WEMBLEY EXHIBITION.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 5 September 1924, Page 10

WEMBLEY EXHIBITION.

NEW ZEALAND DISPLAY

A HAWERA MAN’S IMPRESSIONS

Writing from London ori July 26; to Mi\ 11. B. Burdekin, Mr. R.. E. C. Dowling, who left Hawera about a year ago- and settled there, gives his impressions, after two visits, of the New Zealand court at Wembley. He says:— •;

They all . v cein i'airlv busy at the IT.C’s office 1 since the exhibition. Speaking of the latter. I’ve not yet met a colonial or anyone else who has in any way shown the slightest admiration for the New Zealand exhibit-. Personally. I think the show •we have at the exhibition is a very poor advertisement for the country. I always imagined that the New Zealand Govcvnmcnt aimed at.getting two classes to go out from, here to the Dominion, piie. a. wealthy tourist class, to see the beauties of our country, . and incidentally to drop some of their £ s. d. while doing just that; and secondly, ami mainly, a decent working class to settle on the land. I often wondered whv otherwise quite well educated people here pictured New Zealand as a country populated by a savage tribe, and the few “whites”, who existed there as a sort of prehistoric man type doing the work of carving out a home in the bush, that occupied the lives of mii- grandfathers. Well, before I close. I’ll just give you my impressions of the New Zealand pavilion at Wembley when 1 made mv first and also mv subsequent inspection of it, and perhaps you’ll agree with me after reading it that if the Government expect the two classes I spoke of to emigrate _ from here, their efforts in the exhibition direction will prove their expectations to be visionary. On finding the site of the New Zealand stand. I was at. once favourably impressed with the excellent stand our Government had obtained for their display, and the beautiful building that had been erected to hold our products. Owing to the unfinished , state of everything on the opening day, I was quite prepared to find inside things in an unfinished state, and here I was certainly not disappointed, as I reckon New Zealand was about a lap behind all the others. The entraifce I found formed of Maori carving in. the form of a Maori meeting-house entrance, quite picturesque, but quite typical ■i our country to-day. On entering, the only thing one’s eyes could rest on were the representations of two huge moas at the far end of the hall. I _ made straight for. them. They 'were made of wax, I think, and covered with emu feathers (talk about borrowed plumes). I began to sigh, had a quick look around, decided to have another look when things were- in better order, and disappeared from the depressing atmosphere and spent the est of the day (some hours) in the . mtralian and Canadian pavilions, doth of these latter are a credit to their respective countries. Canada, particularly, is not only beautiful but uymderfully. interesting. On my next visit, which' was some weeks later I thoroughly did the New Zealand show, i >mluding part of the programme of the picture show attached to it. This took me about forty-five minutes. By e-urn, I became more disgusted the further I. went. It appealed to me how easy it would have been to have made a small representation of Rotorua. Ihe cold lakes could have been depicted to show some of their beauties, t' rom an industrial standpoint a modei iaim could have been displayed and a model dairy factory shown in a more iess W’brking condition. What is there, did you say? Well, imagine two huge glass cases. One filled- with a reasonably decent show of butter and cheese, the other jammed full of boxes containing exported apples, labelled at the ends . with the- labels upside down and anyway but straight I hese apples were on sale at a stall c ose by A man and two girls (one ot which was chewing incessantly) were selling them. I approached to make a purchase-, and heard the man •saying to a customer: “The reason Why our apples are so much better than the Australian mies is that we have no drought in New Zealand.’’ I thought he looked a. peculiar type for a colonial so when he had finished I said: What part of New Zealand do you come Trom?” He leaned over the counter and wlnspered in my ear the \7V' ( !, , London -” I roamed on, and , da t bu -Y ,™y apples, and came face to tac-e with a whole pile of opossum ~ lhere was nothing to explain unat they were doing there, so I crossed the entrance hall and tried the oriier wing of the building. Here I ound a stack or glaxo in charge of itse l • . Another stall with sofne rope : nd hc ”>P or cured flax and a bush or two of phornmmi tenax. but no ekThen some furniture—not m beautifully grained woods. Oh "° > upholsteied with leather to hide the wood. The only thing I noticed in wood was a bedstead which was all carved with Maxui carving. Not having seen one before like this I expect ‘ m = y tlrod eyes. I wondered >\ liethei it would improve the prospective settlor’s idea of the savage country he was going to visit, or whether he thought it would help to soothe his kiddies’ fear of the savage tribes, when they woke up after their nst night in New Zealand to find a tiki grinning at them from the bedtwi Tbere 1S & stall of tinned meat theie, and one or two other things not interesting enough to remember. Howis that the mam industries and beauties of our country are not depicted at all, or if they are, not so one could Well g T UeSS V^ at t ! iey are reall y like, drifted eared U P that’ show, aud li lrted into the pictures. What did f and acres of dairy land <eautiful bush sceney, etc.? No bp A Um ; f didn’t The programme ’hail taited, and I saw some birds diving • n the sea, then, heavens above, a picture of ‘the progressive town of Ratea, ; next “the bacon factory at “Ti IK “the grand’parade at the Hawera, Show.” Of course all these things were particularly interesting to me. but I wondered how those r°-T d the edition belore deciding which country to emi £rate- to would think of the Hawera Raoon Factory or the eitv „f----ratea as a place to settle ’ Bv love Birdie, the people of New Zealand ought to know about the mismanagement of this show, and howl itbout it to the. authorities. T C kist, of the Daily News, was here the other night to tea. He will probably have a smack at it when he gets hack He s fed up with it, too. He bought i pound of butter at the stall selling same there and took it hack to some. 1 nends of his to. show them what real Aew Zealand butter was like. It was ‘•ancid. I could write on, hut what's the use. I’ve vowed that I’ll try to get people not to look at it, ae the whole show is absolutely so atypical of our lovely little country.