WHISKY—£6 THE BOTTLE.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 13017, 20 January 1908, Page 7

WHISKY—£6 THE BOTTLE.

The old days that old goldminers can remember are not dead (says the "Dominion"). A bottle of whisky can still fetch £6 in New Zealand—one is said to have been sold the other day in Okahune for that sum. Okahune is on the Main Trunk line, in the prohibited King oountry. The nearest publichouse is at Tokaanu, on the south end of Lake Taupo, distant much more than a Sabbath day's journey. More accessible, for there is the Public Works' Department's train, is the hotel at Taihape, but that, though the next nearest, is 40 miles away. And on the north the nearest legal place for quenching thirsts with strong stuff is Te Awamutu, further distant still. The normal price of whisky in Okahune is £1 a bottle. It was fairly plentiful at that price when an official of the Public Works Department visited the district some -weeks before Christmas, and tho rough, thirsty men at Okahune told him that when Christmas came it would be very plentiful indeed. Christmas had not long passed when it was strangely scarce. Drought reached a serious point, and a gentleman who passed through Okahune before the holiday excitement and thirst were finished, states, as a fact -widely vouched for, that a bottle ,of whisky was disposed of for £6. One man, reckless for the moment, bought two large "mips" at £1 a nip, and the remaining contents of the bottle were, it is said, then put urp for auction, and were "knocked down for £4.