B.P. Extend To Phoenix Group

From Our Own Correspondent APIA, June 16.

THE auxiliary schooner Makoa. owned by Messrs. Burns Philp (S.S.) Co.

Ltd., returned recently from Fiji after a thorough overhaul and repainting. The largest vessel of local registry, she looks quite a smart and trim boat now.

She left a few weeks ago for Swain’s Island, the Tokelau Group, and the Phoenix Islands, in which latter group B.P. & Co. are starting operations.

Carpenters from Apia travelled aboard the Makoa to erect dwellings and copra sheds on Hull Island. Labour for the 300 acres of coconut groves in bearing will be recruited in the Tokelaus to work the plantations on Sydney and Hull Islands.

The coconut crop should normally be be tween 180 and 200 tons a year.

Mr. J. W. Jones, until recently on the staff of the Mulifanua Plantation, of the N.Z.R.E., and a popular member of Apia’s younger set, has been appointed manager of the new B.P. enterprise in the Phoenix Group. He sailed on the Makoa. taking with him a small motor-launch, and a powerful radio set which will enable him to keep in touch with the outside world. (It is reported elsewhere that the “Makoa” was wrecked, at the end of June.) Mr. D. A. Butler, manager for the Union Steam Ship Co. in Samoa, returned to Apia with his family after furlough by the Wairuna in June, Mr. R. B. Barnes arrived in Sydney from Rabaul, New Guinea, by the Montoro on June 19. He was taken to Sydney

Hospital suffering from blood-poisoning.