WELL BELOVED CHURCHMAN

Mt Benger Mail, 21 September 1938, Page 1

WELL BELOVED CHURCHMAN

late ARCHBISHOP JULIUS MEMORIES of a great man Memories of a man of unusual physical endowment, the muchloved Archbishop Julius, are revived in this account of his pioneer days. All his life the, late Archbishop Julius made a hobby of handicrafts, and his interest in machinery lias been fully inherited by his elder son, Sir George Julius, the eminent Australian engineer, who is best known as the inventor of electrical totalisator mechanisms in rise the world .over. As a boy the archbishop rode one of the early “boneshaker” bicycles, and later graduated to a tall “ordinary” or “pennyfarthing” machine. On this he did his Sunday rounds as a young clergyman in order to give his horse a sabbath day’s rest. Some of his parishioners were conservative enough to demur, and he used to relate that; even after he had explained about the horse they still suggested that he was getting rather too much Sunday pleasure out of the bicycle. His 'reply was that; he might consider putting a penitential tack in the seat. Over the Haast Pass His diocese made many demands on its bishop’s vigour. On one occasion he rode on horseback from Christchurch to Hokitika, thence into South Westland and over the Haast Pass to Oamaru, covering 600 miles in all. “I travelled alone .most of the time,” he said years after. “There were few bridges and I often had to swim my horse over rivers.” ■He took comfort in the thought that his journeys were at least easier than those of Bishop Sclwyn, who in the early days had tramped hundreds of miles in the North Island over bush tracks with a staff and swag. A “One-lung” Motor-car The archbishop brought! a buggy with Him to Gnristchureh from Victoria and later rode a bicycle. When the internal combustion engine arrived, he lost no time in becoming a motorist, a role for which his mechanical bent lilted him very well. He acquired a single-cylinder car and then a motor-cycle, which appealed to him because it was faster. His motor-cycling days ended when he injured a leg in an accident at Rangiora. The “one-lung” car provided him with many tales. “1 have travelled on a horse, a bicycle and a motor-cycle,” he said a few years ago. “I have driven a car and flown in an aeroplane, but I ame determined that 1 shall never die in a bathchair. Troubles of Early Motoring The archbishop told one story of his car’s misbehaviour. “I had been preaching at a little country church in South Canterbury,” he said. “When I came out and started my ear the engine began to make a terrible noise, so 1 got someone to hold a lantern, when I discovered that both the screws holding the cylinder were broken and the cylinder was moving up and down with the piston. “1 thought, “Well, I’m stuck this time,’ but Anally managed to borrow a piece of fencing wire, with which I bound the cylinder down in its bed.” With this extraordinary makeshift the archbishop drove 10 miles to the house where he was staying. On the following day he enlisted the services of the blacksmith and bound the cylinder down with the hoops from a tub. He drove 120 miles back to Christchurch. “And the cylinder was dancing a minuet all the way,” he added. Lovers of “Gadgets”

Sir George Julius one; related that his father, as a student at Oxford, made a cunning mechanical device, worked by an alarm clock, which lighted a lamp under a kettle to provide hot water for shaving and a cup of early morning tea. When the kettle boiled it blew a loud whistle to wake him up in time for practice on the river as stroke of the Worcester College eight. The apparatus worked well, to the admiration of his fellow “undergrads,” until one night he absent-mindedly placed a copy of Smith’s Classical Dictionary on the stand instead of the kettle. The smell of smoko 'wakened him to find the book with a two-inch hole burned through it from cover to cover. He preserved the volume as a souvenir for many years after. Much of his leisure the arch-

bishop habitually spent in his workshop. His skill as a maker and mender of clocks was wellknown in Christchurch, for many years.