A HEALTH RESORT AT WAITAKEREI.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XIX, Issue 6571, 8 December 1882, Page 3

A HEALTH RESORT AT WAITAKEREI.

TO THE EDITOR. Sie, —The very excellent suggestion of " Settler," in yonr issue of this day, backed l»y your sub-leader, ought to awaken much interest among the Aucklanders. As one whose health has recently been rapidly and thoroughly renovated by the bracing climate of the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, I cau speak earnestly in favour of such an acquisition of the Ranges as you propose, namely, their purchase by the City Council. This timely idea brings out one of my favourite schemes which, for two years past, 1 have been desirous to lay before the public. This is, the purchase of 100 or 200 acres of forest lant, at an elevation of SOO to 1000 feet, within four or live miles of a station on the Helensville railway, by a limited company, formed for the express obje«t of erecting thereon a family hotel. The best mode of making this hotel remunerative, would be the system so much adopted in the summer resorts of the United States, namely, the erection of a number of four or three-roomed one-story cottages, separate, but all very near to a central two-

story hotel, where atl the families take their meals in common, at fixed hours. Small tables accommodate the family parties, while the single ladies and gentlemen dine, &c., at one long table. The last mpal, usually a substantia] tea, being served about 7 p.m. The servants have no further work of that kind till breakfast the next morning. As each cottage is assigned to the care of one servant, who probably waits at the table used at meals by the family occupying that cottage, the work of the establishment goes smoothly, and the waiting is well done. In the first year of its existence the family hotel should be on the total abstinence plan, but guests should be allowed to bring with them what wines, beer, &c., they consider necessary. Many a time and oft have I lonped for such a sanatorium to send my small family to in the humid and enervating muggy days, which are almost the only very disagreeable features of an Auckland summer. Hundreds of children, and of adolescent boys and girls, need this change to the mountains far more than "doctors' stuff," even the delightful homa'opathic medicines; and the project must, 1 feel certain, eoinmend itself to all

fathers of families, to medical men, and to healtli-seekers. Of course the site of the hotel should be near a spring of pure "water, and it would be necessary lomake a good road from the station by easy gradient to the hotel. I am not, as yet, prepared with figures or facts as to the value and the ownership of land in the region of Waitakerei, but I wish to " keep the ball rolling " now that you have called attention to this important subject. Mr. Robert Graham might think of it among his numerous capitalist acquaintances, as the City Council will be slow to move in the matter.—l am, &c.,

J. Mdkray M OKE, M.D. Auckland, December 7, ISS2.