OFFICIALS OUTWITTED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 March 1940, Page 5

OFFICIALS OUTWITTED

SMALL BOY’S TRIP IN BOAT AT EXHIBITION. The many thousands of visitors who have been through the Waitomo Caves in miniature at the New Zealand Centennial Exhibition have been especially entranced by the section of the journey that is made by board-walk over a miniature river. This feature of the Waitomo Caves model occupies the latter half of the journey, and is particularly attractive beneath the dark ceiling of the caves studded with glowworms.

Officials on duty at the exit from the Waitomo Caves were surprised recently to see a small boy paddling down stream in a boat instead of walking the board planking! It appeared after cross-questioning that the young lad had already been through the model of the caves, and was disappoined that there were no boats in which to navigate the river, as in the real caves So keen was he to complete the journey in the orthodox style that he made a second visit, but this time he was armed with a collapsible rubber boat about five feet long. He inflated this in the caves and, launching it in a quiet moment when there were were no visitors about, he successfully navigated the miniature river, which, although only a few inches deep, gave his boat, sufficient draught to float.