HAWERA.

Patea Mail, 23 September 1880, Page 3

HAWERA.

[from our correspondent.)

BRANCH OFFICE OF TUB MAIL, Wednesday Evening. Early this week nice showers visited us, and the grass can almost be seen growing. The paddocks in the farms look magnificent, and should give confidence to strangers that the reports they have heard regarding this district have not been exaggerated. The Waimate Plains are no doubt good, but it is a question whether many people will not find it cheaper to buy improved farms ere this sale comes off. Supposing, for instance, a party gives, say, £6 to £7 for the unimproved plains : by the time he has cleared, sown, fenced, and subdivided, and also built, he will find his purchase amounting to something like £ls per acre, not taking into account the loss of time and invested capital.

Mr Finnerty has been ordered to Opunaki, to re-survey the township and make valuations of the buildings. This looks as if the Government intend to sell that rauch-thought-of township, No doubt Opunaki naturally is a very good site for a township, but unfortunately for the place it has no land about it other than Maori reserves. Anyone looking at the report of the commission will sec that nearly the whole of the land from Tangatara to Stoney River is set apart as native reserves.

A vciy sudden death occurred at Normanby on Sunday night. Mr Coll McDonald, who has not been well of late, retired to bed early in the evening, and was found in the morning dead. An inquest was to be held.