Timber From New

Guinea

New Industry May Develop

TTHE export of high-grade lumber from New Guinea is receiving an increased amount of attention, and there seems to be some probability that this will grow into an important industry. The four main islands of the Mandated Territory —New Guinea, New Britain, New Ireland, and Bougainville—carry enormous forests of large trees, in both the coastal and mountain areas, and it is reasonable to suppose that a proportion of these trees have a market value.

The trouble, in the past, has been to find a market sufficiently profitable to cope with the transport costs. A shrewd trader, Mr. G. Eidelbach, of Rabaul, ap pears to have solved the difficulty and to be successfully pioneering the industry.

For some time past, he has been regu larly bringing logs out from the forest near Keravat, some 25 miles from Rabaul, and shipping the logs from Rabaul to Australia, where he has found a suitable market.

It is reported also that Mrs J. Gilmour, of Put Put plantation, near Rabaul, has been in Australia recently, organising the export of timber lumber from her property to Australia.

The world’s timber resources, while under an increasing demand, are stead ily decreasing in volume, and it seems inevitable that the New Guinea forests will receive much attention in the near future. It is recalled that a few years ago Mr. Charles Booth, one of the pion eers of the Morobe goldfield, was so im pressed with the quantity and high qual ity of the timbers on the Morobe plateau that he tried to organise a timber ex port industry, and even held an exhibi tion of New Guinea timbers in a room in Hotel Australia, Sydney. The problem of transport between the Morobe valleys and the coast of New Guinea seemed in soluble, however. It need not be regarded as permanently insoluble —the Morobe timbers are too valuable to be neglected.

Some of the finest cedar is to be found there in large quantity—the Bulolo Gold Dredging Co. built a bridge, wholly of cedar, across the Bulolo River. “Yorky”

Booth has been a pioneer always, and some day his initial work in connection with Morobe timbers will be recognised.

Mr. W. G. Johnson, of Brown and Joske Ltd., Suva, has been appointed manager in Fiji for the Carpenter line of steamers.