During the tourist season Mr Davis, as driver of a pair of horses attached to a wagonette, makes regular trips with tourists along the Skippers road, and Sharp considers it his special duty to accompany the conveyance, and he has never been known to neglect it.
He may go ahead of the conveyance, or lag behind, as he feels inclined, but when what is considered the dangerous part of the road is reached he takes up a position between the vehicle and the danger zone, and woe betide any other canine which he may meet at this stage.
Sharp has a knack of engaging him in combat and rolling him over the cliff, so that he may not interfere with the horses attached to the vehicle. After Sharp has seen the conveyance safely past the cliffs he considers his duty at an end and trots home at his own good time.
On several occasions efforts have been made to keep him at the stable when the vehicle has gone to Skippers, but Sharp finds a way of getting free and will be found attending to his self-imposed duty of escorting his master’s vehicle.
Disorganisation in the territory
Sydney: Another humorous chapter has been added to the history of Australia's Northern Territory. It is stated that a number of persons are leaving Darwin as assisted immigrants to Queensland, and even to Western Australia, assistance for this purpose being rendered by the Federal Government.
Apart from its humorous side, this development is a somewhat pathetic commentary on political mismanagement. It was decided by the Fisher Ministry that the Northern Territory was to be an object lesson in the creation of a prosperous community by political control.
Huge sums of money have been diverted to the territory since that time in the endeavour to create an artificial paradise that would attract white settlers.
State hotels were established in which beer was retailed at specially low rates. Hours of work at Darwin were anything the workers chose to make them, and wages were mostly calculated in overtime.
Despite this the history of the territory is one of sustained discontent, disorder, and confusion.
Administrators have left hastily at the request of the residents. In sheer desperation the State hotels were eventually offered to private enterprise.
The fact that the scanty population now exhibits an anxiety to go elsewhere and leave this paradise behind them seems to be the last telling argument against political control.
Rabbiting still booming
Rabbiting is still on the boom, although big catches are now harder to get. That the industry is still a lucrative one (says the Orepuki Advocate) is instanced by the fact that a trapper in this district made a £60 cheque for two weeks’ work.
One man is reported to have received the cheque for £66, being for a fortnight’s work in the Wyndham district.
— ODT, 8.6.1922
