Description
Author: J.Halket Millar, Hardbound, 204 Pages, ASIN: b000qrki7w - Revised and enlarged 1965 Edition - **Second-Hand book in very good condition !
High Noon for Coaches gives a vivid account of the opening up of road communication in the northern provinces of the South Island when the coaching services were started on a large scale, and includes fascinating reminiscences by travellers, old coach drivers, and drivers of feed waggons.
It is the story of how two enterprising and determined young men, Harry and Tom Newman, pioneered coaching south from Nelson in 1879, at a time when few wheeled vehicles had ventured over roads that had been hastily constructed to give access to the West Coast.
It shows how they extended their services, turned to motor cars when the age of the horse was passing, and then to modern motor coaches, and extended south and east to Canterbury and Marlborough, and into the North Island to produce the present road transport organisation, which is the largest private concern of its kind in New Zealand.
J. Halket Millar, born at Timaru, has spent nearly fifty years in journalism, has a flair for. historical research, and apart from numerous articles in newspapers and magazines in New Zealand, Australia, England and the United States, and radio talks, has produced several books of an historical nature, amongst them Beyond the Marble Mountain, High Noon for Coaches, Death Round the Bend, The Merchants Paved the Way, and Westland's Golden Sixties.
He has spent much time in travel over areas about which he has been writing and has made extensive use of public and private archives in his search for authentic material.
He has been interested in the repertory theatre for many years, has taken parts in more than eighty plays, and been active on the administrative side, as well as judging at drama festivals. He was a foundation member of the Mid-Canterbury Aero Club in the late 1920s, and has done much flying. In his " spare " time he takes an interest in photography.
