How well do you know our district?
1. What happened to Whanganui's old hospital building during Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee in 1897?
2. How did Wanganui County Council respond during WWI when asked to endorse a circular from the Anti-German League seeking to deny German-born New Zealanders the right to vote?
3. What
did Jimmy Laurent, a Mexican bushman, try to do to the Upokongaro hotel in 1910?
4. Who was the woman who wrote A Farm on the Wanganui River, a book about her life on a farm upriver from Pipiriki?
5. Where are you if you visit Te Whare Pukapuka o Whanganui?
6. Where does Whanganui figure population-wise among NZ urban areas?
7. How did riverboat magnate Alexander Hatrick get involved in film-making in 1910?
8. What is the popular name of the huge old car yard at Horopito?
9. Why did as many as 2000 people go to Okoia on special trains in the years before WW2?
10. What year did tar-sealed roads first appear in Wanganui County?
Quiz Answers
1. It was burned down as part of the jubilee celebrations. Applying the torch was Wanganui County Council chairman A. Higgie whose father had built the hospital 47 years earlier.
2. It refused to endorse the circular.
3. He tried to blow it up with gelignite after a failed romance with a woman guest, fell in the river and drowned.
4. Elizabeth Allen. She also wrote a book on the development of the Waimarino called In the Hills of the Waimarino.
5. The Whanganui library.
6. Whanganui is the 19th most populous urban area in NZ with a population of 42,300 as of June 2021.
7. He assisted the international film-makers Pathé Frères to make an 18-minute film of Whanganui, the riverboats and the river.
8. Smash Palace. This was also the name of a movie that used the car yard as a set. The proper name is Horopito Motors.
9. It was a popular location for picnic groups.
10. 1914.
Six correct — good; 8 — very good; 10 — genius!
Quiz compiled by David Scoullar
