A Voice from North Queensland.

Evening Star, Issue 7233, 8 June 1887, Page 4

A Voice from North Queensland.

Mr A. G. Peace, of Auckland, writes as follows from Charters Towers, Queensland, on May 5“ I see by a late issue of your paper that someone in a letter to a friend in Auckland has been comparing (with more haste than judgment) this part of the world with New Zealand. Allow me through your columns to correct him, and warn New Zealanders from jumping out of the fryingpan into the fire by coming here. In the first place he says (though he was only one day in Townsville) that there is more money turned over in that hole of a town than in all Auckland district. Now, I have resided in Townsville for months, and confidently assert that more money changes hands in Queen street in one day than in all Townsville during a month. Next, he calls Charters Towers the most prosperous town in tho colonies, and gives its population at 20,000. Now, I have taken the trouble to look up the census returns for last year, and find that, including Milchester, Rishton, Black Jack, and other mining camps within the goldfield district, extending over a radius of thirty miles from the Towers, the grand total barely reaches i O,OOO. The wages are correct (kept up by the Miners’ Union), L 3 to L 3 10s for skilled miners, but there are hundreds out of employment. I have scores of applications every week for work on our lease. Things generally are as bad here just now as they can be. Business so very dull that you might fire a shot down the principal and only business street at almost any hour of the day and hit no one; so bad that many hundreds are leaving for Croydon, But, ‘ ’ware hawk,’ boys, remember Kimberley, Far-away fields look green. I read a telegram from Croydon this week (one brother to another) and give you the exact words, viz.: ‘ Fair show here, but no money, no wages, no credit, and provisions famine prices, very sickly. I have old mates in Croydon, and will send you reports as I get them, which you may rely upon. Please give them circulation, and stop another Kimberley fwsco.’ ”