THE TOURIST and TRAVELLER

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1433, 11 October 1917, Page 36

THE TOURIST and TRAVELLER

HERE AND THERE.

Mr. F. C. Millward, secretary of the Wanganui Harbour Board, has returned .rom a health-recruiting trip to Australia.

Lieut.-Colonel John Craig, N.Z.M.C., is at present in Auckland on sick leave. Colonel Craig is a member of the No. 3 New Zealand Medical Board.

A cable message has been received by Mrs. Freyburg, of Wellington, wh ch states that her son, BrigadierGeneral Freyberg, V.C., D. 5.0., who was severely wounded on September 24, is now in a London military hospital and is doing well.

Mr. J. M. Barr, who has keen act-ing-manager of the Auckland Savings Bank for the past 11 months, has been appointed manager in the place of Mr. S. G. Rountree, who is retiring after 41 years’ service. Mr. Barr has been in the Bank’s service for nearly 40 years. Mr. J. W. Watts, who has been on the staff for 35 years, has been appointed chief accountant.

It is understood that the Government has purchased Meadowbank Estate, near Middlemarch, from Mr. John Roberts for soldiers’ homes.

Acting on the suggestion of a member, the Otago Acclimatisation Society, in view of the scare.ty of leather, has decided to have six red deer shot, and the skins treated commercially, as an experiment. The deer will be taken from the Hawea forest.

Captain Brocks, who was awarded the Military Cross for conspicuous work on active service, has arrived in the Dominion to take up a post on the staff as director of physical and bayonet training to the New Zealand Forces. Captain Brocks, who holds a commission in the Worcestersh re Regiment, was through the whole oi the Gallipoli campaign, and also saw service in Egypt and France.

Mr. Louis Gabriel has just died at Reefton Hospital, at the age of 86 years. He was the discoverer of Gabriel’s Gully, and received the reward for first findng alluvial gold in New Zealand.

The Taumarunui Rod and Gun Club, on behalf of the Tourist Department, Rotorua, has just liberated 50,000 trout fry in the Wanganui River, and another consignment of 15,000 fry from the Auckland Acclimatsation

Society is expected to arrive in a few days. The river is well stocked, but in two years the fry now liberated should .mprove the fishing very considerably.

Mr. S. J. Collett, manager of the Christchurch branch of the Government Tourist Bureau, told an interviewer the other day that there was every prospect of a splendid season. Many inquiries were coming in for particulars connected with the various resorts, and even in the last five months —the quietest period of the year so far as tourists are concerned —the business done by the bureau had surpassed the figures of previous similar months. Favourite resorts like The Hermitage, Cold Lakes, Milford Sounds, as well as the more approachable Akaroa, Timaru, etc., could expect to be very well patronised, many people who might otherwise have gone to Australia being induced to spend their holidays in the Dominion, owing to the unsettled shipping conidtions and the difficulty of obtaining permits.

Colonel G. J. Smith, ex-M.L.C., who has been in charge of Codford Camp, England, has returned to New Zealand.

Mr. W. Perry, of Masterton. has given a 320-acre farm, valued at £7OOO, lor a soldiers’ farm.

The Governor-General has approved the award of the Colonial Auxiliary Forces Long-service Medal to Capta n Robert Simson, 4th (Waikato) Mounted Rifles, with a service of twenty years and fifty-six days. Also to Colonel Charles Thomas Major, D. 5.0., commander Auckland Infantry Brigade, with a total service of twenty-two years and seventy-six days.

The Victoria Cross has been awarded to Captain Wiliam Bishop, a Canad an aviator, who went out alone and visited an enemy aerodrome, bringing down and otherwise disabling four of their machines. His own machine was badly damaged.

Except in a national emergency, says a new British Army Order, retired officers are not to be employed after the age of 65.

For sending matches through the post, Joyce Olive Greig. Red Cross motor driver, was fined 20s. and two guineas costs at Westminster, London.

Mr. E. C. McCormack, the Government gu’de, whose wife and little son succumbed to injuries received during the appalling eruption of Echo crater, near Rotorua, on April Ist last, is on a visit to Wellington. Mr. McCormack, who is on extended sick leave, is still under med’eal treatment, hav'ng up till recently been in a private nursing home in Rotorua. Mr. McCormack stated to a “New Zealand Times’’ representative that Mr. Alf. Warbrick, the well-known guide, had informed him that the Echo crater (known as Frying Pan Flat) now contains a lake of a depth o c about 100 ft., and still shows s’gns of thermal activity. The eruption built up a wall which prevents the lake from emptying on to Waimangu geyser. The famous Gibraltar rock is now quite detached from the cliff out of which the steam gushes from

the aperture known as the “blowho.e.” Instead of belching steam at regular intervals of a few minutes as previous to the eruption, the “blowhole” now operates almost continuously. The whole contour of the locality has been altered and the sightseers are compelled to take a very different route to that taken before the upheaval.

A recent report from Christiania states that the first Scand navian fei ro-concrets boat has teen launched. She was bu’lt bottom up. She glided out on the sledges, which were removed. Then the hull sank and slowly turned right side up. There is great enthusiasm at the new invention, which will enable the construction of a 200-ton ship in three weeks and a 1000-tonner in six weeks.

New Zealand soldiers in the Old Country just now give promise of winning for their country a name in the cricket world comparable with the name it has long held in Rugby football circles. Through the kindness of the ground authorities concerned, four cr cket matches have recently been arranged for New Zealand teams at Lords and the Oval. Needless to say, all these encounters have been thoroughly enjoyed. In the last game at Lords of which mail news has come to hand, the New Zealand team at Sling defeated a Canadian e’.even which had won each of its numerous

matches this season. The Canadians “declared” at the tea interval, with eight wickets down for 178, to which Captain Saxon’s team replied with 204 for three wickets, Qu nn making 127 (retired). These matches have been arranged by the New Y.M.C.A. as part of the work of its social service department in London. The association’s representative has also secured permission to take New Zealanders to play tennis or bowls at the grounds o a private club in S treatham. * * ♦ * Speaking to a “Dominion” reporter, Mr. J. B. Clarkson, -who has just returned to Wellington from a visit to England, said: —“In England there is now no difficulty about food. There is no risk of starvation. People are growing their own food, where they have the ground to do so. There is an increase of 360,000 acres in the area down in potatoes. Potatoes are selling there at under Id. per lb. One man 20 miles out of London was giving away cabbages to any one who would go for them. The control of foodstuffs is efficient, and arrangements were being made to reduce prices. With the high wages the working people are getting they will have no difficulty in procuring ample food in the coming winter. The main inconveniences are a shortage of sugar and the making of a poorer class of bread. As far as hotels and restaurants are concerned, their prices are much about the same as previously.”

Private G. A. Ferrett, a member of the Australian Expeditionary Forces, who returned to his home at Manly, Sydney, last month, has had a terrible experience. He was one of a party o'i Australians who penetrated the German front to the third line of trenches on July 19 last year. There a Hun grenade shattered his left leg, and he lay in agony till the night of July 21, when the Germans attacked and took him prisoner. He was taken to Lille, then to Valenciennes, where, four days from the time of his being wounded, Lis leg was amputated from the thigh. He was kept at Valenciennes for two months in a Hun hospital, where the treatment was what he describes as “very rough.” After this he was moved to Kempten, then to Augsburg, then to Wurzburg, and finally to Aachen. From the last-named place he was selected for exchange, and was returned to England via Belgium and Holland after being in Germany five months. A second operation was per formed on his leg while he was at Valenciennes. This was on August 20. Two days later he, in broken German, complained to the doctor who was dressing the wound of the pain that he was inflicting. The doctor lost his temper, and the tortured Anzac was given, not morphia, but “a belting and a smack in the mouth”! The doctor then refused to dress his wound for seven days. The treatment he received in the other hos-

pitals, however, he describes as good. The food, however, was rough everywhere. •n * * * “Forty-two Australian soldiers who had been taken prisoner were rounded up like so many w Id beasts and bombed to death in cold blood by the Germans. That is one of the countless instances of German frightfulness that the average Australian does not seem to know about, or, if he does, then I can only conclude that he does not believe such barbarity to be true. It is true, too true.” So said Colonel (Dr.) Fred Bird, one of Melbourne’s leading surgeons, who, after three years of war service in Egypt, Salon ka, and England, has returned to Australia. These facts were told to Colonel Bird by an officer high in the Command, and he heard other particulars later, which corroborated the evidence against the Germans, it any corroboration were necessary. “Authentic information of th s terrible affair came to our lines from two of the men concerned,” says Colonel Bird. “They had been rounded up with the others, and when the bomb-throwing commenced, they pretended to be hit, and dropped like dead things on the ground. That was what saved their lives, and it was from them that we heard the awful news. These men had to crawl back to our lines, and you may imagine the threats that were uttered when their story was told.”

The Overseas Club, G'eneral Buildings, Aldwych, London, W.C. 2, has published a spec'al Map of London for the troops from overseas. It tells them how to find the places they most want; what to see while in London; and where they will find a welcome. Copies can be had gratuitously on application to the Overseas Club.

Lord French, speaking at Ilford, Eng., recently, appealed to men physically fit and over the military age to join the “A” sect'on of the Volunteers for home defence. The intention of the Government in re-estab-lishing the Volunteers, he said, and the use to which it was intended to put them, were simply to prove efficient home defence in case of invasion; and, inasmuch as all men of military age were required at the front, it was expected that tlr's duty of home defence would be undertaken by men who were over that age, but were st'll sound and fit in body and mind to take their share in this work. They were not asked to go out of the country in any circumstances whatever. They were not even asked to leave their homes or the districts in which they lived. They were asked only to enrol for this service and to spare a few of their leisure hours in preparing and fitting themselves as efficiently as possible. The men who could be absolutely counted upon for the defence of this countr.v were these “A” men, and one could make no efficient plan for the defence of this country in case of invasion unless one could count with certainty upon the number available at the moment. He wanted them to do their utmost to make every available man join the Volunteers., and make that

addition of strength really effective. This could be done by inducing all men who were in the “D” class to take service as “A” men.

In that new book of reminiscences, “Lively Recollect'ons,” by Canon Shearme, there are several good stories of the old-time Cornish smugglers, mostly handed down to the reverend author by his father. On one occasion, for example, when his paternal relative was attending divine service in Morwenstow Church, the vicar preached his sermon from the reading-desk, a most unusual proceeding. At the conclusion of the service one of the churchwardens stayed behind to inquire the reason for his departure from the recognised custom. The vicar replied, somewhat tartly, that he could preach as good a sermon from the reading-desk as from the pulpit. “Doubtless.’ was the reply. “Still. I presume there must be some reason for your not using the pulpit?” “If you would know the reason,” said the vicar, “you had tet-

ter go and look for yourself.” On exam nation, the pulpit proved to bo filled with kegs of brandy, deposited there by the smugglers for safety’s sake.