AUSTRALIAN GAMBLERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 194, 18 August 1931, Page 9

AUSTRALIAN GAMBLERS.

LOTTERY-MAD SYDNEY. QUEUES ALL DAY LONG. EXTRAORDINARY SCENES. \ ——— (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, August 14. No doubt can exist now that Australians are a race of gamblers. The charge has often been - levelled at this country by visitors and observers from other lands, and as often thrown back in the teeth of those who uttered it. But the opening of the • State Lottery in money-hungry New South' Wales has ■proved the charge.' up to the'hilt. Ostensibly the.rn.oney made from this straightout. gamble is'ear-marked for the upkeep of hospitals,.which at pre-

eent are to a great extent a charge upon the State. But the bill which made the lottery law makes no such .provision, and in the present state of affairs it would not surprise one if the returns went straight into consolidated revenue. After a remarkable run-of headline publicity from the newspapers, the $"ew South Wales State Lottery was declared open for business from last Monday, and it was announced that the doore of that section of the State Savings Bank building in which the lottery is housed would open at 9.30 a.m. for the sale of tickets in lottery No. 1. At 6 a.m. the.first of the devotees of the Goddess of Chance had taken up his stand outside the doors. • By 9.30 a.m. there was a line four deep from the main door, right round the side of the building to the next street, and this unprecedented rush for tickets was maintained up to the closing hour. Indeed, there were some hundreds still unsatisfied at that time. Money flowed like water. In the first rush the man who emerged from the melee and secured the first ticket of the day was an unemployed tradesman who admitted that he had a wife and six children to keep, and had been out of work for the past 18 months. Asked how he had obtained the means to purchase a lottery ticket, he said that he had been growing a few vegetables, and that from the eale of these he had saved sufficient to ensure the cost of a ticket. "I might .win it," he said, "and then I wouldn't have to worry any more." One man in the crowd had found a horseshoe on the way into town, and he clung to this tenaciously until he had bought his ticket. So great was the crowd that a squad of police was on duty all day long, and they noted several amusing interludes. One scheme for preferential treatment was worked six times before the policeman controlling , the queue at the door recognised the trick. A woman with a baby was allowed to go through, out of her turn. When she came out she passed the baby to another woman in the crowd, and the innocent child served as an effective passport for five other women before the policeman and the crowd "woke up." The rush was repeated on the second day and on the succeeding days, although the announcement that the first lottery was full and that tickets in the second were being issued cooled the ardour of some of tlie gamblere. Each lottery has 100,000 tickets of 5/ each, and already the second is almost subscribed. _ J