Australia -- Description and travel; New Zealand -- Description and travel; Windsor, Edward, Duke of, 1894-1972
Dusk fell when the train was some twenty miles from Dunedin, the
Edinburgh of New Zealand, but the sky was lighted throughout the whole
of this distance by enormous bonfires, every village and every homestead
along the line competing as to which could make the biggest flare
against the forest and hills behind. Around these bonfires the local
inhabitants had assembled and cheered the Prince as the train ran
through. The night was alive with enthusiasm. Little old weary England,
at anchor far in her North sea, might have been glad to feel it.
Port Chalmers, the Rosyth of Dunedin, was a wonderful sight. Coloured
flares were simultaneously lighted in all parts of the town, as the
train passed along the top of the cliffs. The harbour was thus shown up
like an inland lake, in a setting of hills, against which houses,
shipping and docks stood out in brilliant relief.
At Dunedin the train climbed down into a fairyland of electric
illuminations, beginning at the railway station, where Mayor Begg and
the members of the civic council were assembled. A procession in cars,
through Princes Street and Stuart Street, to the Dunedin Club, where
quarters had been arranged for the Prince, showed him half a mile of
decorated, illuminated route, kept in absolute order by boy-scouts,
cadets and school-children, though every one of Dunedin's sixty thousand
inhabitants appeared to be participating in an orgy of cheering,
flag-waving and flower throwing behind this slender barrier.
On the following day His Royal Highness attended an open-air reception,
in the presence of an immense gathering in the city octagon, beneath the
cathedral, the steps of which were occupied by a big chorus of girls
from secondary schools. Here he received nine addresses of welcome. In
replying, he told Dunedin that the part she played in the life of New
Zealand was fully worthy of the noble traditions which her pioneers
brought from the schools and colleges of the Old Country. Later on the
Prince visited the hospital, whence he drove over the heights
overlooking the shore, and down a steep winding track to Port Chalmers,
where, amidst more decorations and cheering crowds, the Harbour Board
and Local Borough Council presented addresses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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