BLUFF SHIPPING

Southland Times, Issue 18971, 19 June 1923, Page 5

BLUFF SHIPPING

AUSTRALIAN CONNECTION REPLY BY UNIQN CO. CONNECTION WITH AUSTRALIA. REPLY BY THE UNION COMPANY Several representations have recently been made by various bodies such as the Southland League and the Farmers' Union as to shipping facilities between Dunedin, Bhfff and Australia. Mr Brodrick, President of the former body, at the annual meeting stated that “the distance from Bluff to Sydney was about 600 miles shorter than from Wellington, and as the amount of cargo inwards was more from Sydney than from Melbourne, it wu a great drawback for passengers to have to travel north to join the steamer for Sydney.” On being interviewed by the Ship ping Gazette regarding this statement, the Union Company put its side of the question. The Gazette,, reporting this interview, says:— It appears that the present services are as follows: Bluff to Sydney. Cargo boat every two or three weeks. Bluff to Melbourne. Cargo and passingera every three weeks, one way direct and the other way by Wellington. The first of these services has been hampered recently by difficulty caused by coal strikes. lor many years Union Line boats ran cargo-passenger boats from Sydney to Wellington, Bluff and Melbourne. These boats used to return from Melbourne the opposite way. The Company found, however, that whereas formerly considerable quantities of cargo used to be shipped from southerly New Zealand ports to Australia, this trade showed a constant tendency to diminish until now it amounts to very little. As regards passengers, it was found that in spite of the better facilities which then prevailed from Bluff to Melbourne, compared with the present, the flow, particularly as regarded tourists and holiday-mak-ers set increasingly in a Northerly direction, the attractions being possibly the larger towns north of Dunedin and the pleasure resorts in the North Island, not to mention the very fine ferry service between Lyttelton and Wellington and the better weather conditions often prevailing on the more northerly route to Australia. While anxious to give the best possible services to the community in the South, the Company found itself compelled to follow the trade by the commercial consideration by which it must be governed, and the present arrangements thus represent the result of experience. At the same time, Mr Brodrick’s statement that the distance from Bluff to Sydney is about 600 miles shorter than from Wellington is not literally correct and perhaps his speech suffered in the process of editorial compression. The distances in question are:— Bluff to Sydney, 1107 miles. Wellington to Sydney, 1239 miles. In proceeding from Bluff via Wellington, an additional journey of . 455 miles is involved, and so long as this is understood Mr Brodrick’s statement is near enough, yet the inexorable logic of facts shows that though the Wellington through route was longer it was more attractive to the travelling public, as it was no uncommon thing for Southern passengers to travel to Sydney or Melbourne via Wellington in preference to the Southerly route. There the matter lies. If the former service had never existed, it might have been argued that the provision of greater facilities would tend to create the traffic; aa it is this cannot be said.