C-Gull’s Owner

Comes to Anchor

pAPUA’S would-be cray-fish fisher,

J Evan Toyer, 56, who has been of occasional interest to residents of Papua since May, 1953, was sentenced to two years gaol on

April 19. in Sydney.

Toyer, who faced seven charges of false pretences, had according to the police, obtained £37,000 from the public by false representations about his various enterprises.

Toyer first interested Papua in 1935 when, with a blast of news paper publicity, he and several asso ciates, with their wives and chil dren, left Sydney in a boat called the C-Gull with the purpose of founding a colony somewhere in the Gulf of Papua and engaging in the lucrative business of catching cray fish and exporting their tails to the United States.

This expedition never got further than North Queensland, where it bogged down and where the mem bers of the party dispersed. Noth ing more was heard of Toyer for some time, then on an even greater blast of newspaper publicity and with a ship named Cygnet, the enterprise was on again. Sydney Truth and Mirror then became in terested in Mr. Toyer, and what they had to say about his proposed activities was not flattering.

In passing sentence on Toyer, the Judge said that he had baited his hooks cunningly and had appealed to people’s sense of adventure by advertising luxury fishing cruises along the Barrier Reef, lobster fish ing off Northern Australia, and

cattle raising in New Guinea was a bankrupt but had put eve thing into his wife’s name. A* refutt °f his cunning, people 1 sold their businesses or gathered gether their life’s savings to im m his enterprises, . \J: o Z e J™r Was ,- R former member in 1932 W POhC6 f ° rCO, but resigl