Hydro engineer’s funeral

The late Mr W.R. Miller, of Dunedin, one of the victims of the Mangahao Tunnel disaster. — Otago...
The late Mr W.R. Miller, of Dunedin, one of the victims of the Mangahao Tunnel disaster. — Otago Witness, 11.7.1922
The funeral of Mr W.R. Miller, assistant engineer at the Mangahao hydroelectric works, who was one of the seven men who was suffocated in this week’s fatality at the works, will take place tomorrow. The remains will be buried with military honours. Mr Miller was one of the youngest engineers in the dominion in a position of high responsibility. He received his secondary education at the Otago Boys’ High School, and then went to Canterbury College. He was a railway engineer prior to the war, and was with the Railway Construction Corps in France. After the war he went to America in search of experience and on his return to New Zealand took up the position he held to his death. He was very popular with the men and had a wide circle of friends. Further details from Mangahao state that the workmen had crowded round to relate the little incidents in connection with Mr Miller’s heroic attempt to get out the first two men who had gone into the tunnel. The workmen who found Mr Miller state that he had his arms around two men in his endeavour to get them out. The late Mr Miller had considerable literary ability, and amongst his contributions to the press were a series of articles dealing with the general aspects of hydroolectricity. The funeral will leave his mother’s residence in Grosvenor street for the Southern Cemetery.

Capping frivolity tolerated

The Saturnian festival that brought an annual topsy-turvey, for one brief day making Jack as good as his master, was welcomed by the Roman populace, plebs and patres alike. After the same manner our University undergraduate establishes a day on which he may poke fun at his professor, reminding him that once upon a time he too was a neophyte — haply a dunderhead — looked down on from the professorial chair with lofty condescension. That on the same day the madcap undergraduate should take charge of the town, compelling even the sober-sided police to complicity in his pranks, comes of the eruptive lawlessness betokening his age and stage. But there is no cruelty in the Otago undergad, — oh dear no! — only humour; and in his prankiness we are all art and part. Nobody has anything to complain of; nobody complains, — not the professor that is gibed at, nor the girl that is kissed. — by ‘Civis’

Communication problems

To some extent Otago has suffered from her geographical position. She continues to suffer from it. This is particularly noticeable in the case of the overseas mails. The dominion enjoys the benefit of exceedingly good services by the Vancouver and San Francisco routes in the respect that mails are carried to and from Great Britain with noteworthy despatch. But the maximum benefit of these services is confined to the northern districts. On Monday night next an English mail will reach Dunedin. On Monday morning a mail for Great Britain will leave Dunedin. Business people in Christchurch, Wellington and in Auckland will be able to answer by the outgoing mail the correspondence they receive by the incoming mail. Those in Dunedin would have to wait a fortnight before their correspondence could he answered were it not for the accident of the chance departure of a direct steamer via Panama in the course of next week. It is not an uncommon thing that commercial people in the north obtain advantages through the dates of the arrival and departure of the mail steamers that are not shared with them by business people in the south. This may be irremediable, but the inconvenience to which importers in Otago have been put through shipping delays on the coast, involving them in losses in trade, can be avoided and it will be a fortunate thing if it is avoided.

Tumbling display impresses

About 150 people were present at the annual junior physical display at the YMCA gymnasium last evening. The junior girls, with their marching and wand drill, pleased the audience very much, as did also the small boys under 12 in their turn. The older boys were well up in their form on the apparatus, including the horse, parallel bars and the horizontal bars. The tumbling of a small group of boys was considered as excellent work for these boys under 16. — ODT, 8.7.1922