Reporter’s Diary

Press, 13 April 1978, Page 2

Reporter’s Diary

Garden oil A RELATIVE of the common or garden Euphorbia may hold the key to a renewable source of “oil.” Shrubs of that genus produce significant quantities of a milk-like sap, called lat.ex, which is actually an emulsion of hydrocarbons in water. These hydrocarbons are very similar to those in petroleum. Melvin Calvin, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist at the University of California, says the crude hydrocarbon produced by the plants could probably be used directly in existing refineries after it has been separated from the water. Two varieties which he is studying might be capable of producing 10 to 50 barrels of oil per acre a year. The plants regrow from the stumps. He estimates that an area the size of Arizona planted with Euphorbia could supply all of the United States’ petr o 1 e - m requirements. Could New Zealand do the same, in an area, say, the size of North Canterbury? Ur lan Miller of the Chemistry Division of the D.5.1.R., says this is being looked at as a source of oil by the D.5.1.R., but it is too early to say whether it would be economically worth while. "One of the biggest catches is the need for flat land — it

competes with intensive farming.” (On the other hand, how much of our farm land is now being used to grow produce that is sold so that we can buv oil?). Nasty moment A GRUESOME sight met the eyes of a woman taking her dogs for a walk along the banks of the Heathcote River in Thorrington at the week-end. Floating silently down the stream came the blackclad body of a man, facedown in the water. It gave her a nasty turn, but fortunately her sister was able to explain. The man was a skindiver in a wetsuit, looking for antique bottles on the riverbed. Blaze of glory SIR CLOUGH WilliamsEllis, an internationally known architect and town planner who died last Saturday, had asked that his remains be fired into the air in a rocket during a fiesta. “I would like to think there would be cheers and band-waving and shouts of good-bye when this goes up — and no more,” he wrote five years ago, in a letter containing his last request. He asked that a special rocket carrying his remains be fired off during the Portmeirion fiesta in Wales.

He designed and built the Italian-style village of Portmeirion, which has become a tourist attraction and was the location for a British television thriller series, "The Prisoner.” Wrong note lOLA Shelle., was taking a student " through a Beethoven sonata at the Christchurch Conservatoire a few days ago when a woman knocked at the door, apologised for disturbing her, and asked if it was indeed the Christchurch Conservatoire. It was, she was told. Then she would be most grateful, said the visitor, if she could be supplied with any information for her daughter’s school, project on — conservation. Bargain THE WORKS and reserves committee of Heathcote County has recommended that the county accept an offer to lease two portions of land adjacent to the Heathcote Domain for beautification purposes. The land is owned by the New Zealand Railways, The annual rental, ratepayers will be pleased to learn, wi’>l be one peppercorn a year. Over here!

MR AND MRS Matt Dini live on the very edge of Christchurch City, at the comer of St Martins Road and Centaurus Road. Across the road on both sides is Heathcote County.

One morning this week a City Council track drove up, and workmen got out. "That’s good,” said Mrs Dini to herself. “They’re going to sweep our gutter.” But no, the City Council workmen carefully swept the Heathcote County gutters on the other side of the road, then drove away. Rare win

AN ENGLISH schoolgirl’s curiosity paid off this week when she learned that what her grand” mother thought was a soldier’s button in a vase was a 2000-year-old coin worth £l5OO. Josephine Middie, aged 10, traced the gold coin’s origins through reference books and the local museum in Shrewsbury to learn that it was minted by an Iron Age tribe in the first century A.D. A museum curator said that only 30 similar coins, minted by a West England tribe about 10 years before the Roman conquest in 43 A.D., were known to'exist. A treasure trove inquest has decided that the Crown has no claim to the coin. Consistent

“WHAT do you have left if you take nine from 146 as many times as possible?” inquired one question in a written school test. A 10-year-old girl’s answer read: “I did it 50 times and I always got 137.” —Garry Arthur