GO SLOW

Waikato Independent, Volume XXI, Issue 2488, 29 December 1921, Page 5

GO SLOW

IN NORTHERN AUSTRALIA THE CLOSING OF VESTEY'S. (By "Torritorean" in Melbourne Punch.) One of the severest knock-out blows to the North was the closing of the Darwin Meat Works. They were erected six years ago, and now they are about to be dismantled and removed elsewhere. They cost half-a-million of money. To-day they are in the care of three men. In the face of this sort of thing, how is the vast Northern Territory to be developed? Messrs. Vestey Bros, have meat works in the United States, Canada, Argentine, South Africa and New Zealand, and when Sir William Vestey visited Darwin and the hinterland he decided to erect freezing and canning works at Darwin. This firm had interests on the Victoria. River and in Kimberley, and the works, it was thought, would give an all-round impetus to stock-raising and pastoral pursuits generally. ■ &i .. The Meat Works Story.

The Vestey Meat Works are the largest and most up-to-date in Australia. They cover forty acres, and there are immense holding yards also. The firm erected imposing staff quarters, a number of residences, and a large barracks and a mess-room for the accommodation of the men. In the busy season upwards of 500 men were employed at the works. Three or four hundred of these men were engaged in Queensland, where it was assumed climatic conditions would not materially interfere with the workers in a tropical humid Their fares were paid from Brisbane and back, and full wages from port to port. During the killing season, which usually lasted between three and four months, the men were given carte blanche—that is to say, they could work as many hours as they chose. Many men would earn £2O a week, and the average man would make £ls per week. Boys in the canning shed during the same season earned from £6 to £8 per week. And yet they were not satisfied. The agitator came along, and told them the hated capitalist was filling his own pocket at their expense, . Capital must go, he said, and the .get the full value for his labour. ' Consequently, the much-abused man who provides the sinews for meat, and other works, packed up his carpet-bag, and is leaving for best pastures —probably Java — where labour troubles are not quite so acute. And so the labour agitator has kified the goose that layed the golden egg in the North, as he will in the South.

At these Darwin works over three hundred cattle were put through in a day. Darwin has got a fresh lease of life under the regime of Messrs. Vestey. During the killing season the Territory, from Kathefine to Pine Creek, and thence to Darwin, was an animated scene. The cattle were brought hundreds of miles to the Katherine. A new era has set in. Instead of driving cattle to the southern markets, here was a market right at the pastoralists' door. They came from the Ord or Victoria Rivers, the Barkly tableland, the McArthur and Roper Rivers, and far-away Centralia. They were trained direct to the works from the railhead at Katherine. Cattle trains left at hourly intervals day and' night, and bustle and hustle gave-ia new lifo to the somnolent citizen of the North, who likes rest and ease and plen ty of time to do what he has to do. Climatic conditions are against haste in a land where the chief doctrine'is — go slow. Twenty-seven Nationalities.

When these meat works were in full swing, Vestey's had in their employ no fewer than 27 nationalities of the human race. Ninetynine per cent, of these were 1.W.W., Nihilists, Bolshevieks or men of that ilk, all members of the union, and always ready to strike or cut the throat of anyone differing in opinion from them. Consequently, one of the last hopes of the Territory disappears. At the present time in Darwin white men are not employed in outdoor work. There are South Americans, Greeks, Bussians, Bulgarians. They call themselves cosmopolitans. They in their turn employ the black man. The black iB the.scavenger of Darwin, Pine Creek and every camp in the land. There is no white Australia in the far North. The Territory is mongrel; Thursday Island and Broome are Japanese, Kopang, Malay and Chinese. But the latter work while the.former agitate and bring the country to ruin.

North Australia is magnificent pastoral country, and a great field for enterprise of the right sort. But capital is thrown away there, and Socialistic experiments a dead loss to Australia. The State Meat Works at Wyndham (W.A.) have also closed down. A loss of £BO,OOO was shown on twelve months' business. That would take some beating. State enterprise all over Australia is a failure, and the workers are beginning to understand the shallow'mockers of crank talk. But nowhere is it so apparent as the Far North. It is ghastly. The North is now the laughing stock of the East. The Japanese fishermen openly boast that Australia cannot develop the North, but they can. What will Australia do about'it? Is some method of development by Australia better than Japanese invasion? That is the question the people of Australia have to consider.