Ararat
Published in The Hamilton Spectator, Wednesday 15th March 1876, page 4
By Our Own Correspondent
March 13.
The pipes that have been laid down to carry the water from Mount Langi Ghiran, are still bursting. On the Ararat side of the Green Hills four have burst, and another, which was five feet under the ground, burst the whole length of the casting on Saturday. If this state of things continues to go on with the other portions of the piping, it will be difficult to say when we shall have the long expected and much needed water.
Easter Monday is generally a great day of excitement for Ararat, with the fête which takes place in the cricket ground during the day, and the grand fancy dress ball in the evening, but according to the report of the meeting which was held in the Bull and Mouth hotel on Friday evening last, it is to be greater than ever this year. About five or six hundred pounds are raised annually at these festivals, of which the Mechanics’ Institute, the Hospital, the Dorcas Society, the Benevolent Asylum, and other institutions, get their proper share, which has gone far to relieve most of them of heavy debts, and place them on a secure footing.
One of the favourite, and on that account popular devices of novel writers, used to be the sudden vanishing of substantial things as if by magic. Well, we frequently see the transposition of complete houses, and sometimes with people living in them, from one town to another, long distances apart. A few afternoons ago the half of what appeared to have been a fair-sized, rather tasty dwelling house, passed up Barkley-street, on its way from Ballarat to Stawell. It was mounted on a conveyance of a somewhat curious kind, the name of which I have not learned. It has four wheels generally, but sometimes only three. The two wheels behind are about three feet high, with tires about six inches broad. The axle on which these wheels are is from fifteen to twenty feet long. From the hind wheels to the fore one is a stout frame, corresponding with the length of the house, and upon which the house is securely fixed. The front wheel is generally a large one, something after the style of the one-wheeled reapers. The horses are attached to the pole or shafts, and away marches the house, to be planted in some more favoured locality. The house that last passed up was drawn by six horses. At the same time a boiler also passed up the street in the same direction, drawn by ten powerful horses, and as the wheels of the waggon upon which it was carried had tires of only the usual breadth, the roads must have suffered no small injury. I see a movement, with the view of having tires proportioned to the loads carried, is being made by the Shire of Hampden, and certainly not before it is urgently needed, for not only is the cost of maintaining roads greatly increased by the present narrow tires, but should a heavy waggon come upon piece of new-made road just at the beginning of winter, and break the crust, no amount of repairing will make it comfortable again that year.
