Thursday Is. Notes

Trochus Shell Price Improves—Opportunity for Local Industries

From Our Own Correspondent

Thursday Is., May 30.

TROCHUS shell took a sudden and decidedly welcome rise in price during the middle of May and was quoted at £80 per ton. This is prob ably due to increased orders for buttons placed with Japanese agents and may only be temporary, but the increase is very welcome in these hard times, when every little helps.

The trochus is only found in com paratively shallow water and obtains its nutriment from seaweed and other marine growths; for this reason it is more often found on the south-easterly aspect of a reef, where feed is more abundant. The eggs are formed dur ing the winter months, and at first the young trochus is a free-swimming or ganism only, later settling down to a fixed existence as a shell fish. In the colder months it is not found so freely as it digs in, so to speak, to keep warm; otherwise it has no migratory habits as is sometimes supposed.

The moderate-sized shell, from two to four inches in diameter, is more acceptable for market purposes. When the shell is landed at Thursday Island it is inspected by a municipal officer and passed as clean if the bodies of the fish have been properly extracted; if not, orders for re-cleaning are given.

Insufficiently cleaned trochus Smells objectionably and in the dirty shells the trochus fly, a particularly ubiquit ous little insect, breeds in large num bers. After grading, the shell is off ered for sale by tender and most of it is sent to Japan, where its manufac ture in the smaller class of shirt button is an important home industry. In that country the materials are bought in quite small amounts and cut into discs in the workman’s own home, where all members of the family lend a hand.

What the Japanese do might be equally well carried out in a producing centre like Thursday Island. The main requirement is not so much capital as an incentive to work on the part of local natives. The possibility of obtain ing electrical power in the near future seems to bring local manufacturing enterprises a stage nearer fulfilment, and the decided economic pressure act ing at present on native bread-winners may bring about more industrious hab its.

In Noumea a factory that dealt with the whole of the local catch was in full swing in 1928, but there a better class of labour —Javanese and Tonkin ese —was available. The great assist ance afforded to the proprietor by the liberal laws of the French Colonial Government no doubt helped to make the trochus manufacture a success. It is hoped that our government will give the same encouragement if a start is ever made.

Theoretical as all this may seem, it is believed that trochus and other mar ine objects will be fully manufactured on Thursday Island in the future; the folly of sending all our raw materials to foreign countries will become gener ally apparent some day and the experiment may be tried again—for trochus has been worked on Thursday Island before and given up merely because less arduous means of liveli hood could be found at the time. Any of the local societies would be con ferring a great boon on this district by trying out one or two machines; as for labour, there are always a few white men unemployed and the col oured men gradually might be drawn in to work. A contract price ought to be found, which would make the trial worth while, both as regards wages and returns to the owners. Relief

money, spent in this way, might lead to the birth of a flourishing industry and in any case it could not be looked upon as wasted.

There were 100 cases of pearl shell, part of last season’s catch, sent south in the s.s. Taipang, on June 1.

‘Goodwill’’ Sold To Papua

The ketch Goodwill, the largest and best-equipped of our local craft, has been sold by Papuan Industries Ltd. to Mrs. Cowling, of Mibu Plantation, Fly River, and will in future be used to transport copra to Port Moresby. It is rather a pity that so fine a vessel has been lost to Torres Straits, but apparently no one could find a use for her when she was under offer here.

Replacement Of Mangola

Desired

The loss of the Malabar and the substitution of the Mangola, which carries a limited number of male pas sengers only, is causing some incon venience here and more so in Darwin.

We hear that the Mangola is to return

for another voyage to Singapore, but hope she will be soon replaced by a more commodious passenger steamer.

Aground Near Bramble Cay.

The s.s. Pinna, bound from Pacific ports to Singapore in ballast, grounded on a reef some miles south of Bramble Cay on the night of April 21, but floated off the following night. She apparently had a narrow escape from disaster, as the scene of her mishap is a maze of reefs and banks.

Bramble Cay is not lighted, though it is the northern tip of the Barrier Reef and marks the entrance from the Coral Sea into the great N.E.

Channel of Torres Straits, a route which is used by many vessels trading between the East and the Pacific. The amount of traffic seems to warrant the erection of an automatic light at this point.

Personal Items

Dr. Darvall Barton, who is coming up to T.I. in July to relieve the hos pital surgeon, is a well-known practi tioner of the Bathurst district, N.S.W., a returned man and a keen fisherman and sportsman. He will remain for about three months and is then going to Java and Singapore.

Friends of Mrs. A. A. Dodt, who knew her in Papua, will be interested to hear that she has resigned from the Torres Straits Hospital and has started in business in the town.

It is rumoured that we are to have a visit from the Home Secretary and the Chief Protector of Aboriginals some time during the next few months, but no official announcement has been made to this effect.

Capt. Cross, Managing Director of Guinea Airways Ltd., standing before one of the new ’planes of Bulolo Gold Dredging Ltd., New Guinea