FEARS OF AUSTRALIA

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 306, 17 March 1928, Page 12

FEARS OF AUSTRALIA

“SNAKES AND CANNIBALS” IDEAS FROM POLAND “My wife,” said a petitioner in the Divorce Court recently, says the fcvdney “Sun,” “told me that she wouldn t leave Poland because she had been told that in Australia there were only blacks, snakes and cannibals.” (Laughter.) Mr. Justice Owen (smiling): Say that again! Joseph Martin Slupinsky, a Pole, was the petitioner before the Judge in Divorce, Mr. Justice Owen, and his evidence was given through an interpreter. He alleged that his wife. Michaelina Slupinsky, had deserted him. Slupinsky, in answer to Mr. Dare, said he was married in Saxony on June 26. 1910. “I wrote to my wife,” added Slupinsky, “and said: ‘You’re wrong, dear wife, there’s nice people in Australia. It is a nice place. I like it. and you would like it. You are wrong about snakes, blacks and cannibals. 1 have not seen them.’ ” (Laughter.) Slupinsky said he continued to write to his wife asking her to leave Poland for Australia. He received in reply letters in which she spoke of “frogs,” “dogs” and “freedom,” and said that she prized her freedom too much to again live as she had lived before. The Judge said that in the peculiar circumstances of the case he required reasonable corroboration of petitioner’s story of his wife having deserted him, and would direct that the suit stand over generally for such corroboration. “I have never given my wife cause to leave me,” continued Slupinsky. “My wife’s suggestions against me are untrue. I have never ill-treated her.” “Don’t Want Siberia!” In a letter from London, dated December 19, 1914, the -wife, stated: * . . . I do not want to live a life with you as if I were in Siberia. . . . I want to live with you in a proper wf"- but I want some freedom —you loved brandy and beer, and not your wife. . . . You liked parties and restaurants. “ . . . I don’t want to be tormented as if I -were a dog and you the master. . . .” Mr. Justice Owen said that the wife had made allegations against the petitioner that he was responsible for the separation and not she. •Mr. Dare submitted that, seeing that the petitioner had denied on oath his wife’s allegations against him, it was competent for the Court to pronounce a decree nisi. Her charges were fantastic. She referred in her letters to tho "life of a frog and a snake within prison walls.”