Lake Logan nuisance

Mr and Mrs Proven at their home in Naseby. They have four sons at the front. - Otago Witness, 16...
Mr and Mrs Proven at their home in Naseby. They have four sons at the front. - Otago Witness, 16.1.1918.
The city Mayor (Mr J. J. Clark) presided over a largely attended meeting of the residents in the vicinity of Lake Logan, which was convened by the local Vigilance Committee to arouse the attention of the Harbour Board to the urgent necessity for immediate and adequate relief from the menace to public health formed by the present condition of the lake.

Representatives of the Harbour Board and the Otago Hospital and Charitable Aid Board were amongst those present. The Mayor said the very fact of there being such a large attendance that evening was evidence of the very keen interest the people had in the condition of Lake Logan. Anyone who knew anything about the present condition of the lake knew, to put it very mildly, that it was an abomination, an eye sore, and an annoyance to the people who lived in the vicinity. - (Applause.) One had only to look back over a very short time, when the lake was one of the beauty spots of the city; now it was one of the most disgraceful features they had got. - (Applause.) He had very great sympathy with the position in which the Harbour Board had been placed. They had all been hard struck by the war, but no body had been so seriously affected or hampered in their finance as the Harbour Boards of the dominion. Still he shared in the opinion that some action was necessary in order to protect the health of the residents of this part of the city. The question of making the lake a beauty spot might be left over in the mean time, but its insanitary condition should be remedied. He (the Mayor) was chairman of the Drainage Board, and he hoped within the next few weeks to have the work of preventing any sewage getting into the lake completed, and when this was done he could assure them that no sewage would enter the lake.

von Luckner at Lyttelton

Count Felix von Luckner, commander of the German raider Sea Adler, Lieutenant Carl T. F. Kirscheiss, navigating officer, and an orderly, arrived at Lyttelton on Sunday by the Mararoa. When the ferry steamer appeared inside the Heads the Government defence launch put out from Ripa Island and (the Press says) met her at a point opposite the island. The launch made fast to the steamer, and the prisoners descended a companion ladder at the ship's side and stepped into the launch. Count von Luckner was first to leave the steamer, preceded by a military guardsman. Another guardsman followed, then the other prisoners, and an armed guardsman brought up the rear. The prisoners were dressed in light khaki military uniforms.

Battlefield flowering

The ``country of the dead'', that strip of France from Peronne to the sea, where lie buried so many British soldiers, is thus spoken by Mr G. E. Siocombe in the Daily Chronicle (London):- ``In the familiar haunts of their lives there is sorrow and mourning, but not here. Here is another memorial, nature's own. There spring tears - here springs triumph. To-day there is a great riot of poppies over all these fields of death. The yellow gold of the garlic blossom gives back sunshine to the sun. The blue cornflower, countless among the long grass, sways gently in the wind. Old battle fields that but this last winter were an aching devastation - how they are now beyond words redeemed!'' - ODT, 23.1.1918.

 

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