Timaru.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19212, 19 January 1928, Page 6

Timaru.

It has been emphasised Uefore in The Press that in the matter of self-help Timaru has set an example not only to Canterbury but to the whole Dominion. There are hundreds of people still living who remember Caroline Bay as a bare shingle beach, and the Harbour as a place which ships approached at their peril in any but the safest states of the tide. Yet the Bay is the most attractive resort today of its size and class in any part of the Dominion; while the Harbour is the best open roadstead. And the point is that these great changes have been brought about with so little outside assistance that they are almost entirely local improvements. The making of harbours is always a matter of national as well as of local importance, and dependent to some extent on national resources, while in developing a pleasure resort local authorities necessarily receive the assistance of the travelling public in indirect ways. But apart from considerations of this kind, which are of very little importance, Timaru is what its residents have made it. The Caroline Bay Association has no exact parallel in any other borough, either in status, or in zeal, or in the fruitfulness of its work, and if there is any other coastal borough whose residents take as much interest in its harbour, we do not know where it is. And now we have the further extraordinary fact that the improvements pace is to be accelerated. The following motion, of which notice was given this week, will be moved by the Mayor at the. next meeting of the Borough Council:

That the South Canterbury Chamber of Commerce and the Caroline Bay Association be invited to join the Timaru Borough Council at a special meeting to he called at an early date with a view to forming a joint committee for the purpose of devising a scheme for, firstly, the establishment and fostering of local industries, and, secondly, the improvement of the facilities necessary to popularise Timaru as a health and a holiday resort.

The establishment and fostering of local industries is a question largely of capital and of power, and will take time, though tiiere is nothing to prevent Timaru from becoming a strong industrial centre except the fact that J the chief concern of the people of South Canterbury is, and must remain, the fostering of their primary industries. But the improvements which it ( is desired* to make at the Bay—tepid salt baths, more tennis courts, larger tea-rooms, etc. —are in a different category, and we are sure that if the united conference asks for them they will speedily appear. For the Christmas season that is now closing has been an extremely disappointing one in weather all over the South Island,

and yet in Timaru has been one of the best known, proving, as the Mayor quite fairly claims, that Timaru is "beyond all doubt one of the most "popular holiday towns in New Zealand." It is to maintain and enlarge this popularity that the Mayor is now asking for a conference of all local interests, and it is only in Timaru that such co-operation would be possible.