MILES OF GOAT FARMS

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXI, Issue 4956, 16 February 1937, Page 5

MILES OF GOAT FARMS

BETWEEN GISBORNE AND NAPIER. VISITORS AMUSED. Goats kept on many of the farms between Najpier and Gisborne to keep down blackberry, amused delegates to the conference of the Wellington district of the Ancient Order of Foresters. At a gathering in their honour, visiting delegates made fun of these animals, asserting that there was an 80-mile-long goat farm to the south of Gisborne and that the East Coast Railway was being constructed to take the skins to market. Bro. H. Grone, Marton, said they had to pass through a goat farm 80 miles long to get to Gisborne. Bro. G. E. Taylor, Wellington, said the visitors had come to a wonderful town in a wonderful climate over wonderful hills and through herds of wonderful goats. (Laughter.) Some of the visitors wished to know whether the railway was being built through those hills merely to transport the goat skins away. However, Gisborne was truly a wonderful district. He had read in the papers that 300,000 sheep were going out of the district this summer, and yet many, many thousands were left. The Mayor, Mr. D. W. Coleman, M.P., chose his opportunity to reply to the remark about the railway shortly when called upon to speak. He said that Gisborne had one-tenth of the sheep in the whole of the Dominion. That was one reason why the railway was being constructed.