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Evening Star, Issue 23749, 3 December 1940, Page 6

“ I am appalled at the spread of gorso and broom about Dunedin,” said Cr Borrie, during the presentation of the Reserves Committee’s report at last night’s meeting of the City Council. “ Cannot something be done about it?” he asked the chairman (Cr J. W. Munro). The latter stated that there was very little gorse or broom on council property under the jurisdiction of his department. Most of it was on private property.

At last night’s meeting of the Dunedin Drainage and Sewerage Board a formal resolution was carried authorising the board to apply to the Local Government Loans Board for sanction to the borrowing of the sum of £70,000, being the first instalment of a loan of £200,000 authorised to be raised by the Dunedin Drainage and Sewerage Amendment Act, 3937, for the purpose of carrying out sewerage and drainage construction works in the board’s district, pursuant to the Dunedin District Drainage and Sewerage Act, 1900, and amendments. A Press Association telegram says that a new post office which has just been completed at Hamilton at a cost of over £70.000 was officially opened yesterday by the Postmaster-General, Mr Webb.

Drinking among the men at the .Battery Point camp was the subject of a resolution passed by a meeting of Methodist ministers of the Canterbury district, as follows;—“ We welcome the inquiry ordered into excessive drinking among men at the Battery Point camp and urge the military authorities to make the strictest investigation and to insist in future that all intoxicating liquors bo banned from the camp.” The state of Lawyer’s Head road between Tahuna Park and the cemetery was referred to by Cr B. J. Smith at last night’s meeting of the City Council. The road, he said, was in a very bad and dusty state and the question of tar-sealing was one which would have to be considered in the near future. The chairman of the Works Committee (Cr J. Wilson) replied that the work was provided for, and he would announce when it was to be pro-j ceeded with.

Art lovers and the public generally would do well to pay a visit to the annual exhibition of the Otago Art Society at the Pioneer Hall. It is one of the best held by the society, and visitors have with good reason appreciated the brightness, variety, and merit of some hundreds of exhibits from all parts of the Dominion. Oils, water colours, etchings, black-and-white studies, art photographs, and examples of modelling and arts and crafts all find a place in the display, and an interesting and profitable time may be spent in inspecting the variety of subjects and methods of treatment.‘ The sales of pictures on this occasion have been particularly good, a greater number having been disposed of than for some years. Final opportunities of viewing the exhibition will be afforded to-night and throughout to-morrow and to-morrow night. Those interested in the collection of non-ferrous metals for the war effort have considered that there must be some thousands of brass keys out of use which may have been discarded from patent Jocks (says the Wellington 1 Dominion ’). Th(?se keys are usually cut out of soft brass, which is a metal for which there is an. urgent demand. An effort is now being made to collect as many of them as possible. One Wellington locksmith has promised to hand in 500 of these keys as soon as tjie appeal is made to others to hunt up and hand over their old brass keys.

The longest place name in Britain, and one of the longest in the world, was pronounced by a Welshman, the Rev. M. Davies, at a recent meeting of the Travel Club. The name, that of a town in his native country is Llanfairpwllgyngyllgogorychwy nulrobwillllandysiliogogoch, but for convenience the place is known as Llanfair P.G. Mr Davies said' that he had been told there was a Maori place name containing eight more letters, a total of sixtythree, but he did not tackle the pronunciation of the Dominion's “ jawbreaker.” (J'be pronunciation of the Welsh classic, incidentally, occupied' quite a large part of the meeting.

The following extract from the letter of a New Zealand soldier in Egypt will bring a reminiscent smile to many K.S.A. men of the Great War: “ A few days ago the authorities took our bedboards away and left us to sleep on the ground. That was all right except for the sand getting on the blankets and insects crawling all over you, so some of us got busy on making beds. Wo ‘ found ' some timber, 1 appropriated ’ some wire-netting, 1 took care of ’ some wire, ‘ stumbled across ’ some nails, and ‘ borrowed ’ a hammer and saw, and as a result we all have better bods that we had before. A light finger is a very useful adjunct out here.” The destructive potentialities of high-pressure hydraulic machinery' were mentioned by Mr T. G. Beck, engineer to the Public Works Department for Cajaterbiury, in a luncheon address to the Christchurch Businessmen’s Club yesterday (says the ‘Press’). Mr Beck was describing the hydraulic jacks which will drive the huge steel tunnelling _ shields through the glacial moraine at Lake Tokapo. These jacks would operate at a pressure of 7,6001 b to the square inch, not high pressure in hydraulic engineering, he' said. Vet if the oil from one of these jacks was permitted to pass through a pin-hole it would emerge at GOO miles an hour, and if 10 men *.tood in a line in the path of the jet it would pass straight through them like a steel wire. These huge forces were readily controlled, and hydraulic machinery carried out, safely and easily, some of the most formidable engineer- ; ing tasks.

Late yesterday afternoon the City Fire Brigade was called out by an automatic false alarm from the city corporation’s electrical stores in Cumberland street.

The first camp undertaken by a women's organisation trained for war service in New Zealand will bo held at Avondale Racecourse from December 29 to January 7, when 200 members of the Women’s "National Service Corps will go under canvas.—Auckland Association message.

* Many reservists called in the ballot have expressed doubts whether their preferences for particular units are considered. The position is that, where .a man has expressed preference for a particular arm of the service, provided he is suitable for that arm and there is a vacancy, ho should be posted in accordance with bis wishes. The position of Asiatics under the ballot is defined in a recent Army instruction: If a Chinaman, an Indian, a Malayan, or other Asiatic is drawn in the ballot, bo is not to be medically examined or posted to a, unit, and will not be called to serve in the military forces.—Auckland Association telegram. A striking comment on the “system,” or lack of it, in issuing import licenses for essential goods was furnished by a report of an Auckland Power Board meeting recently, when it was revealed that 354 Government houses in Auckland cannot be made ready for tenancy because the Power Board, having received no response to its applications for licenses to import Ihe necessary material, cannot complete the necessary electrical connections (comments the New Zealand ‘ Observer ’). If there is any more farcical spectacle presented than that of one Government department spending vast sums on houses, while another department. guided by official policy, is forced to obstruct the processes by which material for such houses may be procured, then it would be interesting to hear about it. When import licensing has reacted in such a way that the Government cannot get its own houses completed it may be readily imagined what the private importer has had to put up with. Prolonged discussion took place in committee at last night’s meeting of the City Council concerning proposals brought forward by the Finance Committee in respect to the age limit at which members of the. corporation,staff should retire, and certain regulations controlling the retirements. In the end the recommendation was referred hack to all the committees concerned for further consideration, the result of these deliberations to be made known to the Council through the Finance Committee.

What is the normal life of an apple tree? This question was asked by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr S. G. Holland, M.P.) yesterday when Canterbury members of Parliament met a committee of local growers who sought their support in obtaining relief from the present marketing regulations (says the ‘Press’). Mr H. 11. Sampson (Loburn) was referring to the discouragement felt by many .growers over the effect of the regulations, and he had stated that several, orchards of _’o-ycar-old trees had been abandoned or neglected, and in some cases uprooted to ° make room for more profitable sidelines such as fowls or pigs. But what is the life of an apple tree? Mr Holland asked. “ That is a matter ot some doubt,” Mr Sampson replied. “There are growers present to-day who are still gathering good crops from trees 70 years old.” The construction of a dam and hydroelectric power station at Lake Tekapo is the first step toward the complete harnessing of the latent power in the lakes and tributaries of the W aitaki Biver. said Mr T. G. Beck, district engineer to the Public Works Department, in an address to the Christchurch Businessmen’s Club yesterday (says the ‘Press’). Mr Beck explained that the principal projects at present in hand for the development of hydro-electric power in Canterbury were the Tekapo scheme and the combined irrigation and power scheme which involved the diversion of wafers from the Rangitata across the plhms to the Bakaia River at Highbank. The normal flow of the Waitakl River, with the measure of storage provided by the dam at Kurow, was sufficient to operate two of the five generators for which the W’aitaki station was designed, said Mr Beck. To operate the five machines it was necessary to provide for the storage of flood water Bach machine required 3,000 cubic feet of water a second, or 100 tunes the flow of the Avon River. The first step in the scheme for such storage was the development at Tekapo. This would enable a given quantity of water to be used twice over. Not only would it provide 25,000 horse power tor the driving of the turbines of the Tekapo station, but the same water would be sufficient to operate one ■of thq,, five units at W’aitaki.

The West Taieri Boy Scouts’ Troop has selected a very practical means of rendering national service m connection with the war effort. Some time ago the troop was given the use of half an acre of around at Outram, seed potatoes were presented to the boys and planted by them. The crop has now matured, and it is the intention of the troop to sell the potatoes at 2d per lb, the proceeds to be devoted to the patriotic funds.

The opening of the Milford Track, which was to have taken place to-day, has been postponed until December 12. The first party from Dunedin will leave on December‘ll. Indications arc that the coining' season will be one of the best that lias been experienced on the track, and manv bookings have already been made at the, local branch of the Government Tourist Department.

His Honour Mr Justice Kennedy has o-ranted probate .in the following estates; —Thomas Devlin. Dunedin, lapidarv; John Murray, Dunedin, retired storeman; Jane Margaret Bayne Young, Oamaru, widow.

With considerably heavier supplies of new potatoes coming to hand, values are receding, and to-day’s prices in the rooms were from IJd to 2d a lb. This works out at approximately £lB a ton, which is a very good price, but is somewhat under that generally ruling at this time of the year. Some of the have expressed dissatisfaction at what they term too-low prices for this period, but the old law of supply and demand is the controlling factor. New potatoes are coming to hand from all parts of the district now, and crops everywhere appear to be heavy. In additisn, there are still quantities of old potatoes about, so that the market is unusually well supplied for early December. A "few of the growers who have expressed their dissatisfaction have declared their intention not to dig in the meantime, so that _ prices might_ be pushed up, but nothing will be gained by this procedure, as the crops are all heavy, and there must be a time when prices will be very low. It is much better to got £l3 a ton now than U 3 a ton later on. though apparently some cannot see the mutter in this light. This time last year prime potatoes were bringing from 3d to -fjl a lb, so the difference in values in the two seasons is marked, but last year’s supplies were not so heavy, and old potatoes had long before been cut out.