AREA AND POPULATION.

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LII, Issue 8616, 13 June 1924, Page 2 (Supplement)

AREA AND POPULATION.

it, is very difficult to convey in iigros the extent of the vast area c Jin-

;a.ng \Giat is common,y *no«n e&

-LA.y oi x diwtrKt. iu.dn’g area commencing at the .»a ti.. a i i*—entr a tee to tauranga ha.r•’•,ur, and running round to Cape ictma.vay we cover the seaboard of u*e three counties of Tauranga, Wha.tttaite and Opotiki, the area of which w, respectively:— square miKs Tauranga 651 Whakatane 1550 Opotiki 1509 Total 3710 Equal to 2,374,400 acres. —Now in the whole of this vast and fertile area wo have a population of 16,347, distributed ns follows: — Tauranga County 8119 Whakatane County 4965 Opotiki County 3263 . 16,317

This includes the population of all the interior towns, so that we have just a tittle over four persons to the square mile, or in other words every man, woman and child has 145 acres on which to disport himself or herself. But we have in addition the Maori poplation to take into consideration and this numbers approximately 6500. If, therefore, we include this, we find that we have, whites and Maoris included : . -

ff Coaeiy Souls to every Square Mile But still this does not disclose the tnie position- because, as already stated, the population of the counties as given above includes the interior towns and boroughs. We have living in the boroughs of Tauranga, Whakatane and

BAY OF PLENTY HAS ROOM FOR NEW PKESEiNT POPULATION.

Opotiki, and the township of T© Puke, a population of 6211, settled on an area ; i,106 acres, approximately an acre n . al. ijre.e.y person. If we deduct ti.ese figures from the inclusive county figures we find that outside the towns of the Bay of Plenty there is a population—white and Maori—of approximately 16,600 living on 37C0 square mi’es of country. If wo allow an average of three persons to a family then w$ find that each family is settled upon 423 acres. What a vastly increased population this district can carry wi’l be readily gathered from these figures. There is land in plenty awaiting the development by the energetic settler. Among the earliest visited and settled parts of the Dominion the Bay of Plenty has been slow of growth in point of population. Its comparative isolation has in a large measure accounted for this, but now that isolation is within measurable distance of being broken, and there are signs on every hand that from all parts of the Dominion —and from much further afield—eyes and steps are being turned in this direction.

No more convincing way could, perhaps, be found of illustrating the emptiness of this largo and fertile district, with Tauranga as its economic centre, than' the follbwiug little table: Bay of Plenty 16,347 Hamilton 14,950 Gisborne, 14,920 rvapior, 17,670 Hastings, 13,530 New Plymouth, 13,510 Wanganui, 24,170 *■ Palmerston North 17,510 Nelson, 10,880 Timaru, 16,010 Invercargill, 19,590