Cheap Tea From

Australian Pipe-dream—

New Guinea

IN late October the price of tea in Australia rose to 7/4 per pound. This produced the usual angry howls from housewives and the usual inquiries as to how the tea growing business is progressing in New Guinea. There is, of course, a touching faith among Australians that NG will come good and produce tea —just like that! But, so far, NG

has produced only the odd pound;

not the odd ton.

But even if and when the tea starts flowing south there will be no guarantee that the Australian consumer will readily accept it. A Sydney man who knows about tea has made the thoughtful observation that New Guinea tea, though good, will, like all other teas, have a distinctive flavour. The public may not like that flavour, and a great deal of expensive publicity may be involved in making them drink it.

Tea is like tobacco—and everyone knows that even the New Guinea natives would not accept home grown twist while there was any chance of getting the old dollar source “Lord Beaconsfield”.

But assuming there are no marketing problems, plenty of others remain. Bushes take seven years to reach production from seed, four years from cuttings, so

apart from anything else, no large scale quick relief is in sight. Then the bushes are very fickle —sometimes declining after only one year’s production, or the quality of the buds may change for unexplained reasons.

Then, greatest problem of all, is the necessary labour force. This may be reduced by using mechanical plucking methods. Mr. Bobby Gibbes is experimenting with a tea-plucking machine (See Oct. PIM) run on rails, but no machine so far invented has proved as efficient as ex perienced human tea-pickers.

Experienced Ceylon tea-pickers can handle 30,000 buds per day.

New Guinea labour, even by tem perament, is unlikely ever to work at that speed, even if the numbers of pickers are available.

The art of tea-picking on overseas estates is handed down from gener ation to generation. Tea is the life and business of these people. It is

doubtful if any heavy-handed High lander will ever be brought to feel the same way about it.

Anyhow, no matter what quantity of tea is grown in NG it is unlikely to affect the Australian price. The Australian price of coffee and cocoa are not affected by the fact that they are grown in the Territory* Territory growers receive world price for whatever commodity they pro duce —and they would be horrified if anyone suggested otherwise.

A flourishing tea industry in NG might save Australia from going tea-less during a war. But even that cannot be guaranteed. tl Mr. Len Howie, who has been assisting the Roman Catholic Mission, 250 miles west of Lae, in the New Guinea Highlands, re turned to Adelaide recently. He will later return to New Guinea and continue his work.

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