Heinz Brand Currencies Complicate

Life in South Pacific

)NE of the most pleasant sights in the world for the Britisher occurs at Pago Pago, Ameri m Samoa, when the Union Com any’s Matua pays a visit every [ght or nine weeks.

American officials come on to the lip with large suitcases full of illar bills, and there seems to be o limit to the amount they will xhange for New Zealand £’s.

As “dollar-shortage” has now ;come part of the Anglo-Saxon’s nguage, Matua passengers react :cordingly and change their oney frantically, regardless of the ct that, if they are Australians, ,ch dollar bill costs them about -, and if from NZ or Fiji, some lere between 7/- and 8/-.

And, once having got your money to nice neat dollar bills, you gin to behave something like an nerican and regard the bill with out the same offhandedness as two-shilling piece.

Something that costs one-dollar fifty sounds ridiculously cheap. It is only when you get back on the boat and convert it into shillings and pence that you realise that you have paid about 13/- for some thing that would cost maybe half that further south.

It is suggested that the reason why the Pago Pago Americans pay out good dollars for NZ currency is that, while NZ takes nothing from American Samoa, that Terri tory gets all its frozen meat and some of its grocery lines from the Dominion, and they therefore want NZ money.

If so, it is a wonder that the NZ Treasury has not come down on this leakage of their precious £ notes.

NZ travellers are supposed not to take more than £7 out of NZ, and some tourists to Fiji, who apparently have not heard of travellers’ cheques or letters-of

credit —or perhaps because Author ity in NZ js a bit sticky about issuing these things actually bring no more than that with them, and keep within that limit for spending-money (all travel and hotel expenses being paid for in NZ).

Small wonder, then, that NZ tourists to Fiji have the name of not being very big spenders.

THE variety of exchange rates and currencies in the small area covered by the Matua on her journey from Suva through the islands ' back to Suva—less than 2,000 miles —is fantastic.

If you come from Australia in the first Diace, you change your money into Fijian, and lose 12i per cent, in the process. First call after leav ing Suva is Tonga, and here they have their own notes, worth in terms of Stg., 12h per cent, less than Fiji (same as Australian).

The purser on the ship oblig ingly changes your Fijian money into Tongan; and you proceed to Niua a NZ Territory where they turn up their noses at anything that is not good NZ currency. So

you change your notes again with the purser and lose some more on the deal. (NZ is on Stg.) Then on to Pago Pago, where what you have left in NZ currency from Niue you immediately convert to dollars. Your spending power

shrinks once more. Then on to Apia, Western Samoa, which has its own currency—huge notes about the size of a tabloid newspaper—and likes you to use it. This, too, is on Sterling.

Finally, you get back to Suva,

carrying with you bits and piece:; of all these currencies and you take it to the bank and say “Here, give me some Fijian money for this, 5 ' and they sort it all out, twirling their little calculating machines, arrive at some answer and hand you the result.

It is not as much as you hoped it would be, and you are left re flecting on the cigarettes you bought in Pago and the baskets in Niue, and you begin to realise that they weren’t so dirt cheap as you imagined at the time.

Pre-World War I Britishers speak longingly of the days when a golden sovereign was accepted as currency anywhere in the world. No doubt; the natives of these now compli cated South Seas can become nostalgic over the days when most things could be purchased for sticks:

of trade tobacco..

Suva, 19/9/511