With Foodstuffs
p. 13 · Read in the full issue
Dodging The Wolf
Honiara Has Trouble With Foodstuffs
From Our Own Correspondent HONIARA. February 17.
JUST how close to tne wind B&.LP must sail tnese days, owing to shipping shortages, was made embarrassingly clear in January, when tne breakdown of the Government-owned TSMV Kun marau led to a serious scarcity of staple loods in Honiara.
Kunmarau—the only regular link with the outside world, witn an approximately six-weekly run to Suva and maximum capacity for 210 tons of cargo—has been laid up in Suva indefinitely, for repairs, since mid-January.
At the time, 430 tons of urgently needed cargo had .banked up in Suva lor tne Protectorate, and Government had to make strenuous efforts to charter a sub stitute ship, meanwhile carefully hus banding ration supplies and sending out to districts to buy any available lood stuffs.
The Government ration strength of 1,000 natives, concentrated in Honiara, was hastily reduced by repatriating all labour no longer required, as well as many patients discharged from hospital.
The two-masted auxiliary schooner Miena, engaged in concentrating copra at Yandina, was chartered and rushed off to Suva for rice, flour and personal cargo for Europeans. Bad weather upset this scheme, and Miena did not reach Suva until the date originally planned for her arrival back at Honiara.
The critical situation was eased by the Seventh Day Adventist vessel, “Ambon,” making a special trip down from Rabaul, with rice and biscuits, to Faisi, whence a Government M-class vessel rushed them down to Honiara.
Private food stocks, with the two months’ shipping gap and no imported freezer meat and butter to ease the situ ation (there is no fresh meat supply in Honiara) also showed signs of strain. A two-day Government-organised fishing expedition brightened matters with a moderate catch of fish, plus a bag of pigeons.
Now the first of the Suva cargo, plus mail accumulated in Suva over the past nine weeks, is on the way to BSIP, in the London Mission Society vessel, “John Williams,” due here about February 22, with “Miena” and Burns Philp’s “Moala” (each carrying about 140 tons) follow ing behind.