LAKE RECREATIONS

Taupo Times, Volume I, Issue 45, 19 November 1952, Page 4

LAKE RECREATIONS

AS our readers will have noted, the proposal of the Taupo Aquatic Sports- Club to constuct a concrete ramp at Two-Mile Bay for the eonvenience of boat owners has provokecl a controversy in our correspondence columns. The official authorities concerned — Internal Affairis and Marine Departments — have raised no objections provided the Club accepts the conditions laid down for the use of this part of the Lake foreshore. The Club has accepted the conditions, but further progress has been airrested by objections set out in a petition, signed by the property owners and submitted to the authorities. The main objection is to the noise of speedboats in their vicinity and the likelihood cf considerably more noise if the Bay becomes a base. As pointed out by the retiring Commodore cf the Cltib, Mr A. D. Mac'venzie, in his address from the chair at the recent annual meeting, the situation awaits clarification. In the meantime, Brigadier G. H. Clifton, for the petition, and Mr J. T. Hogan, for the Club, have entered the fray. The Club's official representative, Mr E. P. Taylor, and Mr J. W. Stevens, are also among those present as participants. There is a time-worn philosophy which counsels humanity "to live and let live.,, It would be a very pleasant world if everybody acted up to it. Quite possibly, of course, a state of universal stagnation might ensue. No contr'oversies, no progress. As apparently, we must have progress, it follows that we must have controversies, and that one side or the other must prevail. If in trying to please eveirybody we end up by pleasing nobody, the result is stalemate. Sc it behoves our rulers, either in general or local government to get l somewhere, whether, as politicians, they like it or not.

Follcwing in the wake of modern progress have come many inventions^ in mechanics, innovations in art, and so on. Thetre is, for one thing, the internal combustion engine which adapted to speed boats on the Lake,

threatens to reduce the 18 petitioners abovementioned to nervous wrecks. There is the crooner on the radio, whose treacley sentimentalism produces similar reactions in the case of musically-sensitive people. There is the modeirn artist whose surrealist creations make old-fashiqned people go cross-eyed to behold; the modern composer whose music provides headaches instead of enjoyment; the modern poet searching his soul for words to express what cannot be anything else than the pangs of acute dyspepsia. There are some who like them, and some who donT, neither side is willing to conceded the other is right. It is ireally awfully difficult in this chaotic world of ours to live and let live. To come back to the Lake. It is incontestable that its amenities for recreation will be increasingly exploited as time goes on. It is no longer the monopoly of the angler to be enjoyed in perfect peace. Even the fishermen have resorted to outboard motors that spit like machine guns. The speedboat is symphonatic of the modeirn craze for speed, as the motor-cycle is on the dirt-track. If these craft are prevented from annoying some people in one bay, they will certainly annoy others in another and progress has multiplied the noises of life and we must have to get used to them. There is every argument in favoutr of encouraging people to make the most of the amenities for aquatic sports offered by Taupo^ magnificent Lake, and enhancing it popularity. The proposed ramp at TwoMile Bay Js not intended for the exclusive use of speedboat owners, but for all boat-owners. While it is possibie to sympathise with those who dislike the noise of speedboats, it is possibie to sympathise even more with a Club of aquatic enthusiasts who, exeirting their energies to improve the conditions for boatowners in general, are facing frusiration. Mr Hogan's suggestion for a representative conference on the subjeclf is constructive and worthy of adoption.