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Evening Star, Issue 25994, 8 January 1947, Page 4

Believed to be the oldest woman ever to have flown the Pacific, Mrs Mary Russell, aged 88,_ arrived at Auckland on the Pan-American clipper yesterday. She hopes to fly to her home city, Melbourne, accompanied by her daughter. It is alleged that slaughtermen at Waingawa (Masterton) freezing works adopted a go-slow policy late on Monday afternoon. A dispute is said to have arisen between the union and the firm of Borthwicks on the matter of payments. There is hope of an early settlement being reached. Stock •at the works has been returned to the farmers.

Dressed only in a pair of short woollen underpants, a patient of the Wellington Public Hospital has been missing since 7 a.m. yesterday. He is Clifford Allen Martin Satherley, aged 39. A man similarly garbed and believed to have been the missing patient was last seen in Sutherland road, Melrose, at 7.10 a.m. Police patties have been searching in an effort to trace the missing man. The police stated last night that they had received a further report that a man answering the description of Satherley had been seen on Mount Victoria about 5.15 p.m. The Indian Kaisar-I-Hind medal, first class, lias been awarded to Sir Clutha Mackenzie in the Indian New Year, honours list, according to advice received by his wife, Lady Mackenzie. Sir Clutha has been in India for some years supervising the setting up of St. Dunstan’s there for the care and training of blinded soldiers, and is now in Dehradun. •He has recently published a report on the welfare of the blind in India, and about the middle of this month he will travel to China, where he will advise the Chinese Government on the welfare of blinded exservicemen.. Sir Clutha (a son of the late Sir Thomas Mackenzie) was well known in Auckland as director of the New Zealand Institute for the. Blind. During December health stamps to the value of £4lO 17s fid were sold in the Dunedin -'postal district. This brings the district total up to December 31 to £7,450 11s 4Jd. The financial membership of the Dunedin Returned Services’ Association at December 31 totalled 11,147, a majority of 7,982 being ex-servicemen of the Second World War.

Subject to the formal approval of the Dunedin City Council, \Vednesday, February 26, has been fixed' as the date on which the poll of ratepayers is to, be conducted on the council’s transport and streets reconstruction loan of £858,000. The loan combines three loans put forward by the City Council as follows: A loan of £700,000 for the purchase and installation of trolly buses; a loan of £72,000 for the reconstruction of streets on trolly bus routes and the paving of tramway track areas; and a loan of £86,000 for the purpose of reconstructing and extending Albert street, which will ultimately be a new highway to Kaikorai Valley.

Through tlie usual diplomatic channels we have reiterated assurances that no spirit of international competition enters into the present rush to the Antarctic wastes (writes our London correspondent, January 1). The fact that at least eight nations, including Russia and the Argentine, are planning such expeditions is, we are told, purely a coincidence: It is a coincidence, however, at which Australian pressmen in London smile indulgently but quite derisively. .The fact is that, according to eminent geologists, immense mineral wealth, including oil, coal, and uranium, is almost certainly buried under the eternal sno\ys of the South Pole’s vast unexplored immensity. Scientific gadgets invaluable in war time now make the task of prospecting in even such wastes as these far more easy and certain. Australia is well in the rush, and, like Britain, America, or Russia, is not after whales alone. The last terrestial asylums of solitude seem on the eve of development. (Nevertheless at least one eminent scientist has scouted the idea that mineral weath is recoverable from Antare-. tica.) Prefabrication in house-building is still in its infancy in the United States where plywood is used extensively, but it appears that such methods could not be used to any extent in New Zealand until the plywood industry is developed. These are the views of Mr Gordon Wilson, of Wellington, chief architect of the Housing Construction Department, who has returned by air after four months visit to the United States, investigating housing construction methods. He said one of the objects of his visit was to seek alternatives to the use of timber in housing construction. However, he found no new methods comparing in cost with timber construction. Building controls were still found to be necessary in the United States to ensure that a big proportion of building materials went into small homes.—Auckland Press Association.