BANNOCKBURN.

Cromwell Argus, Volume IV, Issue 184, 20 May 1873, Page 5

BANNOCKBURN.

” (from OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.) A fortnight having elapsed since the date of my last newsletter, you may perhaps think I am going to furnish a heavy budget of news this time ; but if so, 1 am afraid you will be disappointed. I see our Miners’ Association is taking energetic steps towards securing land for commonage. Judging from the tone of MiBastings’ letter (published in your last issue), they seem to have met with very slight encouragement from the late Government. We can only hope they will have more success with the Provincial Council, to which body it is intended to forward a petition. The document, 1 understand, is now being circulated for signature. The Committee have no time to lose in getting it sent to Dunedin, as the Council is now in session. There .are some who think the Association has made a great mistake in entrusting the management of the affair before the Council to Mr Hickey. Now, although I do not wish to act as champion for that honourable gentleman,-—well knowing how he has neglected us hitherto, — yet I do not see how the Association could consistently have acted otherwise. As member for the district, Mr Hickey wrote to the Association offering to do all he could to assist them in obtaining what they might require, and this before the Association communicated with him at all. However, if we are only fortunate enough to get commonage, I do not think we need care in what way or by whose agency the boon is obtained. I observe that the party whom I mentioned a few weeks back as having taken up another claim on the Deep Lead, have been at work for the last fortnight or so. They have made a start in the shaft where the “ w-hip” used to be, and which formerly belonged to Messrs Chilton and Co. They find the ground to be almost dry,—a very different state to what it was in when formerly worked. With this circumstance in their favour, the new owners ought to make the ground pay well. I am sorry to hear that the Nil Desperandum battery has been taken down and removed from the upper part of Pipeclay Gully. This adds another to the long list of crushing machines that have been put up and taken down again before the reels have been properly tested. I remember, a few years ago, a machine was put up where this one has gone to (Rough Ridge) : through some mis-, management it did not pay, and was taken down and removed to Bendigo, where it has remained idle for nearly tlu-ee years ; and now the Nil battery is about to be erected on the site formerly occupied bv the machine now owned by the Alta Company. The same thing has happened so often that it is no wonder people who have money are afraid to invest hi jgpfhg speculations.