A HOLIDAY TRIP.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 988, 6 May 1911, Page 3

A HOLIDAY TRIP.

INTERESTING LETTER FROM NEW ZEALANDER

An ex-Manawatuite who is at present on a holiday trip to Australia, writing to a friend in Foxton, gives some very interesting particulars regarding Western Australia which should be appreciated by our readers. He writes: “I visited the Government Labour Bureau while in Perth and fouud about 100 men gathered in front of the offices, presumably in want ol employment. A large number of vacancies were posted on the notice boards and were scanned in turn by the crowd. The Bureau offered work to 200 or more men. The wageshere are as good, I think, as in any part of the Commonwealth, viz., farm hands 25s to 30s per week and keep, bush work 30s to 35s per week and keep, chaff-cutting 8s per day, grubbing, burning and clearing, all light timber, 30s to 35s per week and keep, or contract, uavyviug 9s to xos per day, timber mills all wages. There is undoubtedly plenty of work in Western Australia. Immigrants are arriving every boat in large numbers, but the majority are not of a suitable class. Yet, beyond a batch of immigrants, only half a-dozen men responded to the work offering at the Bureau. The West seems a harvest for women w orkers; they get from £1 to £2 per week and keep. Out from Perth living is very high. New Zealand, especially in the flax trade, pays the highest wages that 1 know of, but apart from that this State holds its own.” He says that travelling by train in the West is an awe-inspiring experience, so slow, bumpy and dusty. The gauge of the line is 3tt 6in. Speaking of a railway ride from Perth to Kalgoorlie, a distance of almost 400 miles, he says : “On the way old gold fields, long deserted, are passed. —'Cool-, gardie, Southern Cross and Yilgarn and other stretches ot alluvial workings. You see hundreds of holes, close together, with a ring of clay upturned encircling them, suggesting the old rush days, when thousands toiled and sweated there. Tu-day there is a vast loneliness over all. You then wonder what a daring being the old-time prospector was, defiant of thirst, blacks and starvation, lured on by the lust ot gold. Here and there you note, as the trains crawl along, old dry blowers’ tents. They still cling to the ancient Workings and somehow live. Kalgoorlie is a modern town, erected on a red sand plain, joined to Boulder City by tram and train —combined population 30,000. The heat was blistering during my sojourn, the flies in myriads and the red dust covered everything. Work in the mines is paid at the rate of from los to ns per shift aud board and lodgings cost from 25s to 28s per week, washing extra, aud the accommodation is nothing to enthuse over. The wheat country that is being opened for selection around Perth appears to offer excellent chances. The average rainfall is 15 inches.”