Readers Write

Northern Advocate, 4 January 1946, Page 2

Readers Write

Pressed down to her plimsoll by 6000 tons of butter and cheese production of New Zealand’s most efficient indus-

try, the Hororata re-WATER-FRONT cently slipped down “RAIN" the Rangitoto Channel past the Beacon on her way to Britain. What a sight. I saw her. She carried some of my butter. My feelings were those of pride and satisfaction. But before she had disappeared those feelings were replaced by those of disgust as I read that it had taken her two days less than three months to “turn-round” in the Port of Auckland, and that this slowness was attributed to “rain,” “goslow,” and “stoppages of work.” The colour of the pastures for a 100 rpiles around Auckland records the rainfall since October. No October or November shower should stop the loading of butter, while • that very same butter is produced by our farmers, their wives and their children in the' worst gales and storms of winter and spring. Even a union secretary could understand that the worse the weather in the country the greater is the demand of the herd on the farmer's strength and time.

And there is not a farmer’s son from Spirit’s Bay to South Cape.'who having seen a haybailer at work could not devise an impeller to move butter boxes along a flexible ramp from a shed into a ship’s hold. Butter is produced on farms under conditions no wharf labourer would tolerate. Undernourished Britons need the butter. The mere work of loading it could proceed with greater speed and goodwill.

The slowness of Hororata’s “turnround” was due not to rain, but to “waterfront reign” which, unchecked, presently will take as many months to load a ship as a cow to have a calf.— T, McK. RUNCIMAN.