TROUBLES OF A DROVER

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 6704, 30 December 1908, Page 3

TROUBLES OF A DROVER

PUNISHED FOR TRESPASSING. IMPRISONED AT LYTTELTON. (Special to tho “N.Z. Times.") CHRISTCHURCH,’ December 29. A stout, bsarded drover was released from the Lyttelton gaol yesterday after serving a sentence of imprisonment under somewhat peculiar circumstances (says the "Lyttelton Times"). He was engaged last September in driving a * large flock of sheep from Hinds to Ashburton, and when he reached a point near the Windermere flag station,-the ganger in charge of a party of surfacemen ordered him to keep off tho railway line. The lino at this point, and, indeed, for the greater part of its length between Hinds and Ashburton, is unfenced, a road running on either side, and tho drover protested that it was quite impossible - to keep the sheep from straying on to the rails, as they cropped the herbage ■by the way. Sheep have been driven along the roads ever since tho railway was constructed, thirty years and more ago. and no means of keeping them off the rails, except when thev rounded up to avoid a passing train, has* yet been discovered. But the ganger was insistent, no doubt in obedience to his instructions, and as the sheep stilr strayed across the line the ■ drover, after tho lapse of some weeks, was summoned to the Ashburton Magistrate’s Court to answer a charge of trespassing. By some means he mistook the hour at which the case was to; be called on, and in his absence he was ordered to pay a fine and costs amounting to £5 9s. . Tnrmigh the leniency - of the Court, we suppose, payment of the penait** t. uomundsd until the beginning of the present month, and when it was demanded the defendant, to quote his own words, "elected to take the alternative" as a protest against what he'considered the gross Injustice of the proceedings.’ The alternative was two weeks’ hard, labour, and this sentence has just been served. , . . Of course, tho railway authorities were guided ’by their bye-laws, and no doubt the Magistrate acted. with perfect propriety/ but wo have a good deal of sympathy- with the man 'who underwent this measure of humiliation for the pur-pose-of asserting a principle. If drovers taking stock along the Great South road are. to be hailed before, the Magistrate every time) their /charges break away across the unfanced railway line, fanners soon will have to pay a very liigh rate for their services. They will not he r*Mo to take the risks attendant upon, their business at any ordinary wage. But it the Railway Department has at last wakened to the dangfer passengers :by its trains haverbeen running all these years, it should carry its zeal a little- further and see that all its .lines are securely fenced throughout their whole length. Fining a trespasser. now and again, or even sending him to prison, will not materially lessen the danger. Drovers will keep their stock off tho lines only when a ganger or any -official of some sort is in -sight. At other times they will follow the practice they have been following during the past thirty years.