Norfolk Island.

Attractions of Kingston.

From Our Own Correspondent.

Norfolk Is., March 21.

THE long summer drought has broken at last and the roads that have been so deep and dusty are hard and clean with here and there a yellow puddle to warn us of winter rains coming pretty soon. Farmers and planters are plough ing and planting, and their wives are putting vegetable and flower seeds into cherished garden plots and agreeing to exchange young plants in a few weeks’ time.

Last holiday weeks are being spent by settlers from “up country” down at Kingston: where an enterprising and far-sighted resident has been busy for months past building up a colony of at tractive little bungalows, all of different design and all snapped up as soon as completed. Three are permanently let and the rest brim over with joyous, casual tenants whose faces and numbers vary from week to week. As an addi tional attraction the largest bungalow has been fitted and equipped as a tea room and restaurant where vagrant meals may be taken or a weekly ar rangement come to.

The green acre on which this little settlement has arisen is separated from the blue waters of Emily Bay only by the width of the golf course to which visitors are made warmly welcome and where they are certain of a very good game. A hard tennis court is in course of construction and very fine bathing is to be had in Emily Bay or the rougher waters of Slaughter Bay; while, for con venience of domestic shopping or postal business, Burns, Philp’s main store is close at hand and our solitary post of fice is down the road.

Cable Staff Shrinks.

The discovery and development of wireless is not an unmixed blessing to all. The cable companies all over the world must have been very hard hit by the substitution of beam wireless (or whatever it is) for the more complicated process of communication by cable.

Here on Norfolk the shrinkage of cable business is very apparent, and the cable community is diminishing by every steamer. The single men’s quarters and mess are closing down —which also in volves the dismissal of the married couple who have looked after the bachelors —and only a barely sufficient staff of married men is being retained. If it were not that Norfolk is a realy sta tion and must be kept open for the transmission of messages to other parts, it is probable that the whole local or ganisation would be closed down.

By this steamer outward bound, Mrs.

Pinney, wife of our Administrator, is travelling to Sydney to take her four teen-year-old daughter to school. She expects to return in three weeks’ time to her husband and ten year old son, Peter, who, for the present, goes to school here.

Mrs. Victor Sellheim, widow of Major- General Sellheim, who was Administra tor, here some years ago and died here, is also going to Sydney by the Morinda this trip. She expects to spend about three months in Australia and may then either return to the island where she has interests or continue home, where her own family live in Carnarvonshire.