ALMOST READY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 November 1941, Page 4

ALMOST READY

CAMP FOR MILITARY DEFAULTERS INSPECTION BY MINISTER. PLENTY OF USEFUL WORK. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. A statement that the first of the military defaulters' detention camps, at Strathmore, about 20 miles south of Rotorua, was expected to be ready to receive some defaulters by Friday was made yesterday by the Minister of National Service, Mr Semple.. The Minister, who returned yesterday from an inspection of this camp, also said that it was proposed to build a second camp, the site suggested being two miles north of the Hautu Prison Farm. The Minister said that no definite decision had yet been made in regard to the site for the second camp. That was a matter that would be considered after he had reported to the Prime Minister, Mr Fraser, and Cabinet. In the meantime work had been speeded up on the camp at Strathmore. The men who were sent to the camp at Strathmore would not be going there to play, said Mr Semple. There would be plenty of healthy, useful work for them to do. The early work would include scrub-cutting, fencing, reading, and ditching. Later they would be engaged in grassing, and the nature of further operations after that would depend on the duration of the war. Evidence of the fertility of the land in this locality when it was brought under cultivation was to be) found from the success achieved with the Maori land settlement schemes and the results obtained at the Hautu Prison Farm. “The grass and the stock look in the pink of condition,” added Mr Semple. The men sent to Strathmore Camp would be housed in hutments of the type used for Public Works Department -employees all over the Dominion. Provision had been made for separate messroom accommodation and for a social hall for recreation purposes. The camp bore no semblance to a prison, other than that the men would be under discipline and would be required to do the work allotted to them. The camp was designed to take a maximum number of 200 men.