"PERMANENT 'OLES"

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 156, 30 December 1940, Page 9

"PERMANENT 'OLES"

WELLINGTON HAS TWO

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH

Wellington has two notable permanent 'oles: the £9000 hospital hole and the Broadcasting House hole. The hospital hole has been permanent for over a year now and will be there until the Hospital Board and the Health Department have settled their argument —which may be quite a time, seeing that they have been at it for the past four years. The Broadcasting House hole is there "for the. duration." Both, then, are properly within the "permanent 'ole" class. All building holes are wet, because of the reclamation area, rain water, < or seepage, singly or in combination. | These two outstanding examples are; really wet, to depths of 10 and 15 feet of water—ideal mosquito country—so something had to be done about it this summer. The Hospital Board went about it electrically, with a pump and a long discharge pipe,: but real science was applied at the Broadcasting House hole: three.departments of State worked in it. The Health Department suggested fish, not any fish, but a two-inch scoffer of mosquito larvae with a six-inch name, originally from Florida, but obtainable from pools ■ and. ponds^at Auckland. The Fisheries Department agreed that the two-inch, six-inch name scoffer would scoff well enough, but disagreed about its.breeding possibilities as far south as this. So they decided on golden carp, "near" goldfish, obtainable in quantity from Palmerston North. Two thousand were netted, canned, and tipped into the Broadcasting House hole. And they did very well. At a guess there are two thousand enterprising small boys within walking distance of this goldfish hole, so a lot of them climbed the fence and went fishing. Enter the third Department of State, the P.W.D., with barbed wire for the top of the fence. So this promising holiday attraction is finished with, and the near goldfish are doing well, cleaning up mosquito larvae and multiplying exceedingly, in spite of the attention of seagulls.

What is to happen when two thousand have become ten thousand carp and the last mosquito wriggler, has gone has not been worked out yet: perhaps an open fishing season may be declared, or the Cawthron people may be.called on to supply wire twiddlers, or the summer may be over then.

Meanwhile the pump at the hospital hole does its unscientific best to dry up the water there, with a long way still to go.