• There was a large gathering of golf enthusiasts on the St Clair Links on Saturday afternoon, when, coincident with the commencement of the new season (so far as this club was concerned, at any rate), the club's new pavilion was officially opened.
Quite a number of visiting players were present, some from as far afield as Invercargill, and a few friendly games were played The links lie over 90 acres of first-class ground, and the 18 holes in existence there are very well arranged.
The course was fully occupied on Saturday afternoon, the most conspicuous feature of the gathering being the large number of lady golfers present.
Those who did not play (they were few) were entertained at afternoon tea in the pavilion.
The latter building, while not imposing from an architectural point of view, is yet neat and pleasing in appearance.
It comprises the main clubroom, a men's dressing room, a ladies' dressing room, some 140 lockers, kitchen, etc.
It is well finished inside and out, and is enclosed within a serviceable wire-netting fence.
Its total cost, including the fence, was some 350.
Late in the afternoon, when the players had assembled at the pavilion to be regaled with afternoon tea and to be photographed, the club's captain (Mr B. R. Stock) asked Mr T. K. Sidey, MP, to declare the clubhouse open.
He said the club had been in existence some four years, and he congratulated them on having surmounted initial difficulties so well.
Although he did not belong to the club, he wished to say that Mrs Sidey (who was a member) had authorised him to say that she would give a trophy for the ladies, and he himself would leave a donation with the secretary for a trophy for the gentlemen.
• The master of the s.s. Invercargill, which arrived in port early yesterday afternoon with a cargo of timber from Stewart Island states that the s.s. Kotare is aground on the mud in Waikawa estuary.
She had missed the channel (which is very narrow), and was fast in the mud when the Invercargill entered the port on Friday, and was still aground when the latter steamer left on Saturday evening.
• In sentencing a prisoner at Wellington last week, Mr Justice Chapman mentioned that in cases where a crime had been committed by a young man of respectable parentage and previous good character, the Government was considering a plan whereby an offender, if sent to gaol, would be kept apart from the other prisoners. - ODT, 23.8.1909.
