NEWS AND NOTES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 May 1938, Page 9

NEWS AND NOTES

VARIOUS ITEMS OF INTEREST. Kookaburra and Diggers. One of the unrecorded incidents of the soldiers’ recent trip to Sydney resulted in the Wellington Zoo acquiring a kookaburra. It is stated (says the special correspondent of the “Otago Daily Times”) that when one of the men was embarking at Sydney he was approached to take a small leather bag on board to a passenger, but owing to its lightness and a suspicious fluttering within, he insisted on knowing the contents. With some reluctance he was informed that the bag contained a kookaburra, and immediately he had visions of fines and penalties for taking the bird out of the country, but he finally agreed to accept the gift on behalf of the intended recipient. The bird was handed over to the care of a member of the crew, and next day, on sober reflection, it was decided that, to atone in some measure for the breach of the regulations, it should be presented to the Wellington Zoo. The next difficulty was how to get the kookaburra past the New Zealand Customs authorities, but this was successfully accomplished, and the bird is now quite at home in the Zoo, daily laughing in his own amusing way at the manner in which, with the connivance of enterprising Diggers, it achieved the task of crossing the Tasman. New Okahu Bridge. The new two-way ferro-concrete bridge which is being constructed over the Okahu stream on Main South Road near the late Mr Maxwell’s property, Rahotu, replacing an old wooden bridge which had done duty for over 50 years, is approaching completion. It was opened for traffic the other day and it was perhaps more than a mere coincidence that the first car to cross over the new structure was driven by Mr W. C. Green, chairman of the Egmont County Council, en route to the final meeting of the council. “No-Man’s Land.” There is a “no-man’s land” at Dunedin where the fortunate tenant cannot find the local body to which he has to pay rates. On the Pelichet Bay foreshore a wool store has been erected on reclaimed ground, and the landlord is the Otago Harbour Board, But the West Harbour borough does not extend to that area, as was observed at the last meeting of the council, and it is outside the jurisdiction of the city council, so that, until someone does something, no rates can be struck on property owners in that area.

Candlesfickmakers’ Art. The candlestiockmakers’ art has not gone with the introduction of electricity, just as the motor car has not doomed the horse. They are both essential, and in the case of candles they are an absolute necessity in the South Otago district, at least. Drought conditions are wedded to an acute shortage of power and local merchants are jubilant, though they, perhaps, are the only ones who are. Stocks of candles, musty with the dust of six years, have been almost exhausted. “It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good.”

Large Scout Contingent. The largest contingent of Boy Scouts ever to leave New Zealand was being enrolled for the international scouting jamboree to be held at Sydney about Christmas, said the Auckland City Boy Scout Commissioner, Mr R. F. Ward, when addressing the Auckland Rotary Club. Mr Ward said that it was hoped to send 160 boys from the North Island and 100 from the South Island. The Craven Influence. Six small boys with three small footballs practised enthusiastically the famous Danie Craven dive pass on a vacant section in Christchurch. Under the direction of the father of one of the lads, the boys worked in pairs, one playing the role of Craven for five minutes, and then the role of the mercurial T. A. Harris for the next five mionutes. People passing by stopped their cars and got off their bicycles to watch. Legal Pint of Milk. “When a person asks for a pint of milk it must be supplied in a verified measure,” said Mr G. G. Atkinson, inspector of weights and measures, during the hearing of a case at the Eltham court in which P. B. Pease, an Eltham milk vendor, was charged with having committed a breach of the regulations in that he supplied milk in an illegal container. The magistrate asked if it were permissible for a person to, say, sell a neighbour a pint of milk in a billy. That could not be done, said Mr Atkinson, unless it were specified that there was only approximately a pint. If a pint were asked for it had to be delivered in a legal container. Pease, who was not charged with having given short measure, was ordered to pay the costs of the prosecution and to surrender any illegal vessels in his possession.