BUSY WHARVES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 116, 19 May 1939, Page 8

BUSY WHARVES.

STREAM OF LORRIES. HEAVY OUTWARD CARGO. Alili IS NOISE AND BUSTLE. "The Waiana is expected to sail on Monday for Wellington, Picton, Lyttelton, Dunedin, Bluff and Timaru." That was all the shipping news said. The scene is the Queen's wharf, where the Waiana is lying. Prom the gates leading to the wharf there is a constant stream of motor lorries. Some are laden, others empty, but all are bound for the sheds where cargo is stored.

Auckland Harbour Board officials are directing the lorries. They have not a. slack minute. So constant is the traffic that there is a queue from the gates to the second row of sheds. One traffic man stands at the gates, another just inside. The second man stops each lorry. A question to the driver, and he is told which way he must go—down the outride of the wharf near the ferry quay, or down the centre between the sheds. Further down the wliarf, near the Customs' boarding inspectors' office, another Harbour Board man is on duty. He must discover in more detail the driver's business. He asks briefly the destination of the lorry's freight. The answer is just as brief. A wave of the hand, and the lorry is on ite way.

The Waiana wails on "Monday and over the Queen's wharf this morning arose the noise of roaring engines. In the space between the sheds lorries crisscrossed like a jig-saw puzzle. They wound their way at snail's pace through gaps seemingly too narrow by far. These drivers are experts. Intimacy and Efficiency. It was noticeable that the men directing traffic and the drivers know each other by their Christian nances. "Where for. Bill?" the Harbour Board man would ask. "Wellington, .Tack," would come the reply, and so with mutual quiet efficiency the business of the day went on. The men on duty did not. think that the traffic to-day was unusually heavy, but since there was no boat for the south last week the traffic was heavier, perha]is. than usual. The Kaiwarra, they added, had been worked to midnight last night so that the Waiana could l>e moved up to the Kaiwarra's berth, opposite the shed almost entirely devoted to outward cargo. Un|H'rturbed by the noise and neverending flow of traffic, the man on duty waved half a hundred lorries on. asked half a hundred questions, cautioned some vehicles to stop and ordered others to proceed, spoke quietly when he could be heard, or shouted into the questioner's ear when a great five-tonner lumbered past. And in the brief moments .of respite replied to the reporter's queries.

But the lorries bringing cargo were only half the story. While on one «i<io of the wharf "there was the never-ending noise of lorry engines, on the other there was the powerful whirr of electric cranes, and the clank of dozens of hand trollies.

Though the Waiana had been moved up ready be loaded, she had not finished unloading, so that men had to take what cargo was left along to a shed at the otjier end of the wharf. There was not a moment of inactivity.

The inside of the outward cargo shed \vhi< packed *o tightly that one wondered where they were going to put any more. Vet cargo continued to arrive, lorrv-load after lorry-load, and the men in charge found a place for it all.

So the work goes on every day, and on Monday will appear another brief item. The Waiana sailed for southern ports.