Reporter's diary

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33814, 10 April 1975, Page 3

Reporter's diary

Norwegian settlers A NORWEGIAN journalist topped off 18 months research in New Zealand this week with an interview with a Christchurch man, Mr Otto Bergh, aged 93, whose father came to Lyttelton from Norway in 1868. The writer is Ingemar Nordstrand, who is researching a book about Norwegians in New Zealand. Many Norwegians came to this country in the 1860 s and 1870 s, either to try their luck in the goldfields, or to bring their forestry knowledge to bear on the problem of clearing the bush. Norwegian foresters cleared the 70-mile Bush between Hawke Bay and Wellington. and they settled the town of Norsewood. Mr Bergh’s father came out on the Helga, accompanying the first shipment of Baltic pine brought to New Zealand. Paper by satellite NEW YORK'S big financial newspaper, the “Wall Street Journal,” will soon become the first, to be printed by satellite transmission. It is a national newspaper with a circulation of 1.5 million. The publishers, Dow Jones and Company, has announced that it now plans to use a commercial satellite for beaming facsimile material from its composing plant in Massachusetts to its printing plant in Florida, where part of its Eastern edition will be printed. It will take about three minutes to transmit each page, which will then be converted to press plates for production of the newspaper. Circumstantial A CHRISTCHURCH solicitor, sitting idly at his window considering his

torts and adjusting his briefs, noticed a strange van parked in his firm’s private car-park below. Several hours later the solicitor was back at his window and the van was still in the car-park. Quick to spot a trespass, he leapt to the telephone and ordered the van to be towed away. An hour later the plumber whom the legal firm had hired to look into its drains came rampaging in to complain that someone had pinched his van. Weighing up all the facts (and waiving his customary fee) the solicitor's adyice to himself was that his best course was to pay for both the towing away and the towing back. , Discordant HANDEL would never have had the political insensitivity to write such a work these days as the one to be performed by the Christchurch Harmonic Society’s choir on April 23. It’s called “Israel in Egypt.” Relief “THAT Kruschen feeling” is available again. The well-known proprietary salts have been off the market for about nine months because of a shorttage of the principal ingredients, glauber and epsom salts, most of which come from Germany. Kruschen salts have been around for as long as anyone can remember, and the sprightly old gentleman used to publicise them is one of the enduring characters of the advertising industry. A reader who inquired about the product claims that thousands of people depend on it. First shot MR E. E. ISBEY. the Under-secretary' of Transport. has revealed the Labour Party’s slogan for the coming election campaign — “Keep New Zealand Rowling.”