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Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 8650, 3 August 1908, Page 3

Up North, 6ays the Sydney Bulletin, they are telling weird and disquieting tales of how Japanese survey boats are making charts of the Barrier Reef. Of course it is not being done openly and the boats engaged in the work are ostensiMy :Beche-d , e-mer fishers. One Queenslander relates how he surprised a boat taking soundings while an officer on deck was doingsomething with a large slfeet of paper fastened to a drawing, board . Immediately the Queensland boat hove alongside the drawing was suspended and the drawing-board carefully covered up while the Japs suave as ever gave the Queenslander the water he was short of. This boat was working south. A couple of days later he fell in with another boat of the same sortworking north from which he concludes that the Japanese Admiralty's survey of the Barrier Reef is just about complete.