AN ELUSIVE FORTUNE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 172, 22 June 1926, Page 2

AN ELUSIVE FORTUNE.

STORY OF THE HOBBS MILLIONS. TOTAL OF OVER £4,000,000. SYDNEY, June 3. Away back in 1791 there came to Svdney, not, however, of his own free will, a young man named Robert Hobbs. .'He had been transported for some trivial offence. On the completion of his sentence lie was awarded a grant of land at historic Pit.t Town, where he lived and died. His tombstone stands to-day. Highly respected ns he was in the early days of the Hawkesbury, whose history is largely early history of pioneering Australia, his name, instead of being before the public eye, as it is to-day, would have passed into oblivion, but for the fact that a rich brother left to him and his legitimate heirs a fortune wliich is going now begging, for tlie want of successful claimants, and which now exceeds the bewildering sum of £4,000,000. Participating in tlie scramble for these millions there are more than 500 in Australia. In the hunt for the money, a resident of one of Sydney’s suburbs, as the emissary of . these claimants, has enjoyed two trips to England. As the Hobbs millions still remain something of an unsubstantial dream, they are now handing all the papers over to the Public Trustee to see if he can do anything to bring this El Dorado to them. For many years it has been an illusive quest, but this land of promise, as it were, is always before them, and there is probably something sustaining and encouraging even in that.