ABOUT TOWN

Observer, Volume 7, Issue 334, 2 May 1885, Page 2

ABOUT TOWN

A VISIT TO THE FOKTIBTCATJ2NS ON THE NORTH HEAD.

Burning with martial ardour, and accompanied by a couple of friends, I started from Auckland on Sunday last to inspect the defence works on the North Head. We embarked on one of! the ferry boats, tog-ether with a great crowd of people proceeding to a similar destination. Arrived at the North Shore, we executed a strategic movement in the direction of the adjacent "pub.," where we fortified, and, judging from the numbers who did likewise, the landlord need bear the Russians no ill will. Neither, by the sametoken, need the Ferry Company look upon the threatened invasion with horror.

Having refreshed, we proceeded towards Cheltenham Beach, where we deployed on two warlike engines, which on close inspection turned out to be a couple of bathing machines, and being acquainted with the proprietor, we induced him to run one of them into the water, and very soon we were disporting ourselves in. the briny, to the utter discomfiture of an itinerant band of Gospel expounders, whose congregation suddenly left them to regard the unwonted spectacle of one^or two peop)' decently attired in bathing costume, enjoying a swim, and from a bathing machine. "Pis sad that the Word of God should be banged by a bathing machine, but 'tis a stern fact. In the course of a somewhat mixed-up career T have visited many of the most favoured watering places in the Old World, but have never seen anything to beat this Cheltenham Beach for bathing purposes, and I have no hesitation in saying that, as it now is, furnished with those machines — which, I believe, are the only ones in the colony, and are identical in construction with those in use at Ramsgate, Margate, Scarborough. Eastbourne, and other world - renowned watering-places, —it is unsurpassed by any part of the Southern Hemisphere.

The enterprise of the proprietor' lias, up to the present time, had no very tangible return . It is true the machines have been^jpatronised, principally during his abseuce/ror on one occasion some unknown thief or thieves stole two pulley-blocks and a considerable length of new Manilla rope, and on another a band of hoodlums endeavoured to run them in' the sea, in the hope that they would-be carried away by the obb tide, but fifi'ding their virtuous endeavours thwarted, by the circumstance of the machines being chained to a post, concluded that they would upset "the blessed things " instead. This they certainly" would have done, but for the arrival of a few;; respectable persons, Avho compelled them to? desist. When : the Auckland larrikin can turn his fiendish instincts to the depriving of any inoffensive person of his means of living, his joy knows no bounds. He is getting ; much too self-assertive, and I therefore think, in view of an impending slaughter, that a , war with Russia will not be without its fcright side. After our bath we found it too late to visit the fortifications, but I met a friend going back in the steamer, who told me you can get a splendid view from them.