The Exhibition thus will represent not only the greatest scientific and industrial event but also the greatest aggregation of popular amusements ever got together in Great Britain. The organisers of this important side of the Exhibition have, from the beginning, frankly set out to beat all British exhibition records, and it seems almost certain that they will achieve their object. Experience has shown that the amusements at great exhibitions must have a directness of appeal, must possess a punch and make a frontal attack on the sensory nerve. If the mammoth switchback and scenic railways do not achieve all this, then nothing will. The track is over a mile long, and you are carried along at a height which will permit a bird’s-eye view of the Exhibition. The delirious shrieks of the ladies who taste the delights of these giddy flights will, it is feared, disturb the academic groves of Harrow on the north, and discompose the peace of Willesden residents on the south.
Hill settlement school wanted
An application from residents of Brockville for the establishment there of a school was considered yesterday at the meeting of the Otago Education Board. A deputation consisting of Messrs Holden and Burton waited on the board to explain the position further, and stated that as the roads were in very bad order it was a serious matter for the children to have to walk as far as they had to a school, the nearest being Wakari and Kaikorai. There were six families in the district: 13 pupils of school age, and five under school age. If the board could not establish a school there, the deputation suggested that it might be possible to arrange for children up to the Third or Fourth Standard to be taught locally in the church. It would not be such a hardship for the older pupils to walk to another school.
Boring work in Queens Gardens
Boring operations are being continued at the Triangle to ascertain the formation of the ground and thus ensure a stable foundation for the war memorial obelisk. Three shafts have been put down. The boring has so far been confined to one of the three shafts. The bore has been put down 54 feet, and has passed through the following formations: Rock filling to 13ft, then blue pug and shell to 16ft, hard sandstone boulder to 18ft 6in, white and red sand to 22ft, dark blue and light blue pug to 60ft, gravel and clay to 54ft. It is not yet decided whether the bore will be driven into the other two shafts.
Pupils elect to stay in school
School children declining to accept a half-holiday was one of the suprising things met with by a Taranaki Education Board party which toured the King Country last week. At Maungatupoto School the children declined to accept a half-holiday offered, and no amount of cross-examination or coercion could move them from their purpose. The same occurred at Makaraka. "It seemed to us a most unusual thing for school children to refuse a holiday and it is to be hoped that the pupils of Maungatupoto and Makaraka schools will always be so fond of their teachers and their schools, it is stated in a record of the tour which was prepared by one of the board members.
— ODT, 16.4.1924 (Compiled by Peter Dowden)
