News from Norfolk Island

Improved Shipping Service —Influx of Settlers and Tourists Expected —Hopeful Future

From Our Own Correspondent

Norfolk Island, June 1.

WELL! The Morinda is coming on our run at last —her first sailing scheduled for June 25—and not only are we to see her regularly at Norfolk Island, but, every alternate trip, she is to continue on to Auckland, New Zealand, returning thence, we trust, loaded to the gunwales with hope ful and anticipatory visitors.

Settlers, too, are coming to Norfolk.

Mr. Blake, our most prominent builder, tells me that he has been so inundated with demands for plantations and pro perties that he has taken a partner and is extending his business to in clude a land and estate agency.

He assures me that these are not the airy and unsubstantial inquiries with which all residents of desirable tropic isles are familiar; written, ap parently, by dreamers and idlers who, with no real intention of emigration, but with spare time and a pen in their hands, decide that they might just as well write to some obliging stranger and amuse themselves thereafter with building up a fanciful existence based upon information received. Nor do they come from romantically minded dead-beats who see themselves magic ally transported to a lotus land where life is one grand, sweet song and where beneath our non-existent coconut palms they shall dream their days away—living and loving without money and without price.

No, these are solid citizens who, thwarted hitherto for want of trans port and with months in which to make up their minds while their home land trembled beneath their feet, are firmly decided to realise their local investments and come away to where our little isle stands stable in the sea; where the sun shines all the year round, the rains come in their appointed sea son, and there is time for play as well as for work.

Vale, Makambo

And more yet. Not only is the Morinda coming, but the Makambo is going. We can hardly believe it, but

the timetable, drawn up and distri buted, guarantees that it is a solid fact.

So many times have we been assured that after a specific date her smoke would cease to blot our sky; so many times . . . again and again and end lessly ... have we been constrained to accept her for a further period, that we had begun to consider her an unalterable fact or phenomenon of nature; destined to rise and set upon us as inevitably as dawn and dark But she is going. The New Hebrides have already waved a glad farewell and after this very next passage to Norfolk we shall also, for the last time, see her sink into the west with the setting sun. And then, so contrary is the human heart, it is quite likely there will be found many who say with a sigh, “Well, there goes the old Mak

ambo, she wasn’t a bad old ship, after all, and we shall be lucky if the Morinda serves us as well.” But they won’t really mean it, and we wouldn’t really have her back on any consideration.

Golfing Facilities.

We are busy making a second golf course, situated in the centre of the island, in “Nobbs’ Paddock,” where our recent race meetings took place. Its possibilities struck the eye of golf en thusiasts on that occasion and arrangements were made almost instantly to take it over.

It will relieve the conges tion at the Kingston course, where there are already nearly 100 members, all playing on the same two days a week, and will prove an additional attraction for

the boarding houses nearby. Over 50 members are already enrolled, more are coming in every day, and a magni ficent opening is anticipated on King’s Birthday, June 3.

Theatrical Entertainment

On June 23 (the birthday of the Prince of Wales) Mr. Jarvis, our young English actor, is presenting “The Ghost Upstairs,” a thriller written and acted all over Australia by Leon Gordon, who is now writing scenarios in Holly wood.

Mr. Jarvis was in Gordon’s com pany for 18 months and became so well acquainted with the play that, failing to obtain the script in time, he was able to write it out from memory.

A big house is certain.