EIGHTY-FIVE YEARS AGO

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27274, 28 December 1949, Page 4

EIGHTY-FIVE YEARS AGO

»ROM THE FILES OF THI ©taao Daily Uimes DUNEDIN, DECEMBER 28, 1864. “ The supply of water for the various races at the Hamilton diggings is now, thanks to a good fall of rain, plentiful, and sluicing operations are in consequence being actively prosecuted. The next escort from Hamilton is expected to be in excess of the last. Mining affairs at the Hyde goldfields are quiet, a considerable number of the population having left for the new rushes in the neighbourhood.”

“A correspondent informs us that in Waipori district all the companies that have set in along the flat and whose ground is in working order are making handsome returns. There is a likelihood that the flats on each side of the river, for some distance above and below the township, will shortly be taken up. He complains of the high price of butchers’ meat, which he attributes to the absence of competition.”

“The wreck of the steamer Star of Tasmania at Oamaru was currently reported at Port Chalmers yesterday, but there seems to be no reliable authority for the rumour. The report was first received via Dunedin. Though unconfirmed, it is an event which is not at all improbable, Oamaru being a very indifferent roadstead, possessing none of the shelter of Port Chalmers or Moeraki. There is an active desire on the part of the inhabitants of Oamaru to make that place a regular port for shipping, but to work with, rather than against. Nature, is likely to be most productive of success, and the easiest way of doing it is to make the natural harbour of Moeraki the port of the district, and establish communication between it and Oamaru by a tramway or railroad, works of comparatively easy accomplishment.”