CHATS WITH THE FARMERS.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 997, 10 November 1881, Page 4

CHATS WITH THE FARMERS.

The Mataura District. To a very large proportion of the inhabitants of Otago, the Mataura district—l mean that district between Wyndham and the sea, with the Mataura on the right and the Tautuku bush on the left is terra incognita. It cannot be seen from the railway, it is not easily reached from the sea, and the road through it leads to no place where anybody particularly wants to go. Hence like those wild districts of the far interior which “ the white man’s foot has never trod,” it has been till very lately a region of fable. Its climate is popularly supposed to be cold and wet, and its soil swampy. It presents no inviting aspect to the imagination of settlers in more favored parts of the country, and I confess I started off on a visit to it with no great expectations of seeing anything particularly worth seeing. Starting from Edendale, one has to travel in a box upon w'heels euphemistically termed a coach, a vehicle in which one cannot sit upright with one’s hat on. By a comparatively level road across a dreary flat, with dreary-look-ing hills in front, a four miles’ drive brought us to Wyndhant, a little township with perhaps two or three hundred inhabitants, built entirely of wood, and with Do feature to make it specially noticeable in any way. Bu.t getting a trap to pursue my journey of eighteen miles seaward, I very soon found a striking change of scene after leaving Wyndham. On the left are high wooded hills, on one of which is the homestead of Dr. Menzies’ station, and crossing the Wyndham Eiver we came upon one of the prettiest nooks in . Otago. The sparkling, brawling stream —a splendid trout stream by-the-bye—is at the foot of a finely wooded slope on the right. Mr. D. Doull’s farm of about 200 acres, backed by bush and with some splendidly grassed paddocks in front, at once attracted my attention. It had about it an air of fertility and prosperity that I soon found was a characteristic of the district. The road is a very undulating one, and as some of the settlers told me, very badly laid out, as much better gradients might have been obtained by skirting some of the hills instead of running over the top of the ridges. I was also reminded forcibly of the fact that good soil makes bad roads. The soil was evidently magnificent, but the road in places so bad that it had to be mended temporarily with flax to fill up the big ruts. However, it is being metalled by degrees, and will soon be a fair road. I judged by the look of it that the climate is moister than some parts of Otago, and that the traffic had been far greater during the winter than 1 should at all have expected. The distance from Edendale to Fortrose is about 25 miles, and a branch railway has been formed for about four miles of this distance and laid off for several miles further. If it were carried about 18 or 20 miles it would practically open up a district of something like 25 by 10 miles, equal to 250 square miles, containing what I now firmly believe to be some of the very best land in Otago, of which more anon. I was surprised to hear the number of settlers who possessed and were cultivating land in the district in farms of 200 to 500 acres. Then another class own blocks, as yet only partly cultivated, of from 1000 to 4000 acres, and there are, besides, three or four owners of from 10,000 to 12,000 acres —Mr. Preston, Tapper and Carmichael, and Cargill and Anderson. The Glenham and Don estates, owned by the latter, comprise 12,000 acres of freehold, and there is a 7000-acre education reserve situated right in the middle of it, leased to the same parties, but of little use without cultivation, as it is thickly covered with fern; it is a fine and valuable block of land however.

The Mataura Ensign says:—“ The Otara block, is attracting a good deal of attention, and it is expected will sell well. Farmers from South Canterbury and other parts of the Colony have lately visited the district in large numbers, and have expressed themselves as highly pleased with the richness of the soil.”