Ng Tea Prospects
p. 63 · Read in the full issue
THE following was issued recently by the Australian Tea Bureau; The latest reports from New Guinea are that the bushes are doing well and producing what should be good tea.
Aiyura, where the experiments are being tried, is 6,000 feet above sea level. The soil is friable and suitable and the alti tude should produce the best, but tea is an exacting crop, requiring a high degree of skill, knowledge and mechanisation.
A staff of two per acre is the accepted number employed in Ceylon, and to grow tea commercially and make a profit, 400 acres is required. Labour conditions will be a difficulty in NG if tea-growing passes beyond the experimental stage, but while there should be no obstacle in growing the leaf successfully, the manufacture calls for highly complex rolling machines, firing and sorting plant which, besides being very difficult to obtain, are ex tremely costly.
At present, NG leaf is either rolled by hand, a very unsatisfactory method, or rolled in a small-scale hand-operated rolling machine. Fermentation presents few difficulties, but without a firing machine, the leaf has to be left for four to five hours in bright sunlight to dry.
With tropical showers always likely, a good deal of leaf is spoilt.
Tea growing in New Guinea is in its infancy, with no prospects at present.
Mr. Edward Hunkin USN veteran and son of the late Chief of Police of American Samoa, Chief Ma’ilo (Jack Hunkin), has been appointed Postmaster for American Samoa by President Truman. Mr. Hunkin is the first Federal official in the area to be locally born and of Samoan ancestry.
When Mr. Daly, an Australian Labour Member, on December 5, severely criticised the condition of native hospitals in Papua-New Guinea, the Territories Minister (Mr. Spender) said that Australia proposed to spend £7,000,000 in the next five years on overcoming the “desperate” hospital shortage in the Territories.
Mrs. Alex D. Fauth, of Central High lands, New Guinea, has been ill in Sydney, but has now recovered. She and her husband volunteered over three years ago to go as lay workers to the Society of the Divine Word Mission in NG. Mrs.
Fauth has been teaching the native girls and Mir. Fauth has been supervising building work.