Mount Hutton Land Scheme Soldier SettlementPrint Page

The monument commemorates the soldier settler families of the Mount Hutton Land Scheme.

After World War One, the government gave soldier settlers 600 acres (roughly one square mile) and £600 to construct fences, dig a dam and build a hut. Unfortunately, the soldier settler's farms were not very economical and many of the soldier settlers returned to the city. 

MOUNT HUTTON SETTLERS.
Having visited the soldier settlers at Mount Hutton, near Roma, which is supposed to be one of the most successful settlements of this kind in Queensland, Mr. J. A. Hunter, M.P., contends that, the place has been over-valued and that a inquiry into each individual grievance should promptly be carried out. This is not the first time that the Mount Hutton settlement has become disquietingly prominent. Last November meetings there of the ex-service farmers protested vigourously against the Lands Department's demand for interest and redemptio charges from those who took up land under the Returned Soldiers Settlement Act three years ago. These farmers were under the impression that no such demand would be made during the first seven years of their occupancy.

The agreement, as they understood it, was that each man was to receive his block of land rent-free for three years and also an advance of £625, on which interest was to be charged, but no redemption until seven years had passed. It now seems that some of the settlers expected a second loan sufficient to carry them on, and for lack of that anticipated aid, many of them are about at the end of their tether. It is stated that Mount Hutton, with generous treatment, could still become a prosperous district , and then if the returned soldiers there have misread some of the complicated terms of their contract, a compromise should surely be possible, so that their laabours of the last three years would not be lost entirely to them.
Daily Mail (Brisbane), 1 June 1922.

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