100 YEARS AGO Dunedin joyriding popular
FROM OUR ARCHIVES
THE Aero Transport Company’s two aeroplanes on the foreshore skirting the Anderson’s Bay road were again the centre of interested crowds yesterday. While the novelty lasts, parks, gardens, and beach are passed over for the sights and scents around the gas works, and youth and beauty now promenade the sea wall of an evening, with necks craned skywards to watch the graceful flights. Joyriding is still booming, and the Avro was kept busily employed yesterday forenoon and evening taking up passengers. A few trips are also made by the de Havilland. Many of the passengers were ladies, and they all seemed to enjoy the experience. Flying will be started early this morning, early morning and evening being the best hours of the day for the purpose. Some passengers have booked for as early as 6:30am. Mr N. Galbraith, (chairman of the Otago Harbour Board) and Mr H. E. Moller, the West Harbour member, will be taken up this morning at about 7:30 to see what Dunedin Harbour looks like from the air. The engineer, Mr J.M. Wilkie, will inspect the harbour in the same way in the coming week.
Observers from the air are able to see to a great depth below the water, and the engineer, riding aloft, will view spread below him all the channels, banks and shoals.
Record tourist season in the south
The Tourist Department has had a record season this year (states a Wellington Press Association message). All branch offices have been kept extremely busy and all tourist resorts have been taxed to the uttermost. The patronage of these places has been chiefly by New Zealanders, who also are utilising the services of the Tourist Department for booking to a greater extent than previously. The number of overseas visitors has not been great, though on the department’s visitors’ books can be seen a fair sprinkling of the names of the world’s prominent tourists. Australia has contributed most of the overseas visitors, and there has been evidence that the prewar popularity of New Zealand’s beauty and health resorts amongst Australians is again reviving this year. The West Coast lakes have been extensively patronised.
In praise of Molyneux Beach
The Clutha Leader states that a gentleman formerly connected with the Tourist Department, who visited Molyneux beach on New Year’s Day, says there is no other beach, or rather series of beaches, like it in New Zealand, and he has seen them all. Perhaps a benighted tourist department will wake up to this fact some day. — ODT, 11.1.1921.