NAME H.W. Holden
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Holden’s block was near Barham, in the Parish of Moulamein, Balranald Land District County of Wakool.   Holden had applied for his loan of £500 prior to November 1921.  By this date he had planted nearly twenty acres of vines and citrus tress ‘and the holding was looking splendid’.[1]  Holden had some capital in hand, which was to be used for fencing in order to tide him over in the unproductive period.[2]

By 10 February 1922, he wrote to the Director of SS stating that he had been informed by the Secretary of the Wakool Shire Repatriation Committee, Moulamein that the Repatriation Department did not grant loans for the effecting of permanent improvements upon land on which a mortgage is held.[3]  He went on, ‘as 90% of the improvements which (I) desire to make with the loan would be permanent, it would be useless for me to go any further with the application.  So after 18 months work and the expenditure of nearly £400 on this block, I must abandon it’.[4]

Footnotes

[1] SRNSW:  Lands Department;  NRS 8058, Returned Soldiers loan files; [12/7299 No. 8332], W.C.S. Sainsbery to the Director of Soldier Settlements 24 November 1921.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid, H.W. Holden to the Director of SS 24 January 1922.

[4] Ibid.

Sources used to compile this entry:

State Records NSW:  Lands Department; NRS 8058, Returned Soldiers loan files; [12/7299 No. 8332] H.W. Holden.