OTOROHANGA.

King Country Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 264, 1 June 1910, Page 2

OTOROHANGA.

Its Needs and Grievances. (Special Representative.) I am more and more astonished at the progress of Otorohanga and its district every visit I pay to that pleasantly-situated township. On a recent visit I was taken, something after the fashion referred to in the Bible, to the top of a high hill, and there shown, not all the kingdoms ofc the earth, but certainly all the country that falls into the region, lying in that particular part of the Waipa basin. The township showed flat and reguliar in appearance, and it needed no sppcial eye to see that a very small expenditure of money would provide good roads the year round. As it is, without having power to raiso imoncy in any way, the property Lwners and residents in the township ■have banded their funds voluntarily together for the purpose of improving the footpaths and putting gravel on them. Quito a long stretch of the principal streets have been so dealt with, and now, winter or summer, wet or fine, a woman can go dryshod from her home to the store. There are boroughs I know of that quite envy this pleasant condition of thing*. But Otorohanga has grievances, all the same. Wherever I turned 1 was met by the question: "When are wo to get a better train service?" The position seems to be that, while it is possible to take train to Hamilton, or even Auckland, and return the same day, there are absolutely no facilities for visiting Te Kuiti or Taumarunui and returning the same evening. The footballers can get a carriage put on to the goods train and this very day have done so, and are thug able to get home to-night. But ordinary commercial men are debarred from doing any business in Te Kuiti, if they wish to go home that evening. Another grave grievance is the saleyards question. A company has been formed: 110 shares have been taken up of .£5 each with £2 paid: the Natives are perfectly agreeable to sell the land, some 4£ acres, which the company wish to acquire in the township. But, unfortunately, while, as the poet puts it, " freedom broadens slowly down from precedent to precedent," permission to acquire the freehold of this site in a Native township is refused, because "it might estabiish a precedent." Yet such a precedent exists in what was done at Te Kuiti. The freehold, I am credibly informed, was granted in connection with the site of a butcher's show in the borough. An illustration of how the lack of these facilities injures Otorohanga came to my notice when at lunch in the fine well-appointed boarding house recently taken over by Mr Kerr. My neighbour has a section about ten miles out on the Kihikihi road, and though Te Awamutu is fifteen miles further on he is compelled to take his stock all that distance simply because Otorohanga cannot establish naleyards. lie gets his stores and supplies from Otorohanga and would make it his centre in all things if he could.

At present a movement is on foot to get the Native township put into effective operation through the election of a town board. The local branch of the New Zealand Farmers' Union has written the president of tho Maori Land Board, asking that this should be done, but now a petition is being formally prepared which it is believed will result in the board being established. It will not have largo borrowing powers —some ,£;>00 a year is the limit, I am informed —but that is all that is wanted meanwhile. In another year's time a large number of five years' leases will fall in, and these are already cut up for sub-division into half-acre and acre sections. Otorohanga has a bright fuLure before it and once these special difficulties are solved will rapidly forge ahead.