Australia Would!

Vaccination or Else!

11THEN passengers landed from the TT Qantas flying-boat at Brisbane and Rose Bay on November 20, after a flight from Suva, Fiji, they were all com pulsorily vaccinated against small-pox before they were permitted to land. The flying-boat, the “Coriolanus,” was on the return half of a trial flight to Suva, via Noumea, and was carrying 20 Fiji pas sengers.

Passengers had not been told that they were to be vaccinated, and many expressed resentment that they had not been permitted to have this done before leaving Fiji, and thereby escaping the discomfort and sickness of vaccination immediately after their arrival in the Commonwealth. One woman with several small children who disembarked in Syd ney, had, that same night, to go on to Melbourne by train, all of her small party feeling the effects of the serum.

It would be interesting to know why the Australian health authorities thought that small-pox vaccination was necessary for these passengers. Common wealth citizens are not compelled to be vaccinated against the disease, and it is unlikely that, if the Fiji visitors had picked up any small-pox germs en route, which appears extremely unlikely, vac cination at that late stage would afford them immunisation.

There are two ways of approaching Australia by air from Fiji these days: One, by way of Noumea, in two hops; the other via Auckland in two hops. But while the Qantas passengers had to undergo the inconvenience of vaccina tion, passengers arriving at Rose Bay by Tasman Empire Airways from New Zea land, have no health inspection whatso ever. The only conclusion to be drawn is that in Commonwealth eyes, Noumea is considered to be a plague spot. On the other hand, as one of the passengers alleges that the vaccination was done by a “sort of Indonesian doctor” at Rose Bay, it may have been only a case of mistaken Identity, and the job carried through in the belief that the “Corio lanus” was still on her old Singapore run.