CORRESPONDENCE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 460, 1 June 1909, Page 3

CORRESPONDENCE.

pro the editor.] Sir, —In your issue of Thursday last, I read with a good deal of amusement Mr Philip Hennessy’s description of Brisbane. This city is the first and last port of call for the boats of the AustraliaVancouver mail service. As I lived in that city for some years, I may speak with perhaps a little more authority than our worthy townsman, who, by his own showing, only took “a walk” along the river bank at six o’clock in the morning, at a place nine miles from the city. Had Mr Hennessy spent the necessary fourpence, he could have ridden on the finest elecric tram service in the Southern Hemisphere—for such is the expert tramway specialist’s opinion of the Brisbane tramway system—which would have taken him into the heart of the city. Ido not care if anyone should express an adverse opinion of Brisbane, but for any person to take “a walk” nine miles from the city, and then to pass an opinion upon the harbour, land, the stock, the railways, the buildings, and the people, is beyond my comprehension. And if this is the manner in which Mr Hennessy is to gain information, I am afraid it will be of little value. Will you kindly permit me to state one or two facts in relation to Brisbane. As a port, it is visited by the R.M. Steamers of the Orient, and P. and 0.-vessels that are regarded as the finest sailing south of the equator. These vessels come right up to, and lie alongside the Pinkenba wharves ; it is also the terminus port of the large vessels of the British India Company. The Tyser, Shaw Saville, and other large liners berth at the wharves regularly. The land near the railway that Mr Hennessy inspected and criticised, is for the greater part of the distance reclaimed land from the spoil of the river and harbour works. The railway rolling stock he saw are the old obsolete carriages that are run down to the wharves for the accommodation of the wharf lumpers. The line is not a main line, but a branch from the Valley railway to the wharves only. The cars on the main lines are the cars that are now being imitated on the Main Trunk Dine in this Island. The sheep which he despises, top the London market with their wool, and they grow sheep by the million in Queensland, for wool only.—He says the port may be made a good one when population warrants it. The population of Brisbane in a five-mile radius from the General Post Office is over 160,000, the town of Ipswich, further up the river, has a population of 15,000, Toowoomba, 75 miles further on, a population of 30,000, and beyond that lies the great Darling Down; Brisbane is the port for considerably over 300,000 of a population. The buildings of the city compare favourably with those of either Sydney or Melbourne, while its streets are wider, and kept spotlessly clean, in this contrasting strangely with the Sydney thoroughfares—a point thakMr Hennessy probably would not observe. Queen Street and its continuation, Wickham Street, in Fortitude Valley, runs in a continuous line of immense buildings—business houses, banks, and public buildings —for a distance of over two miles. Mr Hennessy states : “ There does not seem to be any move|in the place.” Of course, we can quite understand Brisbane looking small, and insignificant, and slow, to anyone who has lived so long in Foxton ; at the same time, it shows a good deal for the enterprise of those who have accomplished what they have done during the last 30 years or so that the city has taken to grow. —Yours etc., Geo. K. Aitken.