FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 487, 17 October 1928, Page 10

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By “THE LOOK-OUT MAN.” AT TITIRANGI Golfers playing ’in the Titirangi tournament on Saturday will play over an altered course. Thirteen holes will be entirely new. It is to be hoped there has been no tinkering with the nineteenth. * * * WALKING BACKWARD As a result of a wager an Aucklander walked backward from Remuera Post Office* to St. Heliers Bay in the small hours of Monday morning. Catching habit this. He probably had a pound or two on the horse the L.O.M. backed at Epsom on Monday. It did the same thing. * * * BRISBANE-ON-THE-NEYA It was the Margaret Bannerman Company’s last night in Auckland, so perhaps the slip was excusable. The handsome Count had been languishing in a Russian prison. “Where have you been?” they asked him. "I have just come from Brisbane. . . .” Then he hastily corrected himself, and the wheels of drama rolled on. S UPER-IN 8 URANCE A Parnell car owner finds himself in the extraordinary position of being unable to insure his car. The machine is acknowledged to be worth only £45, but the insurance companies demand a margin of £SO for depreciation. Henfce the difficulty. Were the motorist to insure, he would presumably have to Insure for minus £5 ( —£s), and in the event of the car’s destruction, pay the insurance company that sum. But under the circumstances the company might pay the premium. A DRY ONE At the Diocesan Synod last evening the clergy were discussing wireless and its marvels. The radio expert among the band was explaining how various effects were produced in the broadcast of stage plays. In the ordinary way the slamming of a door would create such a detonation through the “mike”’ that listeners eardrums would burst. To get over the difficulty, while preserving the effect, it was f discovered in America that dropping the lid of a grand piano on corks was an ideal imitation. “That is all right, but there is one thing I cannot understand,” said the Rev. G. Gordon Bell. “Where do the Yankees get the corks?” * » * PLEASED “Robert is, of course, very pleased, but he realises that it is also a big responsibility. He is more concerned with getting on at Eton, and is very keen on games.” This was the comment of Mrs. Walpole, the widowed mother of the 15-year-old schoolboy to whom the Earl of Orford, now in Auckland, made over his fine Wolterton Park estate before coming to New Zealand. Wolterton Park, which is near Norwich, consists of 5,000 acres of beautiful, picturesque park land, embellished with a fine Georgian mansion, and a lake. Altogether, there seems no particular reason why Robert should be annoyed.

DRIFTED ON THE ICE Prank Hurley, the Australian who is to attempt a flight from England to Australia in 10 days, has already had more than his share of adventurous hazards. Running away : from school when a mere lad, he worked fdr a time at the Lithgow ironworks in New South Woles, then became a photographer, and went to the Antarctic with Mawson in 1911. Back from the frozen South, he took a film camera into the blazing tropics, but a few months later received a cable from Shackleton, inviting him to join another expedition into the Antarctic. This trip, on the Endurance, culminated in the amazing drift for many months when the ship was imprisoned In the ice-pack, and finally in the collapse of the vessel, crushed to matchwood by the terrific grinding power of the Polar ice. Hurley and his companions then drifted hundreds ’of miles on a detached ice floe, with the ice at times splitting under their sleeping-bags, and finally reached Elephant Island, whence the courageous seaman. Frank Wild, took an open boat across stormy seas to South Georgia. Here assistance was secured, and the rest of the party was rescued by the Chilean trawler Yelcho. They were intensely surprised to learn that England was now at war, and Hurley was next heard of as a daring war flyer, whose aerial photographs have been some of the most amazing ever produced.