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Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22418, 3 June 1938, Page 12

The opinion that a smaller vessel carrying a limited number of passengers could successfully maintain the Bluff.-Melbourne service during the off season was expressed by Mr W. A. Ott, chairman of the Bluff Harbour Board, at the annual meeting of the board. In pre-war days, he said, calls were made at Hobart, both going to Australia and returning to New Zealand. The trade between Melbourne and Hobart was a lucrative one and enabled the service between the South Island and Melbourne to be run successfully. Since the Australian Navigation Act had prohibited the inter-colonial steamers from running passengers or cargo between Melbourne and Hobart, the service had been run at a loss. While in Denmark, said the president of the Wellington Acclimatisation Society (Mr L. O. H. Tripp), at its annual meeting, he had been shown a stork’s nest on a chimney, said to be the northernmost known. Storks were marked in Denmark and Germany, and when they migrated to Africa people there had been asked to notify those in the northern countries. One had been found as far south as Lake Tanganyika. In spite of recommendations made to the Government earlier this year by the Sea Fisheries Investigation Committee, there is as yet no evidence that anything has been done for the development of the rock oyster industry on the North Auckland coast. The cultivation, picking, and marketing of the shellfish are still under Government monopoly, but the claims of private enterprise fpr participation in “oyster farming” received favourable consideration from the Government’s committee, and it is hoped that a widening of the general scheme may shortly be announced. Those who are in touch with the retail fish trade hold that the committee’s proposals represent a distinct advance on any .previous official announcement on the oyster industry