Bulldozer, clock to help raise Motukarara stand

Press, 28 July 1987, Page 9

Bulldozer, clock to help raise Motukarara stand

A 1944 Caterpillar D 4 bulldozer will be the star attraction at a fund-rais-ing auction for the Banks Peninsula Racing Club this evening.

“It goes like a top,” pronounced Mr Clem Parfitt, a club committee member, after he had brought the machine into the city on its trailer yesterday.

He proved it by firing up the bulldozer with a roar that had startled office workers lining their windows. The machine will be

parked today outside the Occidental Hotel, where the auction will take place at 7 p.m. Mr John McCormick, the auctioneer and also a

committee member, emphasised the diversity in the goods on offer, all of them given by friends and supporters of the club. The auction will raise funds for the club’s new

grandstand at the Motukarara Racecourse, replacing the stand which burned down about three years ago. Among the most apt

items will be an oil painting of the old stand, donated yesterday by the artist, Mr Michael Ebel, of Christchurch.

The catalogue also boasts the original clock from the Christchurch gasworks, and what Mr McCormick describes as an investment painting, a watercolour of Fiji by the early New Zealand artist, E. W. Christmas. Lesser items include restaurant and accommodation vouchers, meat packs, snow chains, and mystery envelopes.