MOTOR CAMPING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 302, 22 December 1933, Page 5

MOTOR CAMPING.

WESTERN SPRINGS.

FIRST VISITORS ARRIVE. | POVERTY BAY SHEEPFABMER. j The first camp to be pitched in the municipal motor camp at Western Springs is that of a Gisborne sheep farmer and. his wife, Mr. and Mrs. J. E. Brosnahan. They arrived yesterday and Mr. Brosnahan this morning enthusiastically referred to the enterprise of the City Council in providing this convenience for holiday-makers so handy to the city. Emerging from his neat square tent, whose fly also covered a sports model car, the visitor remarked that he had had a strenuous season docking and shearing. Having last week seen 100 bales of wool loaded for the London market he felt that it was time he had a break, and the simplicity and freedom of camp life appealed as an antidote to a hard year's work. "Yes, it is an old timer," Mr. Brosnahan admitted, when the interviewer noticed the high-pressure tyres on his car. "I bought it in London in 1926. Times were better then. But we must forget that—this is a holiday." The Gisborne visitor's reaction to the holiday season is no doubt .typical of that of many who will later make the municipal camp their headquarters. There will be, a great stream of traffic on the roads from to-dav> bound for the hundreds of summer resorts, with which the Auckland Province is so wonderfully endowed. Motor camps to-day are so well equipped that*the drudgery of camp life is removed. At Western Springs, where only five weeks ago the council commenced its preparation, modern conveniences such as hot baths and showers and gas rings for conking are housed in stout Tittle stone buildings, whose moss-covered tiles offset the "brand-newness" of the interior. The camp is connected to the city sewage and drainage. The camp at present lacks the cool shelter of trees, for it is bare except for a few clumps of gum 6. This, however,

will be overcome in a few years, as trees will be planted about the 15-acre area i which it is intended shall be a permanent motor camp. The Western Springs creek, which flows through the Zoo, flanks the camp and it is intended to divert part of it into one of the hollows and form a fresh water swimming pool. The camp will give useful service both as a halting place for motorists who intend to tour the Far North and for those who will make it their headquarters while spending their holiday about the city. It has taken the place of the Epsom showground camp, where at times there have been over 200 peoplo under canvas. Its patronage, at present only two parties, will be swelled from to-day onwards during the holiday season.