Maclaren-King Ii

Mrs. F. S. Stewart, proprietress of the Cecil Hotel, Lae, New Guinea, was in Syd ney in November. She reports that, after years of delay, the construction of her new hotel at Lae is at last under way.

She came to Sydney to meet her sister

and brother-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Hum bert, who had just arrived. They left New Guinea over ten years ago, to visit Europe, and got caught up in the war in Germany, where they were obliged to re main for some years. Mrs. Humbert was

formerly Mrs. Baldie, and she had charge of the Lae Hotel when Mrs. Stewart ran her original hotel at Wau. Flying-Officer Gofton (a son of Mrs. Stewart by her former marriage) and Squadron-Leader Baldie (Mrs. Baldie’s only son) were both in the Royal Air Force when World War II came, and both lost their lives.

This motor vessel was built by Norman R. Wright, of Brisbane, in 1948, under the direction of Canon M. A. Warren, Secretary of the Australian Board of Missions for the New Guinea Anglican Mission. Length, 68 ft. 3 in.; beam, 16 ft. 10 in.; and it has a 114 h.p. Gardner diesel engine. Speed on trials was 9.67 knots. Maclaren-King ll—replacing the first Maclaren-King which was taken over by the Army and lost during the war—is based on Samarai, and serves all the Anglican Mission stations on the north-east coast of Papua and New Guinea. by courtesy A.B.M.

No more Australian citrus fruit is to be allowed into Fiji this season because of the discovery in a small consignment of oranges recently of larvae of the Queensland fruit fly. An announcement issued in Suva by the Department of Agriculture stated that the larvae were found during an inspection of fruit which

arrived on the steamer Rona. The Queens land fruit fly, the scientific name for which, is dacus tryoni, is one of the most undesirable of all pruit pests, and so far has evaded the large-scale and expensive attempts of the Australian fruit authorities to eradicate it. It will attack almost any kind of fruit.