LIFE ON OCEAN ISLAND

Stratford Evening Post, Issue 44, 5 December 1929, Page 5

LIFE ON OCEAN ISLAND

VISIT OF THE COMMISSION EK AUCKLAND, Dee. 3. Fifteen years’ continuous swviee m thjdcnt Cr Commi SS ionor. who arrivedat itklaad by tic Maunganm to-day on bis way back after a year_s Mr Grimble started as a cadet m the administration just before the war and now. while still a young man he is at the head. His headquarters « at Ocean Island, a little patch of land that is fabulously wealthy by virtue> of its phosphate deposits, and even m a community which contains only 110 white people he finds life full of te “ln Nauru and Ocean Islands the surface of the phosphate depart? has hardly been scratched,” Mr Gnmb said. “Improvements reeently mado to the shipping and stormg facJiUes will allow the export of 400,000 -o • of phosphate annually from Ocean ■ \ land, but even at the contemplated rate of export there is enough phosphate for another 100 years The phate deposits are worked by q < numbers of Gilbert Islanders and Chi nose, about 1500 all told. There has been considerable improvement in their i relations and we do not bav I with any labour troubles. " “In the whole colony there are 40,000 natives and 150 Europeans O the Europeans about 40 are Seattl e around the Lagoon Islands, mostly missionaires. ’ 1