THE OPOTIKI NEWS Wednesday, June 14, 1939. LOCAL AND GENERAL

Opotiki News, Volume II, Issue 194, 14 June 1939, Page 2

THE OPOTIKI NEWS Wednesday, June 14, 1939. LOCAL AND GENERAL

Shipping. , The m.s. Waiotalii arrived Opotiki yesterday. The m.s. Otimai is expected to arrive to-morrow. ■pemperatures. Temperatures at various places in the North Island at 9 a.in. yesterday were; Auckland - 49 degrees, Tauranga, Gisborne and Napier 47, Opotiki 48, East Cape 58, and Wellington -13. “Reporters Men of Discretion” “I often thank God the. reporters are men of discretion, knowing what to leave in and what to cut out,’’ said Mr. S. P. Taylor, when proposing a toast to the press at a farmers’ function in Ashburton. “If they weren’t, the ' newspapers . would! make very interesting reading after some of our meetings,” lie added, amid laughter. Dust-Free Roads. Road users in the area controlled by the No. 9 District Highways Council, which extemhs along the west coast- from Wellington to the Rangitikei lliver in the north, and inland as far as Mangaweka, now enjoy dustfree surfaces on more than 50 per cent, of the road .mileage under the epuncil’s jurisdiction. Practically all the work lias been carried out since. 1928. The percentage of sealed surfaces is exceeded by only one district in New Zealand.—Taranaki.

Heavy Snowfall. Practically all the ranges and hills around Gisborne received a fall of snow cm Monday night and yesterday morning. On seme of the roads leading out of Gisborne the snow was over six inches deep. Snow fell on the foothills near To Karaka, while there was a good fall at Mtitawai. Pepcids from the East Coast state that heavy falls occurred on Mit. liikurangi and the high country there. The Union Airways' ’plane which left Gisborne for Auckland ran into a snowstorm on the way t o Opotiki and turned back, but arrived "at Opotiki later in the morning. “The Old Pioneer Spirit” What he described as ‘‘a touch of the old pioneer spirit” was reported to the annual meeting of the Otago Agricultural and Pastoral Society by its chairman, Mr. J. .Hellyer. About 8.30 o’clock in the evening, he said, a woman arrived in Dunedin in a big hurry toi put' in sonic entries. She put them in and left just as hurriedly. It transpired that hr. home was at Oamaru. Her husband was ill in bed,* but rather than fail in her support of the show, she and her lb-year-old son had driven down front Oamaru with her entries, delivered them at the show building, and turned round and gone straight back home again. ‘‘We could do with a Jot more of that spirit right through the country to-da.v,” Mr. Hellyer said. New Zealand Manners. A brief appreciation of the average. New Zealander’s behaviour to strangers is contained in the recently-issued report by Dr. W. H. Spencer, of London, on technical education in the Dominion. “The average person of both sexes is pleasant, courteous’ and relatively well informed,” he writes. “His speech is not unpieasing. Some people have found him dull and slow. but these critics are from those lands of bright sun and effervescent atmosphere which may account for their own ftambuoyant and excessive heartiness. An Englishman, however, finds this absence of uuintermittent talk, this relatively quiet and reserved bearing, the inclination to abstain from slapping a new acquaintance too instantaneously and too heartily upon the back, by no -means strange.”