[Editor: This article, regarding the New Year, was published in The Northern Star and Richmond and Tweed Rivers Advocate (Lismore, NSW), 1 January 1925.]
New Year
The people of the North Coast have seldom entered upon a new year with a feeling of greater surety for the prosperity of the immediate future than at present prevails. After a long and trying period of drought and disappointment, languishing business and unprofitable markets, rain came opportunely to assure an abundant season, and now, on every hand, there is a hopeful buoyancy and anticipation of the good things to come.
Let us trust that with the new year we are to turn a page in the book of life that will show permanency in the promise the dying year has given us. There can be little question that a new era is being entered upon by the dairying industry, and that the old methods are to be left behind to give place to a more progressive spirit which is destined to carry the Richmond and the Tweed far on the road to success.
Much has already been accomplished in this direction. The first stage — the passing of the Dairy Export Control Act and the movements for the amalgamation of the butter factories — has been initiated, and it now remains for the farmers to carry it to full completion.
Let us remember that whatever has been done in the past year is but dead history, and if advancement is to be made, the new spirit of progress which is now with us must be kept in full activity. Let us make the new year a living issue. The old year is past, the new year is born, and everything lies ahead. What we have done was sufficient for yesterday but it cannot alone meet the needs of to-day. The work that has been accomplished in the dairying industry in particular is but a shadow of what has to be attempted in the near future.
Let this be a happy new year, a year of usefulness, a year in which we shall all valiantly and truly do our share to make the Richmond a better and a more prosperous place than we found it at the dying of the old year. It rests with us to transform the district into what it should be and what we wish it to be. By our energy and industry alone can it be brought about.
The days are surely past when we were content to trust in blind fate and to let fortune juggle with us as she willed. This is a sturdy nation, and being so should plan its own destiny as far as is humanly possible. What we need to do is to cultivate sufficient imagination to visualise the possibilities of the future of this great country, and having done that we are the more likely to bring about their ultimate realisation. With dairying and its kindred industries welded into one compact whole, operating under one control, the Jackadgery hydro-electric scheme an accomplished fact, and a proper system of irrigation as a security against drought, the North Coast would be transformed into a veritable farmer’s paradise.
It is a wonderful land, and the immensity of its possibilities cannot at this early stage be reduced to the terms of understandable figures. Let us at least make an earnest attempt to plumb the depths of its resources, and to bring into use its hidden wealth.
The new year is usually a time for the making of good resolutions, which, unfortunately, so few of us fail to fulfil. But if we cannot do all we promise ourselves we will do, we can at least wipe clean the slate of our heart in the clean water of forgiveness. It is a time to forget old animosities, and to work to achieve harmony, each in our small sphere of life. Individually we can make it a better world, all that is needed is fair dealing, a little kindness, sympathy and forethought. We all reach out longingly to a better state of affairs and to a worthier course of life; and, therefore, to many of us the passing of an old year brings a sense of relief. It seems that we have shut the door on our failures and shortcomings.
The new year suggests a life of something different, and a better, beyond in the path we are treading. May it be so. May the promise of the dawn of the new year be fulfilled.
Source:
The Northern Star and Richmond and Tweed Rivers Advocate (Lismore, NSW), 1 January 1925, p. 4
[Editor: The original text has been separated into paragraphs.]
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