BOON TO BATHERS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 153, 30 June 1944, Page 6

BOON TO BATHERS

BAY HAS FACE LIFTED

} "The bathing beach at' Oriental Bay is undergoing' a face-lifting, almost painless financially to the baths and beaches section of the City Engineer's departi ment, for the two or three, thousand i tons of sand with which the beach is ; being made up are a war windfall, for ', nothing but acceptance. This sand has j ; come out as ship's ballast, from an j English port that was too busy a few weeks ago with war shipping—probably invasion shipping—to be able to handle outward cargo, so ships filled • up with sand as the easiest ballast and I turned round for the. four corners. ■ reached by the seven seas. This i§ not the first sand shipment to 1 arrive here, and a good deal of it has > been snapped up by building firms for. ' plaster finishing, for which it is suite able, though it is not so good for ;■ straight concrete work; a big quantity is also being used in one of the hous- | ing areas in the Hutt Valley. But for 1 the shipping people and the cartage ' contractors Oriental Bay was a better idea altogether—a short haul and a . simple dump over the sea-wall, in one ; handling. GOOD TYPE OF SAND. 1 It is a fairly light golden-brown sand 1 and may not stay about the bathing \ pavilion indefinitely, but the City Engineer, Mr. K. E. Luke, said today, it should be good for one or two bathing seasons at least. The two or three thousand tons now available, he said, would go a long way, and more might ■ be obtainable from other ballast ships. The sand is tipped from the lorries directly over the low guard of the seawall and the wash of the water at ' high tide does the rest, so that spreading costs nothing either, but while the . face-lifting is under way a real cleanup is being made. Years of fuel oil accumulations which have coated and sunk-inches down the rougher parts of the beach are being scooped into ■ heaps by a bulldozer and will be picked up by power plant and carted off to a dump. Just how filthy parts of the beach were was not realised until the surface was broken and the muck below was exposed. There is a possibility of the arrival of sufficient sand for the reflooring of Te Aro Baths, but that is not in sight from the present shipment. Earlier in the war Britain, and London particularly, sent away shiploads of brickbats and broken stone, but noiie of that came here. When London was cleaned up> after the 1940-41 blitzes mountains of debris were built at vari*ous points—there was a huge dump in Hyde Park, and others were along the river front —but they have practically disappeared now, dispersed far and wide, but mostly in' fills and reclamations on the other side of the Atlantic.