Suva Should

Growl!

What New Guinea Evacuees Are Enduring in Sydney

A FEW weeks ago the citizens of Suva, Fiji, were complaining bitterly about the price and scarcity of fruit and vegetables in the town. So much so, that the Director of Agriculture, Dr. H. W.

Jack, had a survey made in the main shopping centre, and stated that the fol lowing were the average prices:— Chinese cabbage, 3d. per bunch; cab bage, Bd.-9d. per lb.; lettuce, 9d.-l - per dozen; beans, 3d.-6d. per lb.; spring onions, 2d.-3d. per bunch; dalo, Id. per lb.; carrots, 3d. per bunch; kumalas, Id. per lb.; pumpkin, Id.-2d. per lb.; toma toes, 6d.-9d. per lb.; cucumbers, 2d.-4d. each; paw-paws, 3d.-4d. each; lemons, 6d. per dozen; grenadillas, 3d.-4d. each.

It was explained that in view of sea sonal difficulties, shortage of seed, trans port difficulties and heavy demands from the Services, the prices appeared to be reasonable.

Suva’s citizens would agree that they were more than reasonable if they had had to endure the vagaries of the Sydney vegetable and fruit markets, as now are evacuees from other Pacific territories.

Presumably Sydney’s “natives” can take it;, but it comes as a decided shock to New Guinea and Papua evacuees, who hitherto kept the family in such things for a week on a few sticks of trade tobacco, to find that 10/- worth of fruit and vegetables can easily be consumed by an average family in one day.

In what are so charmingly called the “better-class suburbs” of Sydney, one now pays anything up to 2/- per lb. for tomatoes, 3d. each for small apples, 4d. for oranges, Bd. per lb. for pumpkin, 1/9 per lb. for beans, 1/4 for peas, 1 - for onions, 9d. for one lettuce, 1/- per bunch for rhubarb—and so on, ad infinitum and ad nauseum. Potatoes are now spoken of only in the tones one usually adopts towards gold-nuggets, or are relegated to the realms of the dodo, and other extinct species, and forgotten.