SYDNEY CAVE-DWELLERS.
AUSTRALIAN CENSUS INCIDENT. Sydney, April 0. One of the most remarkable of many curious incidents reported in connection with the Australian census, taken on the of April 3, was the gathering of the returns from the Domain dossers in Sydney. The haunt of the dossers is a long, narrow point running out into ’the harbor between Woolloomooloo Bay and Farm Cove. Along its steep sandstone sides are many holes, and here, year in and year out, sleep the dossers, a rock their pillow and a half-dozen newspapers their blankets. At 11.30 on the night of the census a party of collectors, guided by police, set out to get particulars of the dossers. It was a wild night, the rain falling incessantly in sheets. The first catch was an elderly man ly ing under a ledge of rock. He reckoned his years in the country by the various winners of the Melbourne Cup. The next man was in a dry but draughty eyrie under the projecting roof of the Domain baths. In a quavering old voice he told the collector that he had had no work for months. “I am too old,” he said, “and I’ve given up looking for it.” Each jutting rock sheltered a few men, lying asleep in grotesque attitudes. Some’ appeared stupid on being awakened, but they displayed no rancour; their spirit seemed broken. The collectors, standing in the pelting rain under dripping um- r brellas, took down particulars of each man. Three men were found cosily tucked away in a kind of tunnel, running 20ft into the hill. They were very soundly as..=ep, and it was some time before they could be made to understand that a national duty demanded their attention.
_ The most thickly-populated part of the Domain was the broken rdCks on the harrn Cove side of the point, near where the Prince of Wales landed. Here fully forty men were unearthed, and they proved to be all sorts—clerks, laborers seamen, and skilled tradesmen. Most of them declared they were sleeping in the Domain because they could not get work The morning was far advanced before the collectors had finished their task. Altogether about B 0 men were found dossing” The information given the census takers was confidential, but it was learned that the great majority of the aoiaert were born in Ireland, ’
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TDN19210430.2.83
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
Taranaki Daily News, 30 April 1921, Page 10
Word count
Tapeke kupu
391SYDNEY CAVE-DWELLERS. Taranaki Daily News, 30 April 1921, Page 10
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Stuff Ltd is the copyright owner for the Taranaki Daily News. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Stuff Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.