Do You Remember ?

From PIM of 20 Years ago.

IT was still a Depression Christmas, back in 1934. There were no

rich planters and traders, then,

20 years ago. But there were some rich gold-miners. In PIM of De cember, 1934, we gave news of a

dozen mining companies in Papua

and New Guinea and all were do

ing nicely. Gold is scarcely men

tioned in connection with the Terri

tory to-day.

Here are some other items from the December issue, 1934; Copra had risen to a c.i.f. London price of £B/15/- ner ton for South Seas sun-dried: and £9/12/6 for Rabaul hot air grade. It was the best price for 13 months. * * * “The struggle between Burns Philp and Co. and Norddcutscher Lloyd interests for the growing shipping trade of New Guinea had a dramatic finish. Burns Philp has purchased the two motor vessels, ‘Neptun’ and ‘Merkur’, with which the NDL proposed to establish a new service between Manila, New Guinea and Aus tralia.” (“Merkur” went onto the Singa pore run; “Neptun”—with an “a” added to the end of her name—to the Sydney- NG-Far East service. “Neptuna". filled with explosives, was bombed in the first Jap raid on Darwin in 1942. Ship and crew perished). * * * A correspondent wrote from Samarai,

Papua: “ . a Japanese vessel withi any attempt at concealment, has visi the D’entrecastreaux Group, and addition to fraternising with the nath has swept the adjacent reefs of si and inforpied the inhabitants that tl will be back soon with a larger ves That an Englishman should live to foreigners so desnise the British flag s the Australian government as to utt« flout our laws in this manner makes < wonder if the supremacy of the wl races is not a thing of the past.” * * * Fiji was unique in managing to h: a Budget surplus of £17,718 for 1983and expected in 1934-35 to at le balance its Budget. We called 1 “Britain’s most prosperous colony”. * * * Average price of cocoa was £29 ton; coffee around £7O per ton; Rang< rice, £ll/10/- per ton; Australian r: £l5/10/- per ton.

Planters in Western Samoa who w producing about 1,200 tons of cocoa year and were finding it difficult to s felt that New Zealand should step and give “some kind of bonus for Same cocoa beans”. * * * Hard to believe, but PIM fashion wri wrote (and we published) this: “The decolletage, reaching to the waist, lo its terrifying moments when with it worn a brassiere of gold or silver lai The effect is ravishing in the extreme a simply shrieks of sophistication.”