WATER AS LUXURY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 47, 24 January 1936, Page 15

WATER AS LUXURY.

CANTERBURY EXPERIENCES. The days when water was a luxury in Canterbury are remembered by Airs G. E. Goldsmith, of Staveley, who celebrated her eighty-seventh birthday last week-end. She told a reporter in an interview that while she was living at Chertse.y, in Mid-Canterbury, about the late seventies, there was no rain for five months, and once, while she was at Sherwood, 30s was charged for a tankful of water, which was very muddy 'and which was carted from the ltakaia River. Often they had to refuse waggoners a drink for their teams. Then came the water races. A gala day was held to celebrate the opening of the Pudding Hill system, but many were sceptical about the success of the scheme, believing that the water, instead of running across the plains, would be absorbed. But at last a trickle of water came, and it ran on right to the sea. 'The contractors themselves had not been optimistic, for they had sunk several tanks in the ground to act as reservoirs.