WEALTH IN A PEARL

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 20, 24 July 1939, Page 9

WEALTH IN A PEARL

(From "The Post's" Representative.) SYDNEY, July 17.

Powanga Savage, a native diver of Badu Island, in the Torres Strait, will, no longer need to live in a little grass hut among palm trees on the island,, for he is now a potentially rich man.

When a box in the mail of the Chief Protector of Aborigines in Brisbane was opened recently, . a large pearl rolled out. Powanga Savage had won it from the sea bed and had sent it to Brisbane after everyone on* the island had admired the richness of his prize. Weighing 23 carats, the pearl measures approximately four-fifths of an inch by three-fifths by three-fifths. It is regarded as one of the finest pearls found by a native diver in the Torres Strait for the last ten years.

The pearl has been lodged in a Brisbane bank and will remain there until a buyer is found. X none offers in Brisbane, the pearl may be sent to London. Whatever money it brings will go to Powanga. .

"I would be prepared to say a" car was travelling fast, but I would not be prepared to state that speed in figures of miles per hour," said Mr. Justice Northcroft in the Timaru Supreme Court when counsel was trying to get a witness to give the actual speed of a train after he had stated that it was travelling too fast under the conditions. "A witness can say whether a vehicle was travelling fast or slow in accordance with what he is accustomed to see," his Honour added, ",but few people are competent to say just how fast in miles atl hour it was travelling." -