Dust a problem at trots
The Forbury Park Trotting Club concluded its meeting in fine weather on Saturday, when there was a record attendance in the history of the club. The card for the day provided some interesting sport and the general result of the meeting stands as a good augury for the club’s efforts to cater for the sport during the balance of the season. The track was in good order, but the dust marred the principal event as a racing spectacle, and doubly handicapped the back markers. In fact it is imperative that the Forbury Park Trotting Club, as well as the New Zealand Metropolitan Trotting Club, will have to make more serious effort to counteract the dust evil, which spoils the appearance of a race, doubly handicaps the back markers, and imparts an unnecessary and real danger to the high-class events, which are usually contested by close running fields. It has been fully and amply demonstrated that a sprinkling of seawater will lay the dust for a considerable period, and failing that inexpensive method, some experiment should be made to see if a small quantity of cheap oil would not have a much to be desired effect.
Catlins the next Taranaki?
The Owaka A and P Association was not favoured by the weather for its 13th annual show, held at Owaka on Friday. With the exception of a couple of sharp showers it kept dry, but there was a bitterly cold wind sweeping across the ground that made the conditions unpleasant. A total of some 450 entries was well ahead of last year’s, the increases being in dairy produce, light horses, Jersey cattle and sheep. There was a slight decrease in draught horses and shorthorns. The attendance of the public was considerably larger than it was last year. A welcome visitor to the show was Sir Thomas Mackenzie, who was entertained at lunch by the Association. He said that nothing could have given him greater pleasure than to revisit the Catlins, a district with which he had always been associated, and among whose settlers were some of the best friends he had in the world. He congratulated the district on the wonderful progress it had made, but still as yet only the surface of the district had been scratched. The time would come when they would have a population there as dense as it was in many parts of Taranaki.
Remarkable attendance record
Ten years’ attendance at Bluff school without being absent for half a day, or even late on any occasion, will be the record of Lilla Vickery of Bluff, unless something very serious should happen to her during the next fortnight (says the Southland Times). In order to guard against an attack of measles during the recent epidemic, she submitted to vaccination, but in her case the cure was harder to bear than the disease, and it was only by grim determination that she was able to keep her attendance record unbroken. Her exceptional performance is to be specially recognised at the annual presentation of prizes.
— ODT, 6.12.1920.