UNUSUAL SIGHTS

Hokitika Guardian, 25 May 1929, Page 6

UNUSUAL SIGHTS

TWO INCIDENTS. “Tramper” writes to the Auckland “Star”: “I came across two unusual sights during a week-end walk. Passing through Oratia, 1 saw signs of a wedding or something, of the kind. Ferns, Hags and other premonitions of ‘For They are J0.1.v Goad Fellows’ were noticeable outside a homestead, which [ should say belonged to some of our friends from somewhere about the top right-hand owner of the Adriatic. J]ut it was al fresco culinary arrangements lhat held the gazo. Over the bed of burning embers in the backyard they were roasting four sheep whole, each one spitted on a thin pole 6ft. long, the ends turning in forked li-tree stakes about a loot h\glu A man with, u long-handled shovel fed the embers from a big fire of pi nus insignis wood. It reminded one of descriptions of medieval merrymaking when the m narch was crowned, or some other great event of the kind ‘and the villagers roasted an ox whole in the middle of the village square.’ I have seen a chef spit-roasting fowls and things before a w<"d lire in a noted Paris restaurant, ‘1 c Gallon do Gait’ (The Sucking Pig), l'”t that wa? part of the stock-in-trade t that deliberately quaint place. The Oratia feast was evidently a matter of the simplest way out ol a difficulty when one’s guest list is too big lor one’s mvens. The other odd sight I saw the same day was a New Lynn goat tethered in Ibe paddock to an anchor big enough for a four-ton yacht. The idea of weighing and casting such a hefty ‘mud-hook’ cverv time Nanny had eaten everything within range of iier cable struck be as being unusual ”