Sea Passages Still

In Great Demand

T HE Union Steamship Company makes available to round-trip pers, 20 berths on MV Tofua and six berths on MV Matua (when she

runs on Islands service) but the eager interest of New Zealanders and others is such that the Company cannot now make bookings for these berths until sometime in 1953.

Probably during the New Zealand winter months, the Company could fill the whole of the Tofua and Matua accomodation with tourists

anxious to escape the cold and make the popular Fiji-Tonga-Niue-Pago* Western Samoa circuit which is still the tourist bargain for travel in these parts.

Residents of the Island territories who feel that the USS ships are part of their scheme of things are always clamouring for passages and it falls to the Company’s lot to try to strike a fair balance between the demands of round-trippers and the demands of Islands residents.

Passengers from Apia whose num bers are always far in excess of the number of berths allocated that port, sometimes travel as deck passengers to Suva and complete the journey tc NZ by air.

If overseas shipping companies made ships available for cruises in the Islands, as has been rumoured, they would have no trouble in find ing plenty of customers. Australian and New Zealand companies whc usually subscribe to the belief that passengers do not pay, do not and, in fact, cannot, show much interest) in developing the round-trip tourist) trade beyond present limits.

Lieut. Jim Ackland, son of Mr., and Mrs. A. B. Ackland of Suva, hast returned to Fiji from the UK where; he completed a course at the Royall Military Academy, Sandhurst.