LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 60, Issue 47, 5 December 1939, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

The issue of three building permits, for structures estimated to cost £3579, was made by the Ashburton EngineerInspector in the last two weeks.

Two large eels with their heads up the exit of the sewer pipe wb iqh runs into the Wanganui River at the Taylorville end of the Town Bridge and a. third eel nfith its large head poking out of the pipe, created considerable interest among passers-by late one recent afternoon. A large shoal of herrings was swimming around the cels, which appeared to be resting.

Payments of benefits under the Social Security Act, made now at the Ashburton Post Office, will, after about the beginning of February, be made: from the Social Security .building in Baring Square East. Alterations to the interior will be made shortly to giye facilities for payments at those offices, counter accommodation to be built in the large room formerly used as a meeting room by the County Council.

Two troop, trains will go south through Ashburton to-morrow morning, taking members of the Machinegun Battalion from Burnham Camp to Cave for special training for 10 days, and two other trains will go north, taking back to Burnham the 800 men Avho went south a little over a week ago. The south-bound trains will arrive at Ashburton at 10.29 a.m. and 11.21 a.m. and the north-bound trains are due at 4.4 p.m. and 4.47 p.m.

. The success of the new rose walk in the Ashburton Domain as an attraction for visitors was referred to at the meeting of the Domain Board last evening, when the Mayor (Or. G. I. Miller) said there had been an unusually large attendance of people at the reserve, looking at the roses in the walk, on Sunday afternoon. Mr E. Buchanan said the people would have to go a long way to see a display equal to the quality and variety of the roses that had been placed in the walk.

The Minister for Finance (the Hon. W. Nash) announced at Wellington yesterday that supplies of the new series of New Zealand bronze coins would he issued by the 'Reserve Bank within the next few days. It had previously been intended by the Government that the new design would be issued for the first time on the occasion of the centennial celebrations; hut the increasing shortage of imperial bronze coins had made it necessary to issue the new coins at an earlier date in order that the public might not be inconvenienced.

Dogs running wild in the Ashburton Domain after being taken there' 1».» t'icir owners were referred to at the meeting of the Domain Board last evening, when it was stated that the dogs were permitted to run over the flower beds, doing a. good deal of damage. According to the by-laws, dogs must he on a leash while they are in the reserve, and the. Board agreed that after the confirmation of the new regulations in two weeks’ time, they will he fully enforced as far as untended dogs are concerned.

A penalty of 10 per cent, on all rates nob paid by January 31 will bo imposed, according to a decision of tlio Ashburton Borough Council last evening.

The time taken to. transact the business of the Ashburton Borough Council, the Ashburton Domain Board and the Ashburton Cemetery Board, three bodies with the same membership, was last evening very little over the record. Starting at 8 o’clock, the Council finished its meeting at 8.19 p.m., and the whole of the business for the other two bodies had been put through by • 8.36 p.m.

Another new motor roadway is to be formed in the Ashburton Domain at the suggestion of the Curator. The entrance track from Wills Street, near West Street, is to be opened up and curved to the left to come out on (Park Street. The balance’ of the track will be closed, the flax removed from the edge of the water, and lawn sown down between the nw roadway and the water. There will he six chains of roadway on this route, two of them new construction.

London was numbed by the news of the conclusion of a pact between Germany and Russia, said Dr. A. G. Waddell, of Hamilton, who returned from England last week. The people, he said, were not scared by the pact, hut because it was unexpected; it stunned them. When official opinion was able to consider the likely consequences of the* friendship, however, it was thought that the pact might turn out to Great Britain’s advantage. While it estranged Germany from some of her other allies, the pact was not 1 considered likely to give Hitler any material assistance from Russia.

Complaints are being made by residents of some parts of Wellington that the city watsv is not devoid of a foreign taste. These complaints have reached the city engineer, Mr K. E. Luke, who explains that microscopically small seed cells occur in the water during the summer time,' which not only create a- strange taste, but sometimes discolour the water as well. The phenomenon was common to water suplies all ove<r the world. Both the medical officers of health and the council’s own analyst state definitely that the water possesses no harmful qualities.

To hear a file of Chinese soldiers on the march through a village in the interior of the country singing one of the psalm in their own tongue was an experience described by Mr Howard Knight to the annual meeting of the British and Foreign Bible Society in Auckland (states the, “New Zealand Herald”). Mr Knight recently returned after eight years as a missionary in China.. It was not the tune, but the words, he said, which first drew his attention. He later discovered that themen were singing the psalm to a Chinese melody, a change which had become fairly popular.

New Zealand is not alone in being perplexed with price ranges in war time, even neutral Cuba being affected. Writing to Mr T. Oonaghan. of Wliangarei, a stamp-collecting friend in Havana states the war had raised the price of sugar and with it the price of every other commodity, making living more expensive. 'Several of the most prominent businessmen were in gaol, and under arrest for raising the price of food and other articles. “This Government,” the writer states, “does not stop to think beforei acting, and, as a consequence, ouir packing firms are having to sell lard and other imported items below their actual cost, or face arrest for not doing so.”

Speaking to a meeting of the; Wanganui provincial centre of the New Zealand Red Cross Society recently,' the' direetor-geneiral (Mr Ira Bridger, Eltham) said that one of the tasks of the -society in its collection of funds was to think of the men after the war. “When the war is over wo may be liable, to forget them,” he said, adding that the four Red Cross homes in New Zealand, established by money brought from Home after the, last war, are still full. Mr W. P. Meads, the Raetihi delegate, a returned soldiejr, paid tribute to the attention he had received in Red Cross hospitals. A delegate: It is not the hardship of dying that the maimed have to face, but the hardship of having to go on living. Our society should think of that.

When passengers were being taken from the torpedoed Athenia by the Southern Cross, one of their number was seen to rush back across the deck and disappear up a gangway leading to the captain’s quarters. The man soon returned carrying the ship’s compass, which he gleefully claimed ' nobody would want if the ship was going down. He had hacked it off with the aid of a hammer of some sort. The daring of the man, who was, of course, an Australian, greatly amused the distressed passengers, one. of whom, in describing the incident to Mr J. L. Conlan, then returning to New Zealand from .a , world tour, added that the last seen of the possessor of the compass was in New York, whore he was proudly displaying the relic of the ill-fated ship, the passengers from which vessel were subsequently transferred from the Southern Cross to the City of Flint, the freighter that took them to America and later became a war prize and a subject of international controversy.

An indication of the problems in providing all the amenities of modern civilisation on an isolated atoll in the Pacific is given by a description in the latest issue of Pan-American Airways’ magazine of the manner in which the erection of a 24-room hotel at Canton Island for air passengers on the San Francisco-New Zealand route was faced. Owing to difficulties of construction work on the spot much of the hotel was fabricated before shipment from America. In the middle of September the freighter Thor I landed at Canton Island 80,000 ft of timber, three truck loads of asbestos-concrete composition, 5000 bags of cement, .97 windows completely assembled with, sashes set in their frames, doors ready to hang, beds, dressers, tables, lamps, rugs, desks, mirrors, chairs, pictures for the walls. As ships do not call regularly at Canton Island it was neccessary to forget nothing, and the vessel carried the entire hotel in her holds. Equipment included blower ventilation, an air-conditioning system, radio set, and even a motion picture projector, pool tables, athletic equipment, and high chairs for infants.. Food supplies included 10 tons of frozen meat and poultry packed in ice, and other stores sufficient for nine months. Only fresh vegetables, fruits, and milk were not shipped, as these will be carried by air from Honolulu.