GLAD TO BE HOME.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20277, 11 April 1934, Page 1

GLAD TO BE HOME.

British Settler’s Story of Australia. LONDON, April 4. Under the heading “The Disillusioned,” thj> “ Star ” says that the firvt batch of British settlers repatriated from Victoria will reach London tomorrow. Under the heads “ Penniless, But Glad to be Home—Settler Returns from Nightmare Life —Smuggled on Ship, Chased by Police Across Aus tralia,” the newspaper publishes an ex traordinary story told it by a settler, Charles James Dixon. He says that he had sixty-eight acres of land forty-five miles from Melbourne, which was submerged eight months of the year. “ The whole scheme was a fiasco from the beginning,” Dixon adds. “ I felt that I had been fleeced and robbe 1. One year I lost £IOOO worth of potatoes, and on one occasion my children had no boots. “ Once two officials came to see my land. The only consolation they had to offer was that they had seen worse. Writs For Debts. “ Immediately it was known that the Government had compensated me with £SOO, the local tradesmen issued me with writs for debt. A solicitor told me that I would be served with a Supreme Court writ. “ Everv obstacle was raised to my departure, so I had no alternative except to be smuggled out of the country. I decided to catch a boat at Fremantle. The police pursued me there, and boarded the boat while I was talking to a steward. They produced a warrant for my arrest, but were in formed that I was not aboard, and vainly guarded the gangway until the boat sailed with me in it.”

Commenting on the case of Dixon, who had a block at Caldermeade, the report of the Royal Commissioners on Migrant Land Settlement said: — “ Training insufficient, supervision insufficient, block badly waterlogged: would perhaps provide living, but not both living and commitments; advances delayed on some occasions: just expectation as to price for which good dairy land could be obtained not fulfilled.”