“DODGING WINTERS”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21940, 29 April 1933, Page 9

“DODGING WINTERS”

A WELL-KNOWN GLOBE-TROTTER MR ALMA BAKER INTERVIEWED (Special to Daily Times.) AUCKLAND, April 28. A well-known visitor to the Dominion, Mr C. Alma Baker, C.8.E., of the Federated Malay States, left by the Wanganella for Sydney on his return to Singapore. For 20 years he has travelled about the world, visiting Great Britain, the Continent, India, America, Australia, and New Zealand successively “dodging winters” and enjoying- perpetual summer. During the 20 years of his travels he has experienced 40 summers.

Mr Alma Baker is a New Zealander by birth, and has farming interests at Port Waikato, but he is better known as one of the wealthiest rubber planters in the world. He owns the largest rubber plantations in the East, his estates at Batu and Gajah, in the Federated Malay States, producing enormous quantities of rubber and tin. His properties in New Zealand, known as the Limestone Downs and Te Karaka, situated nine miles from Port Waikato, on the west coast, are model sheep and cattle stations. For 20 years Mr Alma Baker has divided his time between his rubber plantations in Malaya and his interests in New Zealand and other parts of the Empire. “ I have not experienced a winter in any part of the world since 1913,” he said prior to his departure for Sydney. “ After practically a lifetime spent in the tropics the blood becomes unusually thin and one feels severely even a comparatively mild winter such as you experience in the North Island of New Zealand. For that reason I prefer to dodge your winter months and return to my home in the tropics, where we have perpetual summer. Formerly a surveyor in New Zealand. Mr Alma Baker has always been a lover of the out-of-doors. He is one of the most experienced big game fishermen to visit the Dominion, and was responsible some years ago for- inducing Mr Zane Grey to sample the sport with the swordfish and mako shark off the northern coasts. He is, in fact, one of the pioneers of deep sea fishing in New Zealand, and has done as much as Mr Zane Grey- to encourage valuable tourist tralfic to the Dominion.

While admitting that the world prices for primary products were extremely discouraging, Mr Alma Baker was optimistic about the future. “ There is nothing in rubber to-day, and my New Zealand farms are nothing but expensive hobbies,” he said, “ but the world parity of prices cannot continue for ever at the present low level. Wool and meat must improve sooner or later, and rubber is one of the commodities for which there must be an increasing demand.”