One important restoration has to be undertaken now and that is the replacement of the head-dress fallen from the back of the neck. The rock of the Sphinx weathers not too well and if the unprotected neck is not now taken care of, one of these fine days it would wear through, and the head of the Sphinx crash down upon the sand. It is true that the well-known scraggy or plucked-chicken look of the Sphinx to which we are so used will now disappear, but perhaps that will be no loss.
Pākehā settlement 78 years old
Another Otago Anniversary Day has passed. The oldest identities are a pathetically scanty band. Those of us who came out in the John Wickliffe or the Philip Laing are beginning to feel elderly. I sometimes forget in which ship it was that I made the great pilgrimage. It is only very faintly that I recall the plash of the waves on that first voyage. If I do not soon set about writing my reminiscences it will be too late and all that I knew about Princes St in 1848 will be lost to the Hocken Library and the Early Settlers’ Museum. Yes, I must stir myself for one last senile effort, and furbish up my notes of the table-talk of Captain Cargill and Dr Thomas Burns, the Moses and the Aaron of the brave enterprise. That pious task accomplished, I shall still regret with my latest sight that I was not at Waikouaiti in the romantic days of the earliest forties, — Waikouaiti, in connection with which Dunedin is a chicken, — Waikouaiti, which, some of my fellow-ancients still assure me, should have been the capital and harbour of Otago. After 78 years it is too late to shift; we can only indulge in forlorn thoughts of all that might have been.
— by ‘Wayfarer’
A draining process
The long-continued dispute between the Dunedin Drainage Board and the Otago Harbour Board regarding the proportion of cost to be borne by the two boards for putting in drains in the reclaimed area at the back of the railway station and also regarding what constitutes a main sewer should shortly be ended. The arbitrators — Messrs G.C. Godfrey (under-secretary for Marine), C.R. Smith Drainage Board), and J. Blair Mason (Harbour Board), who were appointed some time ago to hold the balance between the two boards, will commence their sitting this morning and their decision will be final. Mr S. Solomon KC and Mr H.E. Barrowclough will appear for the Drainage Board, and Mr J.C. Stephens for the Harbour Board. The estimated cost of the reticulation is about £52,000. It is said that the sitting will last three or four days. The cost of the inqury, and also of the reticulation, will have to be borne, directly or indirectly, by the people of Dunedin and Otago. The Drainage Board and the Harbour Board are simply asking them to expend some hundreds to discuss through what channel they shall expend some thousands.
— ODT, 24.3.1926
