Draught horse breeder sells up

A notable event in farming circles took place at Outram yesterday, when Messrs Wright Stephenson and Co offered by auction the whole of Mr James Patrick’s well-known Lee Creek stud of purebred Clydesdale horses, numbering 50 head. Mr Patrick is retiring after 26 years spent on his leasehold property about two miles out of Outram township, it being his intention to make a trip to Scotland. During that time his name has become familiar throughout both islands as a Clydesdale breeder. His own horses have had a unique record of successes wherever they have been shown, and horses bred from the many noted sires which he has imported from time to time from Scotland are to be found today in the front ranks at almost all the principal shows.

The break-up of such a noted stud will leave Otago much the poorer, but some compensation may be found in the distribution among farmers of such fine blood The sale attracted a very large attendance from all over Canterbury, Otago and Southland, and the great park of motor cars in the adjoining paddock was a rare sight.

In addition to the Clydesdale stud Mr Patrick’s sheep and cattle and his entire stock of implements and sundries were put up to auction and all realised fair market value.

The sale of the Clydesdales began at 11 o’clock with a number of geldings, some of which were purchased by the New Zealand Express Company, the prices reaching to £46, £49, and £50.

The most famous of the whole stud, the renowned stallion Baron Bold, (1904, Baron’s Pride-Donna Roma, by McGregor) went to  the owner’s son, Mr J.R. Patrick, of Waimate, at 750 guineas.

Public urged to buy poppies

There is not much need to remind the public, we hope, that this is "Poppy Day" in Dunedin. "Buy a poppy and help a digger" runs the legend already familiarised to many eyes, and these simple words make perhaps a more telling appeal than any which a more discursive eloquence could coin.

The flowers that will be on sale in their abundance today should do a little more than raise thoughts and memories of the stricken countryside in France and Flanders, where our soldiers fought and laid down their lives.

For they should stir the imaginative buyer to passing visualisation of indomitable France herself, and of her widows and orphans, all too many, whose labours have produced these petals not quickly destined to wither or decay. Fragrant of remembrance should be these poppies, and the generosity of the public today will help those bereaved ones in France as well as the returned soldiers — with their dependents — who in our own country are lacking employment. It is an opportunity for the people of Dunedin to show in a practical way their sense of what they owe to those who fought for them in the Great War.

Education for a proper housewife

"If education can make a girl a good housekeeper it will fulfil its highest function, as far as she is concerned," said the Minister of Education (the Hon C.J. Parr) at the Beckenham School. "I hope that in the new curriculum (the course from 12 to 16) the girls will give half their time to domestic science, as it is done in Victoria, with the other half of the curriculum devoted to English, arithmetic, bookkeeping, etc. The course will train a girl to become a proper housewife, and an intelligent companion for her husband. The importance of domestic science cannot be stressed too much." — ODT, 21.4.1922