Labour’s Gift to Pacific

Is. Travellers

By Judy Tudor

rHE New Guinea Australia Liner Shansi will soon be replaced by Soochow. Shansi is going 3 Hongkong for refit. Passenger ccommodation will be increased to ike about 30, and she will be made lore suitable for tropical condi ons.

Soochow has been refitted for erritory conditions recently in hngkong; she is identical with hansi. When Shansi has been re tted and is back on the run, inkiang will be withdrawn.

Shansi and Sinkiang at present ich carry about 16 passengers and le service on the ships is so good iat there is now a waiting list for issages.

With Eastern registration these issels have a Chinese crew, and linese crews do not as yet know uch about 40-hour-weeks, or aritime unions. On vessels on istralian registry, what the pas ngers want is always subordinated what the stewards union think ey should have.

That pre-war institution on BP ips, the bathroom steward, seems be as extinct as a dodo. On me of their ships they still have e pre-war method of bathing— It water plunge bath and showers th a wooden tub full of fresh iter to sluice off. [n the days before the war, the throom steward filled up both and sn called you. To-day if you are sguided enough to say you will ve your bath now, steward, thank a, he leads you firmly to the throom and says: “There it is, ly,” (or “mate” as the case may » and leaves you to fill up the th with salt, and the tub with

sh water—laboriously, from a

7 tap on the other side of the >m—and struggle with it across ; heaving floor to the plank on > of the bath. •lod. cons, are for softies, anyway.