WOODVILLE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3149, 1 August 1881, Page 2

WOODVILLE.

(from our own corbespondent)

July 29, 1881

I have just come across a most complete and marvellous production in the shape of specifications for bush falling, which has baffled all the bushmen in the district, and unless a man learned in law comes up in time to explain the conditions we shall, I fear, fail to be able to tender. What with conditions, form of tender, &c, (occupying eleven pages of foolscap), one would not unnaturally think that a hundred miles of railway was going to be constructed instead of a paltry few hundred acres of bush felling. As, however, the gentleman in charge was I believe formerly in the Government service, he, of course, likes red-tape, but I am afraid he is not a man for our district, since he appears to know nothing of the character of our bushmen, nor the financial position of them, since there has to be a deposit of five per cent on the price of the contract deposited, and he also thinks tbat contractors are going to be green enough to settle fortnightly with their men, which in plain English means a loss of a week after every settling. Messrs. Monteith and Fonntaine's new store is now being completed, and in the course of a few months will be both a credit to our town and I have no doubt prove a success to its founders. The architecture is nondescript, but colonial and useful for its purpose, and will for

sotne years to come be an ornament to Woodville. Some few months ago there was a great talk of starting a company to erect a town hall. Although anxious to take shares, and see the town improving, as yet I am entirely in the dark as to whom to apply for them, so that I greatly fear that our awkwardly arranged schoolroom will have to be used as heretofore as tbe only suitable place to congregate in for an evening's amusement or public business. The weather is still unsettled, but still feed for stock is plentiful, and the country in general is looking well.