bad and all as they are, if there is any comfort in comparisons the road from Katikati boundary to Katikati is infinitely worse.