50 years ago
❚ The cross runway at the New Plymouth airport was suitable for Friendship landings and would be operational after testing, the National Airways Corporation’s New Plymouth manager, Mr C D Bamfield, told a meeting of the New Plymouth Chamber of Commerce.
❚ Specially designed to meet the needs of commercial travellers, a
19-unit motel being built in Devon St, New Plymouth, opposite the Devon Lodge, would have some single units as well as double and family units, a director of Auto Lodge Motels Ltd, Mr B Simkin, said.
❚ Representing the New Plymouth Yacht Club for the last time in the Moffat Cup race for I class at Rotorua, Dennis Holdt scored the first win for the club since 1936.
❚ A 6-year-old Eltham girl, Shirley Kay Angell, sang her way into first place in the Taranaki final of the search-for-the-stars talent quest at New Plymouth with Ivan Broughton of Eltham second and the New Plymouth folk-singing trio of Vanessa Eynon, Janis Daniels and Geoffery Armstrong third.
❚ When an unattended Morris Minor began running down a slope in a Blagdon, New Plymouth, supermarket car park, a supermarket attendant,16-year-old John Wyke, dropped a customer’s groceries he was carrying to her car and managed to pull the handbrake on just before the moving car would have gone over a bank.
❚ A lecturer in botany at Victoria University, Wellington, Mr F B Simpson, a former pupil of the New Plymouth Boys’ High School, gained a doctorate in philosophy at the university.
❚ Movies: Funeral In Berlin (Hawera Regent), Michael Caine; Way Way Out (Opunake Everybody’s), Robert Morley and Connie Stevens; South Pacific (State), Rossano Brazzi, Mitzi Gaynor, John Kerr and Juanita Hall; Georgie Girl (Stratford Plaza), James Mason, Alan Bates and Lyn Redgrave.
❚ Seeking to keep lizards, turtles and reptiles on his property at 1a Raniera St, Mr E A Spencer was granted a menagerie licence by the Taranaki County Council.
❚ When the New Zealand women’s table tennis rankings for the 1967 season were released, Miss J George (West End, New Plymouth) was sixth and Mrs K Clegg (Central, New Plymouth) was seventh.
❚ Eighty people attended the first annual sportsmen’s dinner - a meal entirely of New Zealand game - at Whangamomona and saw Mr George Sullivan of New Plymouth the Pickford and McElwain trophies for shooting the best boar head in the Whangamomona district during the season.
❚ A glaring example of careless refuse disposal on Mt Egmont occurred when nearly 300 people reached the summit in one day, leaving a ‘‘disgusting’’ amount of litter, the Federated Mountain Club’s New Plymouth representative on the Egmont National Park Board, Mr D H Rawson, said.
❚ Thirty volunteers assisted when the Turuturu Scout group den, formerly the Princes St Gospel Hall at Hawera, was shifted to its new site at the Egmont racecourse in Fantham St.
❚ Highlight of the Patea Spectacular, which raised $2500 for a grandstand and other facilities at the Patea Domain, was the announcement that Miss Kathleen Sinclair (18), a Patea nurse, had been selected as Miss Patea Spectacular.
❚ Fifty-nine teams, three of them new, had taken part in the Central Taranaki Basketball Association’s competitions during the last season, the retiring secretary, Mrs E Henry, reported to the annual meeting at Stratford where Mrs M Childs was presented with the association’s first life member badge.
❚ 35 Years Ago: Local runner Gerald Dravitzki wins Taranaki mountain-to-surf marathon; Taranaki Polytechnic to run fulltime horticultural course;100 take part in Okato defensive driving course; Sir Charles Kingsford Smith memorial air show held at New Plymouth.
❚ 25 Years Ago: New Plymouth’s Ian McAlpine makes 1000th ascent of Mt Egmont; Val Wilson and Sandra Stowell retain Taranaki women’s bowls pairs title; 5000 attend opening of Festival of New Zealand Arts in New Plymouth’s Bowl of Brooklands.