BUSH WHISKY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3828, 7 August 1928, Page 2

BUSH WHISKY.

SOLD AT A BIG PROFIT. The making of whisky has been notorious in Southland for the past fifty years, and the Government loss during that period must amount to tens of thousands of pounds (says the Marlborough Press). Once in a while, a “find” of a whisky still surprises the countryside, and someone is fined some hundreds of pounds. But as soon as the excitement wears off, illicit spirits are again on the market, and find a ready sale. During the past few weeks the populanee of Southland have been watching developments in connection with a. recent find of a still far away among the hills in the Otapivi Gorge, where nobody is likely to travel for pleasure. The police, who were on the trail, following up suspicious evidence, were, for days trudging around in dense scrub and swampy ground before they reached the spot. Later, a Scotsman named Duncan Alexander Stuart, was arrested, and pleaded guilty. He was fined £450 on the first charge, and £SO on the second. The Collector of Customs, in urging that the fine be made an exemplary one, said the whisky was being made wholesale in the district, and had even been offered for sale in Dunedin. It was sold for £2 per gallon, while the estimated cost of manufacture was about 1/9 per gallon. The accused was a relative of the Mcßaes, who were heavily fined four years ago for running a “still” at Springlands. There’s evidently big money in the whisky business, if the Collector of Customs can he kept from interfering.