DISASTROUS FLOODS IN NEW SOUTH WALES.

Marlborough Press, Volume VIII, Issue 31, 31 July 1867, Page 4

DISASTROUS FLOODS IN NEW SOUTH WALES.

SEVERAL LIVES LOST. GREAT DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY. Quit Sydney files to hand by last steamer are near!}' full of the accounts of the terrific and disastrous floods that have devastated a greatportion of New Soldi; Wales. In (lie Windsor, Richmond, South Creek, Nepean, Bathurst, Camden, Natti, Goulburn, Yass, and Maitland Districts the floods have done considerable damage —sweeping away homesteads, drowning cattle of all descriptions, and causing the loss of several lives. Prom the Windsor District the speciaj correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald writes : The gloomiest, forebodings as to die probable loss of life are prevalent, ii appears thus William and George Father, farmers, living at Cornwallis, placed their wives and children on the roofs of their houses, and there clung with them awaiting- help until the rising waters washed them off. The two wives and their ten children were overwhelmed in the flood, and the husbands saved themselves and one little bay by swimming to a willow tree, from which they were shortly afterwards rescue;! and taken in a boat to Richmond. It is said that they made fruitless attempts to save their wives and children ; and that one of the poor women, seeing the impossibility of escape, begged of her husband to save himself and not to mind her. It fore lives have been lost in some of the other districts; bat nothing certain i.s known at present. From a meteorological record kept at Windsor, the observations show, that the floods attained a height of 02 feet above the mean tidal level. Meetings are being held at Sydney for the purpose of procuring contributions to relieve the distress felt throughout the flooded districts.

Boll’s Life in Sydney, of June 2!), has the following concerning the sad cahmiity : —- Tlse latest accounts from the. flooded districts tell :t laic, if possible, even more terrible than •die first. As the waters recede, and their fearful handiwork becomes visible, a scene of wreck and ruin is disclosed, whose most, imperfect description is enough to harrow the heart of the hardest. Both from the Hunter and the Hawkesbury, the reports describe the desolation, loss, and suffering as unparalleled. Ollier districts have suffered almost :ts severely, and there are accounts yet to come from the more distant rivers which may, and probably will, repeat the same sad tale. In some parts of the Hawkesbury district, we are told, there is scarcely a house left: standing-. Hundreds, who a week ago were comfortable and independent, are now beggars, houseless .and and homeless, in one night their every earthly possession has been swept away—their very

houses have vanished—and there is nothing before them but to begin the world anew,'beggared and broken men, with what heart they may. In many cases, no doubt, the lost is utter and irremediable. Nothing can give back to the two poor men whose whole families perished before their eyes, the happiness of the past. Nothing can restore to hundreds of others the ruined hopes, the wasted toil, the hard won homes, winch it look years to win and an hour to lose. In the presence of so awful a calamity, human help seems vain indeed. It is as impossible to replace these poor people in their once happy homes by any efforts of ours, as it would have been to stop the raging- torrent that swept them from the earth. The most magnificent charity cannot recover from the deep the lost corn and stock, or gather from the beaches of Broken Bay the strewed wealth of desolated homes. The sineercst sympathy must seem idle when the loss

sympathised with is to he measured, not by pounds and shillings, hut by years of fruitless toil, by long lives wasted, and brave hearts broken. The utmost that wo can do in such a case is to meet as promptly and liberally as possible, all pressing necessities —to shelter the houseless, feed the starving, and clothe the naked —to stand between these hapless people and the first foree of the terrible blow which has robbed them of their all. The full extent of the calamity is yet unknown, but if it were confined, as it certainly is not, to the desolation of Wind sor and the annihilation of that very objectionable locality, the Horse shoe Bend, there would still he an'ample claim not only on our sympa-

thies but on our pockets. The probability however, is, that the claim will be much more considerable than this. There are other rivers in New South Wales besides the Hawkesbury and the Hunter, quite as capable as those classic streams of drowning unlimited stocks and running off with any number of hay-stacks and houses. The .Mac]cay and the Richmond, the Clyde and the Slumlhaven are all streams given

occasionally to such objectionable eccentricities as tiic llooi ling of a paddock or the absorption of a township. It is quite possible, then, that when the sum total of damages is made up the account may he rather a formidable one; and whatever it may he, it. will he our duty to meet it, fairly, liberally, and above all, promptly.

WIIAT OUR NEIGHBORS THINK OF US. In an article published in the Auckland News complaining of the large amounts spent for official expenses in all provinces throughout New Zealand, the following remarks occur - As the official class have grown in numbers and extravagance, the body politic on which they subsisted grew more and more attenuated. Remorselessly they continued to suck the vitals of the colony; until now there is from end to end of New Zealand a cry of distress and bankruptcy. The cause for this is variously stated. In one place the official organ, or the officials say that it has been “ over-speculation and an exaggerated estimate of the resources of the province,” as iu Canterbury. In Auckland it is “ over-trading and the withdrawal of the military expenditure.” In Taranaki the same remark is made. Southland again has “ anticipated her revenue by many years,” and her enterprising settlers have been *• too speculative.” Marlborough is prostrate, without trade or resources—why ? because the official class have eaten, absolutely swallowed and digested, all its. wasie lands : but do they make this admission ? And so of Hawke’s Bay. Our readers can judge as to the truth of the remarks respecting Marlborough ; and the extract itself is otherwise significant as showing the estimation in which our position is held by some of the other provinces.