PERSONAL.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9023, 9 January 1908, Page 5

PERSONAL.

Mr J. Strauchon, Chief Surveyor and Commissioner of Crown Lands for the Wellington district, will be transferred on April Ist to Auckland, where an unusually large quantity of survey work is expected to arise in the near future. He wiil be succeeded here.by Mr J. Mackenzie, now Chief Surveyor and Commissioner'of Crown Lands at Auckland. Mr J. Mackenzie is a brother of Mr T. Mackenzie, M.P. *l -i. Mr W. H. Hawkins, ex-M.H.R. for Pahiatua, is reported to have definitely decided to contest the Pahiatua seat at the next" general election. The Hon. Dr Findlay states that Mr Hall-Jones, whose health is greatly improved, will return to New Zealand in the course of a few weeks, and will resume duty at once. Mr H. Parker, champion tennis player of the dominion, and a son of Mr Robert Parker of Wellington, is at present visiting that city. Mr Parker is located at Sydney. Mr T. B. Michell, chairman of the Masterton Trust Lands Trust, left yesterday morning on a holiday trip to Rotorua. Mr W. P. James, S.M., and Mr E. Rawson, Clerk of the Magistrate's Court, returned to Masterton last evening from their Christmas vacations. Mr James Robert Lane, who was connected with the Burke and "Wills exploring expedition as a horse-driver (says the Melbourne "Age"), died recently, aged 85. Mr Lane left Melbourne with the expe- , dition, which he accompanied as far " as Menindie. His services being no longer required, as it was decided to leave a portion of the plant, he started to walk back to Melbourne. He was badly equippsd for the journey, taking with him only a little food and a billy of wqter. He met with great hardship on his journey through lack of food and'>ater,' and had given himself up for lost when he heard the sound of horse bells late one night. This gave him renewed strength, and he managed to struggle on for a little distance, when he sank exhausted to the ground. He was found •on the following morning by a stockman on the station which he had luckily struck—one of the then farthest north settlements in Victoria, somewhere in the vicinity of where "Echuca now stands. At one time .'Mr Lane owned a considerable portion of /the land on which the house where he died stands, but lately he was in straitened circumstances, and •depended upon an ' old age pension, •slightly augmented by a special 'Government grant. The death of Mr Lane leaves Mr Wm. Brahe, the present Consul for Germany, as the only survivor of the expedition which set ♦out from Melbourne with Burke and Wills in 1360.