AUSTRALIA

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 October 1944, Page 6

AUSTRALIA

CORVETTE SUNK

(Recd. 9.5 a.m.) MELBOURNE, October 28. As the result of a collision, while engaged on escort duty in northern waters, the corvette Geelong, Australian built, has become a total loss. All members of the crew were saved. Mr. Makin, Navy Minister, making the announcement said the Geelong, like so many of her sisterships, had performed the necessary routine work with the minimum of publicity. She successfully escorted many Allied ships with their valuable loads of troops and supplies of war equipment. She had steamed one hundred thousand miles since she was commissioned. [ shipping”losses SYDNEY, Otcober 27. The sinking of four ships and damage to four others by torpedo attacks in. Australian waters were announced to-day by the Prime Minister (Mr Curtin). The attacks occurred from July, 1942. to December, 1943, and had not previously been reported. The total casualties were 156 persons killed and nine injured. Four of the vessels torpedoed were American, three Australian, and one Greek. The four which were damaged struggled back to port. The heaviest loss iff life occurred when an Australian motor vessel was sunk northcast of Australia, the crew of eight white officers and 24 natives, together with 82 passengers, being lost. On the Greek freighter, which was torpedoed and sunk off the New South. Wales coast, 33 of the crew were lost. Seven ot-The eight attacks were made off the New. South Wales coast, but the actual dates of the attacks have not been announced. PENSIONS INCREASE. SYDNEY, Oct. 27. War pensions to members of the three Services from this and the 1914-18 war, and to their dependants, are costing Australia £10,920,934 a year. The number of pensions paid is £253,499. The annual cost of pensions to soldiers of-the 1914-18 war and their dependants is £8,356,941, and of the present war £2,536,994 for 66,836 pensions. MINISTER TO U.S.A. SYDNEY, October 27. Sir Owen Dixon, who has retired from the position of Australian Minister to the United States, returned to Sydney to-day. He was appointed to the American post in -1942 and relinquished it recently to resume his seat on the Supreme Court bench. Sir Owen said that the possibilities opened up by the prodigious success of Allied arms in Europe had been widely discussed in America. There, however, the prospect of the European war continuing into the next Spring had been generally accepted as the only wise basis for public and private planning.