Home Base

By Sydneysider

Sydney is the hub of the South Pacific, and its news is your news. Here are some of the things that made October headlines.

Sydneysiders who were boast ing last June that they hadn’t had a fire yet, and who in August were having spashes of real heat, got their delayed winter in September, first month of official spring, which so far as weather was concerned, was generally abominable.

By Six Hours Day holiday weekend (it used to be Eight Hours Day, but things have changed since then), October 3-6, the city got its first burst of heat, 83 degrees, and its first dry north-west winds.

This weekend was the begin ning of the Waratah Festival, a half-hearted attempt to make whoopee on a civic scale. Most Sydneysiders prefer to make their own fun, and most of them did, by heading for near tourist resorts and beaches, in crawling lines of three-abreast traffic, that inched a way out of the city for the not-so-wide-open spaces beyond.

Sum total of motorists’ Six Hours Day holiday exuberance, 15 dead on the roads and heaven knows how many injured. * * * The howl for an inquiry into the police force, which continued all through September, was sud denly, if temporarily, dropped early October for a newer, if not so exciting, sensation. Mr. A.

Landa was relieved of his Hous ing portfolio pending an inquiry into his conduct in connection with the State Housing Commis sion, The rumpus blew up after the Auditor-General had criti cised Landa mostly on the ground that the latter was legal adviser to a firm of merchants supplying the Commission with timber. * * * While he was on the job of publicly keel-hauling the State’s finances, the Auditor-General also had a go at the Rural Bank, and its dealings with a couple of its clients. Metropolitan Port land Cement Ltd., which is using bank credit to the tune of £4,243,080; and the Co-operative Dairy Association of NSW, whose red ink entry in the Bank’s ledgers is just under £1 million.

The A-G had been pecking the Bank’s beneficence to the cement company for some years, and this time contented himself with saying its outlook

towards its security and pros pects with this client was “un reasoned and unrealistic”. Of the dairy company he said “it is in a desperate position”.

Worthy citizens who have been forced to go cap in hand.te their banks for a few hundreds for good causes, during these years of credit restriction, naturally are interested in this most favoured - client treatment of these two companies by the Rural Bank. * * *

Coming And Going: Group

Captain Peter Townsend, who will film scenes for the Peter Townsend Journey (for the French Pathe Company) will arrive from Japan about No vember 8, depart for the US about 18th. Time in between will be spent retracing the Townsend footsteps (or tyre tracks) of his two months here last year when on his Forget-Princess-Margaret journey.

Sir Bernard Heinze, Director of the NSW Conservatorium of Music, has left for a three and a half months tour of Iron Cur

tain countries, including Russia.

* * * TRANSPORT; The decline in the number of local tram and bus patrons (by 13 million in the last year) is laid at the door of increased TV in homes. People who are paying off television sets are alleged to stay home week ends instead of travelling to ®P° r^ s meetings and picture theatres.

More cheerful news on the transport front (although not for the Transport Dept.), was “Jf sudden announcement of I? 1 /* sliced °ff cost of the Holden special and standard This followed a drop of £l5 to £5l on prices of its vehicles anmmnecd recently by the British Motor Corporation. No reasons for any of these cuts were given—and how much TV m the home has to do with it is sheer guess-work. * * * THE ARTS: Shooting of The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll by Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, with an American cast, will begin in s Y dne y m November. The outfit will then move north to the Queensland canefields.