Taranaki oil possibility
While petroleum in commercial quantities has yet to be discovered in Australia, The Petroleum Times mentions that New Zealand has already produced an appreciable quantity. It is remarked that although the undertaking at Taranaki a few years back was not a financial success it is somewhat strange that no serious effort has since been made to open this well or to drill others in the locality. It is possible, however, that the somewhat peculiar nature of the oil obtained is partly responsible. Research on this petroleum has produced some very interesting results which have been published in a recent issue of the New Zealand Journal of Science and Technology.
Hospital unsullied by trams
The Dunedin Hospital doctors who the other night reminded the City Council that tramway noise and tramway dust are not good for a hospital were heard with intelligence and sympathy. The chances are that the new tramway service to Logan Park and the Exhibition will avoid the Hospital. Its line will be Albany street, not Frederick street. More than that, I foresee the time when King street in front of the Hospital will be closed to traffic and transformed into a garden. On the one side will be the Hospital, in the other — no fence intervening — the Medical School, to which already one half the frontage along the block has been assigned. Leading to the main door of the Hospital and connecting Hanover street with Frederick street will be a noiseless road for motors; all else will be an open-air ward, sunny or umbrageous as the day may change, and the abode of peace. — by ‘Civis’
Cheap State mortgages help
The housing problem is inextricably connected with the conditions of the building trade, and these in turn are related to the inflated cost of production, due in the main to high wages, insufficient output, and the increased price of timber. House-building enterprise is not a tempting speculation, at least for purposes of letting at low rentals. It should be borne in mind that the pressing need is not for ornate houses conceived on aesthetic or town-planning lines, but for plain, modest, uncongested dwellings, providing means of reasonable comfort and opportunities for the realisation of seemly home-life. The extremely liberal terms offered under the Advances to Workers system, instituted in 1906, have done something to stem the growth of an evil which, however, will not be eradicated without the adoption of more searching measures. The system represents an excellent ideal, pointing the way to independence and desirable development of responsible citizenship. — editorial — ODT, 30.8.1924