HAVE YOU BEEN THERE?

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22201, 18 September 1937, Page 19

HAVE YOU BEEN THERE?

"It's the finest seaside resort in the world," said Mr George Bernard Shaw when he strode out of the surf at Mount Maunganui—and he based his comment on long experience. Bernard Shaw has known most of the famous and fashionable watering places of Europe, but he preferred the Mount. His preference aroused not a little pride in the little settlement of Mount Maunganui, and his tribute, sincerely given, is one of its treasured possessions. To this day and for many years to come the there will tell the world about it. And apparently the world needs telling about Mount Maunganui. In Christchurch, for instance, it is true that 80 per cent, of the population has only the haziest idea where the Mount is, and that another 10 per cent, knows nothing at all about it, neither where it is, what it is, nor why it is worthy of notice. Captain Cook was the first man to set it on the map. He called the Mount the Sentinel of the Bay of Plenty. It stands at the end of a small peninsula in the middle of the big bay, across the water from Tauranga. At its foot is the little settlement, lying across the narrow isthmus leading to the mainland. The Mount bases its claim to distinction upon its peculiar geography and its pleasant climate. If a holi-day-maker were given a piece of land and a section of the ocean and told to fashion his ideal bathing place, he could have done little better than Nature has done at Mount Maunganui. On one side of the little isthmus is a surf beach which enthusiasts liken to the famous Waikiki. Just across the way, only a few steps across, is a calm stretch of cool, sheltered water in the big harbour bay. If a bather likes the surf he

bathes to his heart's content on one side of the isthmus, but if he prefers calm water, if he gets tired of the surf, or if a wind springs up, -he simply picks up his towels and sunshades and transfers his headquarters to the harbour side and continues his sunbathing, again to his heart's content. To make it all the more pleasant, Tauranga and the Mount have an extraordinarily high quota of sunshine every year. Four or five hundred people constitute its population at ordinary times of the year, but the moment (the Christmas holiday period begins there is a rush from all parts of the North Island, and from a few of the southern centres. Overnight the population reaches from 6000 to 8000, but there is so much room at the Mount that though the place is as pleasant as the Riviera, it is never so unpleasantly over-popular. The slopes of the Mount are clad (With, beautiful pohutakawa and

karaka, and there is a pleasant walk round its base, by the water's edge. The climb to the top of the Mount is easy enough, and the rewajd it gives is considerably g- iter than the energy expended. It .s only 763 feet high (by no means as high as the Sign of the Kiwi), and beneath it lies a panorama embracing the Bay of Plenty mainland, and the strange volcanic White Island. The Mount is only two miles across the water by terry from Tauranga. It is one of those places South Islanders should know about if they would know New Zealand.

Thirty thousand persons visited the "degenerate" art exhibition sponsored by the Nazi regime at Munich, Germany. The idea was to show what art should not be. But only 10,000 'visited the legitimate art show provided for contrast.