Central apples for Britain
Mr W.T. Goodwin, on his return to Wellington from Dunedin, told a Dominion reporter that a great deal of interest centred in the initial shipment of 5000 cases of apples going forward to London from Central Otago by the steamer Cornwall this week. "The crop is a very good one," said Mr Goodwin. "It is the first lot that has come into bearing, and will very favourably compare with the best shipments from Nelson. Central Otago is, as you know, entirely immune from black spot. The area cropped for apples lies between Island Block and Pembroke, and apples are being taken from Ettrick, Roxburgh, Alexandra, and Clyde. Preparations are going forward for extensive planting at Cromwell, further up. The trees there are not expected to produce for export till next season. The chief varieties in the present export parcel are Cleopatra, Scarlet Nonpareil, Sturmer, Delicious and Newtown Pippin. They are fairly evenly divided. A few pears are going forward, of the Winter Nelis variety. The local instructors of the Agricultural Department’s staff have been assisting and getting the shipment up to a commercial standard, in order that it might meet with a profitable handling at Home." The chief difficulty at present was in packing, owing to the scarcity of experienced men in this trade in the district.
Honourable labourers
The disclosure cabled from Melbourne of a baronet working as a market gardener, while his wife was a charwoman is yet another of those romances of the casual in colonial life that are continually outcropping on the surface of our everyday life (says the Feilding Star). There have been and still are parallel cases in New Zealand. There was the case in the South Island of a Scots baronet of ancient lineage who married the washerwoman of a small township. Their eldest son worked as a labourer on a farm in the Feilding district a few years ago. That son is the baronet today. But, like his father, he does not use the title, and earns his living by taking casual jobs. There is a resident in Feilding today, living a humble and retired life, whose mother was entitled to be addressed as "her ladyship", but her neighbours did not suspect her real identity, as she dropped the title on coming to New Zealand. — ODT, 24.4.1922