“GOT NO MONEY”

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 37, 6 May 1927, Page 1

“GOT NO MONEY”

GUM-DIGGER’S LAMENT S.M. TREATS HIM LIGHTLY “I got no money. It takes a man all his time to-day to live on the price of gum, let alone pay fines.” With an air cf “put that in your pipe and smoke it,” John Robertson, an elderly man. leaned back laconically against the outside of the dock rail in the Police Court this morning, and delivered this lament to the bench. He had just been convicted of lighting a fire “whereby forest produce, to wit, raupo, manuka and fern, were burnt,” in the Riverhead plantation area on February 9. There were no trees in the area in question, at the time, it was explained. Senior-Sergeant Edwards told the court that Robertson had blamed two other men for lighting the fire, which he had done apparently to clear the ground to dig gum, but later he was seen stamping the fire out, and then he told the forestry officials that he had lit the fire to boil his billy. “Whatever fine I impose on him, he can’t pay, I suppose,” reflected Mr. F. K. Hunt, S.M. “Convicted and ordered to pay costs. Now don't do that again. I’m letting you off very lightly this time.”