PROVISION FOR TRAMPERS

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22435, 23 June 1938, Page 9

PROVISION FOR TRAMPERS

NEW TRACKS WANTED ON PORT HILLS REQUEST TO BE MADE TO MINISTER Finding it both unpleasant and unsafe to walk along the motorists’ highway round the summit of the Port Hills, trampers have made repeated requests for the provision of new walking tracks. Since the ventilation of the subject in the “In the Pillory” column of “The Press,” the complaint has been brought to the notice of Mr J. A. Thomson, supervisor at the Takahe, who intends to approach the Minister for Labour, the Hon. H. T. Armstrong, for additional rotational workers to build new tracks. Mr Thomson said yesterday that since the building of the highway for motorists he had been concerned about the interests of people who preferred to walk on the hills. To this end, as “The Press” reported at the time, he made a personal request to the Hon. P. C. Webb, when he was Acting-Min-ister for Labour, for additional men to care for the hill tracks and build new ones. Mr Webb granted this request, bringing the staff of rotational workers looking after trampers’ tracks to four.

This number was sufficient only, Mr Thomson said, for the maintenance of present tracks. The men were fully occupied in repair work, and he was hoping that more could be obtained to build a new pathway for trampers following the route of • the highway, travelling just above it. Mr Thomson said he was keen to care for the interest of trampers and was endeavouring to do all that was possible with the men at present allotted to him. They were working at the moment on Mitchell’s track, running from the Sign of the Kiwi round the Sugarloaf on the harbour side, and

joining the summit highway a short distance further on. This and other tracks between the Kiwi and the Sign of the Bellbird at Kennedy’s Bush were being kept in order for hampers.