Help Small Miners

Plea for the Goldfields Road

From Our Own Correspondent WAU, Feb. 11.

PERSISTENT reports are current in Morobe that an excellent route has been found from Salamaua to the Goldfields, presenting no in superable engineering difficulties and eliminating several costly bridges which would have been necessary on the original “most direct route”.

Residents now hope that tenders will be called in the near future for the construction of this project.

There should be no further misgiv ings as to where the money is to come from, since the new Gold Tax is building up the Trust Fund at the rate of about £20,000 per month. As the Gold Tax is to be devoted to “progressive works and forward movements in the Territory”, pre sumably it can be used to finance the Wau-Salamaua road.

Small miners are finding it diffi cult to carry on, since commodity prices and freight rates are advanc ing gradually rice, a necessary item, rose recently by £3/10/- a ton, on the beach. An assurance that the road from the coast is to be put into construction would give new incen tive to these small miners.

An overseas stamp journal reports that the New Zealand Government contem plates issuing a new set of stamps for Niue Island and that one of the de signs will be a reproduction of the mis sion ship “John Williams II” which was wrecked on Niue in 1867. These stamp issues by impoverished Islands Admini strations are becoming so common that a pirate-ship would be a more suitable subject than a mission-ship.