COOK MEMORIAL SITE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19376, 14 July 1937, Page 15

COOK MEMORIAL SITE

UNSIGHTLY FEATURES ] MPROVEMENTS PROPOSED PLANTING ON FORESHORE Proposals for improving the neighbourhood of the Cook Memorial at Kaiti Beach were discussed to-day by delegations of the Gisborne Borough Council, the Gisborne Harbour Board, the Beautifying Association, and the Gisborne Thirty-Thousand Club, at a gathering sponsored by the last-men-tioned organisation.

The representatives of the various bodies interested in the locality made an inspection of the surroundings ol the memorial, and agreed upon a tentative plan of improvement, subject to further discussion as to the cost and the respective contributions to be made.

The building of a vehicular road to a point well along Kaiti Beach, undertaken some years ago through the activity of the Gisborne Returned Soldiers’ Association, and with funds subsidised by the Gisborne Borough Council, has induced a much greater use of the beacli by picnic parties, as well as by campers. The townward end of the foreshore has been partially improved, and the immediate surroundings of the Cook monument were long ago levelled and grassed, as a first step towards beautifying the locality. Time for United Effort In later years, however, little has been done to improve on the early efforts, and it is felt that the time has come for a united effort to take the development of the foreshore in hand, and to make it an asset to the town. It is unfortunate, of course, that the neighbourhood offered the most suitable site, and probably the only one really suitable, for the establishment of a borough sewage tank. The large concrete tank is a mere stone’s throw from the memorial erected in honour of Captain Cook, and in the same neighbourhood is the Harbour Board’s blockvard, still choked with the debris of the harbour construction work carried on in recent years. Those who inspected the locality today agreed immediately upon one feature of the proposed improvements, calling for the planting of a screen of quick-growing shrubs and trees to mask off the sewage tank and blockyard. Closing of Old Road It was also agreed that if the legal difficulties were not too numerous, a portion of the old road down to the beach should be closed, and a new dray-road provided further along the beach' beyond the monument.

A suggestion was made .that a triangular area enclosing the monument should be fenced in, and after certain levelling and surfacing with soil had been completed, planted with trees and shrubs. The area would be much greater than that at present protected in the immediate vicinity of the monument, and would have its base-line on the sandhills along the foreshore, from the signal station to a point about the same distance from the monument in an easterly direction along the beach.

Opinion was divided among the delegations as to how far the immediate scheme should be carried, but eventually the borough engineer, Mr. E. R. Thomas, was asked to provide a sketch plan of the locality, with the projected improvements shown, and an estimate of the cost of carrying out the work. The delegations promised to consider the proposals carefully, and to intimate what finance their respective bodies could furnish for the programme. The Thirty-Thou-sand Club representatives did not participate in this latter agreement, 1 elding that the function of their organisation is purely advisory.