ARAMOHO MOTOR CAMP.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 13 January 1932, Page 8

ARAMOHO MOTOR CAMP.

THREE HUNDRED VISITORS EVERY NIGHT. Wanganui, Jau. 5. Many thousands of tcjvn dwellers answered the call of the road during Christmas and New Year, and the highways and byways of the North Island were crowded with holiday campers. From Wellington to New Plymouth and from Wanganui to Auckland camp sites were crowded and sheltered nooks by the sides of roads were occupied by .wayside campers. One result of the increase in the number of motorists using the camping grounds for, their Christmas and New Year holidays is the recognition of the Aramoho Park camp site at Wanganui as (jne of tne best in New Zealand, and with it the creation of a new character: “Bill Anderson.” During the holidays some 300 people stayed at Aramoho camp every night, many of them from Auckland, some from Wellington and the Wairarapa and Hawke’s Bay, some from Taranaki, and a few from the South Island. One and all of them now know “Bill Anderson,” the caretaker at Aramoho Park.

The carefully laid out camp- sites, the children’s swing and paddling pools, the wide lawns, cookhouses, ironing rooms and summer-houses are associated in the minds of the majority of campers with “Bill Anderson.” Bill is supposed to know everything. Now just how to put up a tent or mend a broken swing or give directions as to the next best camp on the way to Auckland, but, he must know how to mend a puncture or patch a kite; he must know the safest bathing pool in the river, the best pictures in town, or how long it takes to go from Wanganui to Paekakariki in (a) baby car, (b) a 50 horse-power car, with or without a trailer; he must know the best brand of ice-cream or where to find sticking-plaster in a hurry. The life of a caretaker of a camping ground in summer is no easy one, •but Bill Anderson has built up a reputation which makes his job much harder. Yet he turns out for an S.O.S. call with the same cheery smile at four in the morning or wdien halfway through his evening meal.