SOLDIER SETTLEMENT

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 272, 11 August 1921, Page 4

SOLDIER SETTLEMENT

POOR RESULTS IN AUSTRALIA NEW ZEALAND HAS DONE BETTER New Zealand appears to have managed better than Australia in the settlement of returned soldiers on the land. Practically all New Zealand’s soldier-settlers have worked their holdings successfully. Many of them have been guided to success by tho officers of the Repatriation Department, and all of them have had the opportunity to receive practical advice from experts. Officers of the Department, as well as tho land boards and various patriotic organisations, have kept in touch with the men. It appears that in Australia the men have not received similar guidance, and now there are loud complaints about tho conditions of some of their holdings. Some of the Australian soldiers were placed on land in the Atherton district, north of Cairns, in Queensland. This land is rich, loamy soil of great depth, but many of the men did not know how to handlp it. ’ "This land was compulsorily resumed by the Government from the original settlers at £l3 per acre," says a farmer who recently inspected the area. "Practical farmers from Victoria offered £2O to £25 per acre for it. It was handed over to the soldiers, each of whom was given £658 to expend on tho land. There has been apparently no supervision or control. With his money one soldier bought a traction engine! It seems inconceivable, but it is true. If this money had been spent wisely everything would have been all right.' "But things are not all right. I have just been over the area and I saw several beautifully-kept farms. These ere the few not resumed by the Government. But you ought- to see the soldiers’ blocks. Or, rather, you cannot see them, for they are over-run by the useless weed known as 'Stinking Roger.’ As close as any crop of sorghum or maize, the weed is 10ft. high, and the soldiers have not the means to shift it. "The position is that the money is gone, and the soldiers have the land and’the 'Stinking Roger.’ They cannot negotiate on the land they hold for five years, consequently for that period there can lie no nroduction. Yet for the growing of maize nnd other crons there is no finer land in the world.