Guileless Granny

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30686, 27 February 1965, Page 5

Guileless Granny

QN this page recently we printed extracts from the “Sydney Morning Herald” ini Which Granny, of column 8, was taken to task for comments on the flying of the flag at half-mast. Poor Granny has been in trouble again; this time her reprimand comes from a New Zealander. On February 18, Granny wrote:— QUITE A HOP The London “Dally Telegraph" of February 7 guilelessly reprints from an American sports magazine the case of New Zealand’s well- . dressed, well-heeled wallaby. It seems that a hunter shot a wallaby near Waimate, South island, and then thought it would be fun to dress the corpse in his own sports coat before photographing it. But the wallaby had only been stunned by the rifle shot; at the click of the camera it regained consciousness and bounded away—wearing the coat,

I with £4O in N.Z. currency in the pocket. A good story, aS the London paper says, but there is a better one still unwritten: how that wallaby swam the Tasman. The Inevitable letter to the editor arrived from R. B. Bolt in Canberra.: — Sir, — As a New tealander living in Australia I have been fairly successful in suppressing my feelings in the past when reading about "Phar Lap, Australia’s greatest horse." However, on reading the Item "Quite a Hop" about wallabies in Granny’s Column 8 on February 18, I feel I mull make comment. While the wallabies no doubt have their origin in Australia, Just as Par Lap began life in New Zealand, Granny may be assured that Australia has no monopoly on wallabies now. In fact, large numbers of these delightful creatures are living at large quite happily on the other tide of the Tatman.

Granny might be told by those with the problems of control of the Waimate wallabies they are poor exchange for the Phar Laps which have swum the Tasman the other way.