Queensland Move To Reduce Deaths On Roads

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30641, 6 January 1965, Page 10

Queensland Move To Reduce Deaths On Roads

(Special Crspdt. N.Z.P.A.) SYDNEY, Jan. 5. In a bid to reduce the road toll this year the Queensland Government is to introduce a road-safety corps of civilians. Members of the corps, which will be set up this month, will have the power to report motorists for traffic breaches.

Corps members, who must have a clean history of driving themselves (parking breaches are excluded under this heading) will be issued with a simple form that will b -.ntify the vehicle and state the infringement. Court action will not be taken on the reports, but offending drivers will be traced and invited to attend a police traffic lecture. Shark Menace

There has been only one shark attack in Australia this season, and that was not at a surfing beach, but with high summer approaching more attacks can be expected. Over a long period of observation it has been shown that schools or packs of sharks are at their greatest from the turn of the New Year until February, and this year is unlikely to be an exception.

Already spotters, either in aircraft or on elevated promontories, have sighted the grey nurse, the whaler, and the tiger within 100 yards or so of the beaches. Regularly in past weeks shark sirens have sounded their warnings to thousands of swimmers. However, in the last 27 years there has been no fatal mauling by a shark at surf beaches on the New South Wales coastline, an illustration of the effectiveness of shark meshing which has been in use in that time from Cronulla in the south to Palm Beach in the north. In unmeshed parts of the state’s beaches such as those in Sydney’s middle harbour, which is thought to be the main breeding ground for the sharks which patrol the area, there have been six fatal shark attacks in the last 22 years. All the attacks have been in late December to early February. Cheese Imports

New Zealand cheese is one of the biggest sellers in a group of large Sydney shops, but if reported moves of the Australian Cheese Manufacturers’ Federation are successful, the market could disappear. Australian cheese makers are to sponsor a move to raise tariffs on cheese, which are said to have remained unaltered since 1927. The chairman of the Australian Dairy Produce Board (Mr E. G. Roberts) said that imports of cheese into Australia during the 1963-64 financial year amounted to 2890 tons valued at £l.2m. This compared with 2387 tons the previous financial year, he said. Market For Fish Virtually all of the larger stores in Sydney and many of the smaller ones form oases of air-conditioned comfort in the wanner weather, but there is one place in Sydney, provided the ozone is not too intense, that beats the lot for cool comfort when

the temperature climbs to the top of the scale. It is the Sydney fish market, which handles the produce from a wide area, with thousands of tons passing through each week. There is a fairly steady trickle of fish from New Zealand, but only a tiny percentage of the huge volume of fish that Sydney imports each year comes from the Dominion. More than 70 per cent of the fish consumed in Australia is imported, much of it from South Africa. The extent to which New Zealand is missing such a valuable market was brought home yesterday when fish had to be rationed to Sydney shopkeepers. About the only fish available to them was hake. Tons of it is eaten in the city area, and almost all of it comes from South Africa. One of the main reasons for the shortage of normal-type fish at the markets is said to be the fact that many skippers of fishing boats are doing too well in catching tuna and prawns for export to bother about supplying the home market. Some fishermen who used regularly to supply the Sydney market are now working almost entirely for exporters.

At the week-end I found myself at a small fishing village about 40 miles north of Sydney and went to a “shark shop” that advertised freshlycaught fish on its menu. Along with one piece of fish—it might have been shark at that —I ordered a shilling’s worth of chips. The price for my newspaper-wrapped meal was 2s 6d, or Is 6d for my 2in by 4in piece of nondescript fish.