TRIBULATIONS OF PLAINS SETTLERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 21, 16 April 1927, Page 7

TRIBULATIONS OF PLAINS SETTLERS

HAURAKI SIDELIGHTS (THE SUN’S Special ' Representative) By the time the Ministers of Lands and Public W’orks. Hons. A. D. McLeod and K. S. Williams, had completed their Hauraki Plains tour late on Thursday night, they had seen a crosssection of the lives of the Plains people. In drainage matters their final conclusions will not be reached until they have conferred with the engineers. Foreshadowed, however, is a system of unified control, to adjust differences about the various drainage systems, and handle the policy of the Plains drainage as a whole. The Minister of Lands declined to be convinced that the opening up for settlement of a 2,000-acre block at Kereppehi is yet desirable. On the advice of his engineers he told settlers that the land is not yet fit forearming. The spread of blackberry on both private and Crown lands is causing some concern. Settlers asked the Ministers to enforce eradication. Mr. McLeod, at Patetonga: The load for further development may be too heavy for the public to bear. If thousands of acres can be saved from flooding. it may be worth while, but where only hundreds are concerned it is a doubtful economic proposition. A Kaihere settler: If you gave me a new section I would milk the cows up against a fence, and erect a tent, as I did when I came here first. * * * Another settler, also at Kaihere: We, as well as the Government, have done our good money. And we have done seven years of our lives as well. * * * Mr. McLeod, at Kaihere: Public opinion and pressure over-rode the opinion of the drainage engineers once before. I won’t let that crime happen asain - Many of the deputations which waited on the Ministers placed reading matters before them. Many of the Hauraki roads are unmetalled. Those that are metalled have a peculiar reddish colour, owing to the use of metal from McCallum's Island, in the Hauraki Gulf. During the tour the# Minister of Public Works promised to assist the Piako and Hauraki Plains County Councils as far as he could with their roads. Mr. A. M. Samuel, M.P., at Patetonga: A man without an access road to a main road is like a starving man looking at a good meal on the other side of a flooded river. * * * Mr. Williams: I do not favour perfection in main roads at the expense of settlers’ access roads. A main road is no use unless there is access to it. On the tour the Ministers were accompanied all the way or part of the way by Messrs. A. M. Samuel. M.P. for Oliinemuri: T. W. Rhodes, M.P. for Thames: E. L. Walton, chairman of the Hauraki Plains County Council: and T. Lowry, chairman of the Piako County Council, all of whom gave them valuable assistance.