Reporter’s diary

Press, 10 August 1985, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Waimakariri CHILDREN of workers on the Midland railway line used to attend portable schools that followed construction gangs. In the photograph today, a school is shown about the turn of the century. Robert Logan, a Christchurch man who is completing the manuscript

for a book entitled “Waimakariri” wants to know if anyone in the photograph still lives in Canterbury. The photograph will appear in his book by courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library. Mr Logan wants to know about any other Waimakariri memorabilia that might be in local homes, such as diaries, letters and photographs. Chapters of his book will range widely over floods, railway and road building, early settlers (especially in the Upper Basin), coaching days and hotels, the river port, exploration and mountaineering. Mr Logan, who lives in Soleares Avenue, can be reached by telephone or through us. Wet gift

THE SINCLAIR wetlands, a large area of land near Dunedin that has been recognised as the best priv-ately-owned wetlands in New Zealand, has been given to Ducks Unlimited, a conservation group, so that it can be nurtured and preserved. The 300 ha wetlands is between Lakes Waihola and Waipori, and has been owned for 25 years by the man who will now manage it for Ducks Unlimited. Mr H. A. Sinclair retired in 1981, and was offered $300,000 for the property, which has large lagoons and swamps and only 25ha of dry land. Mr Sinclair has managed the wetlands for the benefit of almost 70 species of birds living there. It could be among the best 20 private wetlands in the world. New home

THE WELLINGTON Railway Station statue of Kupe, New Zealand’s first great navigator, will not be going to a Porirua pub after all. It will be restored and housed in the National Museum instead. The four-tonne statue has been the victim of vandalism and neglect over the years, and the Porirua Licensing Trust had planned to have it in the Cannon Creek Tavern as part of tourist promotion for a hangi and Polynesia by Night function. Northland Maori leaders objected to the plan, and the

ton Maori District Council had negotiated with the licensing trust. Bird wanted SCHOOL OF Drama students in Wellington are searching for a not-very-lively bird. In fact, they want a dead one. They have been scouring Wellington beaches for one, and it is illegal to shoot one even though they do need it badly for Chekhov’s play, “The Seagull.” They may have to make do with a stuffed seagull if one of the ones now flying round does not drop dead fairly soon. Tiger dog THEY ARE much easier to find dead than alive, even though the dead ones are also pretty elusive. Bones of at least three Tasmanian tigers, or striped marsupial dogs, have been found by cave hunters in southern Tasmania, along a dry underground streambed that contained an ancient anima] graveyard. Among the bones were what might be skulls of extinct large wombats. In the centre of the island state, a man has been looking for living Tasmanian tigers. The last confirmed sighting was in 1936, but a National Parks ranger saw one last year. Peter Wright, the tiger hunter, set up a network of robot field stations with listening devices and cameras triggered by infra-red rays. They were to take photographs on demand when animals came within range. Unfortunately, they were too sensitive. Snow and rainfall triggered their mechanisms, leaving Mr Wright with 2000 rolls of wasted film. Their demise BONES and egg shell fragments of dinosaur fossils found in the Gobi Desert by Russian scientists contained high proportions of chemical elements corresponding to the make-up of volcanic magma and gases. The finding seems to back up earlier studies of dinosaur extinction in East Africa and the western United States, Dinosaurs roamed the Mongolian steppe until the end of the

Mesozoic era, 60 million years ago. The steppe was then a vast volcanic region. The Russians have had theories that powerful volcanic activity changed the dinosaurs’ accustomed landscape and caused water and food contamination. Popular move A FORMER Dunedin girl with a decided California twang was back in the South Island for her first visit in 24 years recently. She had been among young women who went to America to marry sailors. In her case, her friendship with a Navy man met here did not work out, and she was saving money to come home when she met her future husband. They now live in Venice, part of Los Angeles, with two children. She said that going abroad to marry an American was a popular move in her day. She knows of one New Zealand girl who cottoned on to the idea so well that she is on her third marriage. No vacancy MADONNA, this year’s rock music answer to Bette Midler, has been turned away from a swanky Manhattan apartment building where she wanted to live in a 12-room apartment worth more than SNZ2.4 million. The San Remo Tenants Corporation kept her out. Celebrity applicants are usually turned down because of the pushy photographers; journalists and fans who come in their wake. Only Diane Keaton, a non-conformist actress who lives at the San Remo and is on the tenants’ board, voted to let Madonna move in. Artistic? CHINESE film-goers are in for a surprise if they take a Peking newspaprer’s description of an American movie literally. “First Blood,” starring Sylvester Stallone, is about to screen across the mainland. In the film, which already has a sequel, the character of Rambo, a Vietnam War veteran, shot up a small town in America. The film has been .dubbed into Chinese. The “Peking Evening’

News,” a tabloid, told readers: “This is a serious film with healthy content, profound social significance and a high degree of artistic material. It is an outstanding work in recent American cinema.” The sight of Rambo working out against his countrymen may be edifying, but it makes you wonder if the second film, due in Christchurch soon, will be shown in China. In “Rambo,” Stallone has a penchant for laying waste to quite a few people of the Asian persuasion. .