Industry 50 Years Old

Nauru and Ocean Is. Phosphate Industry 50 Years Old

AUGUST 28, 1960 was the 50th anniver sary of the landing of the first party of phosphate experts on Ocean Island and the birthday of Sir Albert Ellis, NZ representative on the British Phosphate Commission, and the man

responsible for the discovery of phos phate on Nauru.

To mark the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the great Pacific phosphate industry, the New Zealand Herald recent ly published a photograph of Sir Albert holding the piece of Nauru phosphatic rock which led to the discovery of the untold wealth on that island and on Ocean.

This is the historic piece of rock which was used as a door-stop in the Sydney office of the young Mr. Ellis. It had been brought from Nauru several years previously and classified, by the experts, as petrified wood. Mr. Ellis—as he then was—knew his phosphate, as his firm had been trading in a low-quality product from Howland and Baker Islands. He was not satisfied that the door-stop was petrified wood, but had some of it ground up and tested. It was high grade phos phate.

From that discovery and after many vicissitudes (Nauru, for one thing, then belonged to Germany), evolved the million pound industry we know today.

Sir Albert kept the famous door-stop in his Auckland home until 1938 when he gave it to Auckland museum where it now resides in a glass case.

Sir Brian Freeston, Governor of Fiji, in early September returned to the Colony from Sydney where he attended a meeting of the Working Committee of the South Pacific Commission in preparation for the sixth session next month. He is Senior Commissioner for the United King dom.