Reporter’s diary

Press, 7 December 1985, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Locked in A CHRISTCHURCH man whose wife accuses him of being mad on tourism brochures and hoarding them in the house was out choosing some more the other day to post to an overseas friend. He was looking for things that would show the flavour of the city and its surroundings. • One was a brochure about Godley House, at Diamond Harbour. Something seemed out of

place on a back page map which showed the launch route that could be taken across Lyttelton Harbour. Then it clicked — everything about the map was right except the right-hand side, where the harbour meets the sea. The artist had locked in that side with land, making it seem that the harbour had no exit past Purau Bay. The Godley House owners said that many brochures went out before the mistake was seen. The mistake would be rectified in the next print run, but up to 8000 copies were printed in the first place. Visitors had not remarked on the landlocked harbour map, but other people had. Overland skiers A REQUEST to allow commercial cross-country skiing on the Pisa Range near Wanaka has been heard by the Land Settlement Board. John Lee, who owns the Cardrona ski-field and has a pastoral lease over land on the range across the valley, wants a recreational permit to allow uses of the range’s rolling tops and good snow for people who want to ski cross-country without the expense of downhill ski-ing. A Federated Mountain Clubs’ advocate at the hearing said that public rights of

walking access to the 4000 ha ski-ing area should be guaranteed if a permit was granted. Such a permit should be for five years only, to test the idea, with no new roads or permanent structures permitted in the meantime. Mountain club people could take care of themselves in that climate and terrain, he said, but notes from a hut log showed there could be strong winds, blizzards, and zero visibility on the tops. The comments came from a book kept in one of Mr Lee’s mustering huts, above Roaring Meg River. A costly job , THOSE who were interested in recent reports about early New Zealand passenger flying-boats may be surprised to learn that it could cost up to $250,000 to begin preserving a Solent that was on the Tasman run for 11 years. It is now sitting at the Museum of Transport and Technology in Auckland. Its final scheduled flight was in 1960. The Solent Flying-Boat Preservation Society says that money is needed to raise a hangar to protect the plane during preservation work. A structure that could serve as a hangar has been found, but it would cost at least $200,000.

To the Beehive

USUALLY when a Prime Minister sees schoolchildren, he is touring their school. This time, the school came to him. All 30 members of a remote Bay of Plenty school saw Mr Lange in his office this week. They were doing the rounds in Wellington, seeing things such as the Kelburn cablecar and Cook Strait ferries. Three of them had earlier written to Mr Lange, asking if they could see him if he was not too busy. Making them part of his business, Mr Lange welcomed the Waiohau School pupils to the Beehive. The school serves about 15 families in a small valley inland from Whakatane. The headmaster, Rob Hotereni, said the reason for their trip south was so that the children could “learn some pakehatanga.”

Fluffy paddlers

WHEN Noahs Hotel had its Qhristmas cocktail party this week the guests found the organisers had gone to a lot of trouble to arrange plants all around and a three-stepped series of ponds in the function room. There were goldfish in the ponds, but the main attractions • were three ducklings which seemed to enjoy themselves no end, swimming and hopping on to, a rock and doing all those endearing things that ducklings do. They were returned afterwards to whoever breeds them. They were not simply borrowed from the nearby Avon River. A woman who was not at the party wondered whether the star performers had been offered drinks of the Fluffy Duck variety.

—Stan Darling