Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Son of Peter CLARK and Lucy Jane Matilda nee KENWORTHY, Deakin Avenue, Mildura, Vic.

Husband of Hilda Ann CLARK nee KNIGHT of 'Kashmir', Werribee, Vic.

After demobilization, Gunner Clark was wettled on a Bee Farm at Cohuna by the Closer Sttlement Board, after spending 6 months at a Vocational Trainging Course at a Technical School

Crops and Pastures Dying
WERRIBEE, Friday.— Referring to the precarious position of the Werribee Irrigation set tlement, Mr. P. K. Clark, one of the original first World War soldier settlers, and now a  leading beekeeper at Werribee South, said today that the failure of water deliveries from Pyke's Creek and Melton weirs, with the consequent loss of pasture and clover crops,  would result in a disastrous honey season. In normal years quantities of prime district honey were supplied to Melbourne and inter-State markets as well as to England.
This year supplies to the Australian markets would be negligible and - overseas shipments nil.
In recent years the nature and character of the country here have changed with the changing crops; holdings have become smaller, with a consequent increase in population  and wealth of primary production— vegetables, fruit, dairy products, honey, fat lambs and poultry.
Now all is menaced by the second and most disastrous drought in five years, and set tlers find themselves in mid summer with empty reservoirs.
The settlement at present is a sad scene of scorched desolation, with dry and dead pastures and clovers, dying vegetables, with paddocks devoid of the rich and productive  vegetables so urgently required by consumers.
Mr. Clark said he had let his pastures dry out, and saved his water allotments for a small orchard. He thought settlers would not mind having their water charges increased  from 12/ to, say, 20/ per acre-foot to help repay the capital cost of an additional reservoir— a proposal that had been decided upon by the State .Rivers and Water Supply Commission, but which had been negatived by successive Governments.