THE WORST SIDE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3685, 1 September 1927, Page 4

THE WORST SIDE.

NEW ZEALAND ROADS. Some publicity is given in an English journal, “The Sphere,” to New Zealand’s roads, and the information, with photographs, is given in a manner which might lead to a wrong impression of the general statei of roads is the Dominion. Under the photographs the following descriptive matter is published : “(1) A motor-boat! The only road from Auckland, New Zealand, to the South is flooded during the rainy season. This car is heading for Wellington via Hamilton. Motors must be constructed with all vulnerable portions of their engines above high-water mark.” “(2) The ups and downs of motoring life —an impression of a light English car on a clay road. They ,are the bane of the motorist is the desolate tracts of New Zealand.” “(3) A mud-bath for motors. — The treatment, so successful for the complexion is rather harmful to. machinery. This car, although nearly axle deep in the clay roads of New Zealand, within twenty miles of Auckland, succeeded in circumventing the terrain owing to its lightness. Many other Britain cars, are, however, too heavy for the Antipodes.” In an accompanying notice the paper states: —“The ‘Sphere’ publishes the picture reproduced above, not solely from the point of view of their purely pictorial quality, but also because they, are of distinct interest to travellers intending to go to New Zealand —in that they acquaint the prospective voyager with the conditions with which he will have to cope —and also those interested in the road conditions of the Dominion. The poverty of the country is largely responsible for the purely clay tracks that take the place of roads in the desolate districts outside the cities —tracks which arp frequently impassable owing to heavy rains,, which transform them into something little better than bogs. It is hoped that through the efforts of a recent delegation such appalling conditions will shortly be ameliorated.”