THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 306, 28 December 1931, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

People in reduced circumstances who are already moistening tlieir palms to deal with the roadside seed harvest, will have noted the wail from the far South, SEED TIME. where local bodies apparently cut and sell the highway cocksfoot. There isn't very much roadside cocksfoot to harvest. In our own territory the necessity of finding roadside occupation for relief workers has led to a remarkably determined offensive on thejngu* way "weeds," which have been so assiduously pruned that the labourers truly are plenteous but the cocksfeet are few. In short, it might almost be said that the workers have been assisted in killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Mind you, the untold ac ™ 3 f systematically denuded as a necessity of reliet have done their best with the aid of Nature to overcome the disability. Last year one inio-ht walk wholly obscured among the wayside grass, rich with seed. This year the roadsides in many places have been swept and garnished and the gentlemen referred to above will moisten their palins in vain.

Sedulous multiplication of, the anxious query, "Well, what sort of-a Christmas did you have?" induced a large number of answers, but the general reply is THE EATS. summed up in that of a stertorous youth who says, "Eatiu', drinkin' and sleepin'." Generally the day was, as usual, one of reunions. A young lady who has undergone a reunion gave some small indication of the Himalayas of provender that vanished that glad day. MA. P. remarked admiringly that she looked just as fresh and sparkling as ever. She admitted that despite the mountains of sustenance she felt as fresh as a dewdrop, that the family baby was chirping cheerfully, but that the others were more or less comatose. One asked her why she and the baby had escaped the general coma, and she replied, "Well, there were twenty people to feed at home. I did the washing up. Splendid exercise, washing up! Everybody ate a meal and then reclined, breathing stertorously. Washing up!- Then someone would suggest something to eat and drink. Plates and things for twenty people again! More eats, more stertor, more splendid washing up exercise for me. Oh, the baby? He had his chopped carrots and spinach. Bright as a button!"

Maybe you have noticed t.liat the Dutch with a couple of tugs have snigged the Wellington floating dock across the vast waste of water in a nonchalant SAILORMEN. way as who should say,

"It's all in the day's work." Perhaps you go on wondering why John Bull didn't do it. As a matter of fact, the Dutch have been eailormen. for some time and difficult work seems to be the breath of life to them. -Wonder do we admire the Dutch as they deserve? You can't help thinking some time that a Dominion with the Dutch name of New Zealand should feel some warmth for these stalwart relatives of ours. Even if you breathe the name of Abel Tasman it should set you thinking a bit, and you can't possibly refrain from believing that if a British sailor had done the things that Van Diemen did he would be on our historic roll of honour. By. the way, they manage the colonising business, too, with a minimum of uproar, as anybody who has been to Java or the Dutch Indies generally will admit. If Admiral van Tromp had been a British man we should have written quite a different song to the broom and whip one. Perhaps you don't forget, either, that Dutch enemy sailors have been the only ones to sail up the Thames. Will the people of "New Holland," Tasmania and New Zealand kindly give the crews of the Zwarte Zee and of the Witte Zee ("Black Sea" and "White Sea") three hearty cheers?

Highly interesting current stories of oldtime coaching days in New Zealand remind a man who is old enough to have used most means of transport of COACHY R.N. the coach navigators of

Australia, some of whom survived to tool care. Cobb's routes in old times, whether they ran from Dimballyboola to Warracknabloominbeal, or from Wentworth to Swanhill, required a combination of Bushman Bill and Captain Kett-Ie to drive them. In the dry season the long ribbon of road was as plain as a pikestaff to Bill, but when the big rivers were out on both sides of the track and over the track itself for many miles, the Captain Kettle instinct of Bushman Bill was necefisarv. It was a marvel to the fatted tourist that the man who took the coach for a swim in those days ever got to the place he was heading for, but except for the occasional drowning of a few passengers, an odd coachman, and .a team or so of horses, old days' communication was kept up in an almost uncanny way.. ' There ' is' the authenticated Btory of the Swanhill coach of olden times. The regular coachman, deviating to avoid deep water, was swept off his perch by the branch of a gum tree. He was a casualty and had to be carried.. Of the five passengers (four men and two women), only one had ever driven more than one horse at a time, and he happened to be a Royal Navy captain. He not only rendered first aid to Big Tom, the coaehman, but drove the coach for the twenty miles that remained, dodging through the gum trees and water in a highly skilful manner, lauding passengers, mails and invalid all present and correct. The Navy man explained modestly: "Oh, I left it tci the hordes, don't you know." He was tickled to death when the manager of the line offered him a permanent jo-b, but he was destined to become an admiral.

The picnicker who has succeeded the oldtime gumdigger, who used to warm his toes or boil his billy at a burning kauri tree a thousand years old and TEA TIME. worth a thousand pounds, . • retains some of the instincts of his forefathers. The modern picnicker armed with a car has the fossicking instinct in full flower, especially as he often gets bored after half an hour's sojourn in Blue Bay, and may, after a successful afternoon, boil a billy in' Red Bay, Green Bay, and Pink Inlet as well. No,doubt beach picnickers in their time have cooked the water for lunch on bits of history that may have been tall old ships, flotsam driven in by every wind and many a fencing post sunk by philanthropic farmers, wha love to supply firewood for all. The cup that cheers but does not inebriate has been brought to the boil by every kind of timber, from growing olive trees to kerosene cases or wrecked farm houses. A ruffian who kept the Turk at bay mentions, that the British Government paid for- -uncounted olive groves in Palestine commandeered by the troops for cooking "purposes. In'the South African campaign, in the absence of a farmhouse or a piano, the troops cooked their food and their drink with ant hills, and not uncommonly with "meste," the product of the cattle kraal, stacked to dry on every kraal wall. Still, the best available firewood story is about the distant fence sighted by a cavalry brigade, all available troops galloping wildly to get to the firewood first. All the posts were solid stone! The determined efforts of New Zealanders to. burn the country down has already necessitated the provision of concrete fence ill some now treeless - parts; a menace to every picnicker and camper, and an insult to the motorist looking for a "nice -bit o' firewood."