FRASERTOWN NOTES.

Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 184, 12 August 1901, Page 1

FRASERTOWN NOTES.

(From Our Own Correspondent.) WAIROA’s “ SPLENDID ISOLATION.” Wairoa and isolation havo always been synonymous terms, but it has not often been our fate to be so completely cut off from communication with the outside world as we have been for the last four or five months. AVeok after week, month after month, the samo dreary tale, “ Bad bar, heavy sea,” comes up from the Heads. On several occasions supplies have run dangerously low, but by' a Providential lifting of the blockade the necessity of carting flour and sugar 70 odd miles by road in the depth of winter has been averted. Matters seem to be worse, if anything, in this respect since our Harbor Board started fencing in the river with clothes props, manuka stakes, and hoop iron. The unfavorable state of communication by sea has galvanised our Railway League into life, and a petition setting forth the weighty reasons that oxist in the minds of the petitioners has been circulated for signature, praying the powers that be to connect AVairoa by rail with Napier and Gisborne. It is a pity that people will persist in pinning their faith to visionary schemes, when by united effort they might have secured a harbor at AVaikokopu, connecting therewith by a short line of this light railway that we hear so much about. Had united effort been brought to bear in this direction, and tho money that has been sunk (I will not use a harsher term at present) on the harbor works, and on surveying the proposed lino of railway been devoted to this purpose a very good start might have been made, and we would have been within measurable distance of having regular communication with the principal centres of the colony; one of the most fertile portions of the country would have been opened up, dairy factories established, a freezing works would in all probability have followed, and in placo of the present stagnation and paralysis, progress and prosperity would be the order of the day.

MAIL MATTERS. To further emphasise our isolation and place the last straw on our slowly breaking backs, the mailman arrived last evening with only a small portion of our weekly mail, the bulk of it having been placed on board the Tangaroa. The mailman reported that ho tried to obtain the mail from the steamer authorities, but for some unexplained reason, they would not give it up, and it is extremely doubtful if it will reach us now before next AVednesday. How the mail came to be put on board tho Tangaroa in the present extremely uncertain state of the weather and bar, we know not, but it certainly seems like a piece of inexcusable bungling on the part of the postal authorities, and the steamer people aro equally to blame in not handing the mail over to tho mailman, when he applied for it, knowing, as they do, how extremoly uncertain their movements are at presont.