MR HOLLAND AT LINCOLN

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27212, 2 December 1953, Page 12

MR HOLLAND AT LINCOLN

Arrival In Jogging Cart STUDENTS’ PRANK The Prime Minister (Mr Holland) and some members of the official party attending the opening of the Young Farmers’ Clubs’ memorial hall at Canterbury Agricultural College, Lincoln, yesterday, arrived in front of the hall in a horse-drawn farm jogger. The Bishop of Christchurch (the Rt. Rev. A. K. Warren), in his robes and carrying a crosier, was among them. People waiting outside the new hall looked slightly surprised when a few moments before the ceremony was due to begin a small car carrying three rather roughly-dressed students pulled up near the hall, and the students, one carrying a bugle, lined up close to where the official party would have to pass. Their surprise was heightened wheri a jogging cart, bedecked with greenery, came into sight carrying the Prime Minister, the Bishop, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of New Zealand (Dr. A. G. Currie), the chairman of the college board of governors (Mr W. H. Gillespie, M.P.), the director of the college (Dr. M. M. Burns), and the president of the New Zealand Federation of Young Farmers’ Clubs (Mr O. J. Osborne), four of whom were in robes or gowns. The jogger was preceded by three students astride draught horses, and another three horses followed behind. Among the students was the college’s only woman student. Miss Mary Pratt. In addition there was a bodyguard of pitchfork-equipped students. The bugler sounded a “fanfare” as thej approached. The Prime Minister was first out of the jogger, and he stood back to survey his companions as they stepped down. The party filed to their places under an archway of upraised pitchforks. The Prime Minister’s car was intercepted outside the college gates, and he was transferred to the jogger and escorted into the grounds, where the other members of the party were picked up. Mr Holland said that this was the third time he had come to the college in connexion with the establishment of some new amenity, but it was the first time he had been honoured with “worn-out pitchforks and overfed horses.”