PROFITABLE SIDELINES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19453, 8 October 1926, Page 11

PROFITABLE SIDELINES.

WAGES OF PEA-PICKERS.

MONEY IN SEEDS AND GUM. [from our own correspondent.] SYDNEY. Sent. 30. If the unfortunate pea-growers of Sydney are having a particularly bad season, despite the prolific crop, and are, in many cases, allowing their crops to stay on the vines rather than pay the burdensome marketing charges, the pea-pickers at least aro finding good money in the industry. Where growers are marketing their produce, in two of the big districts, hundreds of lads and girls have been making £3 and £4 a week, and some even more, for the past two months. Two lads, not yet lfi years of age, have each earned £4 10s a week during the past five, weeks. Good money is also being made by the gathering for export of the seeds of the abundance of hardwoods with which Australia is singularly blessed. The fact that our native trees are being nurtured in such- places as California, South Africa and South America, is providing a lucrative calling few the gatherers of the seeds, if they are good bushmen and have a knowledge of the trees that yield the best. The seeds are sold at approximately 15s a pound to the merchants who operate in different districts.

Another unusual and profitable calling is that of gathering grass-tree gum. This gum, incidentally, for which the gatherers goi £4B per ton, was quite innocently shipped to Germany, among other countries, before the war and was later used in the - manufacture of explosives. The money that is being made from the export of our hardwood seeds makes the spread of Australia's natural wood throughout the semi-tropics of the world better understood.