AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

Hokitika Guardian, 6 August 1928, Page 3

AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

Australian Press Assn.—United Service MURDER CHARGE. BRISBANE, August 5. James Frank has been charged with the murder of the unknown man cabled yesterday. SYDNEY PROPERTY SALE. SYDNEY, July 26. Property in Pitt Street, Sydney’s busiest thoroughfare, changed hands at £4OOO a foot a week or two ago. Sydney is wondering just where and when these soaring prices will end. A decade ago, £IOOO a foot would have been regarded as a fictitious valuation. Three or four years ago, even land in thoroughfares like Phillip and Macquarie streets, the homes of the legal and medical professions, would have sold readily for £2OO a foot. The phenomenal rise which is illustrated effectively in the Pitt Street deal is manifest all over the city. In October, 1926, for example, a well-known hotel in Wynyard Square, the proposed site of one of the big underground railway stations, changed hands for £70,000 Last January it again changed hands for £103,500. The story of Pitt street is one of the most fascinating in the history of Sydney. It was not very fax from where the property has just changed hands at £IOOO a foot- that Farmer’s, one of Australia’s biggest emporiums, was established in 1840 with twenty hands, in premises occupying a space of 24ft by 75ft. It was in this street, too, that Australia’s oldest afternoon paper once had a dovecot out. side its office for pigeons which carried on a very useful news carriei' service, it was these winged messengers on one occasion which brought to the newspaper office the result of the worldsculling championship on the Parramatta river. In Pitt street also i\as one of the principal bakeries in the good old days when, bread cost 5s for a 21b loaf. 0 tempora, O mores. Times and manners have indeed changed.

LIQUOR CAMPAIGN. SYDNEY, July 26. The prohibition campaign is now in full swing, not only throughout tho whole of “wet” New South Vales, hut also in the “dry” Federal Capital territory. The anti-prohibitionists are in full cry after their natural enemies. Throughout tlie State posters and other signs are eloquent witness to the intensive campaign of the “wets.” The question, What will happen if the Federal Capital goes "wet,” which it is almost certain to do, and New South Wales goes ’’dry,” has given a piquant touch to tho campaign since Canberra is in what was originally New South Wales territory. If this position ishould arise although it is hardly likely to do so, as far as the New South Wales purely State vote is concerned, one can picturo Canberra leaning into unprecedented popularity as a week-end and tourist resort. A remarkable change will certainly he wrought at Canberra if the “wets ’ win the day in that now totally “dry” territory, "for the customary practice at present is to make a trek from there whenever the opportunity offers to the nearest New South Wales town, Queanbeynn, only a few miles off. The position is a. farce, but is almost certain to be altered when the peoplo of Canberra make articulate their views through the ballot box.