Industry's Good Prospects
p. 18 · Read in the full issue
Papua's Rubber
From Our Own Correspondent
T Port Moresby, Feb. 4.
HE rubber industry is booming in Papua, and it is to be hoped that there is nothing in the suggestion that a special tax on the industry is planned by the finance-hungry Government of Aus tralia.
If Australia will encourage this indus try, and permit it to take advantage of the unique opportunities created by the war, we shall have in Papua a source of revenue eventually which should remove Australia’s future responsibility for an annual subsidy.
It is interesting to learn that the Aus tralian branch of the Sacred Heart Mis sion recently has taken up 1,000 acres for rubber planting near the Sagarai Valley, Milne Bay. Eastern Papua. They are thorough people, and are likely to make a success of it. They now have fou£ free-hold blocks of land in Eastern Papua, where they have started mission work—namely at Sideia Island, near Samarai; on Samarai itself: at Ladada, Milne Bay; and in the Trobriand Islands.