ON OCEAN ISLAND

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 664, 16 May 1929, Page 6

ON OCEAN ISLAND

WORKING PHOSPHATE DEPOSIT PIONEER’S EXPERIENCES Telling how as a youth of IS he had gone to the Islands in a sailing ship after a voyage which took over two months, Mr. A. F. Ellis, the New Zealand representative on the Naui'u Island Commission, gave an account of his work and varied experiences on Nauru and Ocean Islands at the monthly luncheon of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce yesterday. Mr. Ellis said he was sent to Ocean Island in 1900, where he flew the first British flag to be flown there. He took possession of the island and spent three weeks there. He found that Ocean Island was almost all high-grade phosphatic rock, and wherevr he went he was walking in it. Although Ocean Island is not any bigger than Bangitoto, and Nauru is not much larger, there is enough phosphate to supply New Zealand for the next 100 years, he said. At Nauru. Mr. Ellis said, the de posits were far more extensive than at Ocean Island. To stand on a hill and look across phosphate depDosits as far as the eye could see was a remarkable experience. The speaker showed a number of lantern slides illustrating the workings after the deposits had been exhausted. In the best year prior to the commission’s operations the output had been 335,961 tons, while in 1921, the first year of the commission’s control, , the figure rose to 364.424 tons. The j estimated production for the current j year at Nauru and Ocean Islands was j 570,000 tons, making a total for" the ; nine years of 4,019,326 tons. The total j production during that period, taking [ in all sources beside the two islands, | was 4,537,403 tons.