Bitterness, Despair In Tasmania

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31344, 14 April 1967, Page 13

Bitterness, Despair In Tasmania

(Special Crspdt. N.Z.P.A.) SYDNEY, April 13. Tasmania, Australia’s smallest state, which was brought to its knees by devastating bush fires on “Black Tuesday,” January 31, is struggling to rise from the ashes amid an atmosphere of bitterness, despair and depression. The once-placid tiny island, which to New Zealanders looks more like home than

anywhere else this side of the Tasman, is now the scene of protest meetings, bitter recriminations, petitions and threats to quit. Nearly 200 families who lost everything they had lived and worked for in the agony of the fires have already given up in despair. They have left the fire-ravaged areas in southern Tasmania —never to return.

Many have crossed the 150mile Bass Strait to the mainland to start anew, while others have moved to the north of the island. Many of those who remain face a bleak winter in huts, tents and caravans as Hobart struggles to rise again.

Figures released this week showed that the equivalent of 32 city blocks were wiped out and 450,000 acres in 12 municipalities destroyed in the fires, which claimed 62 lives. About 7500 people were left homeless when 1293 homes were destroyed and 1400 farmers lost their livelihood when 80,000 head of stock were burnt to death. There is still no reliable estimate of the total financial loss, but it is expected to be in the region of £4B million. Meanwhile the loss grows bigger—and the struggle to recover grows harder—as millions of apples, their growth retarded by the long drought and the fires, are dumped.

About 1200 persons have ' signed a petition calling for ; four Government-appointed members of the Bushfire Relief Fund’s board of trustees to be replaced. They are accused of causing unnecessary delays in distributing the £1.7 million contributed by people from all over the world. The critics claim that the Government’s grant which provides a new £3200 house for families who lost uninsured homes, but nothing for a person whose house was insured for £3200 or more, discriminates against careful citizens who took the precaution of taking out adequate insurance. Federal M.P.s have asked i the Commonwealth Govern-

ment to step in and see that its interest-free relief loan of £5.8 million and grant of £300,000 is distributed fairly. Tasmania’s hard-pressed Premier, Mr Eric Reece, has been angered by the accusations.

“I’m getting disillusioned with this bloody community,” he told reporters. “People who weren’t in the fires are screaming their heads off. The rehousing scheme represents the highest level of generosity that I know of in Australia.”

The critics claim that bureaucracy has gone mad, that endless forms have to be filled in, and that fire victims are sent from one Government department to another.