50 years ago
❚ Sixteen classrooms would be added to the Spotswood College, New Plymouth, and the staffroom, built for a staff of 25, would have to be extended for the anticipated total of 60, the principal, Mr A L McPhail, told the annual meeting of the school’s parent-teacher association.
❚ The result of two and a half years’ work was brought to fruition with a race meeting to officially open the North Taranaki Go-kart Club’s new track at Waitara on land leased to the combined Waitara and New Plymouth Go-Kart Clubs after they amalgamated in September 1965.
❚ The hare was declared an animal pest of local importance by the Waimate West County Council after it had received reports that the hare population in the county was on the increase, the chairman, Mr D E Rider, reporting that he had killed 50 on his property in
1967.
❚ At the 43rd annual Taranaki croquet tournament at the West End, New Plymouth, greens, Mrs V Boyes of Eltham won three titles, the women’s championship, the open title and the handicap
❚ Two records were broken at the Opunake High School athletic sports, Christopher Curd setting a mark of 56.2s in the senior boys’
440 yard event and also gaining the senior boys’ championship title while Beverly Chapman cleared
15ft 4ins to set a junior girls’ long jump record.
❚ Lack of water forced members of the Waitara Fire Brigade and the public to watch helplessly as the Manukorihi Golf Club’s 60-yearold pavilion was destroyed by fire.
❚ An 18-year-old Fitzroy (New Plymouth) Surf Club member, Warren Clow, won the annual Flannagan Cup harbour swim at New Plymouth for the second successive year.
❚ Taranaki All Black Allan Smith had two souvenir rugby jerseys pilfered from crates he had sent to New Zealand, including his own All Black jersey from the 1967 tour of the United Kingdom and France.
❚ Movies: A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum (Mayfair), Zero Mostel, Phil Silvers, Jack Gilford and Buster Keaton; Khartoum (Stratford Plaza), Charlton Heston and Laurence Olivier; The St Valentine’s Day Massacre (State), Jason Robards, George Segal and Ralph Meeker; One Spy Too Many (Patea Civic), Robert Vaughn and David McCallum.
❚ Taranaki’s first woman TQ speedway driver, New Plymouth housewife, mother of five and a nurse at a private hospital, Mrs June McDowell, gained a third placing at New Plymouth and a first at Kio Kio as she started her speedway career.
❚ An invitation All Black team over-ran a Taranaki team by 51 points to 14 before a crowd of 6000 at Jubilee Park, Inglewood, scores for Taranaki coming from tries by M C Wills and T Eliason, a conversion and a penalty goal by B P Gilhooly and a dropped goal by R H Brown.
❚ Taranaki’s speedway title holder,
21-year-old Gary Peterson, left New Plymouth hoping to compete three nights a week in England after purchasing on arrival a new speedway machine.
❚ Demolition began at New Plymouth of an old wooden twostorey building at the corner of Devon St East and Eliot Sts to make way for a new shop and office block being built for the Dominion Life Assurance Office of New Zealand.
❚ By winning the New Zealand junior four-man alarm championship for the second year in succession the Fitzroy, New Plymouth, team of D Knapman, W Clow, G Manning and C Rofe, achieved the highlight of the New Zealand surf-lifesaving championships at Titahi Bay, Wellington, where East End (New Plymouth) won the women’s sixplace rescue and resuscitation title and New Plymouth Old Boys the women’ surf teams’ race.
❚ 35 Years Ago: Hawera-trained Anne Lear and Rebel Royale win at Wellington race meeting; Daryn Harold (17) of New Plymouth wins annual Flannagan Cup open water swim at Port Taranaki; Bernard Fletcher (38) of Urenui wins Wanganui ironman contest; closure of Patea’s Zemba clothing factory announced.
❚ 25 Years Ago: Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries seize thousands of paua in campaign aimed at quota and size requirements; dramatic drop reported in Taranaki’s Kokako population; Archie Dudgeon wins Daily News flying scholarship.