Norfolk Island Notes,

From Our Own Correspondent.

Norfolk Is., May 2.

NOW is the summer of our discon tent made glorious autumn by the suns of April and of May!

The prettiest weather week after week! Bright blue skies drifting with little fleecy clouds; calm blue sleeping seas, dreaming beneath a temperate sun. The roads are hard and bare with all dust gone, the winter mud not yet upon us.

Under these conditions Easter was a holiday season that no one should for get. Bathing, picnics and golf over the week-end and, on Easter Monday, one of the funny little race meetings it is rich entertainment to attend. No bookies operated, but the tote regis tered the passing through of some thing over £100. Not really one hun dred pounds, of course; actually about £20, that was handed in thoughtfully and after due consideration on one side of the structure before each race and snatched deliriously and with joy over the paying out counter after it. But as much fun and excitement expended with it as though thousands were at stake.

A Bean Tragedy.

While our best Canadian Wonder bean seed —of remarkable quality and evenness —only fetched £2/10/- per bushel this last season, we are paying anything up to £6 per bushel for im ported seed that in no way compares with our own, and we wonder why we foolishly continue to cultivate the land for a living; why, knowing as we do, the helpless necessities of the grower, we do not emigrate en masse to the cities and sit like bloated spiders in webs, acting as middlemen between unhappy producer and exploited con sumer.

One of our outstanding settlers here —a man whose name is synonymous with quality and integrity—sold to a buyer a few months ago, his bean crop at what the buyer declared to be a fancy price and, in return, bought from that buyer, who is a seed merchant in Sydney, a bushel of Tweed Wonder seed to use this coming season. When he opened up the parcel he could scarcely believe his eyes. Small, mis shapen, discoloured; they looked like third rate reject Canadian Wonders and, as he said himself, he would have considered that a handful of them scattered throughout an outward bound consignment would have dis qualified the lot and discredited the consignor for life.

And he paid £6 for the bushel! Their sole merit was, apparently, that they were guaranteed free from weevil and blight; and that, even, must be taken on trust until growth and harvest proves it. What a dirty business Business is!

Bureaucracy!

For a long time past we have been agitating for a second post office some where in the centre of the island and equally accessible from all quarters.

At present our only office is down in Kingston, on the southern shore, where all the Government offices are congregated, and it is a day’s journey —sometimes two successive days’ journey—to redeem a mail and transact small postal business. In winter, too, with mud up to the axles of our cars, and the hubs of our gig wheels, mail day seldom passes without an accident.

Our administrator was requested to approach the Postal Department in Canberra and ask them to establish a sub office, however small, in some more convenient situation; but after corres pondence in which he did his very ut most for us he has been forced to announce that there is not the slightest prospect of relief. The Department claims that our postal service already costs far more than the maintenance of a similar service anywhere on the mainland, and, short of a personal visit of inspection and investigation, it is impossible to convince them that our difficulties of communication and so on are unique; we are rated an*d dealt with in the precise manner that is found to be most efficacious elsewhere.

Therefore we may, for an indefinite time to come, resign ourselves to exist ing conditions. Captain Pinney has done his best —with a sympathetic realisation of our difficulties and the justice of our prayer—and he can do no more. Anyway, we got the verandah round the post office and that is some thing that all the year round we shall be grateful for!