Reporter’s

Press, 15 July 1985, Page 2

Reporter’s

Buried sticks SOMETIMES it seems that countless objects are buried or tucked away in garden sheds, just waiting to appear and taunt us because their original use is obscured by time. Some of these mystery objects find their way to this newspaper, and as long as there are not too many at any one time, the call goes out: Who knows what this is? Here is the latest. Behind the Hawke Street fire station, the New Brighton Volunteer Fire Brigade was clearing an area of land to lay a concrete pad for a barbecue. Members dug down only a few inches on a section which once contained a house. At that shallow level, at least a dozen stick-like pieces were scattered round. They looked something like tent pegs, with piston-like coils of heavy wire wrapped round the heads. A band of metal surrounds part of the peg, and the wood below it has been machined and turned. The fire brigade members are a resourceful bunch, but have not have

been able to figure any use for the pegs, apart from the fact that they make great conversation pieces. First reunion A FAMILY who arrived at Lyttelton in the ship Cashmere in 1855 will have their first reunion in October, in Ashburton. Allan Hunter, a Brookside Terrace descendant of William Morgan Watson and his wife, Elizabeth, has been able to trace about 1170 descendants, many of them in the South Island. The strongest call for a 130th anniversary reunion has come from MidCanterbury, where one of William Watson’s sons went to farm at Methven. Some of his sons became farmers in the Ashburton area. When the original Mr Watson came to Canterbury, he was a gentleman’s servant. He went to work for Mr Bray, the provincial engineer, at Avonhead. Later, he bought land that included the present Wigram air base site,

and called his property Willow Creek. He was a dairy farmer and horse breeder, and had made enough money by 1882 to put five sons on farms. On the phone PITCAIRN Islanders are now able to communicate with the rest of the world via a radio link with New Zealand. Calls can take hours to get through sometimes, but it is the first telephone service for Pitcairn, which covers only two square miles. The island’s 62 residents are descendants of some of the mutineers of the Bounty. Islanders walk five minutes from their homes to a new telephone booth in the centre of Adamstown to take calls, which are coming from New Zealand, Canada, Australia, Britain, and the United States. Tom Christian, great-great-great-grandson of Fletcher Christian, has told an American newspaper that the telephone link could be invaluable in a medical emergency. The island has no doctor. Before now, communication with the outside world was by telegram. Muck-raker

EVERY YEAR about this time, the citizens of one Queensland community take a good-natured beating for charity in the pages of a special newspaper that mocks the regular paper, the “Daily Mercury.” The Apex Club of Mackay West has been producing the paper, whose legitimate advertisements sometimes border on the risque, since 1966 as a fund-raising effort for district charities. This year’s editorial urges young people to join service clubs. The “Muckay Mockery” is filled with humour that often resembles the capping

magazine variety, but the community seems to take it in good spirit. The paper says that if public figures believe they recognise themselves, or circumstances in which they are involved, they can take it as a compliment. Nick of time

A YOUNG Los Angeles guitar player was down on his luck and down to his last couple of dollars because work was so hard to find, when he found a cheque for ?NZ5200 in the mail. It was a “Hero’s Reward” from the Carnegie Foundation, which has been awarding medals and money to heroes in the United States and Canada for 81 years. The guitarist jumped into a flooded steam in 1983 to rescue a woman who had been swept out of her truck. It was a neat trick for the young man, who was born with only one arm. He wrapped his legs round a tree trunk and reached out with his arm to help the woman reach the bank. She then turned round and grabbed the man’s ankles to help him back. Loser’s picnic A RADIO station in Colorado bet the residents of Mesa County that they could not get through a long Independence Day holiday weekend without hhaving a fatal traffic accident, and the station lost (the way it secretly hoped it would). Now it has to pay up and treat everyone in the county to a barbecue. Hamburgers and hot dogs are being offered for lunch at a Grand Junction park, and the station expects about 15,000 of the county’s 80,000 people to show up. The picnic could cost the station almost SNZ4I,OOO, but much of that will come through trade arrangements with businesses. -