Islanders’ Needs

A Melbourne newspaper, “The Star," finds a “human interest story " in the fact that the average Islands resident has to depend on the steamers for most of his everyday requirements.

THE ships engaged in the island trade carry many strange items of mer chandise and the companies that control them receive what, to the man in the street, are extraordinary requests, touched at times with unwitting humor.

To the office of one Melbourne firm there came recently an old boot. It mystified the shipping officials until the “covering” letter changed what seemed to be a prac tical joke into an urgent order.

An island dweller suffered from corns.

Efforts to purchase new boots, which would give comfort had failed, and in a last attempt to retain the ease which the old pair provided, the customer parted with one of them, sending it to the com pany with the request, ‘Please match and return in your next ship.”

Those engaged in the island trade are used to surprises, but one of them re ceived a shock some time ago when he opened an order for a gaol door.

That order might well have shattered any romantic illusions he cherished about the islands and their inhabitants, but, business being business, the order was filled promptly.

Bills of lading for island-going ships specify innumerable items, practical and personal, which, although bought un thinkingly in a metropolitan community, become strange when they are cargo for a ship.

These include face powder, tinned but ter, spirits, bon-bons, soap, boiled sweets, gramophones, cigarettes, and furniture.

Some orders are more intimate than others and the petty vexations of life are glimpsed in the order of one customer who sent his glasses to have a lens re paired, and another who had exhausted his supply of brilliantine —even in the islands hair is well groomed.

The medical officer in charge of one group of islands awaits the shipment of phials of calf lymph. Natives and Euro peans alike must be vaccinated against disease.

This order is filled through the Com monwealth Serum Laboratories, and the precious consignment will shortly be taken on board an island steamer at Vic toria Docks.

Customers in the islands do not con fine themselves to orders for goods. Ship ping company officials are often advisers on serious problems. Parents on one island, having decided to send their child ren away from home, sought information on the most suitable schools to which they might be sent.

One of the most unusual requests re ceived recently was from a farmer who asked to be informed of a firm which rigged sailing vessels.

He wanted fittings for a hay stacker of

his own design, and sought second-hand tackle with which to construct it.

It is all commerce, but the circum stances of it must arouse sympathetic understanding in people who enjoy from habit the privileges of city life; privileges which to these islanders form the chief source of interest and pleasure.