Anchorage
p. 12 · Read in the full issue
New Industries In
Norfolk Is.
Plan For Sheltered Anchorage
UNDER the energetic direction of the present Administrator (Major- General Sir Charles Rosenthal), Norfolk Island has been making steady economic progress.
The passionfruit-canning industry established there by Mr. A. Flack, of Sydney, was not the success anticipated; but the residents, who already were run ning a co-operative dairy factory satis factorily desired to establish also, along side it, a factory for canning passion fruit. This saved the passlonfruit indus try. Messrs. Cottee. of Australia, are tak ing all the canned passionfruit that can be produced.
Bean production, which had tended to languish, has been revived. N.I. beans are famous, and th°re is a good, constant demand for them in Australia. The Ad ministrator has been trying to introduce new strains, to further improve the qual ity.
N.I. bananas sell in Sydney, at a high price, netting 7/- per case to the grower; and N.I. oranges are being sent to New Zealand.
Phormium tenax, a flax plant almost identical with that of New Zealand, grows wild in N.I. There is a keen de mand, now, for this hemp and N.I. farmers are being urged to cultivate the flax. During many years attempts were made to cultivate tung oil in N.I. Now, there are some scores of tung trees there, which have yielded luxuriantly, for the last five years, an oil nut described by the Sydney Technological Museum as among the best ever seen there. For that reason, the possibilities of N.I. tung oil are being carefully examined.
Norfolk Island’s greatest handicap is the lack of a sheltered port—under cer tain weather combinations, the anchor ages are unworkable. The Administrator now is examining an interesting plan— namely, to build a causeway, half a mile long, from near the boat-landing at Kingston, out to Nepean islet. It is con tended that, if that were done, there would be shelter, from all kinds of wea ther, on one side or other of the cause way.
Mr. David Buffett, of Norfolk Island, recently married Miss Ruth Stephenson, of Sydney, at St. Barnabas Chapel, N.I.