Opening of the Bowling Green.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 6 November 1912, Page 3

Opening of the Bowling Green.

AT THE HELENSVILLE HOT ~:/ SPRINGS.

This long looked-for event takes place on Thursday (to-morrow) after* , noon at 12.30 p.m, and promises, given the benefit of a fine day, to lie a re« cord gathering for the district, and p- should go a long way to bring our r ..-.•■- great gift of thermal waters more prominently before the masses. There are to be over 72 visiting bowlers and their wives present to take part in the opening games of the bowling green, •^^ while there will be a number of tennis croquet enthusiasts present, also number of visitors from the siirdistricts. On arrival the will provided with a s' lunch at the-Xaipara and Helensville Hotels, and then will proceed direct to the Hot Springs Domain, and after the opening ceremony is over, eight bowling rinks will be set going, and it is anticipated it will take well onto 6 p.m. to get through with the games drawn up. The only drawback that was anticipated in connection with the affair, was the conveying of the visitors to and from tho grounds, but this has been got over by the willingness of those having vehicles to bring them into use during the afternoon. It behoves the people of the district to do their utmost to bring the affair to a successful issue, and at the same time enhance the popularity of the Helensville Hot Springs Domain. Bowlers will be interested in the following extracts from an Ayrshire paper just to hand : It is years since the Australian bowlers were last —■ and then for the first time as bowlers in this conntry. Bowling is not one of the games that naturally send 8 its devotees to the ends of the earth fired with the single ambition to win on the green. As a rule, the bowler, before he starts bowling at all, has reached the age of the no longer young. In fact, bowling pre-supposees that a man has come to the years of • full discretion, and excellency in " bowling means that he who succeeds in attaining to it is either naturally calm and complacent or has been graduated in these virtues by force of circumstances. The game does not lend itself,to the occasional excite* merits of the cricket field ; it does not monopolise a man's existence or'deX moralise his vocabulary the way golf -does :it has no affinity with, the wild joys oi football; the sort of gladiatorial spirit that rouses the assembled throng to making what the indictments describe as a great noise and disturbance. And yet it would be wrong to say that it has not its devotees. . I have known a few of them. myself. There was a typical old gen- ,' tleman in Ayr a number of years ago who thought nothing of walking two miles into town three times a day, :>***.*£«nd as often home again. He started eaVly in the forenoon, he was on the green in the afternoon, he returned in the evening ; and when at last he was called hence, one of his admirers, the sort of man who is seized occasionally with the sudden inspiration to which he feels nothing less than poetry can ever do justice, compounded some verses of alleged song, in which he suggested that his bowls, \: the tangible evidence of his earthly happiness, should be buried with him ab that, on his arrival in the Elysian fields, he might lose no time in be* ginning to " tak " green."