Ice and Aeroplanes Give Fresh

Meat Thrice Daily to Morobe Goldfields.

SALAMAUA has organised a fresh food service for the Morobe gold fields, N.G.

The Salamaua Trading Co., a few months ago, built cold stores which can hold six tons of food. The Sydney steamers now bring frozen meat, eggs, and other produce to Salamaua; three times a day, frozen food is placed on the aeroplanes at Salamaua; forty minutes later it is delivered, at Wau and other goldfields centres, to kitchen “boys” from the various messes and private residences. Fresh meat is being delivered daily by native runners to customers many miles away from the aerodromes.

This food supply promises to re volutionise southern conceptions of life on a New Guinea goldfield. The Morobe plateau is high and, as the bush is being cleared, conditions are not at all unpleasant for Europeans. The nights are cold. All sorts of European vege tables and fruits are being grown. Edie Creek field is now being described, as the healthiest place in New Guinea.

One contrasts these conditions with life on Sudest Island (eastern New Guinea) thirty years ago, as described by Mrs. Elizabeth Mahony. There was a great gold-rush to Sudest Island; and behind Mrs. Mahony’s trading station were the graves of 200 Europeans.

Officially, the cause of death was fever; actually, it, was ptomaine poison, the result of the careless handling of the canned foods of those days.