Nauru Phosphate Next
p. 17 · Read in the full issue
Month New Source of Supply in Indian Ocean
From Our Own Correspondent
Canberra, May 25.
WITH the partial restoration of phos phate workings on the island, about 200,000 tons of Nauru’s phosphatic rock has been earmarked for Australia.
Australia will receive most, if not all, of this amount by the end of this year.
The first shiploads will reach Australian ports in July.
Phosphate supplies will soon begin to pour into the Commonwealth from Christmas Island also. Australia expects upward of 100,000 tons from this source, by next February. Christmas Island is in the Indian Ocean, just southward of the western end of Java.
Officials of the Department of Com merce and Agriculture are doing every thing possible to expedite delivery of the supplies. As the Minister (Mr. Scully) announced recently, Australian primary production has suffered severely because of the wartime shortage of phosphates.
Phosphate from Nauru is being allo
cated by the British Phosphate Commis sion, which had the difficult job of restoring production on the island after it was taken back from the Japanese last year.
Most of Australia’s wartime supplies of phosphates came from North Africa. (The Christmas Island referred to by our correspondent, is not the Pacific atoll which produces nothing but coconuts, but an island with a similar name in the Indian Ocean. It is about four days’ sea journey from Singapore, is administered as part of Malaya, and is rugged, and in some parts precipitous. The Japanese occupation of Malaya shut it, and its phosphate, off from the rest of the world, but presumably work there has now been resumed. The pre-war popula tion was about 12 Europeans, 60 native Malays and several hundred Chinese phosphate workers. Although Australasia formerly obtained her phosphate require ments from Ocean Island and 'Nauru, it will be at least two years before normal supplies are coming forward from the Paci fic, and in the interval, the phosphate from Christmas Island will be of great value to agriculture in Australia and New Zealand.) A Daru correspondent writes: “Messrs.
Hughie Beach and Luff are back here again. At the moment, they are all steamed up, and nrepared to charge cer tain high service personnel with the theft of valuable goods from Daru.”