A bridge too far for county

The monthly meeting of the Waihemo County Council was held at Palmerston on Saturday. Mr B.B. Couston wrote stating that he had inspected the site of the proposed bridge at Terrace Crossing and was not favourably impressed. He had advised the Public Works Department that a heavy traffic bridge would cost £5000, but that the requirements of the district would be sufficiently served by a lighter bridge suitable for motor and ordinary farm traffic, and he estimated the cost of such a bridge at £2500. He could not say that the preliminary estimates submitted were liberal, on the contrary they would possibly be exceeded. — Received. It was considered that the cost of the bridge was too high.

Diseases threaten Pacific

Melbourne: The Science Congress discussed Pacific problems. Dr Cumpston, Director-General of the Commonwealth Department of Health, stated that, owing to an inadequate understanding of tropical diseases, the natives of the Pacific Islands were dying off, and their places were being taken by coolies from India and Ceylon. The inevitable result would be that there would be a huge international conflict in the Pacific. He urged that encouragement should be given to the study of tropical diseases and the preservation of the native races. Mr H.D. Skinner, lecturer on ethnology at Otago University, said that Dunedin had established a lectureship in ethnology. No Australian university had done so, and only now was New Zealand obtaining authentic information regarding the Maori races. Dr Buck (New Zealand) pleaded strongly for an increased study of physical anthropology in the Pacific Islands. He said that a working scheme was wanted which would allow concentration by investigators on specific areas.

Dr Cumpston, in a paper on the subject of quarantine, said that in 1918 influenza imported into Samoa from New Zealand caused the death of 20 percent of the population. Proper measures of quarantine could prevent the overseas transmission. 

Organising Sydney’s Kiwis

A movement is on foot to organise 17,000 New Zealanders in Sydney into a New Zealand association to keep alive their interest in New Zealand and to entertain visitors from the dominion. The association will be launched at a dinner on Dominion Day.

Motorbike with sidecar crashes

The Main South road, not very far from Smith’s store at Henley, was yesterday afternoon the scene of a tragic motor accident, as a result of which one man has lost his life and another is lying in the hospital on the dangerously ill list.

It appears that at about 4pm William Christie, a farmer near Henley, and Alexander Ralston, a butcher at Allanton, were proceeding at a rapid rate on a motor cycle and sidechair when the connecting pin between cycle and chair broke loose. As a result of the speed at which they were travelling men and machine were completely overturned, and both were picked up unconscious.

They were brought into the Dunedin Hospital by ambulance, and there Christie died at 8 o’clock. At a late hour his companion, Ralston, was still unconscious and on the dangerously ill list.

It is not known if anyone actually saw the accident, and consequently the question of which man was riding the cycle and which was in the chair is still in doubt. — ODT, 20.8.1923

Compiled by Peter Dowden