Huge Display At Benmore

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30289, 15 November 1963, Page 21

Huge Display At Benmore

The largest group of mobile ma* chinery ever collected together in the Southern Hemisphere will be seen by thousands of visitors to the £36m Benmore Hydro project on the Waitaki river on Sunday.

The last time the Oatmatata Welfare Association organised a machinery display was in 1961, when 20,000 came from all over the country to see the show. At least as many are expected this year. Special buses are being run from Christchurch, Timaru, Oamaru and Dunedin and a spot has been chosen at the site where hundreds of cars will have room to park. The show will start at 11 a.m. with the static display of machinery—loo of the project’s 200 earthmoving machines, including huge dump-waggons, scraper-loaders, bulldozers, excavations shovels, graders, rollers and haulers. Total value of the 400 vehicles on the project is around £ 1,250,000. Mr A. D. Dick, the member of Parliament for Waitaki, will officially open the display at 1.30 p.m., and an hour later the working demonstrations will begin. One that is expected to draw a big audience of project workers as well as visitors is the tyre-changing competition using the 6ft high tyres on the big scrapers. An admission charge of 2s a person is to be made, and a charge of 2s for each car. Refreshments will be available, and any profits will be passed on to the 60 or more clubs and organisations at the Otematata Ministry of Works

township, on condition that they pass the money on to the next project when the Benmore job is done. The display will be in a natural stadium just below the powerhouse, which stands at the foot of the penstock slope. Special seating arrangements have been made for elderly and invalid visitors.