Tongaporutu.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXXXV, Issue 260, 2 December 1903, Page 2

Tongaporutu.

Some two months * committee was fqnwd—t'he Torogaporutu MuHU'gung' Committee—to ail details in connection with the licgutta of 1904. A meeting was convened by Mr R. O'Domnell on Sunday—all meetings are held here on Sunday—Nov. 22, and another committee formed with the same object in view. How the two will arrange matters time will determine. The lirst named hold the key of the position the purse, contftjmng some £lO from last yptu\ lheiG wjlj he a great ba£helors' !>all m the Uruti Hall on Dec. 4 and a cricket match will be played the same day between Tongaporotu and Uruti on the latter's ground If Uruti can play at all they will beat those from the north side of jfjunt Messenger, who know nothing o* the game.

In allotting' money for public works the Minister has set apart the huge sum of £l5O for the Okau or Upper Tongaporutu Road—£lsoo wo'J Id have been u very modest sum. In recommending Whangamoinonu as a pioneer bush settlement for tourists he should not have omitted Okau. This settlement' was allotted to settlers some ten years ago on the improved farm settlement system. They got very little work, no road, and bad sections. Some four years ago they got a 6ft track, and it is likely to remain so ; £l5O will not clear the slips off it. Gangs of surveyors have been surveying there for years. A good many blocks' hiavo boon taken up, and they aro to gvt a century and a-half spent upon their rouid. They have rent to pay, improvements to make, and food to carry on their backs. They make nothing out ot stock—the mortality is too great; swamps, creeks, and logs are fatal to them. A settler is lucky indeed if after Keeping stqck two years he gets what lie paid. One settler was offered a price for stock which he refused. He kept them for six months longer and sold them for £l./ less than he was previously offered. The cattle had improved prices had improved, but the number had decreased. The wave of prosper- ? h'teii lias overtaken other parts at T aranaki has kept clear of Okau. Ihe laud is not good, but the chief cause is the bad roads, or I should say mud-holes. A _ Cft-track is nothing but a puddle, and a 12ft without drainage is just as bad. The thirds accruing from the land are not even spent upon the tracks • still, as the Hon. Hall-Jones says,' it might interest tourists.