UPPER WAITAKI.

Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 988, 19 June 1879, Page 2

UPPER WAITAKI.

[FROM Oi'iH OWN CORRESPONDENT.J One who has not beep up the Waitaki for the twelve months would be surprised at the ohanges that have .taken place. Duntroon can now boast of a schoolhouse and Post and Telegraph Office, and many other improvements. The railway to the Kurrow is getting on very slowly ; no doubt it will be finished by 1889. The Kurow bridge is not yet over the first stream. Why this bridge is being built on piles I do not know, but I think there will be plenty of time fop the floods to try it before it is finished. The Kurow township is very like Duntroon was three years ago—hotel and Post Office, blacksmith's shop, and about half-a-dozen neat little houses The new punt at the ferry is a great improvement on the old one that was washed away at the last floods. Loaded waggons can now be crossed comfortably, which must be a,

great convenience to the farmers on the Canterbury side, who have been crossing three and four waggons loaded with wheat daily for the last three weeks or more. The grain is then reloaded by carriers on this side, taken to Duntroon, and thence on by rail.

I saw some oats tho 'other day, frown on the Hakateramea, and although, plenty of seconds in them, they were good, clean feed oats and would average from four and a half to five bushels to the bag. The Maoris are still on the Omarania • and are likely to' remain ; they say the land is theirs, and they seem determined to stick to it. They appear to be very happy, comfortable, quiet and temperate and, from what I hear from those who have dealings with them, honest. One of them told me the other day when I was going to Omarama that their crop of ■ iatoes was very small. They have some I Ally good horses, waggons, drays, ami spring carts, and judging from the loads j they take to their camp they don't starve starve themselves.

Very few will be sorry to hear that at last there is ail hotel at Omarama, and the present shanty will soon be a thing of the past. The new building is a tine hotel for such a place, and I should say it cost about L2OOO, or within L2OO of that amount. Mi-. D. Sutherland has got tho license, and the house, I believe, will be opened in two or three weeks, if not before. Then one may expect to sleep as comfortable in Omarama as in Oamaru.