BRIGHTER ROTORUA

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 623, 30 August 1933, Page 6

BRIGHTER ROTORUA

national aspect SWEEPSTAKE PROPOSAL WINS SUPPORT IN AUCKLAND RAISING FUNDS The proposal supported by the Rotorua Borough Council, that the Government should be asked to institute a great international sweep for the purpose of raising funds to develop Rotorua as a travel resort and spa is attraetive enough to win very strong support (writes "J.C." in the Auckland Star). It would at any rate have the desirable effeet of 'retaining within the country large sums of money that are sent outside for lotteries, and it Would bring in muchneeded cash from Australia and elsewhere. The objective of the suggested lottery is natiohal in its character, and a liberal-minded Government I could scarcely find a good reason for j refusing its approval. This national aspect of the matter indeed cannot he too strongly emphasised where the development of Rotorua as a resort for pleasure and health is concerned. Whatever happens to that lottery proposal, and whatever funds are raised in the event of the suggestion,being launched successfully, Rotorua's amenities are not merely a matter to be dealt with by the local Borough Council. We have seen in Auckland, to go no further away, much undesirable interferenee with natural beauty by local bodies and Government Departments. In the present proposal it is set forth that speedways for international motor and motor cycle racing should be provided, that a pier should be built in the lake with a pavilion on the lines of that at Brighton, and that provision be made for aeroplane and seaplane racing. Sports organisations and commercial bodies are to be appealed to in this interest. These seem to me precisely the features that we do not want at Rotorua. The rush and blare and vulgarity of this over-mechanised age we have with us too much in and near the large centres of population. We can do without them in the lakes region, a country that should be regarded as a place sacred to health and rest and beauty and that charm that belongs to a very wonderful wild garden of Nature. ' There is some comfort in the last section of the Rotorua scheme as outlined, proposing a special planting programme to make the place typically New Zealand, and to develop Ohinemutu and Whakarewarewa as typical Maori villages. Those excellent ideas will have general approval Rotorua is, above all other pleasure resorts, a place where indigenous trees and flowers can be cultivated with success; they flourish exceedingly in that pumice soil. The Maori life, the decorative Maori architecture, the colour of the semi-primi-tive age, is what most visitors look for in the lake's region, side by side with the thermal sights. The foreshore of the town especially should be kept free from the garish commonplaces of an English watering place. Rotorua, with its lovely lakes, is too fine and unusual a place to be left to the morcy of a local commercialism which looks to nothing but the money of the mob.