HOLIDAY IN AUCKLAND

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 3, 5 January 1938, Page 6

HOLIDAY IN AUCKLAND

A VISITOR'S IMPRESSIONS.

(To the Editor.)

As a motoring visitor may I offer some opinions and suggestions? First, I notice tramway motormen are careful and thoughtful and courteous as regards motorists. There is an absence of high-handedness with point duty traffic officers and an absence of traffic officers excepting the point duty men, a fact that is some relief to motorists, the latter being harassed day and night in Wellington. There appears more freedom in Auckland for motorists, and parking rules, apparently, may be broken at times without "getting the cane." The main roads, especially concrete and bitumen, are a sheer joy to drive on. The wide roads are delightful. Your motor drives, such as Brown's Bay, Milford, Titirangi, Piha and so on. not forgetting the top of Mount Eden, are just delightful. The Manukau Harbour trip to the heads for fishing is charming, and the bathing at Milford wonderful. The absence of fruit (new season's) is disappointing, and the price of third-grade stuff ridiculous; apples worth eating are not to be found in the shops, and the strawberry supplies are disappointing. Peaches at 1/5 per lb staggered me. Tomato supplies were also very poor indeed. Vegetables appeared to be dear. Parks and pines are ■marvellous and the houses for the most part look splendid; but I don't like the position of the Government's new workers' houses— they look as if someone had dropped them from a 'plane and they just landed slip-shod in the gullies and grew up in a night. Signposting in many parts is neglected. Why the A.A. does not attend to this is hard to understand. Routes to popular drives like Milford are most confusing, especially in wet weather. Many other drives near the city are hard to sort out through absence of sufficient signposting. I did not see any cars excepting my own with the official sticker on the windscreen indicating that the car carried the half-yearly fitness certificate. In Wellington every car must have this sticker on the windscreen. But then I forgot, Wellington is the seat of Government and the great man in charge of transport lives there, and we are continually under his care Regarding radio, there is far too much time given to repetition of racing results, and I regret to say other New Zealand cities make the sanw error. I found the weather nice and tepid and far from hot; excepting on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, the climate has been kind to us. Some of the roads are badly top-dressed, and I include Taumarunui to Te Kuiti amongst these. They have far too much loose metal on the' surface, and the Te Kuiti Hill is still atrocious and dangerous. I have no hesitation in saying that the Auckland suburban area can carry comfortably several millions of people. Everyone round" about has been courteous, considerate and obliging. MOTORIST.