FLAXBOURNE SETTLEMENT.

Otago Witness, Issue 2884, 30 June 1909, Page 39

FLAXBOURNE SETTLEMENT.

Junz 26. — It is now nearly • four years since the famous Flaxbourne estate was settkd.^ Th-j whole fac-3 of the country i.s ■chaciged —new fe'ices, rtaw roads, new cultivation, and now buildings, where a little ever three ysars ago there were neither fences, road*, buildings, nor cultivation. From one poini 'alone over 200 stacks of grain could be- counted this autumn, where formerly was unfenced tussock. Here ther^ was before the tettlement neither ohildr&r nor eohools; jiow we have two fichoofe, with an attendance of ». -early hO children This has all been done not in good years, but in tad; for, truly, if any settlement ,ever had bad luck from the first it was Flaxboume. TII3 first raar stock were too dear for most of the settlers _+o buy, cons-jqurntly-most of them pad their two first half-year's rents Tor nothing. 2*e <ct year came. one. of tha worst drougir.s Jknowii here, 'fc-rge manuka 20ft high dying from the effects. And this year, when we naally did- look for come return, and the crops wera heavy and pi-omisiriur well, camo the cateipillar scouree. stripping the gram as it ri palled, m many oase* leaving nothing but straw in their wake. To cap all, and what makes all the rest harder to bear, tho railway which we were promised two y*aT3 ago, the South Main Trunk, is fifcill at jSeddon, 15 miles fa-cm the centre of th-s "setfclement, a.nd bo' another mile has been • opened sinw. some years before the opaiiner of Flaxbourne. We had tho Minister for Pilblic Works, the Hon Roderick M'K^nzie, here a few months ago, ar.d he promised that the railway 'be opened to Ward, our -maan township, for the carriage of grain next Feb a*uary, but I am afraid., unless we are well backed up by Christohurch and Wellington, ths formation of the - South Ma,m Trunk will be as slow in the future as it has beer in the past. However, notwith&tajtdin.g ali the aforesaid drawbacks, the settlers on tha whole -are well-contented, a-nd have every faith in the future of the'i(district. The main support of this laith is the- railway, without which heavy crops Are of little- avail.