CHRISTMAS IN SYDNEY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21221, 30 December 1930, Page 5

CHRISTMAS IN SYDNEY.

NOT SO FESTIVE AS OF YORE. MOCK BURIALS OF DEPRESSION. (From Oub Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, December 18. Outwardly Sydney is as bright this Christmas as in former years. The big shopping blocks are crowded. The typical Christmas spirit is in the air. But all is not gold that glitters. There is clearly not the money about, not the wild orgy of spending that characterised Christmas shopping hi more prosperous years. With mock, ceremony, and with sardonic glee, “General Depression ” was “ buried ” in the city recently. The cadaverous fox - m of the gloomy, visitant was consigned, amid wild cheers, to the outer darkness. But it will take something more than mock burials and platitudes to shift the depression. , - In Sydney, as in the rest of Australia, it has to be squarely faced alike by governments and people. A big city like 'Sydney will, of course, always have its “dead beats,” who; like the lillips of the field, neither toil nor spin, and who want something lor a meal and then make a bee line for the nearest hotel. Sydney knows this type. It is used to them. What is disquieting, however, and witness to the times, notwithstanding a Labour Government which promised New South Wales a new heave* and a new earth, is the spectacle, every few yards, and especially round the shopping blocks, of quite decent-looking men and women throwing themselves on the bounty of passers-by. Many of them, by way of emotional appeal, no doubt, have babies at their feet. These unfortunates, as distinct from the professional beggars and cadgers, are an inescapable element in the city. Sydney will pot bury “ General Depression ” merely with spectacular mock ceremony. The position is not to be overcome merely by playing the ostrich act.