DISTANT FIELDS.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1384, 9 March 1912, Page 6

DISTANT FIELDS.

NEW ZEALANDER ON WEST AUB TRALIA.

A. New Zoalandor who was lured to West Australia, tells (says the Auckland "Star") a sad etory of his bitter experiences and disappointments. Ho was formorly in the Government service at Gisborne, and had been a resident of Now Zealand for fifteen years. He was so fascinated by the contents of a bulletin issued by the Agricultural Department of West 'Australia that ho threw up his position,. incidentally resigning with it his .pension, and left this country about eighteen nionths ago. It was not long; before he discovered how misleading wero tho statements contained in tho bulletins by which ho had been led astray. It cost him £2b per aero to- clear tho land he had taken up, after ring-barking had been dono four years previously, although the pamphlet stated that similar work could bo dono for M Bs. 6d. per acre. A 1910 pamphlet held out the bait of ICO acres for MO." Tho next ono he saw in Melbourne read differently. It boro on tho front page, "IGO acres for £9 10s., Hundreds of settlors are giving up their holdings in despair, says this returned and disheartened emigrant. Ho declares that he has seen more poverty in West Australia in tho fifteen nionths liei was there than lie over saw durin? lus ill teen years' residence in New Zealand, ilo and his family lived on broad and mut-ton-fat for six weeks, and 111 the end the Government threatened to take his land from him because lie was 10s. behind in his payments. This settler, had lost nil his cafiilnl, and was glad to get back to New Zealand with what ho stood up in a= his solo worldly possessions, and, lie added, "I could not have returned but for (he aid of friends in the Dominion. The lack' of educational fnciliwes in.tho back districts was deplorable, "ami you cannot grow a thins,on Uio land. What a country-to invite immigrants to!

Forty-three lives were lost by the wreck of the Hall Line steamer A\ >stow Hall on tho Aberdecnshire coast. Ihe vessel had nrevionsly experienced serious trouble owing to tho heavy Eoas met with, the funnels being washed away and tho fires nut out. The ship drifted helplessly on to tho rocks at.a dangerous spot, known as tho Unllers of Buchan, near tho villago of North Haven, and wan smashed to pieces. Tho crow, numbering fiftysoren, wero thrown into the raging surf, but only four mon— tho captain nnd three lascars—were rescued. Before tho vessel struck, people on shore several timon threw n life-lino across the ship, but the crew, some of whom wero clinging to ropes nnd others to vontilators and dorricks, were too terrified to grasp it. Tho catastrophe is the worst that has ever occurred on tho east coast of Aberdeonshire. Thousands of people crossed the Hudson River from Tarrytown to Nyack on the ieo recently. Tho rivor hero is thrco miles wide, but the severe weather had frozen the water solidly from shorei to shore, and mode it practicable ovonwor aut»» mobile* to croflc Iβ safety.