Work Begins

On Nauru's

Centre Tower

From Christopher Beck in Melbourne On one of Melbourne’s choicest pieces of real estate, work has begun on the long-awaited Nauru Centre.

At the moment it is nothing more than a huge hole in the ground bounded by Collins, Exhibition and Little Collins streets in what is known as the city’s “Paris end”. Soon pouring of the concrete foundations will begin and the first of its 51 stories will start pushing skyward.

It will be the city’s tallest building, an honour it will wrest from BHP House, and just pipping the towers in the mammoth Collins Place project, diagonally across the road.

Originally, the Nauru Centre tower was to have been 47 storeys—just a fraction shorter than those in Collins Place —but in the final, revised plans four more levels have been added.

Nauru Government officials say the increase in height was motivated purely by economics and not by one upmanship.

The building while conservative in design, promises to be one of Mel bourne’s architectural triumphs, rival ling the AMP, Eagle Star and BHP buildings. Its face will be of con crete faced in a white, round aggre gate which will be specially quarried at Lavers Hill, some 140 miles south west of Melbourne.

According to the building’s designers this is ideal for the job because dust and grime have difficulty adhering to it.

This facade will be complemented by dark brown metal window frames and windows which have a coppery exterior tint, an effect achieved by using parallel panes of glass.

The Centre was first mooted two years ago and the plans for the building were publicly unveiled about 18 months ago. Construction is starting behind time, so the building will be finished later than had been

planned.

One reason for delay has to do with the purchase of additional land to enlarge the site. The additional acquisition, a building at 89 Collins Street, has allowed the developers to increase the height of the building by virtue of the increased plot ratio.

None of the land at S 9; Collins Street

will be occupied by the tower build ing, but it will form part of a plaza at its base. At present the building is still being leased and its demoli tion date is being negotiated with the Melbourne City Council. The whole site is reported to have cost $A5m.

Although it will be mid-1975 before the building is completed, occupancy will take place in three phases. Some of the tenants in the low-rise section can expect to move in at the end of this year or early next year.

The whole of the building has not yet been let. Indeed, the Nauru Local Government Council, for whom it is being built by Civil and Civic, has to appoint letting agents. Consequently no rental figures are available. Even so negotiations are under way with two large firms—one of which says it wants to lease 15 floors.

The offices of the Nauru Govern ment are almost certain to occupy the building’s top floors. However, the offices of the Nauru Pacific Ship ping Line, Air Nauru and the repub lic’s phosphate operation are likely to be located in the lower part of the building, primarily because they need to be more accessible for customers and clients.

The whole project will cost some where between $A3Om and $A35m.

It is by far the biggest investment ever made by President Hammer Deßoburt’s government. On its suc cess will hinge the practicability of similar office-type inner city develop ments in Australia or, perhaps, New Zealand.

Certainly, Nauru Government officials are keen to see the project become a smash success, but they are cautiously not looking too much further than that at present. As one government official said recently: “It is hard to see us going elsewhere with a project of similar magnitude in the next few years.”

PNG doubles

its croc exports

Papua New Guinea has an export unique in the South Pacific Islands —crocodile hides, the export of which more than doubled last year with a total of 45,153 skins compared with 21,135 sold in 1971. The increase re ally came from Papua where an unusually long dry season made for better hunting. Catches totalled 32,500 compared with only 8,204 in 1971. The New Britain total was 1,213 against 674 the previous year but on the New Guinea mainland hunters accounted for only 11,440 a drop of 817.

Out to protect such valuable export, PNG sent its “croc” expert, Mr Max Downs, chief of the Wildlife section of the Agriculture Department, to a meeting of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, Survival Services Commission, in Zululand, Africa, late in March. Mr Downs was one of eight world experts on wildlife attending the meeting which dealt with the framing of conservation and industry programmes for international projects on crocodiles.

PNG’s crocodile skin industry is recognised as one of the best in the wor ld.

Icl/iH/laFc' ISianuciS

Iiquicj Qss6Ts

A number of Pacific Islands groups may be sitting on undersea treasure chests of oil and minerals which could make them wealthy in their own right. They need to be careful about signing away any of these rights, even though they are not financially equip ped themselves to undertake ex pensive searches, Seabed resources will engage the attention of the law of the seas con ference later this year; it is at this conference Islands administrations

press their claims to natural resources to prevent foreign exploitation, or at least to say who will carry out ex ploration.

They are in a strong bargaining position. As known sources of energy are expected to run out early in the 21st century, the search for oil and natural gas is expected to intensify.

The Tokelaus have attracted atten tion from Russia and the United States. Research ships from those countries have established that manga nese deposits on the Maniheke Plateau, near the Tokelaus, are some of the best in the South Pacific. US and NZ scientists will investigate these deposits to see if they can be mined commercially. A Russian research ship first found these deposits several years ago. Since then there have been further investigations by the Scripps Institute of Oceanography of the US.

As land deposits of manganese be come exhausted there will be a definite move to commercial undersea mining. Several big US corporations are gearing to lift minerals from the seabed.

Businesses cheaper

in the bush

Inflation and Town v Country argu ments are dealt with in new regula tions in the New Hebrides governing business fees. In the country, business fees are substantially lower than in the towns as the regulation was de signed to relate fees to the size of the business.

Inflation. —The licence fee for a trading bank is now $2,000, formerly $500; for a wholesale petroleum dis tributor, $l,OOO, against $300; and for real estate agents $4OO, against $75. All of these would be town businesses.

Town v Country. —A bakery licence in Vila and Santo is now $250, compared with $125 previously, but in other places it remains at $25.

A general retail licence in the two towns is now $3OO, $125 previously, while in the country it has been mar ginally increased—from $25 to $3O.

Dry days in

Micronesia

Several districts in the US Trust Territory are short of water because of drought. The Trust Territory Director of Transportation and Com munications, Mr Joe Beadles, has arranged to get US Navy barges from Guam to haul water to the affected districts.

Yap was first on the schedule to receive water, followed by Palau, Ponape and the Marianas. The barges 93 per cent of those growing potatoes

are capable of hauling 277,000 gal lons of water in one load, and off loading in about an hour. The barges were self-propelled, but their engines were rendered useless some time ago in Vietnam and they were towed to Guam and from Guam to the “dry” districts by government vessels.

Fiji controls

potato crop

Fiji is to exercise stricter control this year over potato cropping in the Sigatoka Valley. The National Mar keting Authority is the sole importing licensee. The authority, to encourage

farmers to plant potatoes, will supply the seed on a credit basis.

The farmers will be required to pay a deposit of $3 a bag when plac ing orders for seed. The remaining costs will be deducted from the sale of the potatoes, or paid in cash when the seed is collected. The farmers will also have to sign an agreement for the authority to market the crop.

The Fiji Department of Agricul ture was forced to take stronger con trol measures this year. In 1972, about 300 acres were grown by Sigatoka farmers, the Agriculture Minister, Mr Doug Brown, said.

Although farmers had asked the authority to market their crop, and

signed contracts, many farmers did not honour their contracts. As a result, orderly marketing was dis rupted and the authority found it difficult to sell the potatoes. In spite of that experience, the authority would again guarantee markets.

PNG fights shy

of duty-free trading

Papua New Guinea officialdom is trotting out similar arguments to those advanced in Fiji in the late 1950 s against duty-free facilities. It took three or four years to convince the Fiji Government that duty-free trading could be a bonanza—what was lost in customs duty would be more than offset by higher income tax revenue.

PNG’s Finance Minister, Mr Julius Chan, replying recently to a request from the New Britain Tourist As sociation asking the government to consider duty-free facilities as an added incentive to tourism, said PNG would incur considerable loss. The gains from increased tourism would need to be substantial to offset the loss of revenue which was financing a number of productive projects.

However, he did mention possible approaches to duty-free shopping which were under consideration. These included a duty-free concession in each major port outside Port Moresby.

It is interesting to note that PNG’s Finance Secretary, Mr Harry Ritchie, was Financial Secretary in Fiji when the country went “duty-free” on luxury items on January 1, 1963. Has Mr Ritchie become conservative in his thinking, or does Mr Chan not bother to seek his advice?

Emperor's

gilded variety

Diversification has paid off for Emperor Mines Ltd, which operates the gold mines at Vatukoula, Fiji, through a subsidiary, Emperor Gold Mining Co Ltd. In the first six months of the current financial year, to December 31, 1972, the group earned a net profit of $402,190. In 1971-72 the group net loss was $35,000, while in 1970-71 it was more than $500,000.

The gold-mining activities produced $156,960 of the latest profit, and the diversified operations of forestry, quarrying, gravel supplies, drilling and general trading yielded $245,187.

According to Mr Jim Kelly, general manager of Emperor Gold Mining Co, even better times are ahead with high gold prices.

Towards the end of May, prices were soaring to new records. On May 21 the London price was $112.50 an ounce.