TRIALS OF THE BACKBLOCKS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 53, 23 July 1914, Page 6

TRIALS OF THE BACKBLOCKS

[ NEED FOR. GOVERNMENT HELP. (Lyttelton Tjmes.) The story of backblooks heroism and •backblocks roads told in a New Plymouth telegram in Saturday's issue is a familiar tale, but those upon whose ears such a story should fall with particular emphasis seem to lie deaf to the (■distant and pitiful appeals of'the man in the Inisli. The plucky men who strug."led in with their injured comrade from far up the Mokau river, a journey so prolonged by shockingly bad 'roads that they were too late to save the wounded man's foot from amputation, might well curse the roads, but thev might also with justice extend their heartiest maledictions to the Government which leaves the bush worker in sucli a plight. Again and again then" comes the same narrative, from the newly-born country oi the north, a settler, or a bush feller hurt by a falling tree or by some other everyday accident of back-country life, then the long and toilsome march of the stouthearted mates carrying the sufferer on a roughly constructed litter of po!"s and blanket, over ranges, and through <. ' ■.-, along the most primitive of bush ii'.vi.s and along roads which are simply channels of tenacious mud. Sometimes it is a woman, in urgent need of doctor or hospital, and the sufferings in her case, as may he imagined, are tenfold worse.

The inevitable roughness of such a journey, however tenderly tin; -bearers may handle their charges, is as often as not fatal to the broken man or woman of the bush, and many a valley of the King Country, am! North Taraiiaki and AVanganui countr. holds the grave of a pioneer settler or his wife or some Unconsidered sawyer or lm-.lifeller whose life would have been saved but for these roads. "Curse the roads!" is the crv of hundreds of settlers in the north. The roads as they know tin in are popularly called "pig tracks." a too-flattering title, perhaps, for the twenty-five mile thoroughfare from Mokau heads southwards which took last week's party ten hours to traverse. "Roads—give lis decent roads!" is the never-ending appeal of the new settler, a cry to which any Government worthy of the name should give immediate sympathetic response, f During the last two or three years many si ores of new settlers have taken up sections in the rough parts of the fsland. and in practiaclly .every part the tracks and roads given them are almost impassable in winter, and even in summer are often scandalously bad. The members of the Government, and particularly the head of the Government, are fond of talking in fond and generous terms about the '"backbone of the country." which they profess to have under their special care. Unfortunately, the backbone in the Dominion does not get much attention except at election time, and too often it goes Under in the struggle for bare existence. And more than backs are broken. The" saddening story of the woman who died when she was informed by the doctors that she was well enough to leave the hospital to return to her home in the bush should not soon be forgotten. The prospect of returning to the unroaded desolations out-hack simply broke her heart, and even the doctor could not think of a move scientific and less direct name for it. Meanwhile, the Government takes very great care of that privileged section of the "backbone" which owns its ten or twenty or fifty thousand acres if fat land in the well-roaded and railwayed plains of Hawkc's ]!ay and the YVairarapa and the Mauawatu and many other parts where the wool-king reigns. These fortunate gentlemen indeed are the root of the whole matter. They are fortilied in their strongholds of many acres by the Government which went ir on the cry of •'settlement, more settlement, anil still more settlement.'The poor' man and even the man who cannot even he called poor but who cannot afford to buy out a sheep-baron <|uickl\- discover that the line open lands arc not for them. The big limber out back from Tauniaruiiui and the Mokau is their portion, and their road, if any. is a sixfont puck track. A fifty-thousand acre of sheep run of tl pen country would probably support a hundred families now pent in between the gloomy ranges. Bui the goodly plains are not for the land-hungrv home-seeker. They are sacrosanct'to the gentlemen who put Mr Ma-sey into ollice and would haul him out without much ceremony if lie were suddenly and niira-ulouslv to conceive the revolutionary idea that the land is the r o;de"s..