FIFTY YEARS AGO

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXIV, Issue 14049, 2 May 1946, Page 5

FIFTY YEARS AGO

The following items of interest are taken from the Bay of Plenty Times of fifty years ago:—

On Thursday last the men working on Thompson’s Track were knocked off, but a wire was received by the ganger the following day to resume work to-day. The track is now fit for light wheel traffic about five miles on this side, and from the Te Aroha side to within about five miles of the Katikafci workings. The road is being made 9ft wide in the solid and twelve feet on the flat, while all the sharp corners are being taken off.

Most of the bridges between here and Katikati arc more or less in need cf repair. In some cases there arc holes wide enough to let a buggy wheel drop several inches.' and at nearly every one the approaches are too low.

Mr John Spratt, of Mataura Island, Otago, threshed his oats the other day and obtained in one paddock 100 bushels per acre. The average yield per acre was 93 bushels. At the birth cf a child in Cyprus a vessel of wine is buried, to be served up afterwards at the marriage. A certain superstition attaches to this wine, for whatever'be the fate of this child it is never employed in commerce.

Fungus is very plentiful around the Levin and Ohau districts, and quite an income has been secured (his season by those settlers who have a large family of children to collect it. Nearly every house outside the townships has its drying ground, and a Chinese collector at Ohau has been sending it away in sack loads.