Country News.

Southern Cross, Volume 1, Issue 8, 20 May 1893, Page 5

Country News.

OREPUKI. The long spell of dry weather has at last broken up, and as a consequence of the welcome change the miners are all at work again. The threshing, machine is here just now, but I am informed that the yield is not up to expectations. The Rev. Mr Christian, of Riverton, paid Orepuki a visit last Sunday, making the journey on horseback in torrents of rain. He held service in Sorensen’s hall, but owing to the wet night and some mistake about the time, the attendance was very small. We have had quite a storm in a teacup about the selling of the land between here and Riverton. The Land Board seems anxious to get the land settled, and seems to think that the objections of the miners should have no weight with them. We held a meeting to consider the matter, and sent a deputation to wait on Mr Warden Rawson, asking him to advise the retention of the land in the goldfields. One of the members of the Board says that miners are a conservative body of men, and so they are, and so should be the members of the Land Board, whose aim should be to conserve the land for the benefit of' the whole colony, and not to part with large blocks of valuable timbered land, to which ere long the colony will have to look for railway sleepers, &c. Disposing of the land means destroying the timber, or else hanging on to the land till some sawmiller offers more than the original cost of a section for the privilege of cutting the timber on it. Let the sawmillers go through the land and sell it. Sawyers and miners can work together in perfect harmony. May 10th.