SYDNEY LAND IS HELD BY SOME UNUSUAL MEANS

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6811, 15 January 1929, Page 8

SYDNEY LAND IS HELD BY SOME UNUSUAL MEANS

MAN SITS IN ROPED ENCLOSURE FOR TWENTYFOUR HOURS ON END SYDNEY, Jan. 4. By far tho most interesting personago in Sydney last week-end was Mr Jack Miller, of Macleay Street, Potts Point, who, to uphold a queer title to a strip of land in tho city, had to. sit in a roped-in enclosure from midnight on Saturday to midnight on Sunday, keeping out trespassers. If anyone had trespassed on tho strip of land he guarded in such strange manner, the land must have reverted to the City Council. Tho narrow strip referred to is next to Lyric Winter, Garden Picture Theatre, in George Street, and Miller dared not sleep during the whole of the‘twenty-four hours’ vigil. The ropes fenced off the portion of the ground upon which the exit doors of the theatre open. Usually it is a public thoroughfare; but once a. year it must be closed to the public so that it may still remain the private property of Union Theatres, Ltd. It is not the only strip of land in the city to’wliich a queer title is held. In Hamilton Street, there is a small piece of land on which the City Council has been waiting to pounce as a public right-of-way, but the owner has it safclv guarded with iron railings. The whole of Rowe Street, which runs from Castlereagh Street to Pitt Street, is owned privately by the shopkeepers of the street, and the council has boon endeavouring to claim it, too, as a right-of-way. In the University grounds there is a strip of private roadway which has to I bo closed once a year to protect the “private” rights of the University, and there are many areas in the city where one foot of land is held by eccentric persons. This has to bo fenced off to stop trespassers. This year, a city solicitor will become rightful owner of an acre of land at Northbridgc, which is at present without a title. Once each year he erects a fence around the property so that no one can “jump” his claim.