GARDEN “ALL GONE”

Taranaki Daily News, 28 December 1934, Page 3

GARDEN “ALL GONE”

CHINESE PROPERTY FLOODED. SAND ALL OVER THE CROPS. People travelling to the city over Victoria Bridge have noticed Chin Shoo prodding the waste left by the recent floods on his market garden. To the inevitable questions they ask, the answer is that Chin Shoo is looking for lost soil under six inches of sand, says the Melbourne Herald. On the morning of November 30, Chin Shoo had a large crop of tomatoes and beans near the river bank, most of it ready for picking. In the afternoon the floods came, and during the ensuing days the water rose and covered all but about half an acre of Chin Shoo’s sevenacre garden. When they receded, tomatoes, beans, young cabbages, and many other plantings had vanished, along with most of the soil. Where the flood did not take away the soil, it left sand, so Chin Shoo’s garden on the west bank of the Yarra, north of Victoria Bridge, is now mostly clay subsoil or sand. Through the top of the sand peep the tops of a rhubarb crop, which was to have made money for Chin Shoo. The sand is six inches deep. It will take a long time to move, and Chin Shoo is getting old. But he comes of a race of philosophers, and when interviewed he was smiling broadly. “All gone,” he said with a grin, “five hundred and sixty-five pounds worth. No goo’.” The flood destroyed beautiful willows on the bank below Chin Shoo’s garden. It washed away part of the cape at the bend of the river, and cut huge gashes in the banks. It submerged Chin Shoo’s pumping plant. A fellow countryman was trying to save some of the sand-submerged rhubarb. Chin Shoo was flitting about in his conical-shaped Chinese coolie hat, his smile hardly belying his plaintive chant. “All gone.” Chin Shoo has been in Australia 42 years. For the first two he worked in a market garden. Then he went into Lonsdale Street and made furniture for 30 years. “Sight no goo’.” he said in explanation of his departure from the furniture trade, and so he went back to the market garden again. There is still some soil left in parts, the six inches of sand can be shifted, and Chin Shoo must live, and smile, and carry on.