THE MAKERUA SWAMP.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 948, 31 January 1911, Page 4

THE MAKERUA SWAMP.

A correspondent (D. M. O’C.) writing to the Wairarapa Standard in reference to the Makerua Swamp says inter alia: —‘‘The Sieterts’ 4000 acres freehold is the worst part of the swamp, low, and subject to floods. Sielerts’ have nine strippers at work, and are slacking off work, and experimenting on labour saving patents. One to save paddocking, is on the principle of a Chinese laundry, where your shirt is placed in a rack to dry, and comes back smelling as if it had been to Rotorua for a month’s holiday. They will spend on this, with the chance of its being cast out on the scrap heap. Another is some improvement on a scutcher.

‘‘A platelayer’s tale was that the Company was not putting much work out, and that labour would do better than patent machinery. The flaxcutters said they were put at places to work where it was hard to get fibre, and that they were also not pleased with the Company playing with these toys of patents. ‘‘ The swamp is about 12 miles long by four broad, thick with flax. A drain nine miles long, 22ft wide, and Bft deep, runs from Linton to the Mauawatu River. Just now, it burns with a smell of gunpowder, and stale Chinaman’s shop—4ft drains gridiron it. There are about 800 men ditchers, platelayers, flaxcutters, mill hands, and others employed about Shannon in the hemp industry. Saturday is the night on which the town is innundated with the hands, whom a friend describes in uncomplimentary terms. I see only a type, and a manly one, too ; not of the kind described by Scientists as the ” Intermediate Sex.” ‘‘ This is rather a poor account of an immensely rich asset in the way of swamp laud which really should belong to the State.”