Birmingham Special Settlement

Feilding Star, Volume IX, Issue 153, 26 July 1888, Page 3

Birmingham Special Settlement

There are very serious and very justifiable complaints of the treatment which is being meted out to the settlers on the Wanganui and Feilding special settlements. Both blocks are separated trom the township of Feilding by the Birmingham special settlement, and by blocks of Government land. The settlers on the Feilding block, whose case we a <; assured is very similar to that of the settlers of the Wanganui block, state that the Government promised, when the block was taken up two years ago, that they would "clear and form" the road through the Birmingham block, and the Government land beyond. - The distance to be formed is about ten miles in the case of the Feilding block and fifteen in the case of the Wanganui block. The Government felled and burnt the line to the Feilding block, and so left it, partly forming at 3ft. bridle track on one side. Anyone who has any experience of a track cut through the bush in this manner in the deep -soft ' eoil of these North Island bushes can well conceive the hopeless slough into which the Government track is now converted. There are about forty families settled there on the faith that the Government would give them the access to Feilding necessary to their occupation of the land. They have paid all their survey expenses and all instalments, and they are now in this lementable position. They cannot get their produce to market, not even so much as drive a bullock down. The ten miles between their settlement and the metal road to Feilding is a deep hopeless bog. They can send nothing to market. Their children cannot get to school and an attempt to get an cwt of flour to the settlement ended in a mule being bogged, the bag broken, and the flour scattered. The Government Departments applied to, plead "no assets." It is really lamentable to think of the vast sums squandered am useless railways, and the stupidity with which the Government discourages every attempt at bona fide settlement. — Wellington Press;* '