New Wharf At Samara!

No Use To Little Ships

AFTER much expenditure and bitter striving, the Works and Housing Department erected a good wharf at Samarai, Eastern Papua, to replace that destroyed by fire in wartime.

But only the men who run the big ships are happy about it. There is outspoken discontent on the part of the people who run the small ships along the coasts and among the islands—and they outnumber the big ships by scores to one.

No provision whatever has been made at the new Samarai wharf for the little ships. Copra is the staple product of Eastern Papua, and the copra is brought into Samarai in little ships. When the little ships lie alongside the new wharf, the top of the wharf, nearly all the time (there are queer, irregular, whirling tides in China Strait) is away above them—too far off to allow the handing up of bags of copra.

Somewhere beside the wharf, there should have been a floating pontoon connected to the wharf by a ramp, onto which the copra could have been unloaded at any state of the tide. There is nothing of the sort.

So the little ships go elsewhere for unloading; their copra is dragged painfully ashore; and the smallboat

owners’ opinion of the wharf planners and builders is expressed mostly in terms of brimstone.

Noumean cyclists, Raymond Sens and Jean Richards will compete in the Goulburn-Sydney road race to be held on September 22.

Australia seems to have suspended the export of butter to New Caledonia, and Noumea housewives have been unable to obtain this article of which French households are big users. Shortages of rice and sugar are also feared.