MUSHROOM GROWTH

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 77, Issue 6974, 4 October 1948, Page 3

MUSHROOM GROWTH

DEVELOPMENT OF MANGAKINO FROM SCRUB TO TOWN IN TWO YEARS The town of Mangakino, the construction centre in the Maraetai hydro-electric scheme, appears to have the first building priority in New Zealand. In the last few months there have been great changes in the appearance of the town, which now has a population of 3200 and nearly 600 houses set along well planned roads, which will be sealed soon. Two modern blocks of shops already partly occupied, stand in the centre of an area laid out in lawns and shrubs, flanked by the picture theatre, library, and community billiard room on one side and the nearly-completed cottage hospital on the other. The hospital, built to the most modern standards, will have five maternity beds and, in a separate section, three general beds and an outpatients’ section. It will be under the control of the Waikato Hospital Board and will be opened as soon as all the essential equipment is available. A. new picture theatre being built will cost £19,000, and it is hoped to have a new social hall ready by the middle of next year. The local welfare association, which has control of the facilities provided at Mangakino, will soon have buildings valued at £58,000 and grounds and equipment costing nearly £6OOO under its care. A weekly newspaper is published by the association.

Two years ago the area was a scrub-covered flat. Now telephones are being installed in private homes and shops, a 100-line switchboard having been made available to the local post office, with a prospect of a further extension o± the service in the near future.

Many of these facilities have been awaited with some impatience by men to whom two years has been a long time. Also many workers still have to live in single men’s camps, some distance from the main facilities. Some of the loudest complaints recently have come from private truck-driving contractors, who are forced to live in huts on the furthest outskirts of the settlement, with little prospect of obtaining houses so that, they can be joined by their families.