FISHSKIN SHOES

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 37, 12 August 1930, Page 9

FISHSKIN SHOES

OF RAINBOW HUES

A NEW INDUSTRY?

LONDON, let August-

London streets paved with Queensland timbers and trodden by Barrier Beef fishskin shoes is an ambition of Mr. Ernest Hunter, of North Queensland.

When Mr. Hunter, who was a delegate to the recent Congress of the Empire Chambers of Commerce, recalls tho gorgeous tropical fish of the Barrier Kecf, masquerading in all the colours of the rainbow, with endless variations, ho has visions of English ladies brightening London's drabness with red, yellow, green, and blue fish-skin shoes. He said to-day that leading English tanners are prepared to accept consignments of flshskins, and also snake and lizard skins and crocodile hides, and he believes that it will mean a valuable new industry for Australia.

Ho is also negotiating with railway engineers, and is hopeful that they will use Australian sleepers,_ and that, when meeting English municipal bodies, he will induce them to uso Australian woodblocks and renew the experiments begun with theso in London in 1896. Meanwhile tho London County Council has informed Mm that it is willing to buy Empiro timbers even at a slightly higher cost. Mr. D. G. Stead, tho fishery export, stated to-day that tho colouring of fish skins in some instances can be preserved if tho skins are very carefully dried while they are fresh, but it is hardly possible to retain tho original brilliance. Interesting results had been obtained experimentally, he said, bui he did not think that it would bo a commercial proposition. Some iisb skins, oven though delicate when fresh, became very tough when dried, and could bo used for a variety of purposes, ranging from the making of artificial flowers to leather. They readily took all sorts of dyes, and lie himself had had a beautiful imitation poinscttia made from a leatherjackot and a pair of braces from a fish skin also.