LATE LOCALS.

Hokitika Guardian, 30 August 1920, Page 3

LATE LOCALS .

In the House on Thursday, tho Hon. W. D. S- MacDonald (Leader of the Opposition) championed in the House of Representatives the claims of the West Coast of the South Island for a State, experimental farm, saving that there was muclf land in the district which could be very profitably settled if the Government would help the settlers in that way. Mr It. T. Hudson (Motuekn) expressed his pleasure at bearing the Leader of the Opposition, formerly Minister for Agriculture in the National Government, make that suggestion. The West Coast used to be looked a- place where nothing but coal was produced. Mr W. S. Glenn (Rangitikei): And very little of that. (Laughter.) Mr Hudson ndded that the great agricultural possibilities of the West Coast were now ■being recognised; and lie predicted that it would eventually rival even the great dairy district of Taranaki.

The "Press” correspondent with the Canterbury delegation states on Thursday afternoon the visitors motored from Westport to Charleston, 17 miles to the south of Westport, through a stretch of country once busy* with sluicing, and now given over to solitude. Charleston in its heyday, in the middle sixties, was in reality a suburb of Melbourne. It contained a population of 40,000 miners, and was a well-laid-out and animated town, possessing banks, casinos, and sixty hotels. Old miners to-day still speak of the incandescence of the town in its zenith. To-day it is a spectre. Dismal remains of its one-time glories abound on every hand. Only one hotel is still carrying on. The European and flamboyant titles of others long since abandoned, are still discernible on the ruined buildings. One such hotel has a pathetic interest, in that it still contains the remains of the furniture and fittings with which it was equipped before the great exodus took place, A grand piano, decrepit and dismantled, retains pride of place in tile main dancing hall and the few remaining strings still give out a tinkle. To visit Charleston now is indeed a melancholy experience. It is a city of tile dead, a new Pompeii. Near Charleston exists a big deposit of surface-lying lignite, which it is proposed should be developed To do this it will be necessary to construct a nine mile length of railway to connect up with the Westport Harbour Board’s line* from the town to the quarry at Cape Foulwind, in order to provide transport for the coal. The present road is very steep in places, which makes it unsuitable f«r motor transport.