Project

Gulf Crayfish

Is On Again

WESTERN PAPUA may still have a cray-fish industry. Reports from Sydney and Terrigal, m NSW, and from Townsville, Qld., indicate that the Toyer family and its associates have not given up the idea of wealth from this source and are again on the eve of de parture for Daru.

About 15 months ago, the venture got off to a blast of Australian newspaper publicity when the 112-ft, twin-screw launch C-Gull left Syd ney for Daru with a large party on board. Included in the party were three women and half-a-dozen children. They said they would live on the ship until houses could be built for them ashore near Daru.

C-Gull got as far as Townsville and there she bogged down. The crew dispersed and the cray-tail Industry was heard of no more.

FROM Townsville, in July this vear, C-Gull was again reported to be making ready for the trip to Daru—they were waiting only for their company to be formed Into a £lOO,OOO public company and the arrival of the Cygnet, a freezer ship.

Meanwhile Cygnet was reported at Terrigal, NSW, where Captain Jack Toyer, his wife and six chil dren (one more baby since they set off in the C-Gull 15 months ago) were filling in time waiting for some refrigerating machinery. When that was installed they expected to head for Daru, they said.

Cygnet is equipped to hold 9 tons of snap-frozen crayfish tails in its freezing room, a crew of seven who are all shareholders in the company, and Captain Toyer and his family.

Cygnet cost £30,000, but according to the captain can earn £l,BOO in a single day. Besides Cygnet and C-Gull, the company will take with them to Daru two small launches, Curlew and Cormorant. In Towns ville a spokesman for the company said that they planned to build large freezing works ashore in Daru.

Captain Toyer is said to have been marine superintendent for Australasian Petroleum Co. in Papua before the war.

Residents of Papua will watch

the activities of the Cygnet Com pany with interest. Some old re sidents of the Western District were sceptical when C-Gull first set out in early 1953. They said that in some seasons there were not suf ficient crayfish to worry about in the Gulf area.

But sceptical old residents can be wrong; and frozen crayfish tails from southern Australian waters have learned a lot of dollars for Australia.

At all events, if the Cygnet Co. finally gets there and begins to catch crayfish, the PNG Adminis tration will be ready: several months ago they filled a Govern ment Gazette with the rules and regulations under which crayfish may be fished and frozen.

U Mr. W. G. Johnson, chairman and managing director of W. R. Car penter and Co. (Fiji), Ltd., has been appointed a director of the parent company, W. R. Carpenter and Co., Ltd., Sydney.

II The Rev. Ambrose Fletcher, a Methodist clergyman who went to Papua as a missionary in 1894, celebrated his retirement from active duty and his ninetieth birth day with a party at his Sydney home on July 3. He said that when he went to Papua cannibalism was rife and “skulls were hanging up on the verandahs.” Traders paid for coconuts and bananas with tobacco twist. For the last 14 years Mr.

Fletcher has been a chaplain at Sydney hospitals.