THE ORONGO ESTATE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4494, 20 November 1922, Page 2

THE ORONGO ESTATE.

FIGHTING THE FESCUE. SOLDIERS’ SENTIMENTS. Though the Orongo Estate, wnich is on the north-western extremity cf the Hauraki Plains, is a highly productive and valuable piece of land, the soldier settlers are finding that their greatest enemy in the proper working of the land, is l the tall fescue. Some of the settlers have handled the fescue fairly successfully, but there are others less fortunate, and one, Mr C. J. Dean, has expressed the soldier settlers’ sentiments in verse as follows : THE TALL FESCUE. We have fought on many battlefields, In France, and Belgium, top. We chased the Turks', to Gbd knows where, With our famous billet doux. We cams back to fair New Zealand, But this I’ll tell to you, We are beaten to a standstill By this cursed tall fescue.

We have cut it, we have burnt it; We have ploughed it, we have sworn;

We have cursed the man who sowed it, And the day that he was born. We have battled with life’s many storms, And-haVe always said "Hurop,” But this here pest has got us down — This cursed tall fescue.

They call us soldier settlers, And we are settled night enough . We have sweated, we have laboured, With this rotten cursed stuff. Would some kind friend come forward With a purse about ten miles long, And help us win this fescue, • That ,we have battled with iso tong.

Our rent is due, but h’ow to pay— God only knows we cannot see our way. Our landlord seems quite motherly, But for how long we cannot say. We will battle with this fescue As we battled with our foes, And perhaps gbpd luck will stand to us, In Orongo, where this' cursed fescue grows.

We have- fought for right and liberty ; We have fought, and we have bled ; We have left the many, battlefields, Covered with our dearest dead. Sb if we fall in this great fight— That's the last thing we will do— The world will raise a monument, To the boys of the “Tall Fescue,”