Marooned In Bsi

Plight of Residents Who Still Hove No Adequate Shipping Service

THE acute shipping position in the British Solomon Islands is to be relieved to the extent of one 60-ft. trawler.

Seven Fijians left Suva by air in November and subsequently picked the trawler up in Sydney. Their destina tion was Guadalcanal, via Queensland ports.

It has been stated that the trawler will be operated in BSI waters on be half of the Government. Its services no doubt will be acceptable to BSI residents, but its advent will by no means solve the local shipping position.

The Solomons have been virtually without shipping since the end of the war and the departure of the Americans.

The only relatively regular shipping connection is between Honiara and Suva, by a small Government vessel.

With Australia —which before the war provided BSI with its consumer goods and a regular 6-weekly surface mail service there is no regular connec tion whatsoever. Planters who have managed to return to the Protectorate have done so literally under their own steam by begging passages on small ves sels which chance took to Sydney.

The “Southern Cross” the small motor vessel of the Melanesian Mission, took about a dozen planters back to the Solo mons in March, 1946. Since then these people have been literally swallowed up in the mighty silence that surrounds the Solomons and all pertaining thereto, these days.

In February of this year the 85-ft. motor-ship “Ruena,” which belongs to

the Fairymead Sugar Co., Ltd., carried a number of the Company’s men back to their BSI plantations, and, as well, a number of private planters who were more than willing to work their pas sages back to the Protectorate. x LITTLE news has come out of the Solomons of any of these people, but what little there has been in dicates that their time is fully occupied in coping with the problems attendant upon lack of native labour, supplies and shipping and what is worse lack of the wherewithal for rehabilitating war-blasted plantations such as fellow planters in the Papua-New Guinea ter ritories enjoy through generous dis bursements from the Australian War Damage Fund.

How these people have managed to exist at all is one of the major miracles of the post-war era. There has, however, been a lightening of the clouds recently.

It is reported that the labour problem has been less difficult since the arrest of the leaders of the Marching Rule move ment fand that the “Moray Bank,” under charter to the British Government, has now completed calls at BSI ports and has picked up between 400 and 500 tons of copra that planters have managed to produce.

BEFORE the war the Burns Philp motor-ship “Malaita” maintained a regular 5£ weeks schedule between BSI ports and Sydney, via Rabaul. For this, Burns Philp were subsidised by the Commonwealth Government, to which the BSIP Government contributed an annual sum of £3,000. As well as the “Malaita” calls were made by the NDL steamer “Friderun,” by W. R. Car penter & Co. ships and by Japanese freighters.

The “Friderun” has now, of course, disappeared; likewise the Japanese

freighters, and trade in those quarters does not warrant calls by WRC ships.

The “Malaita” is now on the Sydney- Papua-New Guinea rup. It is operated by Burns Philp & Co., for the Australian Shipping Control Board. There is no indication that it will go back on the Solomons run.

At the end of November, the “Ruena” (Fairymead Sugar Co.) was again in Sydney undergoing minor repairs. She was expected to sail for BSI ports at an

early date. Mr. Leslie F, Gill will re turn to BSI on her.

A useful service from Sydney to New Caledonia, New Hebrides and, occasion ally, the Solomons, is provided by, the

Trans-Oceanic Company with a large flying-boat. At the end of October,, the plane carried 21 passengers, in comfort and safety, to Noumea and Vila. In the absence of ships, the service which is not on a regular schedule is appre ciated by Islanders.