Carnival acts as major mecca

Press, 20 December 1977, Page 24

Carnival acts as major mecca

D. W. HODGE

By

The Caroline Bay Association’s annual carnival is Timaru’s biggest drawcard. It is the city’s bread-and-butter over Christmas and the New Year, mecca for an itinerant population of several thousand. The carnival will open at 1.45 p.m. on Christmas Eve, and last until Saturday, January 7, when the finals of the Caroline Bay Holiday Queen contest will take place at the sound shell. Carnival contest prizes total about $550. The carnival is a potpourri. It has everything the heart desires — heartwarming tiny tots’ parades, beauty contests, pets’ parades, concerts, games galore, sand-mod-elling, races, fancy dress parades, merry-go? round, chair-o-plane, octopus, big wheel, rocket rides. The Junior Miss Caro-

line Bay contest begins on December 26 and ends the next day. The Princess of the sands contest will conclude on December 28, and the Mother and Son event the following day. The Mother and Daughter contest will be held on December 30.

The “piece de resistance,” the Miss Caroline Bay contest, the winner of which will be eligible to appear in South Pacific Television’s Miss New Zealand Beach Girl contest, will be “served’ on December 31. The finals will be held the following night. The winner will receive $75. Second prize is $35, and third prize $l5. Monday, January 2, will see the start of the Queen of the Carnival contest. Contestants will appear that night in suits and accessories, and on successive nights in street wear and evening wear. The prizes are $75, $5O, and $25.

The Master Caroline Bay contest is timed for 10 a.m. on January 3. Entrants in the Caroline Bay Holiday Queen contest will make appearances in street wear, beach wear, and party frocks. The contest, which will end on the evening of January 7, is a good money-spinner. First prize is $5O, second $25, and third $l5. The Miss Caroline Bay Cutie contest for eight to 10-year-olds, is scheduled to take place that day. Caroline Bay is by far the most lavishly equipped beach in the country. It has a convention hall, community rooms, tea rooms, sound shell, with permanent seating, two completely equipped children’s playgrounds, a paddling pool, aviary, tennis and basketball courts, roller skating rink, miniature golf course, amusement devices, gardens, walks and ample parking space.

The Maori Park tepid pool overlooks the bay. It gives one a warm feeling — a glow — strolling through the bay, which is a monument to human endeavour. It is an example of industriousness and "ribbon” development — historic and modern.

Beyond the head-of-the-harbour road and the sweeping curvature of the overhead pedestrian bridge, the “willow walk” hugs the deepening shadows of the city’s pioneering days. The site of Le Cren’s landing service, where goods were off-loaded from surfboats until the harbour was built; the wrecks (28 vessels were wrecked or stranded in the vicinity between 1866 and 1886); the more-recent memorial commemorating the centennial of the Timaru Harbour Board (1976-78); the; low memorial wall recording hte naval and land battles of the First World War; the

tree planted on July 13, 1943, to mark the seventyfifth anniversary of Timaru.

Timaru’s first lifeboat (an unseaworthy craft); a try pot used by Weller Brothers who had a whaling station on the bay in 1839-40.

The Port Loop Bridge towers over the landscape, dwarfing the playground — the zebra, the elephant (a big “tusker”), and the most unlikely-looking giraffe with a ring through its nose nibbling away at the branches of a tall tree with complete insouciance. Fashioned from pipes, the animals are the nucleus of what the Caroline Bay Association hopes will become a zoological garden. The amusements are mainly of American design, and the menagerie seems to give more pleasure to youngsters than the standard type of playground equipment, such as swings, see-saws and hori-> zontal ladders.