A LOST OPPORTUNITY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10139, 9 November 1910, Page 7

A LOST OPPORTUNITY.

116,000 ACRES FOR £22 10s,

Opportunities for good investments are seldom lost sight of in these days, but it would appear that the unusual eventuated on a recent morning comments the Southland Daily News, when the Southland Land Board unsuccessfully submitted to auction the grazing rights over the well-known Auckland Islands to the south of the Dominion. The board offered the group of islands, in three lots, viz., the lower half of the Auckland Islands (75,600 acres) at an upset annual rental of £.7 10s; the upper half of the . Auckland Islands (38,600 acres) at an upset annual rental of £10; Rose and Enderby Islands (1995 acres) at an upset annual rental of £5 ss. Thus investors or agriculturalists could have obtained the grazing • rights over no less than 116,195 acres at a total upset annual rental of £22 10s for twenty one years. About half of the area is pasturable. and of the remainder most of it is either mountain top or forest, the latter predominating on the eastern side. An item that might have weighed with investors is the fact that on the western shore of the Auckland Islands lies the wreck of the good ship "General Grant," which sank under the cliffs iii 183-1 with something like £IOO,OOO in gti 3 on board. Unsuccessful attempts have been made to obtain this treasure, but hopes have not yet been altogether abandoned. The fact also that the previovis lease of twenty-one years expired only about nine months ago, apparently did not carry weight, and when the area was offered not one solitary bid was made and the opportunity of becoming squire over an immense tract of 116,000. acres for a fee of £22 10s r>?v annum had to be vjluctautly "passed in. ; '