Good Job

M. O. F.

But "Matua" Does a Good Job

YOU pays your money and you takes your chance'—on the good ship “Matua.”

Someone tells me that the initials “MOF,” in England, mean “master of foxhounds.” Maybe. But MOF to the Fiji citizen, whether leaving the Colony or returning from Auckland, means, ominously, “mattress on floor.” And, tak ing them by and large, Fiji citizens are mighty glad to get even an MOF, be cause, it it alleged, that there is a wait ing list of hundreds.

Life is a pretty dull business without an element of chance, anyway. New Zea land has its countless art unions; Aus tralia its lotteries: Fiji has the meeting of the Movement Control Board —five gentlemen who have absolute power over the goings of the local citizenry. It is like this:— Before the war one had the choice of half a dozen largish ships, American and British, for the journey between Fiji and NZ (or Australia). To-day, and for the past three years or so, there has been only “Matua.” 4,000-ton Union Steamship Company shin, built for the Islands’ fruit trade and to carry, comfortably, 40-odd passengers, but ferrying now over 100 passengers per trip, plus fruit. Army equipment, guns, lorries, groceries, and everything else that keeps a community going.

Hence the reason for the MCB, which has the thankless but essential task of deciding who has the greatest need of transportation.

HAVING been through the mill myself now, I have a fairly accurate idea how Fiji travellers feel about the comings and goings of the “Matua.” This is the procedure:— As many months as possible before the event you* optimistically enter your name on a sailing list; and, as the fatal time draws nigh, you begin to pay at least weekly visits to Mr. D. A, Butler, Suva manager of the Union Co. (Mr. Butler is only one member of the MCB, but he is the most accessible to the general public. I’m sorry for Mr. Butler.) You make polite conversation, and he makes polite conservation back; you ask (and try to make it sound off-hand) just what are your chances of getting away, and he is strictly non-committal;' and then, after some more conversational passes, you leave with your morale, if anything, somewhat boosted just through having been there.

And so it goes on until it becomes known that the MCB has fixed a time for its meeting. No doubt, if you are of a devout frame of mind, you spend that night in fasting and prayer; but, in any event, next morning you sally forth to learn your fate.

In my case I met Mr. Butler in the street. I guess he could see afar off that I was screwed into a question-mark, so when he got within hailing distance, he called out: “You’re on!”

I didn’t have to ask what or how: a feeling of intense relief began some where in the region of my toenails and ended near my ears. Nor did I demand to know if I had a deck cabin with h. and c. and all mod. cons., or anything else about the accommodation. I said: “Thank the Lord for that!” and let the rest go hang.

Any heartburnings about mattresses are kept strictly until one is at sea.

“MATUA’S” extra passenger accommo iTl dation is provided by the aforesaid mattresses—one, sometimes two, to

a cabin—by clearing out the lounge, and erecting tiers of bunks therein, and by utilising one of the holds. The converted lounge (known as the Jungle)

sometimes accommodates women, some times men. The hold (known as the Con centration Camp) is exclusively for men Meals are in two or three sittings

according to the state of the sea and the consequent incidence of sea-sickness.

All these improvisations naturally make travel pretty inconvenient for the pas sengers, and provide about three times more work for the crew. The waters north of New Zealand, and even around the Islands ports of Polynesia, can be far from calm; and “Matua,” with her slim bows, can produce a corkscrew pitch-and toss motion that is guaranteed to create spasms in the most hardened innards.

Under these circumstances it is hard to bubble with “joie de vivre” (be you pas senger or steward), and at the same time wade through piles of luggage, mattresses and sick passengers spilled indiscrimi nately over cabin floors. .

Yet there are few, if any, wails. The passengers take what is coming to them in the beliefs that they are lucky to be there; and the crew, from the captain down, cope with what might be regarded as an impossible problem with universal good nature—and that’s mighty rare to

day, when it is. the apparent privilege of all and sundry to be as downrightly bad tempered and ill-mannered as possible.

Fiji is grateful to “Matua” for the years she has spent in grey paint and bristling with guns, sub-dodging in a zig-zag course between Suva and Auck land. In 1943, to give tangible proof of this, a bronze plate, made in the shape of the island of Viti Levu, was presented to the ship. It is now let into the wall at the head of the main- staircase, and reads; “Presented by the people of Fiji

to record their appreciation of the splen did service maintained by the vessel in the dangerous days following the out break of war in the Pacific.”

IffHEN the ship came into Suva this ff October the funnel was back to its original red and black, and the superstructure was painted white. On the trip around the Islands, strips of white appeared on her sides, and by the time “Matua” leaves Auckland In November she will probably sail again as an all white ship. , . , A „ . ...

Human nature being what it is, that will probably be the signal for the moan ing to begin. I can almost hear those whose mission is life is to kick Big Busi ness, saying, plaintively; “But look at all the money they must have made!”

True, mavbe. You pay as much for a MOP as for a regular berth. But as I said In the beginning—you pays your money and takes your chance. And mighty glad we be of it!—JUDY TUDOR.