LOCAL AND GENERAL

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 56, Issue 4047, 13 May 1938, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL

Overheard in the street this week. Toddler, with mother walking past Burchell’s Corner towards Sloane Street and looking at the new post office: “Mummy, is that the police station!” Cambridge is to be the headquarters of the Waikato Licensing Committee in the near future, as a result of the change in electoral boundaries. The quarterly meetings will be held at Morrinsville for the last time this month. An Auckland contemporary, in its notes on Rugby players, has the following: “When a forward named Grace, from Te Awamutu, came before the Auckland Rugby Union to apply for a transfer to Otahuhu seniors, Mr Arthur Tilly remarked: ‘lf he’s as tough, as his old man, he’s not bad.’ The, clearance was granted.” The well-known author, J. B. Priestley, is rapidly becoming one of the most important of the newer playwrights and the Te Awamutu Drama Club has chosen his comedy “Laburnum Grove” for the first reading of the new season next Tuesday. Members and visitors are assured of a bright and entertaining evening. When an opium dealer is caught by t’ne authorities in China no time is wasted on elaborate processes of law. He is beheaded immediately. The Rev. C. J. Patchett, of China Inland Mission, told members of the Christchurch Rotary Club that opium growing in China had decreased by over 50 per cent, since Chiang Kai-shek assumed control. On the other hand, over 90 per cent, of the narcotics in the world were’ controlled by the Japanese.. Automatic timing clocks for toll calls, will, for the first time in 1 lie Dominion, be installed in the new Napier telephone exchange, according to Mr J. W. S. Guntrip, speaking at the weekly luncheon of the Hastings Rotary Club. These clocks would be different from the ones already in use in the country, in that they would start and stop automatically at the beginning and end of the conversation respectively. This would greatly reduce the worries of the operator, said Mr Guntrip, as under the old system the operator had all the responsibility of charging only till the end of the conversation. The matron of the Masterton Hospital is to decide whether the nurses are to smoke on the roof of the new nurses’ home, the Wairarapa Hostipal Board at a meeting having resolved not to lay down any rule as this was a disciplinary matter. The question was raised by Mrs A. Fletcher, who said she had been asked by the nurses to obtain leave from the board for them to smoke on the roof. Mrs Fletcher said she had told them it. would be better for their complexions if they did not smoke, but they wanted to and at present were smoking in I the grounds, giving the place a glowwormlike effect. In the current issue of the New Zealand Observer appears a full-page article headed “Nineteen Years a Hurdle Rider”—in which the Te Awamutu trainer-jockey, Mr Jack Mcßae, tells of his racing experiences from the commencement of his racing education by the late Mr F. E. Loomb up to the present day (when he is regarded as the most capable horseman in the Dominion riding over hurdles or steeplechase fences). Incidentally Mcßae told the interviewer that the first horse he rode in a hurdle event was Colonel Abbey, and that the best horse he ever rode was Mr B. Brewer’s , present-day champion Tudor.

An order which appears in this, week’s Gazette prohibiting the importation, save with the consent of the Minister of Customs, of oranges, mandarins,. grapefruit, lemons and bananas, is effective in respect of such fruit from all countries, including the Cook Islands. < When asked by a deputation of fulltime unemployed workers in Christchurch recently whether they should consider themselves employed by him or by the local body for which they worked, the Minister of Labour (Mr H. T. Armstrong) replied with a laugh that he was certainly not their employer. “I have got enough troubles now without taking on those of an employer,” he added. It has been seldom that the pastures of the Waikato and Northern King Country have looked s 0 green, but farmers are seeking bare pastures on which to put their eczema affected stock. Probably this is the first time in the farming history of both districts that such a thing has happened and slight frosts yesterday and again this morn,ng were welcomed. The construction of the New Zealand Co-operative Dairy Company’s butter factory at Tiirau has now been completed. The factory, which is designed on the most modern lines, has a capacity of 500 tons and is one of the larg-est in the district. Cream will be received at the factory from the Tirau-Putaruru district for the first t me on July 1, and the official opening ceremony will take place within a few days of that date. At special polls on Wednesday, on the subject of half-holiday-observance, there were decided majorities for the change from Wednesday to Saturday in four boroughs. At Tauranga the figures were: For Saturday 1196, for Wednesday 588. Whakatane also made a change, for there the voting was:—Saturday 505, Wednesday (observed at present) 190. Opotiki voters retained Wednesday halt-holiday with a vote of 303, as against 252 for Saturday. Rotorua recorded votes were: Saturday 1026, Wednesday (observed at present) 901. Three petitions are in circulation in Te Awamutu generally protesting against the placing of any obstruction on the highway near the Post Office as this is believed to be contrary to the policy of the Highway Board, which it is contended aims to keep the highways clear for traffic. It is regarded by those who are pro • moting the petitions that any obstruction at this junction would be a source of potential danger. The Government has now decided that the large railway station to be built at Kaikoura on the South Island Main Trunk will be erected in the township, and not, as was formerly intended, nearly two miles away. The decision follows strong representations made to the authorities by interested organisations in Kaikoura, which have protested vigorously against the plan to build the station so far away from the township.