Ships For Fiji Sugar

From Our Own Correspondent

Suva. Dec. 12.

SHIPMENT of the 1941 sugar crop from Fiji has been very much delayed. On at least one occasion, storage sheds were full and the mills had to stop crush ing. However, it would now seem that the 1941 crop will be got away, even though late, and though reduced by the “wasting” that was ordered in mill processes. There is still no assurance that the 1942 crop will be bought, and the planters, now largely Indian, are getting very anxious.

Gold remains Fiji’s one certain export of value. America buys it all; it continues to go into a hole in the ground in Ken tucky, with regularity, and to the profit of the British Exchange Control. It is an odd world which sees utility in such a course at a time when sugar and copra, which have their direct edible values to the world’s inhabitants, should be prac tically unsaleable. (Odd, indeed! But it cannot last much longer. See article in this issue on “Can Gold Hold Its Value?” —Editor.) Mr. S. J. Anderson, of the Papuan Gov vernment Printing Office, is at present on long leave, prior to retirement.

Mrs. George Turner, of Suva, Fiji, died on December 21, aged 59. A trained nurse, she was in private practice some years ago at Levuka, Ba, and Suva.

Mr. Monks, of the Bank of NSW staff, Wau, New Guinea, has gone to Lae with Mr. K. Diamond, where they will organ ise a branch of the Bank of NSW.

Writing on November 22, from the Middle East, where he has been recuper ating after a strenuous twelve months in Libya. Lieut. Fred Nelson, well-known in Port Moresby, mentions that since his sojourn there he has met a few of the lads from Papua; among them Robert Howland, Archie Mclntyre and Stan Wilkinson, all of whom are well, but homesick. He expresses the hope that, now they are fighting-fit, they will be sent along to the fighting zone as soon as possible, as otherwise they may “get stale”. At the time of writing the weather was bitterly cold.