NEWS OF THE DAY.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 250, 22 October 1928, Page 6

NEWS OF THE DAY.

Wharf Workers' Holiday. Auckland's waterfront presented an appearance of unwonted quiet to-day, work being entirely suspended, save for the departure of holiday excursion steamers. The Niagara is due from Sydney this evening with passengers and mail, and another expected arrival is the Steamer Saltersgate with phosphate from Nauru Island in the Southern Pacific. Rain by the Yard. The township of Otira, on the West Coast of the South Island, has an undisputed claim to the highest rainfall in the Dominion. The fact that more than three yards of rain has fallen during the last seven weeks and the inhabitants are still cheerful says a lot for the tonic properties of Otira's air. The first twelve days of October saw a fall of 50.2 in, and in the course of one day ami night nearly sAin were recorded. Ambulance Parade. Members of the St. John Ambulance Brigade attended a special parade on the Domain on Saturday afternoon for the purpose of having their activities filmed. There was a fine muster. During the muster the commissioner, Mr. C. J. Tunks, took the salute, after which officers of the association gave a practical demonstration of casualty work. Co-partnership at Hamilton. Responding to the toast of "Country Members" at the Typographical Union's social on Saturday night, Mr. G. Bundle made the interesting claim that in Hamilton the most advanced experiment in co-partnership principles had been made. The employees of the firm by which he was employed had allobated a certain number of "labour shares," and he, as a representative of the labour shareholders, had representation on the Board of Management. Ship's Officer's Death. The death took place in Auckland Hospital at midnight on Saturday of Mr. V. Grant Allen, second officer of the steamship Canadian Explorer, now at Prince's wharf. Mr. Allen was boarding the vessel on Friday evening when he slipped on the gangway, and, in falling, struck his head on a pile, being seriously injured. He was taken to hospital by the St. John Ambulance. Mr. Allen, who waa 27 years of age, was a native of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, and had been employed on Canadian National Government steamers for several years. Veteran Returning Officer. Fifty years of electoral work is the splendid record of Mr. J. Hay, the veteran returning officer for the Waitemata electorate, who will retire at the end of the present contest. Mr. Hay was postmaster at Devonport until twelve years ago. "After half a century of experience," he told an interviewer, "I can honestly say that the country can be congratulated on the absolutely impartial way in which the elections are conducted. In this respect New Zealand has nothing to learn from any other country that I know of." Live Shell on Campbell Island. Of recent weeks there waa discovered on Campbell Island, in the far south, a live shell four to five inches in diameter. One of the shepherds on the island found it during excavations round the hut. Its presence in such an inaccessible part is unaccounted for, although a French or British gunboat is known to have visited the Auckland Islands, farther north, many years ago. Instead of having the copper band seen on all modern shells, it is studded with brass or bronze, which shows that it must have been on the island for at least 20 or 30 years. The mystery of its presence there has yet to be solved. Papatoetoe House Burned. Fire, which originated in the chimney, caused the destruction of a five-roomed house in Detro Street, Papatoetoe, yesterday afternoon. The place was owned and occupied by Mr. Frank B. Thompson, and was insured for £700 in the South British Insurance Company. The insurance on the furniture was £200 in the same office. A sewing machine and a few small articles were saved, but Mr. Thompson considers himself a heavy loser. A piano valued at £200, which was almost new, was lost. Mr. Thompson was at a neighbour's for dinner, arid the house was locked up when the fire broke out. The Papatoetoe Fire Brigade, summoned at 1.40 p.m., saved a small outbuilding attached to the house. Safety frrst. Alighting from suburban passenger trains while they are slowing down at the bottle-neck entrance to the arrival platforms at the Auckland railway station is a practice that is strongly disapproved by the authorities, and an official said to-day the prosecution of offenders was contemplated. Besides requiring increased vigilance on the part of railway signalmen at the Breakwater Road crossing, the practice involves personal danger. Mention of Breakwater Road recalls the time when the Auckland waterfront was in the early stages of development, and the breakwater was built in the vicinity of the present entrance to the railway wharf. It has gradually increased in importance as a traffic link with Quay Street and King's Drive, and at railway rush hours the control of the point receives the attention of the Railway Department. A Real Sea Serpent. A sea serpent was caught off the East Coast recently, about three miles from the shore. According to the "Rotorua Chronicle" the catch was made by fishermen on an ordinary schnapper hook and line, but it was treated with every respect because of its formidable teeth. The creature was about 7ft long, with slender silverbrown body and a thin ribbon-like dorsal fin that extended the whole length of the body. By good fortune Sir James Parkinson, the eminent physician and biologist, was in Rotorua, and he examined the find. He pronounced it to be a real sea serpent, and justified the fisherman's caution, as it was highly venomous. Sir James stated that it was out of its recognised habitat, which was the coastal waters of North Australia and the narrow seas adjacent. He had never seen so large a specimen, nor one of that colour. The snake had a remarkable head, with large eyes i set well forward above the jaws. The teeth were numerous and sharp, being laid back at an angle that would make release from a grip almost impossible. The poisonous fangs were in the middle of the jaw. > "Good-bye the Huia." "With the opening of the Huia waterworks scheme next year," writes "Tramper," "I suppose we can say goiyl-bye to another large slice of the Waitakere hills. In Auckland there seems to be a rooted objection to allowing the public anywhere within cooee of a watershed, and the result is, first, the closing of the Waitakere Valley, then the Nihotupu Valley, and now the next to go will be the Huia—the three finest gorges in these splendid hills. In the old days we used to tramp where we liked, finding our way up hill and down gully by the scantiest of tracks —sometimes none at all—but to-day one has to stick pretty much to the highroad or one comes bump into some of the 17 miles of wire fencing the City Council ran round its water areas. This fencing, by the way, alwayß struck me as a considerable waste of money, as in many places it goes through bush where you would not find a beast once blue moon, and if a human wanted to get through, a wire fence would not stop him. In some other countries the watersheds are not bo severely prohibited as in Auckland, and it is to be hoped the council's present policy of complete isolation will be somewhat relaxed in favour of the people who find pleasure in tramping through New Zealand's glorious forest ways " ...