OTOROHANGA.

King Country Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 294, 14 September 1910, Page 5

OTOROHANGA.

Own Representative. | I have just paid another visit to this rising township, which impresses me more and more with its possibilities every time [ see it. j I hear that the roll of ratepayers and householders has been prepared by ] Constable Fraser, and was sent to Wellington several weeks ago. It is expected that a town board election will take place before many months go by, and then Otorohanga will have entered upon its upward career, which will land it —who can j say?—at the rank of a borough, before j it finishes. A curious position, pro- | bably never contemplated when the j Act was framed, occurs when the first j election is held. Only those living j within the township and entitled to j vote at a general election are qualified ; to select the town board that holds the j destinies of the township in its hands j for the following three years. People I who merely own land or other property | and who may live just outside the j boundaries, even though every day in j the town doing business there, are | forbidden to exercise the franchise. ■ One of our lady readers draws my j attention to a difficulty and an advantage in connection with coummunication 1 with Otorohanga. She says that though we are forbidden to travel as passengers in the afternoon or evening from Te Kuiti to Otorohanga, enabling one to spend the night there, and returning by a morning train, giving mutual benefits and satisfaction to bath centres, yet it is possible to speak by 'phone to the sawmills and Mr | Kerr's boardinghouse and others. That | latter is a feature soon to be improved, j The telephone exchange at Otorohanga I is now nearly complete, and is only j waiting for the switch-board to enable ! the authorities to commence business. | Speaking of telephones reminds me j of the way in which some of the counI try settlers wide of Otorohanga are j overcoming space and the loneliness of out-back. At Putaki (Hauturu road) several settlers have installed a cheap mutual telephonic communication, enabling them to speak to each other and to the Waitomo store. The cost in the case of one settler, for a three and a-quarter miles connection, including two instruments, piping, insulators and copper plates, but excluding labour, which was done by the i settlers themselves, was £l3 12s 6d. The benefits are incalculable. Say a settler wants the doctor. He rings up the store and Mr Forster kindly takes a wire across to the post office there and the medical man is put in a few

hours' time. Or groceries may be wanted or a message sending on some urgent matter. The store people are ever obliging, and the monotony and hardships of life away from the centres are much mitigated. If settlers generally knew the advantages of cheap mutual telephones the movement for connections would proceed at a much more rapid rate. There are no motor-bicycles to be seen in Otorohanga, writes my lady correspondent, and she draws the moral that as we see a few in Te Kuiti, they are evidence that the mads are much improved with the present warmer and drier weather. I "hae me doots." One solitary motorbicycle, making a terrific din in the process of getting up steam or .whatever the inner power may be, and surrounded by a crowd of admiring boys experimenting on the "pip. pip" instrument, hardly represents the coming of the motor-bicvcie to Te Kuiti' I want to see more of 'em. It will, I hope, mean that our roads are entering on the smooth macadam stage. But it is not yet.