SEA-SIDING DE LUXE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 853, 23 December 1929, Page 9

SEA-SIDING DE LUXE

NEW STANDARDS IN SEASIDE “SHACKS” OLD ORDER CHANGES The new type of seaside “weekender” is shattering seaside conventions. These never coincided with city conventions, and this was the main reason why many sought to acquire the status of • weekender.” It was to get away as far as possible from the drabness, routine and rule of city life that the would be “weekender” hoarded up suffiic. et to acquire a shack somewhere alo lg the coast, either on the mainland or on the islands that sprawl about the sunlit Hauraki Gulf. He marshalled his family on Saturday afternoon and with a sufficiency of provisions, valuable liquids, blankets, old clothes and a kerosene stove, hied him away to the haven of his heart’s desire. The 1929 “weekender” does things on the grand scale. He motors down to a specially built seaside home, jokingly called a shack. Twined roses colour the gateway, and canvas blinds hide .the doorway and porch from the prying eyes of the passers-by. Inside one finds the walls papered, and electric light to defy the darkness. Guests, in flannels appear at meals and fare of the city restaurant type is eaten off tables covered in snowy white linen. In the kitchen an electric cooker yields to the whims of the cook. Wireless breaks the quiet to fill the valley with raucous riot of halfmumbled lectures or' weirdly varying “music.” In one of these modern bachs in a North Shore cove recently a piano was being strummed. In days of yore the strains of the mouth organ or an accordion might be heard floating down on the breeze, sometimes accompanied by tuneful singing, reminiscent of folk songs that once delighted our forefathers as they sat in the gloaming, glad that they were alive. The all-electric bach is something of a North Shore novelty, but roast beef and custards cooked in an electric stove have little of the wild flavour of a freshly-caught schnapper sizled over a fire of driftwood and eaten with a knife, or of the solidity of corned beef extracted direct from the tin. Modern conveniences are despoiling the haunts of those who seek primitive life. Hike the native birds, they must take themselves further afield. T.W.