Kuru-Kuru Grass

Trial

Now in Sydney Police Court

THE Kuru-Kuru grass conspiracy trial has been dragging along slowly in the Sydney Police Court. Michael Sinclair. David Hampton, W. J. Taylor, E. R. White, P. R. Higgins are charged with having conspired with W. J. Fuller ton and G. S. Holburn to obtain money from certain people.

It appears that some of these accused either acquired the ruins of the Com monwealth Hemp Corporation (which had tried to produce sisal hemp in Papua), or built upon them; at any rate, there were developed most impressive

plans for the establishment of a great paper-making industry, the chief raw material of which was to be the well known Kuru-kuru grass of Papua (which is practically the same as the Kunai grass of New Guinea). A group of com panies with large nominal capital was created, and there was share-selling, and some apparently involved share transac tions. It appears that special police offi cials spent months in examining transac tions as between Commonwealth Hemp Corporation, Fibres Ltd., Issuing Houses of Australia Ltd., British Australian Fibre Co. Ltd. and British Australian Paper and Pulp Co. The accused, apparently, told the detectives that they were “on the verge” of floating a great industry. The detectives replied that they “had been on the verge for five years”. They then asked “what they could do when they had to fight Baillieu and Mussen” (the two men allegedly at the head of the corporation which established paper mills in Tasmania).

It was in the middle ’thirties that the “PIM” first directed attention to the activities of this little group of company promoters and suggested that, if any one in the Territories contemplated an investment in these companies, he first should examine the history of the Com monwealth Hemp Corporation, and those latterly connected with it. Certain of the gentlemen now accused in the police court thereupon threatened the “PIM” with a libel action, and there were some

lively interchanges.