NOISY SYDNEY.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 19941, 30 May 1930, Page 7

NOISY SYDNEY.

RUMBLE OP THE TRAMS. (fbow ouk oww cobrbspohdent.) SYDNEY, May 23. Dr. Donald Fraser, well-known in New Zealand, acclaims Sydney as the noisiest city that it has ever been his misfortune to dwell in. In that view quite a lot of people in Sydney most heartily concur. There is no city like it in respect to noise south of the Line. Dr. Fraser had hoped for results from tho Health Society's recent deputation on the subject to the Minister for Health. The latter happens also to be a doctor—little Dr. Arthur, full of idealism in an iconoclastic political system which, unfortunately, breaks the beautiful images even of Ministers, especially when a Government's cupboard is bare. What Dr. Fraser fears, however, is that when a man has been a politician a certain number of years he almost ceases to be human. "Politicians," he says, "sit up all night listening to one another, so apparently they like noise." The Health Society, however, appears to have more faith than Dr. Fraser in the ability of the Government to reduce Sydney's collective noises, and it proposes to tell it once again what it thinks. Sydney's nervous system suffers the strain of more noises,- most of them at least reducible, than are dreamt of in the civic philosophy of most countries. "If you give up the saxophone I'll come back to you," runs the music hall song. Similarly, many people would be less inclined to escape from the city as from the plague at the end of the day if Sydney gave up its present trams, for example, and substituted trams which would make less demand on the auditory and nervous systems. Its trams are the biggest factor in its noise problem.