A WILD TOWNSHIP.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19269, 5 September 1924, Page 5

A WILD TOWNSHIP.

LAWLESSNESS AND SLY GROG. PROBLEMS OF THE “OUT BACK.” (From Our Own Correspondent 1 SYDNEY, August 28. For a long time things had been going from bad to worse at the wild little North Queensland township of Banyan—supposed to 'be " dry” in the sense in which the word is understood in liquor parlance, as it is without question in the climatic sense—but a crisis came last week -when a spiritmaddened resident raced up and down the main road terrifying the inhabitants with shot after shot from an automatic, pistol. Suspected ely-grog shanties were raided, and several guilty purveyors of spirits were hailed to the court at Innisfail. And the evidence there showed what things can come to when the wild characters who gather in some of the remote and isolated townships determine to run things in their own way, and are not held sufficiently in check owing to the difficulty of thoroughly policing the vast territories of Australia. The magistrate had given severe warnings to wrongdoers from the notorious ' little township. And how ■he would listen to no appeal for leniency in the form of a fine instead of imprisonment. “To prison they must go,” n., declared, and “sent along” the grov sellers for periods ranging from three to six months’ imprisonment. “Banyan,” declared M O’Kelly, the magistrate, ”is an isolated locality, and it has been a veritable cancer on industrial peace ever since 1 have known the place. There is a type of men down there of the extremist clement, who do not require any grog to make them attempt to break the law, as they have done in the past. There are individuals there who want to take the reins of law and order in their own bandsmen who want to run any particular township in their own particular way. Appeals have been addressed to me in the past, and I have actually been informed that a certain notorious gang at Banyan used to open what they called a court down there. It is surely time that both the police and the police magistrate took a firm stand in connection with certain matters in the particu-' lar locality. This trouble is largely attributed to sly grog. I have been repeatedly spoken to by officials of the ‘ Australian Workers’ Union about the enormous amount of harm that is being done to workers in that district, also to men on the railway line, through this pernicious sly-grog selling. I must remember that my duty to file public is to try and rid this district of the evils of sly grog. If I cannot wipe it out, I shall do so as far as the law allows mo to do so. I have repeatedly warned people if they cores before me for this offence they are likely to got the full penalty of the' law. It has been said, in spite of all the warnings that have been given, and the prosecutions that have taken place in the past, that 11 or 12 sly-grog shanties still exist in the Banyan areas. It is the shocking happenings that have taken place at Banyan which prompt me to impose imprisonment in these cases. Madness and orgies have characterised Banyan in the past, but I can tell the people who have been responsible for these things that they will have to fall into line with other places, and keep the law and behave as any decent British community behaves.”