PERSONAL ITEMS

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 19 August 1933, Page 4

PERSONAL ITEMS

Mr E. W. F. Gohns has been appointed a Conciliation Commissioner for a further term of three months.

Major 11. V. Searle, Nelson, Marlborough and West Coast Regiment, lias been awarded the Colonial Auxiliary Forces' Officers’ Decoration.

Squadron-Leader G. L. Stedman, officer commanding No. 2 (B) -squadron, New Zealand Aar Force, lias been awarded the Colonial Auxiliary Forces Long Service Medal. Mr Barney Thomas, son of Mr and Mrs W. ,\V. Thomas, of Hawera, is visiting his home during the vacation from Auckland University College, and will remain at Hawera for some weeks. The death of Mr ‘Samuel Bolton, of Oete, Pahiatua, late chairman of the Pahiatua County Council, is announced in a Press Association message received from Pahiatua this morning. Ho was actively identified for many years with numerous local bodies and institutions. He was aged 77 years.

Captain A. Ogilvy, a retired sea captain, is making a round voyage on the Motaroa, which lias arrived at Wellington from England. .Captain Ogilvy formerly commanded the Aberdeen Line’s Sophocles, now the Tamaroa, and last visited New Zealand in 1926, when the Taimaroa made the first trip under her new name. Captain Ogilvy is accompanied by Mrs Ogilvy.

At a largely attended meeting of the Rangiora Presbyterian Church congregation held on Monday night, it was decid ed 'to give a unanimous call to the Rev. John A. F. Watson, M.A., of No.rmOlnby, tio fall the vacancy in the pastorate caused by the resignation of the' R‘ev. W. R. Hutchison, who has golae to‘ Waipukurau, says the “Christchurch Press.” Mr Watson, who has been stationed at Normanby fo'r the pastt three years, has taken a prominent part in. the social a'otiivties of the district and ia sport. This season he won the South Taranaki Association residential tennis singles championship and has won other litres In the province in past seasons. For the past two seasons lie hais been a member of xhe Taranaki a-epresenitativG hockey team, and also l was a prominent member of the Okaiawa Cricket Club. The death of Mr Charles Llewellyn Watt, who was entrusted with much of the engineering work associated with tlie construction of the Melbourne and suburban cable tramway system, and later with the laying of sewers and drains in Melbourne, occurred in the Alfred Hospital, Melbourne, recently. Mr Watt was aged 86 years. He left a widow, who resides in Sydney; a daughter, Mrs D. Cooper, of Melbourne, and a son, Mi* ‘George Watt, of Sydney. Mr Watt was a son of Mr I. N. Watt, and he wa6 born at New Plymouth, New Zealand. Mr Watt went to Melbourne in 1893 to accept the position of engineer and mechanical draiigthisman for the system of cable trams which was being constructed. Several years- later, when the work had been completed, he was employed bv the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works as engineering draughtsman. Mr Watt was the inventor of tramconductors’ “bell punches,” which previouslv had to fl>e imported from the United States. He also assisted 1 in the invention in 1883 of the rabbit exterminator which is being used extensively in Australia at present-—a. cylinder of deadly poison gas wTEK which the rabbit burrows are charged. _ Besides many minor electrical inventions, Mr Watt invented a totalisatoi*, safety catches for trams and trains, slip rails at present used on electric trams, and an automatic expanding brick sepa-, rator.