“NOT RECOGNISABLE”

Taranaki Daily News, 17 October 1935, Page 5

“NOT RECOGNISABLE”

NEW PLYMOUTH AFTER 15 YEARS.

MR. E. B. HORNER REVISITS TOWN.

After 15 years’ absence from New Plymouth Mr. R. B. Horner, F.R.G.S., an old boy of the high school, visited the town this week and “found it unrecognisable in parts.” He was impressed by the great development in the suburbs and with the progress and expansion at his old school. He. thought it possibly the best equipped school in the Dominion.

The street lighting was certainly an improvement, added Mr. Horner, but he remarked with a smile that Devon Street seemed to be just as “deficient in decent buildings and the trams moved slower than ever.” Mr. Homer has lived for nine years in Malaya, where he is assistant superintendent in the Government Survey Department. He has the distinction of being the youngest man in Malaya to receive a King’s jubilee decoration for services to the Malayan branch of the Royal (Volunteer) Engineers, in which he holds the rank of lie-itenant.

Mr. Horner is on eight and a-half months furlough in New Zealand and, but for the cold, is enjoying his stay. When he left Singapore he said the temperature was 96deg. and stayed so until the ship came near Brisbane, when it dropped to about 61deg. “I have not been warm since,” he said. He will leave New Plymouth for the south.this morning and will then go with his wife and small son to Auckland, where he expects to do a good deal of fishing.