The Hustlers

Australia's policy of excluding Asians, which has long irritated its up over neighbors, does not extend to Asian currency. With Australian exports to Asia up by 300% since 1959, money is flowing down under where immigration cannot. During the first ten months of fiscal 1963, reported the Australian government, the value of Aussie goods exported to Asia rose to $855 million, exceeding 1962's record-breaking total of $778 million. So far in 1964, Japan for the first time has displaced Britain as Australia's No. 1 customer, and Red China is buying more than 53% of Australia's wheat exports.

The surge in exports to Asia is largely the work of Australia's imaginative, Canberra-backed industrial and commercial associations and an army of tropical-suited Australian salesmen, who tout their goods in every Asian bazaar.

This spring a "floating trade fair," consisting of 100 businessmen and 400 trade exhibits aboard the merchant ship Centaur, dropped anchor in Hong Kong, Manila, Bangkok, Osaka, Tokyo and Singapore, piped 90,000 visitors aboard and transacted $1,125,000 worth of business right on deck. Australia's enterprising businessmen miss few opportunities to mold their exports to their customers' specific habits and needs: in a wily and woolly coup in Thailand, they recently landed a large order for plastic sneakers by producing them in a shade of orange that matched the robes worn by the country's innumerable Buddhist monks.

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