LOCAL AND GENERAL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 January 1939, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL

Import Licences

So far as can be ascertained, no import licences have yet been received by Masterton firms, who are expressing concern over the delay and the uncertainty of the position.

Accident at Miki Miki. Mr A. S. Clarke, a baker, of Masterton. received minor cuts and bruises when the van he was driving left the road at Miki Miki yesterday and somersaulted several times down a bank. Mr. Clarke later continued his round. Gift for Wellington Zoo.

A pair of Canadian buffalo and one Canadian elk for the Wellington Zoo arrived at Auckland from Vancouver in the motor ship Hauraki. The consignment originally included another elk. which died in the voyage across the Pacific. The animals are from the Canadian Government's game sanctuary in Northern Alberta, and are a present from Canada to Wellington. New Zealand Postal Notes.

A large Masterton retail firm, which recently had a small cheque returned by a Melbourne firm because its immediate policy is not to accept New Zealand cheques, received another shock yesterday. The firm had a small account with a Sydney firm, and remitted the amount in postal notes. These were returned with the intimation that New Zealand postal notes were not being accepted, and the suggestion that the firm wait until the account was much larger, when it could be paid by means of a bank draft. Train Tickets Run Short.

The heavy patronage at the race meetings at Ellerslie caused an unexpected situation at the Auckland railway station, where the ticket office ran short of tickets from Auckland to Green Lane, and was forced to borrow 1000 tickets from the Green Lane station for the use of people living in the suburb who travelled to the city by train. The demand was caused by people 'who travelled to the races on an ordinary Green Lane ticket, getting off at the Green Lane station, the fare being 6d cheaper than the special race ticket.

Leap for Life. When a motor truck which he was driving left the road and fell fully 150 feet into the Otira River below, Mr J. C. Witherington, a contractor, who lives at Greymouth, was saved from certain death by leaping from the cab. Mr Witherington was travelling alone from Arthur’s Pass to Otira when, about 9.30 p.m., the truck entered the Bridal Veil Falls and suffered a severe jolt, which, it is believed, caused the headlights to fail. Unable to see because of dense fog, Mr Witherington immediately applied the brakes, but the truck swerved into a fence overlooking a sheer drop into the Otira River. With great presence of mind he opened the door of the cab and jumped clear. The truck was found the following morning, 150 feet below, completely wrecked and almost unrecognisable.

Expensive Kindling. The extraordinary ignorance and indifference shown by many pakehas to old Maori culture were revealed recently at the Alexander Museum at Wanganui. A well-dressed, apparently prosperous farmer gazed at some of the carvings. “Why ever do you people collect that stuff?” he asked. "Why, we pulled down a lot of that sort of carving recently and boiled the billy with it.” Then the story was revealed of an old. and deserted whare whakairo in the back country of Wanganui. The new owners knew nothing of its existence until when mustering they came across it, and then forgot all about it. It so happened that the district decided to make a rough golf course,, and the old whare was right in a fairway, so it was pulled down and sledged back to the new little golf house —and the old carvings boiled the billy during the whole of last winter! The teller of the story was very downcast when he found that the museums of the world place a solid cash value on such things.

Farm Workers’ Agreement. Thousands of farmers and their employees throughout New Zealand are interested in a conference to be held next month to discuss whether there will be any change in the existing farm workers’ agreement. Farm workers, except those on dairy farms (who have a special agreement) have been working under the arrangement come to nearly two years ago between farmers, the Government and workers’ organizations. The coming conference will make its recommendations to the Minister of Labour, Mr. Webb, under whose authority this particular agreement is ratified. Girls’ Walk to Napier.

Coming under the category of what the Americans are pleased to call "hitch-hikers,” two girls clad in serviceable slacks and open shirts arrived in Napier the other evening from Wellington. < They left Wellington early last week on bicycles, but both machines developed trouble and were packed on to the train at Carterton and returned south. The girls, when they arrived in Napier, had walked just over 100 miles of their journey; the rest they- had covered with the assistance of lifts from passing motor cars. The art of securing a "lift," according to one of the girls —they are sisters—is easily acquired. "When we heard a car coming,” she informed a newspaper man. "either my sister or myself would develop foot trouble and the other would be anxiously examining the limb when the victim drew abreast. The treatment never failed.” The girls sot out on their return journey on Monday. A Fine Cathedral.

Dean of what he said was to be the finest cathedral in Australia, the Rev T. M. Armour, Newcastle, arrived at Wellington yesterday on holiday. He said that ihe Chapel of the Unknown Warrior would be something without equal in the Southern Hemisphere. Lord Foster, when Governor-General, laid the foundation stone and gave the memorial shrine to the unknown wairior, carved in the likeness of his own son’who died during the Great War. The sculptor was Sir Cecil Roberts. The cathedral when finished would be well worthy of Newcastle, the second city of New South Wales. It stood on a magnificent hilltop site commanding the city, and was in traditional Romanesque ecclesiastic architecture, with priceless windows of- English stained glass. His own predecessor as dean, whom he succeeded in 1936, was the Rt Rev W. H. Johnston, now Bishop of Ballarat. He himself had been previously the head of a bush brotherhood, working in an area of 60.000 square miles, in the western backblocks of New South Wales.