50 years ago

❚ Lying in the midst of Port Taranaki’s major development project, New Plymouth’s Nga¯motu Beach was not doomed to oblivion as sand was building up along the entire length and by the following summer the

beach could be ‘‘quite good’’, the Taranaki Harbours Board engineer, Mr P D L Holmes, said.

❚ The Pa¯tea Aero Club achieved a milestone when its first student, Mr Kevin Lord of Kakaramea, trained by Mr T Withey, Ha¯wera, flew solo from the Kaharoa Rd, Whenuakura, airstrip.

❚ Three Okato boys, P A Richards, D J Hill and A J Sandford, flew to Sydney as members of the New Zealand contingent to the third Pan Australian Boys’ Brigade camp.

❚ When the Apollo space mission was launched on its mission to the moon a tape recording of the first four hours of the flight was made at the North Taranaki Tikorangi Observatory by the director, Mr J D Whelan, and Messrs Pat Spellman, Bruce Durdle and Tom Whelan.

❚ Winning three of four events he contested, Ha¯wera’s Neil Bulmer dominated the TQ speedcar events at the Waiwakaiho Speedway, New Plymouth.

❚ First prize of $100 in a national window-dressing competition was won by a New Plymouth man, Mr Chris Carter, the display and advertising manager for the Farmers’ Co-operative Organisation Society of New Zealand.

❚ Movies: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Mayfair), Dick Van Dyke, Sally Ann Howes and Lionel Jeffries; The Liquidator (Stratford Plaza), Rod Taylor, Trevor Howard and Jill St John;

After The Fox (Ha¯wera Regent), Peter Sellers and Victor Mature; The Perils

Of Pauline (Opunake Everybody’s), Pat Boone, Pamela Austin and Terry Thomas.

❚ The leader of the pop group Larry’s Rebels, Larry Morris, made a wager with the rest of the group that if the crowd at their Bowl of Brooklands, New Plymouth, performance exceeded 3000 he would jump in the bowl’s lake and when the crowd totalled 4121 Morris duly took his ducking.

❚ Competing on the first day of the national catamaran championships at Moana on Lake Brunner, Tamoure (I Slight) of New Plymouth won the Shearwater class, with Maree (G Coles), also of New Plymouth, second, while on the second day their placings were reversed.

❚ A seven-week tour of Oregon in the United States of America began for the New Zealand junior wrestling team managed by Mr H Fenton of Waitara whose son Roger was a

competitor in the lightweight class.

❚ The New Plymouth combined bowling clubs’ Christmas pairs tournament was won by G Little and L Koorey (Paritutu) who beat T Reilly and S Carley (RSA) 24-8 in the final.

❚ After more than three years as assistant manager of the New Plymouth branch of the Bank of New Zealand, Mr D H Searle was promoted to manager of the bank’s Huntly branch.

❚ The Taranaki entrant for the Miss New Zealand Holiday Resorts 1969 contest, selected by a panel of judges in the Queen’s Hall, New Plymouth, was Miss Christine Woolliams, 18, a New Plymouth cosmetician who had won the Miss Taranaki Beaches title.

❚

With three centuries in eight innings,

the Stratford and Taranaki batsman J Irving aggregated 463 runs in the first round of matches in the Taranaki southern division first grade cricket competition.

35 Years Ago: Taranaki Savings Bank announces drop in mortgage interest rates from 14.5 per cent to 11 per cent; BMX track opened at Opunake; New Zealand’s first microlight flying programme held at Stratford; West End’s Des Griffin and Dave Bennett win Taranaki Christmas pairs bowls tournament.

25 Years Ago: $7 million Richmond shopping centre announced for New Plymouth; South Taranaki District Council reverses decision and backs

1080 use on Mt Egmont; bumper milk season sees re-opening of Inglewood milk powder plant.