Letters to editor: Anzac memories, Gate Pa Bowling Club, museum needed

Gate Pa Bowling Club

I, along with many others, play tennis at the Gate Pa Tennis Club, across a very colourful camellia hedge but not quite overlooking the now-defunct Gate Pa Bowling Club.

Many of us who play tennis often discuss who owns the old bowling club.

The large clubrooms seem empty but regularly the once much-used bowling greens are mown.

A large clubroom block and several small huts along the boundary between the tennis club and the bowling greens lie empty.

Surely the buildings could be put to good use as a place of shelter and warmth to the homeless, especially with winter approaching.

The clubrooms probably have a well-equipped kitchen, toilets and maybe shower facilities.

Local groups could be approached to supply hot dinners to those who bed down.

At the moment it would appear that this once well-used facility lies unused and empty.

What a waste when we are regularly told of how many homeless sleep rough.

Lyndsay Morgan
Judea

Museums will add to the city
We recently spent four weeks on a road trip around the top half of the South Island.

In each town we stayed in that had a museum we spent many hours looking at their displays and reading about their local history.

What amazing and interesting places they were.

The museums we visited were all located in the downtown shopping area and were mostly in old buildings that had been renovated for purpose.

It showed us that you don't have to spend multi-millions to achieve a high standard.

The custodians were all very proud of what they had achieved in telling their stories and gave visitors an enthusiastic welcome. They were all busy places.

When asked about Tauranga we were embarrassed to say we did not have a museum.

It is time we displayed our rich history without further delay.

A museum can only benefit our city and add to the other attractions that make Tauranga a great place to live.

John and Margaret Rountree
Matua

Anzac memories
Bill Keenan's photo of seven young Pyes Pa farmer's boys off to enlist for World War II - which includes my father, Bill Kennedy - has prompted me to tell a further Anzac story.

Bill took an exercise book with him and kept it to write poetry in during the non-active times.

The poems were mostly about missing the bush and the sea at home and about his fallen comrades.

When the troops were hurriedly evacuated from Crete, they were told to leave absolutely everything behind.

Bill discarded his poetry book, not expecting to see it again. After the war he received a letter from an Englishman, one Reg Wingate, who had been captured on Crete.

This officer had found the poetry book and kept it hidden until he was home again in Hampshire at the end of the war.

It was his reading matter through his years as a POW and he became fond of the poems.

Not prepared to part with the book he found out a bit about the writer, had the poems typed out and sent them to my father.

The envelope was addressed to: Bill Kennedy, on a farm near Tauranga.

In the 1970s my parents visited Reg in England and the story was much publicised.

Just before Reg died he sent the original book back to my father. That book is now in the Waiouru Museum.

Raye Catran, nee Kennedy
Tauriko