Poaching Sampans
p. 76 · Read in the full issue
Minister Goes North to Investigate
T° investigate personally reports of Japanese sampan activities in North Australian and New Guinea waters the Minister for Customs (Mr . T. W. White) med from Sydney by the J/erc«r on June 6 for North Queensland, Thursday Island, and the Mandated Temtory.
His inquiries will include an examina tion of measures used to check smuggling and poaching, the landing of prohibited immigrants, and the evasion of quaran tine regulations. He will also investigate the suitability of various types of craft
for coastal and inter-island patrol work.
This belated investigation is the result of numerous reports of the depredations of foreign raiders in territorial waters which have been received over a period of two years or more.
Only a week before Mr. White depart ed, Mr. C. G. Frazer, an engineer, who went to Darwin to install diesel engines in British-owned luggers, told the Federal Government that he had seen a fleet of 21 Japanese pearling vessels with a mother-ship of 200 tons in a remote har bour of Bathurst Island. A larger parent ship must have been working with them further out to supply the necessary stores, and to carry the young pearl-shell to the Caroline Group where they would mature, he contended.
Aboard the Japanese boats at Bathurst Island, added Mr. Frazer were aboriginal lubras from Melville Island, bartered by their relatives to the crew during their stay in Australian waters.
Referring to Mr. Frazer’s report, Mr.
Thomas Paterson (Minister for the In terior) said that poachers around Bathurst Island would be soon scared off as the Government patrol boat (armed with a Lewis gun) had just departed to police the Northern waters. However, the poachers apparently have wooed the gods, for no sooner had the new launch, Larrakia, arrived in Darwin than it sank at its moorings. It transpired that the automatic bailing device began to pump inwards instead of outwards, and, filling, the vessel heeled over. It will be another month now before it is in commission again, as the engines have to be removed for overhaul.
Mr. I. Shoobridge, of the Crown Law Office, New Guinea, arrived in Sydney by the Neptuna on June 1. For several weeks prior to his departure from Rabaul, he was an inmate of Namanula Hospital.