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MONDAY, MAY 20, 1912. THE CRY OF THE WILDERNESS.

The cry of the wilderness in New Zealand is the cry of the back-blocks, ana it is tor roads, without wmch progress is not only slow, but life someciuTes a martyrdom, markets practically beyonu reach, and the benefits of civilisation out or the question. Yet tiie men ana women who undergo these hardships and dangers are the pioneers of further progress, an^ of more prosperity, for the whole country. Is is hot, then paradoxical, or worse, that they shoiila receive suan treatment V Surely a wise Government would, to begin with, encourage them with concessions; would, so to speak, subsidise their pioneering efforts, by giving all land at stated i distances beyond railways or main roads, on specially favorable terms ana conditions; by supplying telephone services as soon as possible;. ana enacting special legislation designed to give roads to all new settlements without their having to wait an indefinite number of years. Apart from the rights and claims of humanity, this would be only businesslike policy on the part of the country, as a prospective sharer in tne wealth that is created by a successful new settlement. Tnis policy is followed to some extent in connection with outback settlement in Queensland, but no politician in power has ever done anything effective towards its application in New Zealand. Most of the Australian States have been equally remiss in the matter, and only the other day, when the Victorian Minister of Public Works returned from a visit to the back-blocks of North Gippsland, he said: "I saw some magnificent land there, but it was rendered almost useless by the lack of roads. Men had to send out their produce as best they could on pack-horses. One farmer, in order to take ten tons a distance of twenty chains, had to travel backwards and forwards with a pack-horse until, he had covered I 225 miles carrying • the load across. Much of the country has not even I decent tracks. I saw one very old man lying ill, and there was not a | doctor within 75 miles. And the j people of the locality were actually | exercised in their minds as to how j the poor man's body, if he died, j could be carried up to the cemetery, j because there was no roadj and oniy the worst of tracks. Yet, despite it all, I saw splendid families of sturdy youngsters being brought up, healthy and ctieerful. The fathers were fine men, but the women —I have no words of praise high enough for them. In all their isolation, and amid all their hardship, I found them cheerful and brave, rearing their families without ever a call from a doctor, and always somehow managing to keep their little homes neat and tidy and bright. I tell you, if a man can go up there among them and not be moved by the pathos of it all, he must have no heart in him." In its way, this is sympathetic enough, but the state of things described by the Minister is a disgrace to his official predecessors and to him and his political associates. It says little for their humanity and less for their statesmanship, because, as a mere matter of business, it would pay to bring pioneers, at the earliest possible moment, within convenient reach of markets and civilisation. But in this matter New Zealand's failure has been even worse and less excusable than that of Australia, for here the distances are less, and the railways and main roads such, that communications with back-blocks might be' established with comparative ease and cheapness. Yet this has not been done, and is not being done. Very recently, Mr James Mackenzie, the Surveyor-General, had only too much occasion to say: "I should be glad to see railwaymaking have a rest for a year or two, and let the money be deroted to building roads, and giving men who have not so much as a pig track some sort of access to their land. There are men whose farms are away back beyond twenty miles of mud tracks, and no roads at all, and they cannot get access to the railway. Let them have at least some sort of access —these pioneers, the pioneers, the heroes and heroines of the backblocks. If we only knew the toll of the forest, and what these people have to contend with! Sick children carried over the mountain-tops on their fathers' and mothers' backs before they can get aid of any kind, women going into the settlements to perform the highest duties of womanhood, and- then, rather than go back to the isolation of the forest, committing suicide —those are the sort of things that you run against, not once or twice, but dozens of times, in your travels. I don't know of anything more necessary than to help in getting roads into the backblocks." Still those roads are not made; but hundreds of thousands of pounds are spent on quite unnecessarily large railway stations, post offices and other buildings in towns like Invercargill, Dunedin, Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland. It is a monstrous anomaly, discreditable to the humanity and to the business insight of public men in j power. The pity of it is that there is j ne national sentiment in the country equal to the proper punishment of those men for their failure to respond, as statesmen should, to the cry of the wilderness. Do they take advantage of this, and forego forethought and neglect action, because they feel they can do so with impunity? If they do, it says all the less for their quality as statesmen.

Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/HNS19120520.2.17

Bibliographic details

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXI, Issue LXII, 20 May 1912, Page 4

Word Count
948

MONDAY, MAY 20, 1912. THE CRY OF THE WILDERNESS. Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXI, Issue LXII, 20 May 1912, Page 4

MONDAY, MAY 20, 1912. THE CRY OF THE WILDERNESS. Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXI, Issue LXII, 20 May 1912, Page 4

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