A Bigger And Better Exhibition

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 19, 3 November 1939, Page 9

A Bigger And Better Exhibition

school dressed up to look pretty and stuck on walls and benches for easy reference. With the electrically operated robot lecturer and the huge World globe above the model lecture room, the whole exhibit can be used for practical teaching purposes by parties of school children, and a most fascinating lesson it will make. There are 26 State departments represented in this part of the building, separately and together making well pointed contributons to the job of illustrating the work of the most comprehensive system of State management of public utilities in the world. Next in size to the Education Department’s exhibit comes the model railway service set up by the Railway Department. Trains speed around long lines of track through a realistic landscape, with a real electric signal box to control them. Many of the industrial exhibits were being jacked into place while The Listener toured the building. Their aggregate weight is tremendous. A boiler unit in the Marine Department’s exhibit totals almost 20 tons. It was brought in and rigged, in common with this Department’s other heavy machinery, with only such mechanical assistance as the ingenuity of the men could produce on the spot. It is testimony to the strength put into the. foundations of these supposedly impermanent buildings. The floor will take two and a half hundredweight per square foot. Engineering Exhibits Lovers of fine engineering will find much to attract them, and not the least interesting are the two huge aeroplane engines in the Air Force exhibit. Both will be actuated by electricity, with cylinder heads cut away to display moving parts and with red, green, and white electric lights flashing on and off to illustrate sparking order. The Bristol

Pegasus develops 1,010 brake horse power for take-off. The Rolls Royce Merlin, as used for the now famous Hawker Hurricane, Supermarine Spitfire, and Fairey Battle aircraft, develops a maximum brake horse power of 1,025 at 3,000 revolutions per minute. The Marine Department has cut in half the lens casing of a big lighthouse, the Fisheries Department runs an aquarium, the Navy Department has a scale model battleship (Cumberland), and the Housing Department model blocks of flats to make Wellington citizens’ eyes water. When you have seen everything there is to see here it will be time to go home and get in the wheat, pick the sturmers, or cover up the taps against next winter’s frosts. But there are many other things to see and you can post your letters in the Post Office (if you do not prefer to use the box in. the top of the tower), make your will with the Public Trustee, and proceed to the Dominion Court. Diorama Most will agree that this contains the feature of the Exhibition. i Once caviare to the multitude, the word "diorama" is now in everyone’s vocabulary. In the Dominion Court is the diorama of all dioramas. Instead of a bushel of wheat for Canterbury, a mud flat for Auckland, a wind-blown coiffure for Wellington, and a memory of 1925 for Dunedin, the characteristics of each province are reproduced by wonderfully accurate modelling on geographically exact landscapes: "Ships in harbours, running trains, streets, factories, and houses in towns and cities, grassland, cropping, pasture country, mountains, rivers, lakes, and waterfallseverything is there, covering more space than a football field and more information than the Year Book. The accuracy of the smallest detail is more than impressive, except that South Islanders will object to seeing Egmont and Ruapehu looming as high as Cook, ' Below this huge court is a facsimile of the Waitomo Caves, nearby a large assembly hall, the Canadian Court, and Transportation exhibits, with cars and engines gleaming with special Exhibition spit and polish, and the Ford people doing all sorts of interesting things in a splendid exhibit. Canada has many and tremendous natural resources to draw upon for display, and this Court is not behind any of the others in finding effective means of putting them on show.

Private Exhibits By now you have travelled -much too fast-through the entire southern block and you cross to the block containing private exhibits by way of the central block. Here there are committee rooms which may be used for meetings and conferences, a covered-in motor car entrance, the women’s court, rooms for the use of the Minister of Industries and Commerce and the Mayor of Wellington, the entrance to the tower, a balcony, and a dozen other items which you will not notice first time round, and which we may therefore skip meanwhile, Next to Godliness It would be as impolitic to start describing the manufacturers’ exhibits as to write up the dresses at a charity ball: many would be left out and

they’d be the wrong ones. Suffice to say that New Zealand firms and industries are on the spot with the best of everything. You will notice, though, that Cleanliness is very close to Godliness; but you had better look for the point of that joke yourselves. In the same block you can gain access to the cafeteria, the restaurant -- which commands a fine view of Playland-and the big cabaret. From Other Lands Large as their buildings are, neither the United Kingdom nor the Australian Governments have at their disposal the space in use for New Zealand purposes. Unable, therefore to enjoy the luxury of assembling detail, they have allowed themselves the privilege of exercising restraint, and both in their own different ways have achieved the maximum of effect with a minimum of effort. The United Kingdom Court is concerned with the development of transport; the inventive genius which developed the British Isles to be the axis of the world’s finance and commerce, and flung their influence across the whole earth, even to far away New Zealand. The development of transport by land, sea, and air, is illustrated round a sculptured central figure symbolic of power drawn in to the Earth and developed by Man for his own purposes. The Exhibition authorities describe this as a " prestige" exhibit, with justification, Australia has done the usual things in a new way. The Pavilion itself is an example of the best in modern architecture. Behind the great glass facade the stars of the Southern Cross are hung, and inside, in the least possible detail, are displayed the nation’s resources in materials, industries, culture, travel, and sport. It certainly is a wonderful Exhibition. It has everything. Almost everything. It has taken the British Working Man to put it up in the time, and make such a good show at this particular time, but if rumour is to be believed he has worked thirsty, for the only beer you'll find is For Display Purposes Only. You will find the Exhibition has everythingexcept a licence, 4