LUXURY LINERS.

Evening Star, Issue 22954, 11 May 1938, Page 6

LUXURY LINERS.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,— Why is Otago cut Out- of the lucrative visits of luxury liners? The reply to that query'is neither over-com-plicated nor incomprehensible. Reduced to simple terms such liners require'a safe and convenient harbour. Otago Harbour is the safest harbour in New Zealand, but its convenience aspect has not been accorded adequate attention. Its development as a' harbour has been ' neglected. The entrance is not what it might be, and should be. The channel from the entrance to the Port Chalmers wharves is inconvenient owing to easily removable sand having been. allowed to accumulate. ’The wharves at Port Chalmers are in a shocking state of out-of-dateness. A Dunedin lady who recently landed at Port Chalmers from a “ Rangi ” liner told me she lost her walking-stick through the decking of the wharf. More in .sorrow than anything else she described the deep-water berthage wharf as “in a dreadful state, really.” In the interests of the prestige of Otago and Otago Harbour, that lady had, she said, asked the captain of the big liner why his company’s liners did not make Otago Harbour a first port of call. The captain had replied that he would be pleased to do so, but that “ the crude wharfage ae-

commodation for passenger vessels watf simply impossible.” Such a state Of affairs need not hava been in existence had all-round harbour development been carried out here, as elsewhere. During the past two or three decades whenever attention was directed to the undeveloped state of the lower harbour, reference to it has been on the rather feeble plea that it ivaq merely “ lower versus upper harbour again,” As a matter of fact, iti was “ the lop-sided development ofl Otago Harbour versus the trade auc( commerce, of Otago ” that was tha issue. Now luxury liners cannot visit Otagd Harbour, the safest, harbour in New; Zealand, because it is not so accessible as it should be to modem shipping.—l am, etc., ' T.S. May 11.