COMPLAINTS BY TOURISTS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 42, 17 January 1935, Page 6

COMPLAINTS BY TOURISTS

At a time wlien the Government is spending many thousands of pounds on providing better access to tourist attractions serious complaints by overseas visitors require close examination. Recently Mr W. Goudriaan, a director of the Holland-Austra-lia Shipping Line, who is no doubt closely connected with tourist traffic, complained against the formalities and requirements imposed on him, and tourists generally, on visiting these shores. This visitor complained against the bond of ten pounds required of tourists and the obligation asked of them ‘‘that they shall be of good behaviour.” He felt that the Customs officers who had to carry out such duties as putting these questions must find them distasteful, and _ explained that he had to forfeit his ten pounds deposit as bond because he delayed seeking the return of it until less than a day before leaving the country. The Departments of Customs and Tourists have, through their officials, made a reply to the complaints, the summary of it being that they fail to see what has displeased the visitor mentioned. The complaint seemed to be plain enough; a foreign visitor resented being asked to give a bond of ten pounds and pledge himself “to be of good behaviour.” There were other interrogations, but these do not matter so much. What many people will agree with is that the tourist traffic of Hew Zealand lias become an industry calling for the utmost business acumen and tact, with capacity for individual service by tourist officers away from hidebound departmental restrictions. The good name of a tourist country may well be smirched if it persists in obnoxious requests of persons who obviously do not come within the category of those to whom the legislation such as the Customs Act was designed to apply. One fears that there may not be enough tact displayed in the execution of departmental orders. We recall that a prominent divine, Dr. Moffatt, mentioned that his first official communication, indeed his first letter, on approaching Hew Zealand, was a form received from the Tax Department affecting his stay in this country. Complaints were made a few years ago about the delay in berthing overseas steamers through the health inspection system and Customs formalities carried out in respect to passengers. Fortunately there has been some improvement in this regard. Perhaps now that attention has been drawn to a genuine and important complaint the departments concerned will not rest at feigned surprise over the resentment their regulations have caused, but make a serious attempt to remedy conditions which seem to call for close attention, for they affect an industry which means a considerable amount to the Dominion and to foster which large sums are being spent.

Life in the Nan has become attractive to hundreds of New Zealanders. More than half of the 950 ratings in the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy were born in the Dominion. Their number to-day is just on 500. Thieves were active at the annual camp of the Convention of the Seventh Day Adventists at Hamilton. Many of the 170 tents were entered and sums of money ranging up to 30s stolen. Petrol was also syphoned from many cars. A shark’s tooth, which was found near Ivaikoura, has been identified by Professor R. Speight, curator of the Canterbury Museum, as belonging to an extinct shark which lived in New Zealand and Australian waters in the Middle Tertiary (Eocene-Miocene) age. One of the most important questions to be considered at the annual conference of the Hospital Boards’ Association at Napier on March 5 will be that of national health insurance. A comprehensive report on the proposal will l>e dealt with fully, in conjunction with a report from the British Medical Association. No information has yet been received concerning the whereabouts of Harold P. Goodman, the Greytown bricklayer, who left his home on Christmas morning ostensibly on a camping expedition, says the Wairarapa Standard. A party proceeded up the 'Wa.iohine Gorge on Tuesday, but found no trace of him. Two members of the Anglican Church Army column are to visit Woodville early in February to conduct a mission of eight days. The column, members of which visited Palmerston North and conducted missions at this centre, will conclude their visit to New Zealand in the Waiapu diocese and will leave for England at the end of February. Sixty-seven boys have spent a splendid three weeks’ holiday at the y.M.C.A. camp in the Pohangina Valley this summer under the joint supervision of Mr O. C. Woods (secretary) and Mr L. Gittings (boys’ work director). They returned to Palmerston North yesterday fit and well after having experienced delightful weather conditions.

Holiday-makers at Taupo who took out licenses for trout fishing have been very disappointed with the amount of good fishing that was available this vear (says the Auckland Herald). Fish have not been plentiful, except at the mouth of the Waitahanui River , and there the limited space available was often so crowded that when a fish was hooked three or four lines of other anglers became involved in a tangle. Another violin bearing an inscription “Antonins Stradivarius, Cremonensisa Faciebat” lias been brought to light, this time at Feilding. The inscription also includes the date “Anno 171 1,” while there are also the initials “A.S.” with a double cross over them in a circle. The owner of the instrument is Mr J. Corkill. He says his father bought it in a pawnshop in Auckland 37 years ago and gave it to him. He had played on it ever since. There has been a good deal of vandalism lately at the Christchurch Museum. The curator, Professor R. Speight, is the man who is beginning to believe that the pub’ic conscience is far from being what is was a few years ago. Exhibits have gradually been moved back to a distance that was presumed to be beyond the reach of the public ; cases have .been locked ; some of them have been double-locked and screwed down—but still the vandalism goes on. When the storm hit the scouts’ camp at Frankston in the early hours of the morning of the last day of the Melbourne Centenary jamboree, one or two marquees collapsed, but out of £7OOO worth of tent equipment only £2 worth of damage was caused, states a Melbourne exchange. No sooner had the storm broken than in every tent a leader immediately took charge and organised the scouts in digging deeper drains, slackening guy ropes and battening down. In a very few instances the rain swamped camps.

Though there is nothing siicctacular in the groundwork which lias been done towards the electrification of the Main Trunk railway line from Wellington as far as Paekakariki, 90 per cent of the poles for carrying the overhead transmission wires have been erected. The special communication cables have been installed and will be completed within the next three weeks, and the greater part of the overhead gear is either in the country or will be arriving very shortly for erection. The high-tension cables have been run in the tunnels, although they have not yet been joined up. The dangerous nature of sodium chlorate and the .necessity for extreme care after using it was again strikingly illustrated recently by an accident to an Ohura County workman. He ha.d been spraying sodium chlorate on a county reserve, and in the evening, while returning home in the county car driven by the county engineer, slight friction caused the sodium chlorate that had dried off his clothes to burst into flames. He received injuries, necessitating his removal to the Taumarunui Hospital. The car also caught fire, but the blaze was extinguished before much damage was done.

Exactly 23 years ago, on January 17,* 1912, Captain Scott and his ill fated party of explorers arrived at the South Pole and raised the Union Jack amidst a solitude of snow, after a 900-mile sledge journey from the winter camp at Cape Eva.ns. They found thev had been forestalled by Amundsen' whose Norwegian party had reached the Pole four weeks previouely. Scott’s party turned towards home—and death. The journey was an epic of gallantrv. all perishing after great privations. Eight months later a search party found a tent with three frozen bodies, including Scott s, and the tragic diary of the gallant explorer. A report like that of a rifle and a crash as of a bullet against the side window of his car, recently brought the heart of a motorist- into bis mouth, and sent him racing for armed assistance from Culverden, reports the Christchurch Star. The comparatively harmless nature of the “hold-up was shown in the Children s Oomt latei, when two boys, aged about 11 years, appeared on charges of projecting stones to the public danger on the Main North Road, m North Canterbury. One was charged with damaging a car window to the extent of £2. A constable gave a graphic description of the motorist’s fears when the stones on the road caused him to slow up, and the pebble smashed the window. “Why did you fire at cars?” asked the Magistrate, Mr H. A. Young. “Were there no birds about?” The boys were admonished and discharged.