New Caledonia's Timber

Wealth

Mr. Jack McDonald, of Wau, arrived in Sydney last month from New Guinea, having been called up by the RAAF.

Shortly before leaving the Territory, his engagement was announced to Miss Daphne Beck, of Wau.

Mr. Harry Stuart-Russell, Collector of Customs at Samarai, will retire next month from the Papuan Government Service, to take up a position with A, H.

Bunting Pty. Ltd. With his retirement will disappear from the Service a name that has been associated with the Ad ministration since the 1890’s —his uncle Mr. Henry Hamilton Stuart-Russell was Chief Government Surveyor, retiring about 1905; his father, Mr. John Rae Sydenham Stuart-Russell joined in 1901 and served until his death in 1918; and he himself entered the Service in 1914.

During recent years, regular shipments of New Caledonian timber have been sent to Australia for making matches and match boxes. The great valleys of the Colony are filled with a luxuriant growth of kauri pine, similar in type to that of New Zealand.

Top photograph shows logs being transported from a kauri forest at Nepoui. In the centre of the group is Mr. T. Mulhearn, an Australian who has played a leading part in the develop ment of New Caledonia’s timber industry. He recently returned to Noumea after a visit to Sydney and now is investigating the possibilities of securing timber suitable for the manufac ture of rifle butts.

Standing before a huge kauri log, in the lower picture, is Mr. Webster, also an Australian, who made the 37-kilometre road from the forest to the coast where the logs are loaded aboard ship. He is now cutting timber at Anatom for a syndicate in which the well-known Mr.

“Tibby” Hagen is interested.