FRUIT GALORE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 26, 1 February 1937, Page 8

FRUIT GALORE.

CASES BY THE THOUSAND. MATUA BRINGS BANANAS. • "The Matua with fruit." This looks an unpromising enough title in the shipping lists. It does not appear as if there could be much interest there, but just go down to the wharf where the vessel ie lying.

There you catch a glimpse of the Islands. You see fruit in quantities of which Auckland never dreams. Auckland, that is, where bananas are (id a pound, and not many to the pound either. On the Matua there were, roughly, 21,500 cases of this pseudoluxury. You could smell bananae as eoon as you approached the vessel. There were odd bananas scattered here and there, where they had perhaps fallen out of a case or been dropped by a member of the ship's company.

You leaned over ths side of one of the holds, and there below were thousands of the caees of that fruit which many Aucklariders know best through seeing it in shop windows. After you had seen the cases you might glance down at the deck, where, so near and , yet so far away as far as the spectator was concerned, were bunch**' of the fruit, golden and delectable) many pounds in a single bunch.

Auckland will not enjoy the cargo by itself, however, part of it being destined for' Wellington.

Aβ far as the trip was concerned, it was uneventful. The vessel called at Rarotonga, Nukualofa, Pago Pago, Apia and Suva.