NEW AUSTRALIA.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2686, 17 July 1894, Page 4

NEW AUSTRALIA.

The following extracts are made from late letters received in Albury from A. Brittlebank, one of the seceders from the New Australia settlement, and formerly a well-known resident of the Albury district:— Over 700 native families are to be expelled from the homes of their childhood to make way for the other New Australians who are coming. How far this accords with the principles of justice I leave for others to determine. The orange groves by which the natives' homes are surrounded, and from which they derive their incomes and staple diet for nine months in the year, have taken over 50 years to arrive at their present condition of maturity, and now the owners are to be driven out like so many cattle. This act comes well from Mr Lane, who has always preached that the land of a country belonged to the people collectively aud not individually. It was this act that first gave rise to the split, as many of the pioneers refused to stand by and countenance such treatment to a peaceful and industrious people. Fred. White has just returned from a trip of exploration some 250 miles out, and he reports that the country is all dense woods, or swamp for the greater part of the year, and not worth cultivating; all the laud of any value had been b >ld previously by the Government to English and Spanish syndicates. These sales included the verbales (or native tea farms), the industry which serves to keep the Paraguay above water. The site of the New Australia settlement—the Lowry estate —was bought because it was thought that if the settlers saw the other parts of the country they would not settle at all. There are absolutaly no sanitary arrangements on the settlement. A statement was circulated to the effect that the morality of the settlers was so low that many of them had exchanged their wives and husbands for Paraguayan men and women. The object of this untruth was to prevent any respectable Europeans from giving assistance to thoso who might leave the settlement. The Government, by request of Lane, sent up a party of soidiers to eject 254 native families, to make room for the second batch of emigrants by the Royal Tar. If Mr Lane goes on in this manner, thore is a probability that his career will receive a violent reverse, us many on the settlement

and the natives have reached a condition of desperation. Since first leaving Australia no balance-sheet has been issued, and the cattle brand is still in the name of Lecke, one of the "prospectors." The clothing of men and women who leave the settlement, with all their private effects, are overhauled in public by an officer: The settlers are kept in entire ignorance of what is going on outside their own narrow confines. So one is allowed \off the settlement except on business of the association. ■ All building operations are suspended, and what huts were erected were such as would be used for stables in a couutry town in Australia, being composed of stakes and monkey rope and filled in with mud, the roof being thatch, and floors of mud. At a meeting of the faithful held the day after the exodus, Mr Lane stated " that if by any chance they should get any more settlers like those who had just left they would have to get rid of them." The Australian press should bestir itself in denouncing the scheme, and do all in its power to prevent young girls from being induced to come here. This is no place for' unmarried : women. I wish to emphasise this, as Mrs Lane and another woman will shortly revisit Australia to organise single girls for the settlement. Messrs Lane and Walker have registered the association in 'Paraguay as a local company with a share capital of 2000 at £lO each, to carry neither dividends nor interest for 20 years. The number of votes are according to the number of shares held.. : The chairman has absolute authority to use. , votes held outside Paraguay unless the I shareholder appoint a deputy, such shared holder to be approved of by the chairman. A certain number of shares can at any time dissolve the company or alter the basis of association. In the chairman and one director shall be vested the tithes of the titles of all land. When this business was transacted not a soul in the colony knew anything of it. All newspapers were shut put, and had not F. White got hold of a copy of the Democracia from a native no one would ever have heard anything about it."