STRANGE DEVICES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 September 1943, Page 4

STRANGE DEVICES

MANY NOVEL IMPROVISATIONS. (Official War Correspondent, N.Z.E.F.) (NEW CALEDONIA. New Zealanders are noted for their ability to improvise in adverse conditions, but the carpenter and metalworker at the General Hospital in New Caledonia stand as peers among their fellow experts. Throughout the hospital area they have concocted strange devices of various shapes, sizes and functions that do their jobs quite effectively. An ablution and washingup stand is one of the most novel of these improvisations. It stands beside a group of wards, under a framework of naioli tree branches and bark. With no tubs, plugs, piping, taps or proper draining facilities, the unit carpenter and metal-worker got on to the job with oil drums,, jam tins, fruit tins, and rubbish from metal disposal dumps. Lining half an oil drum with cement, they produced a wash-tub. Rounded wooden blocks filled plug holes punched in the bottom. The tins, cut, beaten and soldered, took the shape of a drainpipe which led round divers corners to a grease trap made of another oil drum, and thence to natural drainage in the valley.