A BLACK CHRISTMAS.

Taranaki Daily News, 9 January 1917, Page 6

A BLACK CHRISTMAS.

> REMARKABLE STORMS. ' N.S.W. COUNTRY DISTRICTS SUFFER HEAVILY. Christmas, 1010, will be long remembered ««s* the darkest in the history of MiUthorpe and district, says the Sydney Daily Telegraph. The scene of destruction upon which Christmas morning broke saddened the hearts of all. 1 lie fury of the stonn which broke over the district on the previous evening was fully revealed, both in Dig town and district, and ruin stared many in the face. Never before has anything approaching such a storm been experienced. The heat on Sunday morning was most oppressive. About 3 p.m. storm clouds gathered in the. south .and northwest—dense banks of black, illuminated every few minutes by vivid flashes of lightning, the tail* becoming more oppressive and heavily laden with dust. The sky presented a weird, awesome appearance, the clouds gathering in force and travelling rapidly towards each other.

Suddenly-—it seemed with a terrific impact—the two- banks of cloud met directly overhead of 'the town, and the fury of tilt storm descended. Ra.a deluged the whole district, and was accompanied by hail, which wrought havoc beyond conception. The lumps of ice, some oval, other? jagged lumps two inches square, cut and lashed everything within reach. Windows were smashed in every" building in the town, roofs penetrated by the hail, and water and mud raced through houses and business places as if one vied with the other in the awful errand of destruction. Though the town suffered considerable damage, the havoc wrought on the farms cast a gloom over everything. The district, which the week before was covered with a glory of waving, ripe grain crops five feet and six feet high, presents now a picture of desolation. Not a straw stands within the area touched by the hailstorm—thousands of acres were threshed by the awful j scourge, and lay battered'into the mud, ' bearing no vestige of resemblance to the crops of an hour previous. The season altogether had been a most trying- one to the farmers; the unusually wet spring months delayed the harvest, which in ordinary seasons is practically all cut by Christmas. This year, however, the ground was so wet that reapers.and horses bogged whenever an attempt was made to commence cutting, ancl thus only a very small quantity has been gathered within the past fortnight, which was fine. Now the harvest is over One and a-half hours' storm has in its fury reaped the whole acreage, with, alas! the result that, for the unfortunate farmers, the year's work stands for nothing. The orchard-owners, too, fared badly, the splendid orchards of apples, nears, plums, and quinces, which gave, promise of a good reward to the owners, sta«d to-day bereft of every vestige of fruit and foliage, besides, in many cases, leaving the trees considerably damaged, the bark being stripped and hacked by the force of the hailstones.

Various estimates of the damage have been made, but it is quite impossible to give an exact total yet. However, all agree that it is quite over i £150.000. and that is calculated on n moderate valuation of the crops only. The damage done by the floods is also very serious —miles of fencing Jiavc been washed away and streets and roads damaged to such an extent that several hundreds of pounds will be required to repair them. The force and density of the hailstorm can be gleaned from the fact that inany places were heaped when the storm abated to a depth of four feet, and even yesterday, in tile cellars of some of the hotels, there were heaps of ice four foot deep still unraelted.