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Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LX, Issue 10829, 30 March 1932, Page 2

PAGE FROM THE PAST.

TAURANGA FIFTY YEARS AGO. For a few days we intend to dip back a little deeper into the past for our notes for this column, and from the Bay of Plenty Times of March 30th, 1879, we take the following:— “Lord Harris and party arrived from Ohinemutu at five o’clock on Sunday afternoon, and drove straight to the Commercial Hotel, where they were received very hospitably by host Ellis. Like all true Britons, the residents of Tauranga dearly “love a lord.” and a small crowd assembled to see ‘his lordship’ and ‘her ladyship’ descend from the coach. Strange to say neither the lord nor the lady differed greatly from ordinary mortals and several of the watchers who were staring their eyes out. moved off with visible disappointment on their intelligent 'countinghouses.' ” In a message from Dunedin in the same issue we read that “Lord Harris gave the Christchurch cricketers to understand that he would endeavour to organise the best team of gentlemen procurable and come out in two years to play New Zealand before going to Australia.” Agitations for railway communication seem to have been ever present in the public life of Tauranga. even from the earliest days. In 1879 we find an agitation going on for a line between Thames and Tauranga. A paragraph in thb same issue says: “The Thames people are evidently quite ready to give hearty support to a Thames and Tauranga railway. A leader in the Grahamstown Star of Monday says:—‘We did not think that the good people of the East Coast would long remain iu a state of inaction when they saw the Thames and Waikato railway fairly commenced. We hear that there is a probability of an organization being shortly formed at Tauranga and Katikati for the purpose of urging the construction of a branch line connecting these flourishing agricultural settlements with the Thames.’ ”