AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 29 November 1924, Page 2

AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

V LIFE IN THE WILDS SUPPLIES BY CAMEL OUTBACK AUSTRALIA. SYDNEY; Nov. 19. “Do we bash folk need so much, comforting ? —1 thing not/' was the remark or tlia bronzed wife 01 Mr. Elliott, the owiief oi Engoordina Station, iNotnern Territory, w hide visiting Adelaide last week, in reply to an interviewer, who had offered some commiseration upon the hardships of living in the scorching heart of Australia. But Mrs. Elliott was not out to be pitied; she rather gloried to be one of those who are winning mid-Australia for the white man, ana some of her word pictures of the life on a station, where it is necessary to keep a hundred or so caihels as the only means of contact with civilisation, were cheery and full of spirit. Horseshoe Bend, where the station is situated, takes some reaching. First”one must travel 700 miles by the train from Adelaide to Qodnadatta, and then spend at least a week on the backs of camels —and there are no hotels or restaurants en route.

To mention the difficulties of housekeeping to Mrs. Elliott is to bring a smile. “Everything from town/?, was the laughing response to a query, “is sometimes broken and sometimes merelycracked, for the distance between us and the shops - is stupendous. Groceries drapery, ironware, glassware, furniture, and fruit all come up from town, and cost much more than double their shop value by the time they arrive. We have a number of camels, and send ;.a string of about 50 to Oodnadatta. to bring on to the station the goods trucked to the railhead. After rveeks on the road we receive our belongings, and then there is a great deal of unwrapping of packages and cases, and examination of the contents. The summer is bad between December and March, Very often the fruit perishes and rots, and the banned goods swell, and tinned butter is destroyed, on the road —hut that is just a small matter, as compared with whole bullocks going had over riight, and dust-stbriiis filling the house with sand in an hour or so. The winters are beautiful, and when we have cold mornings that tempt us out on horseback, and cold nights with big tires, following sunny and warm days, then life is well worth living.”

“Furniture P How 7 do we maange about that —with camel loading?” Chairs are .taken apart, and other articles, as much as possible, are carried to their destinations in pieces, packed upon the backs of our local “delivery vans”—the same “vans” are liable at any time to utterly wreck a sideboard portion, or a dressing mirror. SYDNEY UNIVERSITY SENATE. Before the Act of 1912 the graduates of the University of Sy T dney had but an ineffective voice in the government of our chief seat of learning.. Fellows were appointed for life, and elections were held only to fill individual vacancies as they occurred —and it was a case of waiting for dead men’s shoes, for university senators, so it was said, seldom died and never resigned. The Act of 1912, however, clothed convocation with extensive powers, providing for quinqufnnial elections at which that body should choose by election ten senators. The Act still further “democratised” the university by the establishment of a large number of free annual exhibitions. . These elections, however, have not revealed any desire for marked innovations in university government, although it was believed that the Senate, felt to he the stronghold of Toryism, w 7 ould have a hard fight under the new Act to defend the citadel against the assults of the young university insurgents with their “modern” ideas. The elections, and this was manifest at the latest Senate election a day or two ago, have shown that the -‘advanced” elements in the university have been able to make little or rio impression on the more conservative body of opinion there. Of the ten Senators elected at the latest election, all were re-elected except one, and none of them can by any stretch of imagination be described as violent radicals. The Chancellor (Sir William Cullen) again headed the poll, with Professor Mungo M‘Galium ag runner-up. The Attorney-General (Mr. Bavin) was not only not elected, but he was at the very bottom of the poll. This is not, however, difficult to understand. In the Public Service there are many university graduates who had the right to vote, and not a few of them have been antagonised hv Mr. Bavin’s attitude towards the principle of arbitration, in its application to the Public Service. The graduates apparently saw their chance to get even with Mr. Bavin, and they seized it with both hands. MOTOR TAXES IN N.S.W. The Government hopes to derive from taxation and licenses under the new Motor "V ehicles Tax Bill, now before the Legislative Assembly, about £600,000 a year, which will go to the Main Roads Board. Private motor-cars, it is understood, will pay a tax of between 30 and 40 per cent, higher than at P res ®*?U It is estimated that about £45,000 will he derived from doubling the present taxation of the license fees in the following cases: —Motor-cyclists, present fee 2s 6d a year; motor-drivers, present fee 5s a year;, conductors of motor vehicles, present fee 5 S a year. The fee for the transfer of the regisa mo t ;o r vehicle will also be doubled. The highest rate to be charged on any motor-bus now in use within the State will he about £6O, wdiich will be reducible to about £4O, provided that the vehicle is fitted with pneumatic tires. Some of the chief provisions of the Bill, provide for the taxing of motor vehicles according to weight, and not according to horsepower ; the abolition of certain preferential rates which now exist, including the cars of doctors, clergymen, those used for hire, and trade motor vehicles; ana the taxing of motor-buse s according to weight. Motor of over five tons, previously exempted under the old Act, are to be brought the new Act and taxed according to weight. In the case of motor-ears with pneumatic tires the proposed tax is 2s 9d per halfcwt. of total weight. Gars without pneumatic tires are to be taxed at the rate of 3s 3d per half-cw r t of total weight.