FRUIT POSES BIG PROBLEM FOR TASMAN AIRWAYS

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 December 1950, Page 8

FRUIT POSES BIG PROBLEM FOR TASMAN AIRWAYS

WELLINGTON, This Day (0.C.). —T.E.A.L’s operations from Evans Bay are fruitful, whether profitable or not.

There is prospect of mounting quantities of oranges, apples, and pineapples shuttling back and forth across the Tasman to the ultimate exclusion of all passengers. The problem starts by passengers from Sydney liking Australian fruit, and the New Zealand Department of Agriculture not liking it. Passengers bringing fruit from Australia have it taken from them at the Customs check at Evan’s Bay. Today the haul was more than two dozen oranges and three pineapples. “Fruit fly,” mutters the Department of Agriculture, darkly eyeing the oranges.

The fruit is hurried back to the fly-ing-boat out in the bay, so that no fruit fly shall come into New Zealand. The- Department of Agriculture is happy if the forbidden, fruit is dumped into the sea 200 miles offshore on the return flight, but it happens the Solents have no dump hatch, therefore they arrive in Sydney with the fruit. There the Customs men look with abhorrence and ban its entry. So it stays on the boat till the next flight to New Zealand, when it is juined by the fruit carried by the passengers on that trip. Details as io what happens when the fruit reaches New Zealand are set cut in the foregoing.

So far as can be judged, the fruit is not allowed to land in Sydney, Auckland. Wellington, or Suva. As T.E.A.L.’s flying-boats land nowhere else, the answer would seem to be an orange. To save: T.E.A.L. being put. out of business by oranges and pineapples, the Department of Agriculture is getting some escape-proof bags in which the fruit, and pests resident therein, may be carried from the aircraft to an incinerator ashore at Wellington. Then there will be room for passengers.