CLEARING WASTE LAND

Press, Volume LXXV, Issue 22662, 17 March 1939, Page 4

CLEARING WASTE LAND

TO THE EDITOR OF THE PRESS Sir, —I have read the statement in “The Press” of Wednesday about clearing waste land at Westport, and the wonderful American machines that have been one of the main causes of depleting our London funds. Your article says that the machinery has already been used crushing out trees and stumps on an area of pakihi land near Westport. This is quite incorrect, as there are no trees and stumps on pakihi. The word “pakihi” means clear land, and it is covered by a small rush and a small fern, and not by trees. I saw last week where these large machines were working, and it was a place .named for some unknown reason ’ Utopia, beside the Westport cemetery. The land was not “pakihi,” but light, sandy soil, which, when cleaned of .scrub and old stumps, would probably be worth about £5 or £6 an acre; and even one acre of this land is worth 100 acres of pakihi land. There are thousands of acres of fairly decent land on the West Coast that will pay for clearing, but a start should be made in the Grey valley, or at Recfton, where there are large areas of rough bush land that will grow grass. I understand the cost of clearing with the big machinery is high, and, if so, the West Coast land cannot bear the cost. —Yours, etc., COASTER. Greymouth, March 15, 1939.