“CURIOSITIES OF NEW ZEALAND.”

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 865, 14 July 1910, Page 3

“CURIOSITIES OF NEW ZEALAND.”

We often have to go away from home to hear news. The following remarkable statement appears in the London Graphic of May 14th of this year. That it will be accepted as a fact by thousands of people outside New Zealand we have no doubt. The article mixes up Queensland and New Zealand and is headed as above:—

“ There is a little town in Queensland which actually derives its light and water supplies from the same source. Roma is the name ot the town, happy in the possession of a copious spring so impregnated and charged with natural gas that the welter is simply drawn off into a tank, the gas collects above and is distributed throughout the houses, while the water also finds its way though, of course, by different pipes, to the domestic tap. The fine city of Christchurch in New Zealand, also possesses a water supply that is quite unique. Away beyond the Canterbmy plains rises the great mountain rang e of South Island, running up to well over 10,000 feet in its culminating peaks, the highest being Mount Cook, which McKinley never climbed. Ice and snow and rainfall on the summits and slopes gather and run down the mountain sides, sink into the earth through a very porous stratum, and are lost to sight, flowing on into the sea under the Canterbury plains, at the edge of which Christchurch stands. Any householder in the city has only to sink an inch pipe a few feet — not very many—below his foundations, and up comes the pure, cold, filtered flow under pressure sufficient to drive it to the tops of the highest houses.—F.M.A.”