For several years the fruit garden of the old Waihemo Hotel has been dedicated entirely to the use of the local public by its present owner, who had purchased and demolished the hotel and its annexes, and thereupon thrown open the acre of fruit trees for the exclusive use of his neighbours.
The place grows quantities of apples, pears, apricots, etc., and is a favourite summer resort for picnic parties, whose conveyances generally leave the premises well stocked with the spoil of the trees. Pears are especially abundant, and in their green cooking stage have annually stocked many a local larder.
Owing to the distance of the place from the owner's homestead, where also an extensive orchard absorbs all the available means of attention, the trees are not pruned or sprayed, and in fact, being mostly of the inferior kind compared with those favoured by the more modern orchardists, would in any case be doubtfully worth such treatment.
In view of the value of the fruit to the local public, and of the fact that his own homestead orchard is the only one within several miles of the place in question, the owner requested the Orchards Department to relax the rigidity of its rules in this instance, pointing out, however, that to himself personally this could not be considered any favour, inasmuch as the produce of the place went to whomsoever else it might concern.
The reply of the department being an uncompromising refusal accompanied by a formidable list of Latin atrocities which it declares to be rampant in the place, and a grim threat of prosecutions and penalties, the owner has had to consider whether it is practicable to bring this ancient fruit farm into line with modern orchard practice and permanently to appease the authorities by undertaking and continuing at that distance, and for the benefit of others, the various operations on which they insist.
This being, in the present state of the labour market, at least, beyond reasonable possibility, the alternative of the destruction of the orchard has been officially ordered.
Otago floods
Early on Saturday evening a downpour of rain of unusual severity commenced to fall in Dunedin and the surrounding districts, and continued with a steady persistence that gave promise of serious results right throughout the night.
A slight easing off was apparent yesterday, but at intervals heavy showers continued to fall. One report states that close on two inches of rain fell during Saturday night in the upper water-shed of the Leith, and the downpour in that neighbourhood is stated to have been the most severe since that which caused the memorable flood in the North-East Valley on Christmas Day of 1911.
The rain gauge at the pumping station at Musselburgh registered a fall of 1.14in between 7 p.m. on Saturday and 9 a.m. on Sunday, and at Opoho during the same period 150 points of rain fell. The Taieri and Waipori Rivers were both in high flood yesterday, and reports from Middlemarch state that the flood is one of the most severe for many years.
The outlook for residents of the Taieri Plain is grave, and, as the rain is still falling on the high country, the prospects are not likely to improve much to-day.
The only hopeful note in a generally gloomy situation is from Waipori, where the river was reported to be falling last evening.
- ODT, 29.5.1917.
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