The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE FRIDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1916. MAIL COMMUNICATIONS

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 210, 13 October 1916, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1916. MAIL COMMUNICATIONS

(With which is incorporated The Tai hap» Post and Waimarino News.)

A lamentable incident occurred at the commencement of this week which indicates the almost entire isolation of settlers in an old settled district only a few miles from Taihape, once more calls onr attention to the extreme need there is for the Government to review and remodel its system of providing communication. So that there may be no misapprehension about what, is being discussed, we may mention that a settler on the Koelce Eoad, who lives just fourteen miles from Taihape, ranoup this office and said a neighbour, who lived nearly opposite to him had a telegram despatched from Palmcrston North advising that his mother had died. This telegram was handed in on Saturday, and it is understood it went some way towards its destination on that day, but it was the following Tuesday when the case was being related to us, and the telegram had not been delivered then. The harrowing fact is that this man's mother had died and been buried before the intelligence of what was happening could be conveyed to him, and yet he lives in a district that has been settled for twenty years, and is only fourteen miles from Taihape, For twenty years men and their families have been in semi-exile in what might be Siberia for all the means the Government have instituted for enabling what is going on in the outside world to be communicated to them, and they are only fourteen miles from Taihape; for twenty years these men have paid taxes to provide conveniences and luxuries for other, districts and still all they hold dear on earth may be dead and buried before they can be made

aware of what is happening to-day. There being no response to the telegram that had been which was, we understand, lying at Mataroa, a few miles distant, a neighbour of the bereaved settler was rung up and asked to convey the sad intelligence, but the man 's mother had in the meantime been buried —and all this happens only fourteen miles from Taihape, and less than half that distance from a telegraph office- Those settlers are just as much isolated from territory only a few miles from them as they arc from Palmerston. A well-known, highly-respected, exceedingly popular and beloved settler passed away in Taihape on Saturday, but the fact could not be communicated to these Koeke Road settlers, and the result was that most intimate friends of the deceased were not able to pay their last respects to their departed friend. Now, there is another aspect that affects the commercial well-being of the settlers on this road and the surrounding country, which we trust will be taken up by the Farmers' Union, as it seriously affects some of their members, and to some extent most farmers in the Taihape territory. It is as well we should understand that the Koeke district was taken up, some twenty years ago men went into the dense, heavy virgin bush, and they commenced hewing it down, with the result that the whole country is now luxuriantly grassed rolling downs, we believe, second to none in New Zealand. The extraordinary fact is that the Government of twenty years ago gave these pioneers just a precisely similar mail service thea as the Government of the present is giving them to-day. After twenty years of converting virgin bush into the richest of pasture, and paying in the meantime thousands of pounds by way of taxation into the public exchequer, it is singular, to say the least, that the authorities are still under the impression that these men are not entitled to. and the huge producing capacity of their, land does not warrant, the extension of reasonable communications. It affects the farming community as a whole, as these men have to guess when a stock sale is taking place,, unless they are more than ordinarily anxious to know, and they go to someone who has a telephone and ring up one or othen of the stock auctioneers. Stock sales are not notified for a sufficient length of time to enable these men to know what is being offered at sales, therefore they rarely trouble to attend them, owing to getting mails and newspapers only twice a week. What is worse, it leaves them an easy prey to the Meat Trust men who have been scouring the district and buying up all they can lay hands on. We urge on the authorities the real necessity that exists for reconsideration of mail services, not only in the Koeke distract, but also in other districts only a very few miles from the town of Taihape. The Chamber of Commerce and the Farmers' Union might ascertain when tiro Hon Mr Fraser, Minister of Public Works, is likely to be in Taihape,, and then arrange for deputations on matters of greatest urgency. The Minister will be in Wanganui on Monday morning, a communication from Taihape should be awaiting him to learn when Taihape would be visited, as lie leaves Wanganui on Monday afternoon fon the 'Main Trunk. The lion. Mr Fraser is being deputationised at most other towns in his line of travel, and it seems a rare opportunity will be given for Taihape to thresh out with a Minister its most urgent needs.