RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31304, 25 February 1967, Page 42

RANDOM REMINDER

HOME COMFORTS

They are still out there, in the great beyond, the campers of New Zealand. At least, some of them are. A good many came home between the deluges of December and the February floods. One complained that it was highly unpleasant walking on the worms which emerged in scores in the area between the camp beds. But some are still Out There. Of course, the success of a camping trip depends almost entirely on the skill and foresight of the organiser. At the -camping grounds, the nights have been hideous with the hammering of tent pegs loosened by the wind or

the rain, usually both. Some people have little knowledge of the rules to be observed. Others seem to go to the opposite extreme. A colleague, earlier this month, was passing by a camping site at the top of the South Island —not one of the grounds which teem with people throughout the summer months, but a rather more remote and exclusive one. While he stopped there for a moment, a man arrived in a large station waggon, with his family. They disembarked, and the driver went round to the back to begin unloading. The first thing he withdrew was a lawn-

mower, and he smartly proceeded to cut the grass on which he proposed to pitch his tent. His numberplate hinted to our observer that the man had come from a long way south, and It was not really according to form to bring a lawn-mower all that way. It seemed, to the spectator, to be fussing a bit. He had to go on, and was sorry he could not wait, in case the unloading produced a refrigerator and television set and a vacuum cleaner and cocktail cabinet and pot plants and dish-wash-ing machine. It would have been particularly interesting to have seen If they had left rocsn for the tent.