Huia For Island Trade

THE 56-year-old schooner, Huia, which carried explosives from Melbourne to New Zealand for 37 years, has been purchased by a group of New Zealanders who will run her co-operatively to trade in Fiji and other islands.

Huia has been laid up in Auckland for the past 15 months awaiting a purchaser.

Repairs have been made to her and it is expected that she will sail for the islands sometime in June.

The original schooner-rig has been maintained, but Huia now has a 154 HP diesel auxiliary engine. She was built in New Zealand in 1894 of heart of kauri — her 110 ft. keel was cut from one kauri log. She was one of the fastest sailing ships on the Tasman run and still holds the record for the crossing—4 days 16 hours.

Captain N. W. Thomas, chief share holder in the new company, says she is good for another 30 years yet. She has far outlived the now extinct New Zea land bird for whom she was named.

For the first time in 64 years, Hawaiian oleomargarine will this year be free of federal tax, thus reducing its price by about 10 cents per pound to the consumer.

Butter interests, which have strenuously opposed the lifting of the tax, predict that the price of oleomargarine will soon climb to that of butter.