Reporter’s Diary

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34044, 7 January 1976, Page 3

Reporter’s Diary

Off the rails ! MORE THAN 1100 new railway- waggons are being assembled at the Addington Workshops after a trip by sea from South Korea to Lyttelton and a road journey to Adding- ' ton. A spokesman for tbe ! Railways Department said yesterday, that the waggons were taken byroad to the workshops because completed railway waggons were not available to carry them. The carrier. Brightlings Transport. Ltd, said the shipment was possibly- too heavy for the Railways to handle. It included 200 frame assemblies weighing 10,000 kg each. The ■ waggons have high sides, similar to those already on New Zealand lines. The contract was let to a Korean firm in December, 1974. It will provide 1500 waggons at a cost of SI sm. The firm, Samsung Moolsan, also makes passenger cars for New Zealand express trains. Holiday brief THE Educational Institute, : the trade union for the : country’s 20.000 primary school teachers in State ■ schools, has been agitating I (successfully) for more ! money for its members.

But it already offers the best “after hours” service of the education organisations in Christchurch. When a colleague rang the institute yesterday, in the middle of the teachers’ six-week summer holiday, he was told: “This is a recorded message. If you have any message you have 90 seconds to give it.” No such facility is provided by the Department of Education, the University of Canterbury, the Technical Institute, the Canterbury Education Board, or the Post-Primary Teachers’ Association. Monster report STORIES about the Loch Ness monster prompted a Scottish immigrant recently- to telephone a colleague and report his own experience. many years ago, while out fishing with two friends on the Gare Loch, a branch of the Clyde, near Greenock. Our informant was quite convinced that he and his friends had seen a large, unknown creature surface twice near their small boat and. prompted by his wife, he had decided finally to report his sighting to the British naturalist. Sir Peter Scott. For our informant's assistance, Sir Peter lives at The New Grounds, Slimbridge, Gloucester.

‘Why I believe’ STILL on lochs and monsters, Sir Peter Scott set out his own grounds for belief in the Loch Ness monster- in a letter to “The Times” on December 29 last. “I find the existence of large animals in Loch Ness unlikely,” he wrote. “But after studying all. the evidence, 1 must conclude that the contrary proposition requires a large number of witnesses, many with corroboratory evidence on film and in sonar charts, not just to be mistaken. but to be deliberate liars. When I know from personal experience that they are nothing of the kind, then 1 find that proposition even more unlikely than the first.” Postal prices THE HIGHER postal rates charged in Australia since September have not improved the service. A 71b parcel, posted at Bathurst, New South Wales, on November 25 was delivered to a Merivale address on Tuesday. It carried $4 worth of stamps. An airmail letter, sent to the same address, cost $1 to post, and took seven days to cross the Tasman. The writer said that Australians had been warned by the Post Office to have Christmas mail posted by December 12. or deliveryin Australia by Christmas could not be guaranteed.

Cycle match FISHING stories need to be treated with caution, but a colleague assures us this one is true. He was picnicking on the bank of the Waimakariri River near McLeans Island on Monday- when two boys aged about 12 came riding up the river on bicycles, slipping and sliding on the stones, partly submerged, and in hot pursuit of a fish. Result — after about 20 minutes they finally cornered and landed a 31b trout. Very naughty, of course, but they deserve points for originality and sheer hard work. Migrant insects THE TOBACCO cluster caterpillar. or tropical army caterpillar, is an unwelcome immigrant from Australia. The parent moth (Spodoptera litura) is thought to be blown across the Tasman each year and its progeny attack clover, lucerne, and tobacco. Now the D.S.I.R. has a new “immigration policy” to beat the tobacco cluster caterpillar. A small parasitic wasp. Teienomus remus, imported from New Guinea, is being bred at the department’s Mount Albert research centre and released during the summer. The wasp lays its eggs in the eggs of the moth, and the department hopes to use the new arrival to reduce the population of unwanted moths and caterpillars below economic significance