LICENSING COMMITTEE.

Gisborne Times, Volume V, Issue 132, 14 June 1901, Page 1

LICENSING COMMITTEE.

(To the Editor of the Times.) Sir,—l see by your paper that a petition by 62 persons, residents of AVaiapu, signed for an application for an accommodation license for To Raimi Hotel. Nowfsir, I have lived.up at Te Rahui, and the hotel thero is not wanted. For every twenty that pass by that hotel, one or two might call in and have a nip, and then proceed. I knew the former owner well, and I know that most of the settlers and travellers go by Kahuha, because thero aro a telegraph and post office there, and it is a shorter road by 25 miles than that by To Rahui Hotel, round by the Cape. AVhen the AVaiapu is up or other rivers, going from Te Araroa or from Awanui, thero

are no travellers then, and all the 82 sottlers live nearer to Kahuka than Te Rahui, and to go'up to To Rahui would take them about eight or ten miles out of the direct road. Thero is a good ferry at Kahuka, and a man looks - after it very well indeed. I have crossed the river in the ferry boat when it has been very high, and swam tho horse behind the boat; so I don’t"see what on oarth an hotel is wanted for at all ;• the former owner was thinking of giving it up more than once, because it did not pay. It is not wanted now, because there is a very fair road to

Te Araroa, and it saves 25 miles than by going round the Cape via Te Rahui Hotel to got to Hick’s Bay. : Thero is more use for an extra hotel in Gisborne than up at the AVaiapu. Time after time, I have come into town, and the hotels have been over-crowded, and I have had to sleep up at friends’ houses. I can always get a feed for my horse, but to get a shake-down my friends

and myself have to go where we can. The townspeople are all right, they have got their homes to go to, and it doos not matter a fig about us poor chaps-who live, away in the back blocks, where we sleep, or what becomes of us when we come to town. As far as the country is concerned we could do with two more hotels in Gisborne, and four moro in the country. Ono hotel is wanted badly in the AVaimata, and the other about two miles from Dolhos station, Tokomaru road. If you, sir, have business by way of the AVaiinata, and you want to go to AVaipiro, there is no place to stop at from the time you leave Gisborne till you get to Tokomaru Bay, a distance of 80 miles, or a little more. Let some of the good people go that way and see, and you, sir, take my word for it, it will not be long before the travelling

public will have the hotels that I speak about. But the people in Gisborne only have ono way, and that is, every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost. That is not tho way, thank goodness, we have in the" country. Gisborne people might vote for Prohibition straight out, but the country people will not have it at any price, and if we do not get what wo want now, you will see, sir, we will upset their little apple cart for them later on. To be fair and just, that’s all we ask. One or two more hotels in Gisborne, and two more in the country, and you will see the country getting larger every year, and still’more, hotels will be wanted. But prohibition will never be carried in’ AVaiapu without they carry it all through New Zealand.—l am, etc., . Traveller.