THE NORTHERN TERRITORY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1445, 11 September 1915, Page 2

THE NORTHERN TERRITORY.

TETTER FRCM-JMR. R- Q. perreai& The following letter has\^ en received from Mr Robert G. reau (brother ot Mr M. Perreauy—

of Foxton), trom Stapleton, Northern Territory of Australia, under date June 26th : “While I was living in Tokomaru, New Zealand, I was granted a block of 1,616 acres of land by the Australian Government in the Northern Territory. I have since been granted an additional area in an adjoining block, I have now been in the Northern Territory ot Australia eighteen months, and I think that I am entitled to claim that I have formed a reliable opinion as regards the laud, climate, and general surroundings and prospects afforded to settlers. I left New Zealand with my wife and family in November, 1913, and we landed at Darwin on the 14th December of that year. A few days later I proceeded to Stapleton, which is situated 70 miles inland on the Darwin to Pine Creek railway line. I rode from Stapleton to my block, which is eight miles from the Stapleton railway siding. I inspected the land and found it to be open forest country of an easy undulating character, with extensive open flats of good rich soil, which are heavily grassed. It is permanently watered with clean, good water in a number of lagoons, and a permanent branch of the Finnis river traverses the block. There are a large number of similar blocks here which are still open for selection. I brought ray wife and latnily out to the land shortly alter New Year, 1914, m midsummer, 1 which is the wet season. 1 set to work and fenced in 100 acres and felled So acres of timber, and sub-

divided tlie laud iuto three paddocks. The Government has advanced me fencing material and sufficient building material to build a good large house, out-, buildings and cow sheds. They have also advanced 18 milking cows, 50 goats, 3 good horses, 7 splendid pigs, and farm implements. The stock are all doing remarkably well. I atm satisfied that the land is good, and will grow almost anything that is put in it. I have twelve acres under cultivation, including two acres of sweet potatoes, two acres of cow peas, three acres of water melons and pumpkins, 200 pine apples, and 300 mixed Iruit trees. The latter are oranges, mangos, lemons, bananas, and cocoauuts, all of which are doing well. There is a good market here for all farm produce. It is now winter in the Northern Territory, and the weather is cold. We have a long, dry winter, without any rain whatever. We claim New Zealand to be God’s own country, and it may be, but the Northern Territory can rightly be claimed to have God's own climate. It is a heaUhy country to live in, and pests are surprisingly few. Not one member of our young family, consisting of seven girls and two boys, under the age of thirteen years, has had a day’s illness since arrival. The children have thrived and grown beyond all belief. Bird life here is plentiful, and grand live fowl is to be bad at times. There are turkeys, geese, wallabies, kangaroos, pigs and buffalo. The advantages offering in the Northern Territory to the bona fide farmer ate not properly known to people in New Zealand. A settler gets land free (not even the survey is charged for), and he gets extensive Government assistance. I am convinced that the settler’s task here is a simple one as compared with that of the New Zealand pioneer of the early days. The latter had then, In the fullest sense of the phrase, to “paddle his own canoe.’ ”