They've Never

Had It So Good

Norfolk Island’s current tourist boom has created so many jobs on the island that, probably for the first time in the island’s history, there is over-full employ ment. As a result: • Elderly people who have gone to the island to retire have been “roped into” jobs—at least one such man being employed by the Administration • The new Kingfisher Airtel flew University students from Australia over the Christmas period to work as kitchen hands, waitresses, yardmen, etc. • The island’s bowling greens have frequently remained uncut for lack of a man to cut them. • In mid-December, the Ad ministrator, Major-General R. H.

Wordsworth, could not get any one to work for him as cook.

O Money allocated for public works projects cannot be spent because labour is not available, and it is probable that men will have to be imported from Aus tralia to cope with what has to be done.

This is a far different situation from that which applied on Nor folk a year or so ago when the whaling industry collapsed for lack of whales and the cable station closed because the new COMP AC cable made its exis tence unnecessary.

Jobs around that time were so hard to get that some islanders threatened to beat up a man who was brought to the island by the Administration to superintend the grading of roads.