THE OTAGO CENTRAL.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CIX, Issue 13137, 27 May 1903, Page 6

THE OTAGO CENTRAL.

Mr A. L. D. Fraser, tie member for Napier, has not waited for th« meeting of Parliament to express the opinion, he formed of tho Otago Central Railway during his recent visit in company with Sir Joseph Ward and tho Canterbury members to the country through which it is proposed to carry tho lino. HA recognises that tha Dunedin people, ■ who are now clamouring for aa impossible expenditure upon tha yrork,

are mainly responsible for the unsatisfactory position of the undertaking. “What has kept Central Otago from being connected with the outside world/’ he says, “has been the wicked and criminal expenditure on somo portions of the railway. The expenditure of £600,000 in taking the railway through the Taieri Gorge is an instance of monumental folly, probably the most glaring instance of reckless expenditure in the history of the colony." Any one who will look at the map of the district published in the “Canterbury Times” this week will see that if the Dunedin people had been unselfish enough to allow the line to bo carried from instead of insisting upon it beginning at Wingatui, all the difficult country might have been avoid 4 cd and enough money saved to push on tho work another hundred miles. It was the desire to divert the trade of'Central Otago to Dunedin that led to tho wicked and criminal expenditure condemned by Mr Fraser. Tho member for Napier is nob blind to tho possibilities of the district. Ho believes that certain portions of it might bo made extremely fruitful by irrigation, but he thinks it unfortunate that the settlers have nob done more in this direction to justify their agitation for therailway. Ah present they arc doing little more than talking of what the district wilt produce when it gets its line. Mr Fraser, like our own representative who accompanied tho Canterbury members in their recent tour of in* spcctiou, deplores the wholesale destruction, of somo of the beet land by the operations of the gold dredgers. “ The whole country,” he says, “is tracked for miles by waterfaces, and in parts you see nothing bub desolate tailings. There is a general feeling now, notwithstanding the undoubted value of the gold dredging industry, that Parliament should interfere to some extent to prevent the whole district thus being made absolutely unfitted for human habitation or for producing anything.” This is a very serious matter, and if- the settlers wish to see the railway carried beyond its present terminus they should take immediate steps to prevent the disappearance of tho only asset that can justify the construction of the line.