Enamel Dishes?

Do You Want Two Useless

THIS post-war period will probably go down in history as the “era of valu able rubbish.” Residents of more civilised parts are used to junk mer chants who have become rich on the profits of odd pieces of galvanised iron, corroded water pipe and second-hand timber. But the disease seems now to have spread to Papua-New Guinea.

In a recent Papua and New Guinea Gazette five inches of space is used to call tenders for “eauipment lying un sheltered at Cupula Rubber Plantation.”

Of 23 items listed only two seem worth worrying about. They are “5 suspen sion shaft bracks as new,” and “1 dozen gutter brackets. Good order.”

The rest consists of things like —1 pair of platform counter scales—incomplete, 3 pulleys—rusty. Wooden roller —poor condition. Quantity home made cup hangers—poor condition and rusty. Rub ber press—poor condition. And. of course the classical item, 2 enamel dishes —useless.

The tenders and Disposals Board has one distinction —it is brutally frank about the condition of the goods it has to offer. Same cannot be said for Southern junk merchants.

Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mason, of Buka, New Guinea, arrived in Sydney at the end of 1949, intending to proceed immediately by the liner, Mooltan, to a holiday in Britain. The Mooltan’s timetable has been dislocated by a typhoid epidemic, however: and in mid-March the Masons were still waiting in Sydney with a pro bability that they would be forced to cancel their European trip.