HOLIDAY TIME IS HERE

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 23, 18 November 1938, Page 21

HOLIDAY TIME IS HERE

Fortnight’s Free Holiday Offered To "Record" Readers : By Columbia Pictures Pty., Ltd. OLIDAY time is approaching fast. ft will be only a few weeks, in fact, before school holidays ond Christmas and the hot summer months will be upon us. This year it appears thet bumper business: will be done at beaches and pleasure resorts all over New Zealand. Rail, sea and air services ave already heavily beoked; one seaside hotel not many miles from Auckland has even announced that alveady it has been completely booked out for Chrictmas and the New Year. The moral, of course, is that you should start right mow planning your holidays.

NEW ZEALAND is a country of yachts and boats. The disposition of our long, narrow, Sea-girt country and our dependence, in varying degree, en water. transport, probably accounts for this, but whatever the reason, the fact remains that we are remarkably "boat conscious." The popularity of boating in the main centres of the Dominion is, of course, mainly ~ dependent on the facilities available. Yachting is popu- " lar in Wellington, but not nearly so popular as in Auckland, where the Hauraki Gulf offers to Auckland yachismen a cruising ground without paraile! anywhere in the world. That must be the perfect holiday for many people-a week or two spent on a leisurely cruise round the Hauraki Gulf. It is a holiday which can be recommended to those who have never tried it. So far, entrants in Columbia Pictures’ "Ideal Holiday’ competition have not ‘had very much to say about what we might call aquatic holidays, but why not consider it this summer?

Holiday Essays

NTRIES for Columbia Pictures’ competition continue to pour in, and the judge’s task is becoming increasingly difficult. It is not only that the number of entries is imcreasing every week, the standard is improving as well. This week’s prize goes to A. S. Hely, 40 Te Awe Awe Street, Palmerston North, whose essay is a nicely-balanced combination of styte and facts.

Here is what Mr. Hely has to say about his ideal holiday:To passengers sitting in the comfort of the north-hound express as it breasts the long climb that lies between the plains of the Manawatu and the deserts of Waiouru, where the lonely winds whisper through the tussock grass, and Ruapehu stands white and calm under the frosty sky, Ohingaiti is just another wayside station, a blur of red brown buildings, of red and green lights. To moxorists in their super-stream-lined cars, roaring through on their way from the commercial offices of Wellington to the fishing lodges of Taupo, Ohingaiti is but another of New Zealand’s architectural medciocrities-hotel, post office, general store and the ubiquitous service station-set down aimlessly in the centre of a long, white dusty road and imprisoned by the bleak majesty of. burnt and tortured hills. To me, however, Ohingaiti is the spot for a _ perfect fortnighi’s holiday. A few feet away from the white road, through the tangle of dusty scrub where in the. spring ths kowhai’s gold makes a blaze of colour and the starry faced clematis drifts across the ti-tree bushes, one comes with startling suddenness to the sheer cliff edge aad gazes down past clinging ferns, stunted mountain flax and the feathery spray of leaping cascades to where, two hundred. feet below,- the Rangitikei River flows in wide and lazy sweeps between its canyon walls. On the river flat where green sward slopes. to silvery saad | would raise my tent ‘"a sail above an oar" and for two weeks | would swim in the cool green pools where the willows rustle softly in the breeze and the sunshine filters through the pattern of the leaves like golden dust; 1! would climb the soaring cliffs and broken hills past start"led sheep and_ stiff-legged moun-

tain yearlings who. gaze with redeyed suspicion at the intruder before, snorting, they wheel and lumber away, till at last, | reached the windswept ridge from which, looking north, one can see Ruapehu standing up white and clear in the sunshine and, looking south, one can see through the tangle of hills and. valleys and purple haze, the rolling plains of the coast and the blue green shine of the Tasman; | would canoe upstream past racing shallows aad calm deep stretches where the willow fronds droop to the water and kingfishers dive ‘like spears of purple flame, | dropping back to the camp in the evening when the river fies black and still in the shadow of its canyon walls and the moon rises over the shoulder of the MRuahines. Under the blazing arc-lamps at Nuremberg Hitler may arouse the passions of the Nazis, the fears of the world; under a Mediterranean moon, swift shapes may be bearing death and destruction to a Spanish towa; in the great cities of the world may be unemploy.ment, sickness, uncertainty; at | Rotorua the gay crowds may celebrate the New Year while Maoris without conviction commercialise the culture of their ancestors; but at Ohingaiti the sun shines, the river murmurs over its. gravel bars, the trees whisper in the breeze, and all is calm and peace.