Rice Crop Prospects

COMMUNIST operations in Malaya and Korea may close some rice markets in the East, in which case Australia will be obliged to send some of her com ing rice harvest to feed people in Formosa and Hong Kong.

This year’s rice harvest in Australia is expected to be a record and it was hoped that the ban on sales in Australia, which has existed since 1942, would be lifted.

Lifting of the ban depends now upon allocation of Australian rice to the Far East.

Mrs. E. J. Hallstrom, wife of the Sydney philanthropist, said in Brisbane recently that New Guinea Highland natives were becoming expert shearers. She was on her way to New Guinea for a short holiday. She said she would stay at Nondugl sheep station which her hus band established in the. New Guinea Highlands to foster native farming.

There are about 1,000 sheep on the station.

Mr. A. W. Marshall, who was Presi dent of the Public Servants Association in Papua, during the hectic post-war period under Mr. E. J. Ward, has been enjoying a happy and active life since he retired on superannuation in 1946.

He became a general storekeeper in the west of Queensland and, although doing very well, gave it up after two years be cause—like thousands of other business men—he could not get staff. After that he prospered again as owner of a Dari

ing Downs hotel, which he sold out satis factorily. He recently has been away out camping in the interior, shooting kangaroos and wild pigs and experienc ing all the weather vagaries between drought and flood.

Among those present at a reunion in Christchurch, NZ, on August 5, of NZ servicemen who had served in Fiji were Mr. W. G. Johnson, of Suva, and Rata Simione Matanitobua, who is at present a student at Canterbury College.