SMUGGLED CHINAMEN.

Shannon News, 1 November 1927, Page 4

SMUGGLED CHINAMEN.

IN SYDNEY HARBOUR. NEWSPAPER STORY PUTS POLICE ON TRAIL. \ SYDNEY, Oct. 13. Sensational developments followed the publication of a story by a Sydney newspaper, telling of the mysterious landing of a party of exhausted Chinamen from a ship's .boat near Cremorne wharf iti Sydney Harbour iu the early hours of Monday morning- Dozens, of Chinamen have been arrested as the result of police, and Customs raids on Chinese market gardens, and they have been charged with being "prohibited immigrants. Others have been charged with the contravening of- the Immigration Act. The newspaper story of the silent approach from out of the fog hear Cremorne wharf of a ship's boat, oars muffled, which nosed in towards the shore and grated against a stone retaining wall. Near the spot where the boat grounded a fleet of taxis waited. Immediately the /boat touched the land, men jumped ashore, made it fast, and bent over a"heap of huddled forms amidships. { Piteous groans floated across the water as they stirred the heap to life. Shortly after a line of men towards the shore, each bearing on his back an inert* shapeless bundle of humanity. Clambering up the wall to the roadway, the porters deposited their human baggage into the waiting as they were loaded, the ears were driven off into the night. So weak was the human cargo that was landed from the ship's boat that not one of them had the strength to even crawl on to the seats of the taxis, but lay huddled on the floor. Its cargo landed, the ship's, boat slipped silently back into the night again. On the day following the publication of the story, police and Customs authorities awoke to activity and combed the market gardens and Chinese haunts of the city and suburbs in an effort to trace the whereabouts of the smuggled Chinamen. For it was obvious that the human cargo landed at Cremorne were Chinamen, who no doubt had escaped the usual Customs search, perhaps huddled together in such a confined space as a chain locker, unable to move for weeks, and with little food. The raids brought to light fourteen of the smuggled immigrants, besides many more who were unable to answer satisfactorily questions put to them by Customs men. As the police and others approached one garden at Ryde, there was a wild scatter of Chinamen. A search of the house disclosed the presence of three exhausted, weak, almost dying Orientals, whom the police had to carry out on their backs to waiting ears. None were able to speak English, and had undoubtedly been in confined j spaces for a considerable period. At another garden a sea*ch proved fruitless, until a curious policeman started demolishing a pile of fruit cases. In the centre of the eases, in' an oilI cove, were three Chinamen. Gardens and opium dens are still being searched in an effort to unearth more of the j>inhibited imm : —nuts.