“DOMAIN DOSSERS”

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 520, 1 August 1932, Page 5

“DOMAIN DOSSERS”

Unwilling to Shift Quarters. CITY’S DIFFICULT PROBLEM. (Special to the “ Star.”) SYDNEY, July 21. There was a time when the rather opprobrious title “ Dossers of the Dom.” was meant to indicate the loafers and “ hoboes ” who, in default of permanent abiding places, found shelter in the Domain. To-day, few of this vagrant tribe survive, but their place has been taken by a considerable number of the unemployed. A stranger wandering round the picturesque foreshore of the Domain in the vicinity of the outcropping sandstone ledges, known in local j history as Mrs Macquarie’s chair, finds ; himself confronted by a considerable number of tents, huts, and “ whares,” which house some 70 or SO people. These are supplemented by about 100 more who sleep in caves or under any casual shelter available. They are not of the “ hobo ” or larrikin class, but are simply the flotsam and jetsam of the great wave of depression cast up on Sydnfey shores. They have remained there undisUirbed, because it was impossible to find work for them and difficult to provide shelter. Now, however, the new Minister of Agriculture, whose Department controls the Domain, has decided that the campers must go, and the people chiefly concerned are in a most resentful and refractory state of mind. It is not proposed to turn them adrift as homeless wanderers in the city streets. The City Council has offered the use of several buildings in the city to accommodate them, and suggestions have been made to provide for their immediate wants. But the “ campers ” definitely refuse to leave the Domain except on their own terms. There is a “ Mayor of Shantytown,” one “ Bluey Thompson,” and in a published interview he expressed the resolute determination of his constituents to hold their ground. In the Domain they are free and independent; they have a harbour view that “ millionaires would do their blocks over,”

they do not relish the idea of “ hostels ’* in which they would be subjected to rules and restrictions, and they do not intend to go. Do Not Feel Hardships. It must be understood that this is a case of men, unemployed through no fault of their own, striving to retain their liberty and their self-respect. Where they are, they can bathe in the sea and prepare their own food, and as most of them are used to “ roughing it ” they do not feel the hardships that this sort of life involves. The Minister has taken up a sympathetic attitude over the whole question, suggesting that if the campers will leave the Domain quietly the authorities will do everything in their power to provide them with shelter and facilities for decent living with some measure of selfcontrol. Blot on Landscape. The whole question is a difficult one for either municipal or departmental authorities to handle. One cannot help sympathising with the men who, being without work, desire to have a free and unrestrained life under conditions that are to them healthy and acceptable. But this “ camp ’ of huts and hovels, fabricated chiefly of bags and kerosene tins, is certainly a blot upon a beautiful landscape, and it ought to be possible to restore the Domain in this quarter to its original beauty while making provision for the needs of men who have been driven to this casual form of existence by sheer privation, and who are quite ready to work as soon as the opportunity is open to them again.