VICTORIAN BACKBLOCKS.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLV, Issue 215, 18 September 1911, Page 2

VICTORIAN BACKBLOCKS.

The hardships suffered by settlers in the backblocks of Victoria have been attracting a great deal of attention in Melbourne. The needs of Gippsland have been the subject of a long series of newspaper articles, and now the apostles of good roads are lending a sympathetic ear to 'the claims of settlers in other portions of the State." Along the southern coast there is a large area of bush-covered country where roads are almost unknown, and in wet seasons the hardy men and women who have gone forth, to make homes for themselves in the wilderness are cut off from the world. Victoria has passed through an exceptionally wet winter, and newspaper correspondents who have visited some of the outlying settlements recently have marvelled at the courage and endurance of the settlers. One visitor

was deeply shocked by a funeral which he witnessed. The roads were impassable for wheeled traffic, and the coffin had to be carried on a rough sledge through miles of mud and water. Another correspondent was amazed at the hardihood of a settler who undertook to convey a number of pigs sixteen miles to market. For twelve miles the road was in a dreadful condition. The settler left home at six o'clock in the morning, and after struggling through the bog until midday ne reached a point within six miles of the market town. He had still two miles of bad road to cover, and it proved to b© a veritable quagmire. His tired horses were unequal to the great strain placed upon them, the waggonette sticking fast in the middle of the road. The settler waited patiently until two o'clock in the afternoon, when a waggoner driving fairly fresh horses appeared. With his help the waggonette wasi released, but the vehicle collapsed under the necessarily hard usage, and the settler had to spend most oif the night by the roadside, watching over his herd of hungry pigs and patching Ws conveyancers best he could. The settlers in the Victorian backblocks are making the best of circumstances which have never deterred British men and women from pressing forward into the waste spaces of the earth.