MORTAL AFTER ALL

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19784, 7 March 1927, Page 3

MORTAL AFTER ALL

COAL MAGEAIFS KOW •NATURAL INTEKEST TN Mr John Brown, who. as a coalmining magnate and as a celebrity of the turf, is known throughout Australia. has his hobby, like other mortals. J Tn his case, it is pedigree poultry. ■ When he returned to Sydney from a 1 visit to the Old Country a while back ; press representatives gravely asked him ' about the coal strike which was convulsing England and other weighty problems. John Brown who is a man of few words, knew nothing. But they forgot to question him about the only subject upon which he was likely to become talkative —the consignment of pedigree poultry, which he had imported while away for his beautiful property at Richmond Vale. It is a vast sanctuary for wild and tame bird and animal life. There, for example, one will find geese worth as much as 70 guineas apiece; flocks of blue cranes, and all the other aristocrats of bird life. Richmond Vale is one of the beauty spots of New South Wales, and is suggestive of the rural charm of English countryside. If the pressman who interviewed John Brown on his return to Sydney had chatted with him about geese or native wild ducks or turkey gobblers instead of trying to draw him on such a material subject as coal strikes, they would have touched him on a weak spot. What they missed someone else got a day or two ago, in tho form of a most fascinating story of Richmond Vale and its bird life and waters teeming with fish.