Pacific Islands Monthly - 1 August 1953

Mission

OF all the useless delegations from the Trusteeship Council which have visited the “mandated”

Territories of the South Pacific, that which was in Nauru, New Guinea and Western Samoa in April and May made the most un favourable impression. It was led by Dr. Enrique de Marchena, of the Dominican Republic.

The enthusiasm with which some members of the party entered upon the saltatory exercises at a Rabaul function arranged in their honour has been the subject of comment.

Later in the New Guinea tour, officials at Lae arranged to take the party up the mountain road to Bulolo in Landrovers, to let them see the country and the natives.

Dr. de Marchena made history by flatly refused to ride through the country in a Landrover —it was too uncomfortable. He remained in the hotel. Other members of the party showed little interest in what they were shown at Wau and Bulolo.

But the real highlight came in Western Samoa. The Samoans, notable for their hospitality, courtesy and strict etiquette, made the traditional presentations of food, fine mats and tapa and then they put on the Ta’alolo ceremony, reserved for only the most im portant visitors. The Trusteeship Mission, of course, was enthroned on a dais.

Believe it or not: while the cere mony was in progress, the members of the Mission, led by Dr. de Marchena, came down off the dais, and circled around, trying to get effective pictures for their cameras.

And then (according to a well known New Zealand weekly news paper of May 13) “Dr. de Marchena adopted every possible attitude to ensure good results, finally lying flat on his stomach a few feet away from a dancing girl in order to get the right angles.” (The worthy Dr. de Marchena evidently was trained in photo graphy in America, where some contend that the best way to photo graph shapeliness is to put the camera low down and point up wards—usually with startling results in the picturing of ankles and thighs!) The NZ newspaper’s head ing to the article was “Contortions With Cameras Over Dancing Girls”!

It is not surprising to learn that the attitude of the Samoans to the Trusteeship Council gentlemen was “courteous but cold.”

This may appear to be merely an amusing incident. But it does give strength to the repeated plea

of this and other journals that the Governments concerned (especially Britain, United States, Australia and New Zealand) should put an end to this useless Trusteeship farce, and leave the Territories of New Guinea, Nauru and Western Samoa in the complete control of the countries which have efficiently governed them and protected and helped their natives since 1914.

Dr. de Marchena, photographed as he presented his dancing partner to members of the Mission, at an entertainment in Rabaul.

Tariffs in W. Samoa

FTTHE NZ representative to the UN, X Mr. L. K. Munro, has informed the Trusteeship Council that his Government has no objection to the abolition of the British preferential tariff and the sub stitution of a general tariff in Western Samoa.

Mr. Munro said that the Govern ment of Western Samoa had been informed of this and now could take appropriate action. He added that his Government did not feel it had any legal obligation to abolish or vary the preferential tariff in Western Samoa, but it felt it should defer to the wishes of the Samoan people as expressed through their Legislative Assembly.

Miss M. Keeting, P-NG Educa tion Dept., will spend her leave in Australia and USA.

Fiji Governor’S Narrow

Escape

117HILE Sir Ronald and Lady TT Garvey were returning to Suva, via Queens Road, from a function on the other side of the island, late in July, they were in volved in a car accident.

Some 34 miles from Sigatoka the Governor’s car, driven by an aide, approached a one-car bridge as another car, travelling fast, came from the other direction, A head on collision appeared certain; but the aide, by swinging the official car to the extreme edge of the road —and at the same time striking a concrete post—managed to clear the other car by an inch or so.

Had the Governor’s car been struck it would almost certainly have gone over a steep bank into the river.

The other car did not stop, but was later traced by the Sigatoka police.

Their Excellencies went on in the official car, which was not badly damaged.

Nondugl Sheep-Raising

Continued Faith In

A Suggestion In May Pim

that Sir Edward Hallstrom, of Sydney, had lost interest in his big sheep-raising project at Nondugl, in the Central Highlands of New Guinea, is contradicted by friends of Sir Edward. They say that he is more than ever deter mined to show that sheep may be successfully established in the Highlands—not in a big way, but in small flocks, so that they may have the personal care necessary to guard them against tropical diseases The August Bulolo is carrying to Lae, to be flown in to Nondugl, £l,OOO worth of fencing material — iron posts and six miles of netting —which is a personal gift from Sir Edward to the experimental station.

Highlands

Medical Training in NG Highlands

A HOSPITAL and medical train ing centre have been opened by the SDA Mission at Omaura, in the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea. The Mission says the purpose is a practical medical training in nursing and first-aid for the young people of that area.

Already 21 young men and two young women have commenced classwork. The opening ceremony was carried out by Pastor A. J.

Campbell, and Mr. and Mrs. L.

Hawkes, graduate nurses of the Sydney Sanitarium, are in charge.

From Notes Made in New Guinea

pp. 23-24

By R. W. Robson

“Coons,” “Kongkongs,” Etc.

I FOUND that, following the Raluana case, Rabaul is a little vociferous on the subject of “coon.” A lot of people still use the term to mean a native worker, and it is not used offensively. It is so much easier to say than “native labourer.”

Rabaul tells me that the Chinese object strongly to the native name for a Chinese—“kongkong.” Some natives have retorted that if the Chinese will refrain from calling natives “bloody kanakas,” they will try to discourage “kongkong.”

Actually, “kongkong” has no offensive meaning. In the German time, a lot of the Chinese labourers who were brought in game from Hong Kong, and it became the practice to refer to them as “Hong Konffs.” The aspirate is not easy for the natives, and so the term naturally became “kong kong,” and has persisted since. It is not de rogatory.

While the Japanese were here, they forbade “kongkong,” and made the natives call the Chinese “China.” “China” is in use to some extent, but the easily-spoken “kong kong” is far commoner.

The native name for the Euro pean, or white man is “wittiman.”

It is in the same category as “coon,”

“kongkong” and “kanaka,” but the Europeans show no signs of suffer ing under it.

Need For A Bank Of

New Guinea

ALL leaders of the Territories’ commerce and industry especially the men in Rabaul —are emphatic and unanimous on the need for establishing some kind of bank which will provide finance for the new and expanded indus tries which the government is so anxious to encourage.

They do not criticise the existing banks—NS Wales and Common wealth are here, and ANZ is coming in—because those are merely branches of the Australian banks, whose primary function is to facili tate trading. What they want is a financial institution whose special purpose is to appraise the value of new projects, and the character of the men who will handle them, and then advance funds in accordance with a policy for encouraging de velopment.

Some favour an extension of the Rural Bank of Australia. Others advocate a new, special bank for the Territories, owned and directed jointly by Government and private enterprise. The history of all colonial development emphasises

the need for such an institution here.

There cannot be much progress, however, until there is a clearer policy announced regarding the re sumption of lands now nominally owned by natives; until lands are more readily available; and until it is easier to get titles.

I saw two good men hard at work out in the field—Mr. McCubbery, Commissioner who is restoring the land titles lost in the war, and Mr.

Mclnnes, brought from Australia recently to take charge of the Lands Department, and whose work already is earning general praise.

All this talk about the develop ment of P-NG resources, however, represents much useless beating of the political air, so long as Can berra allows itself to be influenced by the stupidities of the Trustee ship Council, and is afraid to deal boldly and efficiently with land.

Land is the basis of everything. Un less the Government overcomes its timidities in this direction, it might as well send a thousand or so officials back to Australia, and leave Papua-New Guinea as a sort of protected zoo, a happy hunting ground for anthropologists and post-war sociologists.

The District Governors

I WAS sorry to see District Com missioner D. C. Bates, from Madang, on Lae airstrip, head ed South, seeking urgent medical attention. Post-war, he has rendered most useful service in Rabaul and Madang, and is the type of officer whom the Territories can ill spare.

District Commissioner “Horrie”

Niall has just resumed his task at Lae, and DC Aitchison, who acted here during Mr. Niall’s 5-months’ leave, has departed to take charge in Kavieng. Both have a fine ad ministrative record, and are person ally popular.

It is remarkable how high all these District Commissioners gener ally stand in the regard of the unofficial public, although their de cisions often, as a matter of necessity, offend some section of opinion.

District Commissioner Keith McCarthy, in Rabaul, maintains his hold on popular regard, despite a little behind-the-scenes mud slinging during the Raluana affair.

The upshot of it all probably will be a clearer directive from HQ to District Commissioners in relation to native policy—which was con siderably confused by the thinking of the Ward-Murray regime, and the change of government.

McCarthy is booked for long leave in October, but I hear that per sonnel shortage in District Ser

vices er-cates a problem of finding: relief. McCarthy’s staff already is depicted, and it is likely that the efficient young McLean will be moved across from Sohano to Rabaul.

Incredible—But It Could

Happen

BOTH Suva and Papeete will have to look to their laurels as the prettiest towns in the South Pacific. Port Moresby is on their tail.

If anyone, 15 years ago, had sug gested that Moresby could develop beauty he would have been laughed at. Moresby then was a dilapidated, untidy and dusty little place—situ ation good, but condition dreadful But the post-war Administrations, plus private enterprise, have done wonders. Each side of the main street is now adorned with modern buildings. All side streets have been re-shaped, given concrete gutters and footpaths, planted with trees and flowers. Ela Beach, with its Casuarina Avenue and its bungalow buildings, is a charming place.

Moresby is in the “dry belt,” and no one ever thought it could acquire a tropical and luscious green. But well-selected trees are growing strongly, in and near the streets, and have assisted much to change the appearance of the town.

It needs only a continuance of this cooperation between govern ment and townsfolk for Moresby to become celebrated in song and story (and technicolor) for its beauty.

The Markham And Its

Bridge

HORNIBROOKS Limited are just beginning the construction of the 500-yards bridge across the Markham at Markham Point, eight miles out of and above Lae. The piers will have to go very deep into this shifting, ugly river-bed, if it is to withstand the river’s occasional terrific floods.

Only a few days ago, heavy rain inland,sent down a sudden mighty wall of water, which swept away one of the dongas just built for workmen on the bank.

These are good bridge-builders, and should know their job. The real problem lies in the two miles of road just built through sago swamps from the main Markham Valley-Nadzab road, across to the bridge. During recent heavy rains and floods, this road became heavily inundated and impassable—obvi ously, not a suitable highway for this area’s rainy season. I expect that High Authority will now have the road built up a bit —an ex pensive business.

The bridge-builders don’t care— their job is simply to construct a bridge in a designated position— but a certain gentleman up at Mumeng, who fought so consistently against that Markham Point site, may be getting a kick out of it.

Hotel Cecil’S Boss Returns

riTHE return of Mrs. Flo Stewart A to her new T Cecil Hotel, at Lae, after a visit to the Corona tion, and Europe, and America, was something worth seeing. Sister-in law Dorothy Stewart, and attractive young daughter Flora Stewart — who gave the hotel some notable finishing touches during the owner’s absence —had a welcome home expressed in flowers and de corations; the locals came in little parties to hear “Flo’s” accounts of bull-fighting in Spain and beauty in Honolulu; the dogs were in ecstacies; and even the house-boys —who hold the boss’s disciplinary measures in wholesome respect— could not contain their grins.

Right alongside her bonny bis hotel this enterprising woman now is erecting a huge new hall, com plete with stage, capable of accom modating any kind of public func tion, from the weekly dance to a theatrical production. The hotel can take 100 first-class travellers; and another double-story building, set back between the hotel and the hall, will accommodate a couple of score of second-class people.

Some effort should be made to develop a tourist traffic to the New Guinea Highlands—unique in the Pacific, and probably in the world— and this new hotel in Lae would be the sightseers’ natural stepping-off

place lor the Highlands,

Harnessing Highlands

Water

THE Administration now is taking many active steps to develop hydro-electric power for the benefit of the Central Highlands.

Old-timer Jim Ellis (he and Gordon Thomas were prisoners of the Japs in Rabaul, 1942-45) has gone to Goroka with a contract to erect lines to distribute power over a wide area thereabouts; and other minor schemes are under way.

Many streams run continuously down onto those Highlands plat eaus from the surrounding moun tains; and hydro-electric power may create something very important there before long.

Curiously, I was told by a man who knows the Eastern Highlands that there is a substantial seam of coal to be seen somewhere east wards of Goroka. Coal there' might render the development of hydro electric power unnecessary. The report is hard to believe. I know of no workable coal seam anywhere in the South Pacific Islands.

If The Roman Catholic Vicar Apos tolic of the Gilbert and Ellies Islands. Bishop Terrienne, visited Papua-New Guinea during July, first going to the Vunapope Catholic Mission near Kokopo, and then to the Yule Island Mission. He has recently visited Italy and France.

Planes to Link Dutch

p. 24

and Aus. N. G’nea

ANEW air service linking Hollandia, Biak, Lae, Madang, Port Moresby and Australian mainland ports will be starting shortly said the Australian Minister for Civil Aviation, Mr. H. L.

Anthony, on July 22.

It will be operated by Qantas Empire Airways and for a start

will function once a month —Lae- Madang - Wewak - Hollandia - Biak, and return.

The Netherlands and Australian Governments have agreed on the service and will provide reciprocal information.

H Miss Annie Nicholas, daughter of a well-known Rarotonga family, was married to Mr. Vaai Moate, son of Island Councillor Piri Moate and Mrs. Moate, at the LMS Church, Ngatangiia, Rarotonga, on July 17.

Vila Celebrates Coronation

p. 24

The brightest and most successful Ball ever held in Vila, New Hebrides, was given by the Vila Cricket Club on June 1, 1953, to celebrate the Coronation of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. The Vila Cricket Club Committee, Messrs. S. G.

Jones (President), G. Husband (Social Secretary), H. Horsburgh (Secretary), J.

Murray (Treasurer) and R. A. Warren (Team Captain) were responsible for the success of the function. They were assisted by Messrs. G. Ward, N. Gilliland, W. Shipley, L. Bairstow and B. Lodwick, Misses A. Eaton, M. Croker, H. Briat and Mesdames Frouin, Holder, Warren, Max well and Lodwick.

Guests were received by members of the Committee and presented with a rosette of red, white and blue ribbons and a Coronation Badge. Several large photo graphs of the Queen were prominently dis played in the hall and the main feature of the decorations was a huge Crown

suspended from the centre of the ceiling, which supported coloured bunting, and red, white and blue streamers (see top photo).

During the evening various Novelty Dances were enjoyed and handsome prizes were won by lucky winners. The British Resident Commissioner, Mr. H. J. M. Flax man, proposed the Toast to Her Majesty, which was followed by the singing of “God Save the Queen.” Those entertained at the official table by the Vila Cricket Club President and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. S.

G. Jones, were Mr. H. J. M. Flaxman, M. P. Anthonioz, Resident Commissioner for the French Republic, M. and Mme.

Jouve, M. and Mrs. M. Challons, Monsieur, Madame and Mademoiselle Ohlen, Mrs.

Carter, Dr. and Madame Merle and Mr.

E. L. Lancon.

The bottom photo shows some of those who attended the Ball. —Photos by Fung Kuei.

Japs Get Huge Hauls Of Fish

Profitable Operations in the Solomons Area

SUVA, July 30.

FURTHER reports of “mysterious vessels” being sighted in the Solomons area may soon be ex pected. Japan’s largest and most modern tuna fishing fleet —consisting of 30 fishing craft and an 11,000-ton mother ship—sailed from Japan on May 28 to operate in the vicinity of the Solomons, according to a report in an American fisheries journal.

As an indication of the enormous wealth that Australia is failing to exploit in the Solomons-New Guinea area, it is stated in this report that the Japanese expedition expects to take home about 12 million pounds’ weight of tuna from this voyage.

Also from Japan comes word that the Government has just approved a subsidy of £A500,000 to private owners to build ten motor-ships of from 240 to 270 gross tons, for tuna fishing in Trust Territory and equatorial waters of the Pacific.

The building of this fleet is to be expedited, following favourable fishing reports by an American Fish & Wild Life Department’s survey of the area by an expedition from Honolulu in recent months.

Jap Haul in 1952

WE learn from a report received through the Fisheries Division of the Australian CSIRO that in three months, in 1952, the Taiyo Fishery Company of Tokio, operat ing in the waters of the Solomon Islands, caught 4,580 tons of fish.

The breakdown of this remarkable catch was as follows:

The Japanese expedition used, as a mother-ship, the ss Tanyo Maru, 11,224 tons, and 28 fishing-boats, of from 70 to 180 tons, each with a diesel engine. The “long-line” fishing method was employed; and the bait was frozen sardines. The fishing extended over 85 days, from June 12 to September 4, 1952.

The official report says: “Out of the fish caught in this operation, all of the first-class yellowfin tuna were quick-frozen in round, and exported to the United States. The other fish were frozen in fillet, and met with domestic demand in Japan.”

It may be remembered that, when a Japanese expedition was arrested for fishing in territorial waters off New Britain last April, the Japanese were using approxi mately similar methods, and

appeared to be getting very large quantities of fish. The PIM sug gested then that, instead of fining the Jananese, the Administration could more advantageously pay them to show us how to catch fish pro fitably in those waters. The above merely adds another chapter to the incident.

The despatch from our Suva correspondent indicates that the Jap fleet, which did so well in 1952, is returning to the Solomons waters for similar work in 1953.

(See also article on page 115)

Percentage Yellow Tuna .. . .. .. 64 Big-eyed Tuna .. .. .. 6 Swordfish ... 15 Sharks ... 12 Albacore .. .. 2 Others .. .. 1 100

Absurd Status of P-NG

Governor

IT has been noted lately that if the Administrator of Papua-New Guinea should have much to do with his neighbours and colleagues —the Governor of Dutch-New Guinea and the Resident Commis sioner of the British Solomon Islands—the official set-up could be embarrassing for him and bad for Australian prestige. Don’t be mis led: in personal quality, Brigadier Cleland is a match for all-comers.

But, as a mere lowly Administrator, he is junior in rank to both of his neighbours.

Although, in fact, governor of what is by far the biggest Territory in the Pacific, Brigadier Cleland, because he is classed by Canberra as an “Administrator” ranks below Gov ernors , High Commissioners and Commonwealth Ministers and —believe it or not—even below State Ministers. That is an absurd posi tion.

In the smallest United Kingdom Colony, the Governor takes preced ence over everybody, except a Gov ernor-General or High Commis sioner acting within his jurisdiction.

He takes precedence over the Prime Minister, the Colonial Secretary, and even the Heir to the Throne.

What is good enough for Sir Winston Churchill and Mr. Oliver Lyttleton should not derogate un duly from the position of Messrs.

Menzies and Hasluck.

But, United Kingdom protocol apart, there are two sound, prac tical reasons for adding to the dignity, if not to the power, of the Queen’s Australian representative in Papua-New Guinea: the natives are likely to misunderstand things if every Tom, Dick and Harry who comes up from Canberra for a week or two takes precedence over their governor. Either he is “Namba wan” or they are confused by the fact (mentioned above) of his per man e n t inferiority on official occasions to neighbouring Governors.

If St. Helena (population approxi mately 800) can boast a “Governor

and Commander-in-Chief,” why not Papua-New Guinea?

Sir Herbert Murray was Lieut.- Governor of Papua. Since then, Canberra has kept the Territories’ heads on a lower official status than the Territories Minister—B

Queen Salote

Brief Stay in Sydney

QUEEN SALOTE, of Tonga, is due in Sydney on August 22 on the Orient liner Orontes.

While in Australia, she will be the guest of the Australian Govern ment. She will be in Sydney only three or four days, however, before leaving by air on her return home, to Nukualofa.

The Tongan monarch has been received abroad with demonstra tions of friendship and admiration, not only in the United Kingdom, but also in Europe, where she made a limited tour. She joined the Orontes in Naples; and the liner is according her the usual acknowledgments to her rank, and flying her Tongan flag on all formal occasions.

An effort is being made to organise a semi-public luncheon for Queen Salote, in Sydney, but it is feared that her short stay in the NSW capital will not permit of this.

Enough

Pacific Trochus Not Good Enough

From Our Own Correspondent SUVA, July 30 MR. Kenneth E. White of Sydney called briefly at Suva and Papeete in July in the course of a world business trip. He had already called on button manufac turers in England, Europe and New York, and on shell producers elsewhere.

European manufacturers, said Mr. White, were very critical of Papua-NG green-snail and trochus, and of some BSI shippers of trochus, who included large per centages of burnt, dead or un cleaned shell.

Compared with Mergui green snail shipped from Singapore, the manufacturers said that the Pacific Islands product was inferior in the matter of cleaning, carrying much waste material that should be chipped off before shipment.

Buyers are reluctant to pay good money for this waste material.

The European manufacturers, said Mr. White, consider that trochus —and other shell —prices are bound to fall next year as the Japanesse production comes onto the world market. (See article p. 115, this issue.)

in N. Guinea Jungle

p. 26

Woman Pilot Down in N. Guinea Jungle

From Our Madang Correspondent MRS. PAT TOOLE, New Guinea’s only commercial woman pilot, crash-landed her Auster air craft one afternoon in June, on the only clear stretch of river bed in amongst hundred of miles of rugged, mountainous country.

Mrs. Toole crashed about 20 miles from Drekikir and 50 miles west of Wewak. This area is only just being brought under Adminis tration control.

She apparently lost her way in very bad weather. She flew over the remote patrol post of Drekikir for half an hour trying to find a place to set the aircraft down, then through a break in the clouds she sighted a dry, shingle area in the Om river, and managed to land the plane causing, what appeared from the air, only minor damage.

The discovery of Mrs. Toole was remarkable and can only be de scribed as a fluke. The District Commissioner of Wewak was flying in a Mandated Airlines Dragon air craft and happened to see Mrs.

Toole at the end of the dry stretch of river. Later, when well-known war-time and commercial pilot, Bobby Gibbes, and DCA officials flew over the area, they were un able to sight her.

When Mrs. Toole saw that she had been found, she spelled out a one-word message in stones using a piece of white laplap as a back ground. The message was FOOD.

After Mrs. Toole had been lo cated, three patrols set out to pro vide help. One patrol, in charge of Patrol Officer Macgregor, reached Mrs. Toole after 14 hours hard walking through thick jungle country. The patrol had to cut its own track over the last two miles in pitch darkness whilst torren tial rain was falling.

Mr. Bobby Gibbes later walked in to the plane in the hope that he will be able to fly it out. The plane is owned by Gibbes Sepik Airways and is based at Wewak for local flying.

Mrs. Pat Toole is an attractive young woman who accepts her un usual job very matter-of-factly.

She is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. W. R. Graham of Kavieng.

She and Mr. Toole, who is Gibbes Sepik Airways representative at Wewak, were married at the be ginning of this year.

Women commercial pilots are un usual enough anywhere, but Mrs.

Toole is the only one to tackle the tough flying conditions of NG, and beat them, even to the extent of coping with the emergency she has just experienced.

Solve The Solomons-Fiji Problems By

pp. 26-99

Encouraging Indian Migration To Bsi

Review of South West Pacific t>y JUDY TUDOR

IF the group of Islands in the SW Pacific known as the British Solomon Islands Protectorate were to sink suddenly and perman ently, the event would cause few ripples on the economic ocean.

The 17,000 tons of copra which it produces annually, as its chief reason for being, could easily and quickly be compensated for by in creased production in more acces sible and more bountifully endowed Territories.

If one could ignore the fact that it is now a home for 95,000 Melanesians, that possibly would be the best solution of the problem of the BSlP—in one blow it would re move what is obviously little more than a financial embarrassment to the UK Government, and also the risk that, at some future time, over crowded Asia might regard it as a legitimate field for migration.

The greater part of what we now know as the BSIP was proclaimed a Protectorate by Britain in 1893, and the rest was acquired and added to it between then and 1900.

The reasons for the Proclamation followed the usual pattern. There were about 50 Europeans living in the Group and, in the previous half century, a prodigious number of missionaries and others had man aged to have themselves murdered by the natives. But this was at the fag-end of Britain’s Victorian era of colonising zeal; and the factors that make for growth, vigor and prosperity in a Colony have always been lacking from, or denied to, the Solomons.

In 1905, Lever Bros, began estab lishing their coconut plantations in the Protectorate, planting up, eventually, 20 000 acres, and this was and still is the hard, economic core of the BSIP. There always were few private European plant ers in the Solomons, and since World War 11, there have been even fewer.

Since annexation, of course, colonial theory has changed greatly.

In those days, it was assumed that a Colony should contribute some thing to the common wealth; pro fits were not then sneered at. Later, the theory that we, the European governing body, merely held a colony, at our own expense if neces sary, until such time as the native inhabitants were fit to run it themselves, was embraced enthusi astically.

Very, very recently the latter phase has been tempered by the thought in high places that if suf ficient of the Late Victorian profit making could be wedded to our altruism as to take some of the

burden off the unfortunate tax payers, it would be a good thing.

And, with this last phase of all, has come the corollary that each country must have a Future, and people therefore speak portentously about The Future of the Solomons.

Well, what is the future of the BSIP? Has it one?

European Enterprise

fIIHE Solomons, to-day, are produc- JL ing about three-quarters of the copra that they produced before the war. One reason for this is the obvious one that great areas of coconuts were destroyed during the war and virtually no new areas have been planted since.

Officially, however, the view is that the development of the copra industry is the only means by which the BSIP can hope for an early improvement in its economic posi tion. This may be so, so long as the present demand for copra holds. But a one-crop economy is always dangerous and if the BSIP is to have this nebulous thing called a Future —if, indeed, it is not to remain static —new industries are essential. These could be based either on private, individual enter prise, with capital introduced from outside the Protectorate; or based on native enterprise, heavily bolst ered by Government money and Government guidance.

Since gold was discovered in Fiji and New Guinea in the 30’s and 20’s, there has been a correspond ing interest in gold in the Solomons; but, to date, nothing has been found in payable, workable quantities, and, to-day, any gold find would have to be at least three times richer than a similar find in the early 30’s to make it payable.

But gold still is a possibility, although more as the lucky marble in a lottery than as a factor in a sober summary of future prospects.

BSl’s future seems to lie in its agriculture, possibly in its forests. (In this latter department, although there is a small export of logs from near Honiara, there is no mill to serve the timber-hungry township).

After the war, planters were actively discouraged from returning to their plantations. The British Government paid no war-damage compensation, and no assistance was given in transport or in re establishment such as was afforded, albeit reluctantly, the planters of Papua-New Guinea. BSI planters returned in small privately-owned ships, taking their goods and chat tels with them, and beginning from scratch again on their bombed-out

(Continued on Page 85)

plantations. As soon as they began again to produce they were attacked ferociously by the Internal Revenue Department with a newly devised income tax.

It is small wonder, then, that there has been no clamouring at the gates by strangers to invest money or grow new crops in the BSIP. Such enterprise as there has been in the Solomons since the war has been connected with the wasting asset of war-scrap or of the taking-in-each-other’s-wash ing variety in Honiara.

It is interesting to note that although Papua-New Guinea was equally beset by Socialists after the war, it has at least acquired some promising new enterprises: also that although it has at least two British firms —one making cutch from the mangroves of Western Papua and the other surveying hydro-electric potential in the same region with a view of refining bauxite —no British firm has fav oured the Solomons with anything of a similar sort.

The first essential of a new large-scale industry in BSIP, as elsewhere in the Pacific, is a re liable and adequate labour supply.

Ihe official opinion is that the labour potential is by no means fully utilised —while private opinion

is that the labour force at present presenting itself is totally in adequate for any large scale step up of production, and that more over, it is, on the whole, inefficient labour.

Cost of importing food to the Solomons, plus local wage rates, does not make it cheap labour, either. Semi-skilled jobs of car pentering, etc., which in Papua are performed by Papuans, are done in Honiara by Fijians and Indians brought across from Fiji.

TRAVELLING in a ship for the A 16 to 24 hours it takes from Santa Anna and Santa Catalina, up along the coast of San Christoval Island into the long inland passage between the larger islands of the Solomons Group, and so to Honiara half-way along Guadalcanal, the traveller is struck by the forbidding look of these islands and the feel ing that they are lands without people. Few villages can be seen along the shores by day and at night there are gaps of many miles between village fires.

The total land area of the Solo mons is 12,000 square miles. The population is about 95,000 natives, of whom over 40,000 live on the 1,500 square-miles island of Malaita.

Compare that with Fiji, which has

a total land area of about 7,000 square miles and a population of 313,000.

BSI has a similar land policy to that of Papua-New Guinea —that is, native land can be leased through the Government from the native owners.

But at this stage it is probably opportune to ask ourselves what

BSIP has to attract new enterprise, new capital and new blood that can not also be supplied by other Terri tories better endowed with trans port services, proximity to markets and without the income-tax factor that must be considered in the Solomons.

Native Enterprise

AS an alternative to European enterprise, let us consider the case for an economy based on native enterprise. This obviously was the plan of the immediate post war years, when Socialism was in full flower and private individuals were actively discouraged from re turning to the Solomons.

If the Solomons are to be de veloped to a first-class Pacific territory by this means it is going to take a great quantity of Govern ment money, a great deal of time and an even greater amount of patience.

During the war, the American forces had a farm at Ilu, about 12 miles out of Honiara, and this pro duced large quantities of vegetables for the local forces. This appears to have been one of the factors in the decision to put the capital at harbourless Honiara. The Yanks had produced bountiful supplies of vegetable crops—ergo, with this and the fertile plains on the east coast of Guadalcanal, native peasant farming could be established forth with.

Rice was then scarce and ex pensive, and natives like to eat rice —so planners immediately decided to experiment with rice at Ilu. The seed was imported from Fiji— although most of the rice grown in that colony is of the submerged variety and the rice to be grown at Ilu was dry rice.

T*?e ? r ,°K grown at Ilu shot up like Jack’s beanstalk to about six feet high—probably due to the wrong variety of seed being used and possibly because of a high residue of fertilisers left after US army “truck” farming, it set a heavy crop of grain; but, when it was mature, it was too heavy for

the long stalks, which toppled over and could not be successfully har vested.

The second attempt was a com plete failure, due to drought. The rice experiment was then abandoned.

A tremendous rice-harvester is standing idly in a shed at Ilu, with out any work to do.

But the plan to grow rice locally has not been entirely abandoned.

Rice is grown at St. Joseph’s Catholic Mission school, near Ilu — and, as it is a success in New Guinea, there seems no good reason why the right varieties should not be grown satisfactorily on Guadalcanal.

Hu at present is the home of about 30 or 40 cattle, imported from New Zealand and Fiji for experi mental purposes, and a few large white pigs. No crops are grown. r!E failure of experimental agri culture in the Solomons can not be attributed to the local De partment of Agriculture. For the whole of the Solomons, the agricul tural personnel of all grades, from the chief executive officer to the tractor mechanic, could be counted on the fingers of one hand. To in troduce agriculture to natives on a large scale —and this must have been the plan at one stage—it needs a big team of vigorous, enthusi astic agricultural officers, and a great deal of cash. Papua-New Guinea is 50 years ahead of the Solomons in this department; yet here, too, progress is impeded by lack of qualified officers, particularly on the veterinary and scientific side.

Although Guadalcanal is the largest of the Solomon Islands— -2,500 square miles— the population is only about 15,000. The villages around Honiara are few, indeed, and on the road between the town and Ilu not one is seen. North of Honiara, there are one or two very small villages.

The plains in this part of Guadal canal may be the most fertile land in the Solomons; but the natives show complete indifference about it.

They have not even sufficient energy to provide an adequate fresh vegetable supply for Honiara.

The comparatively small island of Malaita contains almost half the population of the Solomons. The island is poor in natural resources, and the old law of survival makes the natives the most vigorous and energetic in the group. It was Malaitamen who traditionally were the workers in the Solomons—until post-World War 11, when they de veloped a new nationalism which usually goes under the name of

“Marching Rule.”

If there is scope for native in dustry, and an economy based on that, it probably exists with the Malaita natives; but this also probably means their partial trans plantation to the less populated areas of the Solomons. There seem to be no official plans for anything

of this sort—if, indeed the Malaita natives themselves would counten ance such a move.

Why Not The Fiji-Indians?

r[ERE is another possibility for the future of the Solomons— but one which may cause horror in certain places, and the imple mentation of which would call for a considerable amount of courage.

Fiji and the Solomons still have many affinities. But while in Fiji there is a large, landless section of the community—the Fiji-Indians,

who make up half the population— in the Solomons are large areas of land lying idle for want of people or inclination or plans to develop them.

Why not cancel out the two problems by giving the Fiji-Indians a stake in the Solomons, and afford ing them the opportunity of provid ing the Solomons with this Future of which so many speak so glibly?

The Fiji-Indians, of course, may not be interested. They could, how ever, be given the opportunity of offering. At present, except for a

few artisans who are brought in temporarily they are apparently not allowed into the BSIP.

If Papua-New Guinea can grow rice, peanuts, coffee, cocoa, kenaf and fibres, why cannot these things be grown in the Solomons? Why not let the Fiji-Indians have the opportunity of proving that it can be done?

It is not suggested that the Indian community should be shifted entirely from Fiji. Whether that is desirable or not, it is not practic able. Fiji is accommodating her present population (150,000 Indians and 130,000 Fijians) comfortably enough.

But in Fiji, as in BSI, it is the future that is ugly. Both Fijian and Indian communities are growing rapidly: and trouble will commence before another 25 per cent, increase is recorded. But the shape of the picture might change very much if the future surplus population of Fiji-Indians were given land-owner ship and opportunities in Pacific Islands similar in character to the islands of Fiji.

The migration scheme could be carefully controlled and sponsored by the governments of Fiji and Solomons. Land and technical assistance could be made available to the migrants; and, in their train, in course of time, would come the artisans and the skilled tradesmen, new enterprises and organised transport.

“And what would happen to the poor Solomon Islanders?” asks someone. “In half a century the place would be over-run by Indians,” yells someone else.

And why not? If not Indians it will probably be someone else. Only for the might of the American armed forces, Japanese would now be colonising the British Solomon Islands, just as they colonised Micronesia between 1920 and 1940.

It is too bad for the Islanders that the time has now passed when the mere fact of being was sufficient excuse for inhabiting the earth.

Are the 17,000 tons of copra which the Solomons now produce sufficient reason for their continued existence under the present set-up?

If the handful of Europeans and the 95,000 Solomon Islanders can not do more with their country than that, is it not better to plan realistically for some one who can, rather than wait, hands folded, until in the fullness of time popu lation pressure from Asia forces the issue?

This problem, of course, is not one peculiar to the Solomons. But the Solomons are the least developed of the fertile islands of the Pacific.

There, more easily than in most territories, it would be possible to take time by the forelock and an ticipate the inevitable, and while there still is time to shape it to our own ideals.

Such a step would need bold

planning; the obstacles are obvious and many; there would be no lack of critics to denounce the plan. The Indians may not be interested—or they may prove a dismal failure at the job of pioneering.

But the alternative? To carry on as at present, with UK disinterested: a few unfortunate officials, caught midway between better things in the West Indies or Fiji or Africa,

Squabbles

p. 27

Lautoka’S Absurd

SUVA, July 28.

AT mid-July, the faction war within the Lautoka Town Coun cil, between present Mayor Hollander and former Mayor C. A.

Adams, was still in progress.

The fight seems to have had its genesis in personal feeling, and intolerance. It directly manifested itself in June, when Mayor Hollander —for some reason un known—refused the use of Churchill Park to the Lautoka Basketball Association (11 clubs) because it was not affiliated with the Suva Basketball Association; whereupon a majority of Town Councillors in sisted the Mayor reverse his decision, and allow the Lautoka basketballers to use the Park.

The Mayor says he permitted the use of the ground as soon as he knew more of the circumstances.

Mr. Adams says he “surrendered with a bad grace.”

All sorts of petty matters then were ventilated. Late in June the Adams section got a special meet ing of the Council which, by 6-4, passed a resolution of no-confidence in Mayor Hollander. (Ayes, Adams, Beddoes, Naidu, Nityanand, Patel, Prasad: Noes, Hollander, Stokes, Corbett, Saukuru.) Mayor Hollander refused to re sign over such a “petty” thing; he declared the attack upon him was organised by one man, out of per sonal grudge. He challenged the malcontents to petition the Govern ment for the dissolution of the Council.

It seems an extraordinary storm in a teacup, and is deplored by re sponsible people in the Northwest districts. Both Mr. Adams (who has given much excellent public service to this area) and Mr. Hollander (a newcomer, and now the man ager of the Northern Hotels Com pany) are held in high respect in the district; but both now are blamed for an absurd situation.

French Celebrations at Suva

p. 27

DURING the visit of the French patrol vessel Tiare to Suva in July, the 164th anniversary of Bastille Day was celebrated.

Capitaine de Corvette Houdayer, commander of the vessel, and a de tachment of French seamen at tended the Colonial War Memorial Hospital to lay a wreath there on July 14. The French Consul, Mr.

M. Helsen, also attended. The party was met by Dr. J. M. Cruikshank, Director of Medical Services and by the Medical Superintendent of the hospital, Dr. T. A. Doran.

On July 15, Captain Houdayer entertained the Fiji Governor and Lady Garvey • and a large party of Suva people aboard Tiare at a cock tail party.

Territories Talk-Talk

pp. 27-29

By Tolala

A N apology to readers of “Talk- Talk” for my silence in the July issue. It was unavoidable. Every bit of machinery requires overhaul ing at times and, believe me, even I am not immune from the need for repairs. During my period of “servicing” I received many cheer ing messages for which I am ex ceedingly grateful. Especially did I appreciate the thoughtful tributes —good wishes, flowers and reading matter —which I received from the President and Members of the New Guinea Women's Club, as well as the cheerful visits from many of its members. I say a very big “thank you”.

I came across an appropriate reference to Pidgin the other day as I was browsing through “Some Experiences of a New Guinea Resi dent Magistrate”—C. A. W. Monck ton’s book, first published in 1920.

In the Preface he writes: “I have abstained from putting into the mouths of natives the ridiculous jargon or ‘pidgin English’ in which they are popularly sup posed to converse. The old style of New Guinea officer spoke Motuan to his men, and I have, where re quired, merely given free translation from that language into English.

In recent books about New Guinea, written by men of whom I never heard whilst there, I have noticed sentences in Pidgin English, sup posed to have been spoken by natives, which I would defy any European or native in New Guinea, in my time, either to make sense of or interpret.”

Although written over 30 years ago it could easily refer to the present-day method of mutilating the pure Pidgin.

And when I refer to “pure Pidgin” I mean that lingua franca which consists of a mere 350 words and wa,s learned by the new-arrivals in New Guinea before World War I as a separate language, not to be confused with pure English by the non-English speaking people.

The mutilation of Pidgin started with the advent of the Australian soldiery in War I, when they occupied the old German colony, and its mutilation has been steadily progressing ever since, for the reason so many of the English speaking residents do not bother to learn the real Pidgin and carry on a conversation in a fantastic chop suey jargon of words, ending in “ee” with a liberal smattering of “fella” and “savee”, somewhat along the lines of the Adelaide Pidgin as mentioned in PIM July (p. 32).

Had a letter the other day from a chap, who had been up in the Territories for over 30 years, and he mentioned employing four Papuan carpenter boys, on a New Britain plantation. Three of them from the same village. My friend carefully spoke to them in pure English, which they understood quite well, but he discovered when they worked on their own they spoke nothing but Pidgin!

A short while ago, in the columns of the PIM, there was some ex change of ideas concerning the activities of the Works & Housing folk in NG. Thus an extract of an article, on the Manus base, written by a Special Correspondent of the Sunday Herald (2/8/53): “Unlike the servicemen, they (Works & Housing employees) lived tax-free, were paid an average of £22 a week (£6 for Saturday) and were charged only 16/6 a week for messing. But they worked at such a snail’s pace that the sea-air corrosion, termites and voracious jungle growth that are the curse of Manus threaten to overtake the little they did achieve.”

Now, however (the article points out) progress is being made with Naval and Air Force personnel who “in a few months have accom plished more than W & H was able to do in four years.”

I don’t know. I’m merely quoting what a man on the spot writes and I don’t think he has any particular axe to grind for any section.

A step in the direction of real progress is the establishment of a branch of the ANZ Bank in Moresby, where a bank official is reported as saying that ordinary business in Papua “was providing an attractive and growing market.”

It’s good to read about the pro posed Historical Society in PM (PIM July, p. 131) and Minister Hasluck (himself an historian of no mean tonnage) will doubtless give it his full blessing.

One of the best sources of re search, in TNG anyway, should be the Catholic Missions, especially Vunapope, unless their old records have been sent to the Vatican.

Much valuable data was lost when the Japs came in. • • • Islands MLC Don Barrett, who is working for the abolition of the Trusteeship over NG, has an uphill fight, despite the fact that 90 per cent, of the thinking Territory population agree with his policy.

Top level politicians say the old Mandated area must remain a

Trusteeship, willy nilly. I have yet to learn what advantage the Mandate system was to the Terri tory under the aegis of the Permanent Mandates Commission, and the same applies to the present control from UNO.

Australia is far too conscious of outside criticism concerning the ad ministration of NG. A pity she does not take a leaf out of Nippon’s book when that country held the mandate for Micronesia following the First War. Japan politely ignored the League of Nations and got away with it. It’s impossible to serve two masters and no one must realise that more than Minister Hasluck.

If there is any trouble brewing anywhere it’s a pretty safe bet that Bertie Hall will be somewhere about. At the latter part of June, the 25-tonner Lochaven left Sydney harbour for a trial run, with Skipper Bertie Hall and Gus Kuster (another well-known Islands identity) and two others. The engines failed and the hooker was adrift for seven days. Conditions were grim when Lochaven was picked up and towed into New castle. So happily ended another dire experience for Bertie Hall, who has been cruising around New Guinea waters since the First War.

Falling down the hold of a ship in Rabaul and breaking his back some years ago put him in Namanula Hospital for a long spell, and internment by the Japs in China didn’t add to his enjoyment of life.

But despite his ups and downs Bertie—for all his 73 years—gets a lot of pleasure out of this world.

“Stamp duty comes to P-NG,” says a heading in the June PIM

(p. 15) —but not for the first time so far as NG is concerned. I have vivid recollections of cheque books bearing penny postage stamps back in the ’3o’s, and I think receipts for over £2 required stamping also.

Hanuabadan natives have been told by a District Commissioner to “stop bickering.” Says he: “I suggest if you talked less and did a little more, your lot would be a much happier one.”

It would appear that the adoption by the Hanuabadans (and many others also) of the Australian way of life has been most successful.

Civilisation carries the good as well as the bad attributes to primitive folk.

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Beatrice Grimshaw

p. 29

Commenting on the death (at 82) of South Pacific novelist, Miss Beatrice Grimshaw, Mr. Sydney H.

Chance writes: In my early Papuan days, “Beattie” lived with her brother Osborne and his wife in Moresby.

It was a practice of hers to enter tain Patrol Officers on their occasional visits to Moresby from the wilds, and thus she gathered much material for her books and stories. She came to Papua for some English newspaper about 1910, when the ss Bentinck arrived with the initial staff of the British New Guinea Development Co.

H Mr. George Clark, Burns Philp manager in Rabaul, has been elected President of the Rabaul Chamber of Commerce. The former president, Mr. Norman Lee. has gone South on sick leave. Mr. H.

Hodson (of Coconut Products Ltd.) becomes vice-president.

Amphibious Landing

p. 30

Of Honiara Power Plant

From Our Own Correspondent

Honiara, Bsi, July 30.

THE July Malaita brought the third of the new engines for the Honiara power-house. Al though all three engines have now been delivered, the second and third alternators have not arrived, and the electricity supply of Honiara is still dependent upon the first engine which was installed last year.

The two cases containing the engine bed and cylinder block of the engine that arrived by the Malaita weigh five tons each, and as the only means of unloading them was to use the Bomb Disposal Unit’s landing craft, considerable difficulty was experienced. There was no crane available capable of lifting the weight, and a bulldozer had to be used to skid the heavy cases off the landing craft.

Unfortaunately the load on the LCM caused the front landing ramp to lean and the vessel being vee bottomed could not be hauled up on the beach and therefore filled with water. It was pumped out suf ficiently to allow it to be anchored

against the jetty at Point Cruz, but here intervened one of those things that happen in the Solomons; The crowd of native fishermen on the jetty decided that the barge would be an ideal place from which to fish and the weight of the fisher men, all on one side, plus the water already in the barge, made the barge sink for the second time.

The crates were retrieved by the use of the bulldozer and sustained little damage. An overhaul of the barge engine was necessary.

H Frank McNulty, who helped to sail Wanderer II from England to Tahiti, arrived in Sydney in June on the MM liner Tahitien.

Advertisements & other items, p. 30 (1 item)

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Fiji Council

Election on August 29

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Maurice Scott, European Member, of the North-western Division.

Other nominations announced, at closing late July, are:— Southern Division. —European: J.

N. Falvey, C. S. Phillips, J. B.

Turner. Indian: Hari Charan Akheel, Hari Charan, Vishnu Deo.

North - western Division.—Euro pean: H. Maurice Scott (elected unopposed). Indian: A. D. Patel, Babubhai Patel, Ajodhya Prasad, Hari Shankar, Tulsi Ram Sharma.

Eastern Division. —European: F.

G. Archibald, H. B. Gibson, W. E.

Willoughby-Tottenham. Indian: J.

Madhavan, Odin Ramrakha.

From these will be elected, on August 29, one European and one Indian member for each Division.

Two other European and two Indian members will be nominated by the Governor, who also nominates all five Fijian members.

There is a hope in many quarters that the Governor will nominate Fijian-born Indians to the Indian vacancies.

Taveuni Airstrip

WORK is proceeding apace on the new airstrip at Taveuni, Fiji.

All palms have now been cleared from the area and heavy machinery is fully engaged in mov ing the 100,000 cubic yards of spoil involved in levelling the area.

Screeching Newspaper

Finds Revolt

In The Solomons

J JNDER huge black headings (“Japs Arm Natives —Alarm Spreading in Solomons”) a Sydney newspaper on July 26 announced that Asian Communists are secretly arming cannibalistic savages in the Solomon Islands with modern rifles and automatic small-arms; that missionaries report the “Marching Rule” is spreading unrest among 70,000,000 islanders north of Aus tralia; that Naval Intelligence officers are “concerned”; that planters fear uprisings and violence; that “Marching Rule” continues to gain ground, with a threat of armed violence. And so forth.

There is not a word of truth in the absurd story; but it is typical of the rubbish with which Aus tralia’s more sensational newspapers seek to tickle the ears of their credulous readers.

Guiding in New Guinea

Mrs. A. V. Price, P-NG Com missioner for Guides, and Miss Daphne Carpenter spent a busy few days in Rabaul in mid-July on affairs connected with Guiding.

Miss Carpenter was State Secre tary for Guiding in Queensland before she resigned last year to become private secretary to the< wife of the Administrator, Mrs.

Cleland. Miss Carpenter has not escaped Guiding, however, and has been re-organising the business side of the Association in P-NG.

Advertisements & other items, pp. 31-32 (1 item)

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p. 32

Death of Mrs. Isobel Field

rE death occurred, in Los Angeles, in July, of Mrs. Isobel Salisbury Field, who was the step-daughter of Robert Louis Stevenson, and who was with him in Western Samoa until his death there on December 3, 1894. She had lived to the great age of 95.

Although 60 years had passed since she accompanied her mother and Stevenson in their South Seas wanderings, including five years in Samoa, Mrs. Field never lost her interest in the Pacific Islands. For years (ever Since the publication of her charming book, This Life I’ve Loved) and in spite of the fact that she was bedridden, Mrs. Field had maintained a correspondence on Islands affairs with the editor of the PIM. She was a distinguished woman of letters in her own right, apart from her association with the great Scottish writer. Her son, Austin Strong, a notable architect and playwright, died last year, aged 71.

“Her death was a shock to those who, over the years, had seen her fight her way up from these heart attacks,” writes Mrs. Elsie Noble Caldwell, also well known as a Pacific Islands traveller and author.

“Her strength was not equal to the last one, and she quietly fell asleep.”

Her friends brought from San Francisco, and laid across her coffin, the same ’ie fog a (fine mat) that had covered the body of RLS when he died at Vailima, Samoa, 59 years ago.

So passes the last living link be tween Stevenson and the Samoa he loved so much.

Fishing a Profitable

p. 32

Nadi Sideline

FISHING is becoming big business for some of the Nadi (Fiji) Airport emptoyees, who in their spare time, combining business with pleasure, head forth in a variety of craft that were mostly never de signed for the job, and sometimes bring back good hauls.

The Mocambo caterers pay 1/3 per pound for fish delivered to their freezer. More than one employee, striking the fish when they’re in the mood to bite, has made better than his salary in a month of spare time operations. Fish caught are surface feeders, taking lures of various kinds—just what kinds are top secret to the individual fisher men, and frequently known only to the fish, which are fickle indeed in their feeding habits. But when the correct lure for the existing light, weather, and state of sea is struck, the sport—and profits—can be rich indeed. —JPS.

Heavy Damages

p. 33

Echo Of Papua Case

Former PO Asked to Pay Heavy Damages

A FORMER Patrol Officer in Papua, Lawrence Anderson Wall, was proceeded against in the Supreme Court in Maitland, NSW, at the end of June, by a man, E. W.

Murdoch, whom he had charged with theft; and a jury awarded Murdoch £2,500 against Wall, dam ages for malicious prosecution. It was estimated that the costs of the action represented another £2,000.

Wall now is licensee of the Rich mond Hotel, at Lismore. Before that, he was part owner of Manning Motors, ih Taree, and Murdoch was employed there by him. Bad rela tions developed between them; Wall charged Murdoch with theft; and Murdoch was arrested, charged and found not guilty.

In the course of evidence, Wall, under cross examination, denied that at Kokoda, in 1939, he was committed for trial for manslaughter by Mr. Chance, the Resident Magis trate; he denied that subsequently, before Mr. Justice Gore, he was convicted of manslaughter in re spect of the death of a native.

Wall was not to know that, sit ting outside the court, awaiting his call as a witness, was Mr. S. H.

Chance, formerly RM at Kokoda, who committed Wall for trial in 1939. Mr. Chance is now retired,

and living in Brisbane. Mr. Murray Mackay Hooke, solicitor, once well known in Papua, who prepared the case for Murdoch against Wall, somehow found out about Wall’s career in Papua, and it was he who brought Mr. Chance down from Brisbane to Maitland. He was pre pared to show that Wall was con victed in Port Moresby of man slaughter and sentenced to six months, and was subsequently let off on a bond, and departed immedi ately from Papua. This evidence was not produced, however, because a curious legal position developed when Wall denied on oath that he had been convicted.

J The High Commissioner for the Western Pacific, Mr. R. c. S. Stan ley, with Mrs. Stanley and Miss Stanley, visited the Eastern Solo mons from June 14-19 in the MV Bina. His Excellency inspected Kira Kira Station, and called at the Melanesian Mission School at Pawa on the island of Ugi.

An earth tremor shook Lae, Wau, Bulolo and Kerema (Papua) about 8 a.m. on July 7. This was reported as being a severe shake, but the only casualties were a few bottles and some crockery which tumbled from shelves.

Advertisements & other items, p. 33 (1 item)

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pp. 34-35

Fiji’s Hotel Programme Going Ahead

From Our Own Correspondent SUVA, July 28.

GOOD progress is being made on the new South Seas Hotel in Suva, Fiji.

It was anticipated at the end of July that the bar would come into use, though not completed, by late August or September. The hotel itself is unlikely to be completed before the end of 1954, but will come into use in stages before that date.

Round the coast at Koro Levu Beach Hotel extensions and im provements are being made by Sir Hugh Ragg. The new central hall, dining room and lounge should be completed by November, Thereafter the present central building on the inland side of the road will become staff quarters.

Levelling of land on the seaward side continues and further attrac tive bures for the use of guests are being erected. By the end of the year there will be bure accom modation for 100 guests and a set ting as attractive as any in Fiji.

In April, Mr. S. B. Philp, who with his brother, Mr. D. R. Philp, operates the attractive Deuba Hotel on the south coast of Viti Levu, 35 miles from Suva, took over a ten

years’ lease of the Mocambo Hotel at Nadi Airport.

Since then Mr. Philp has pressed ahead with improvements to the accommodation there.

Originally it was a barracks-style building divided into cubicles for the very temporary use of air passengers in transit and stopping only for a matter of hours. These

cubicles are now being made into comfortable rooms. Partitions have still to be extended to ceiling height but already hot and cold water has been laid to each room and other furnishings provided.

There will soon be accommodation here for 65 guests.

Under existing airline schedules, few air travellers use the hotel for

any length of time and there is therefore much accommodation available for tourists on a longer term basis, though some is still be ing used by airport staff pending shifts into their own housing which is also being extended on a large scale.

Mr. Philp has for the past 18 months managed the victualling of 350 airport staff in the special din ing room adjoining the Mocambo.

Advertisements & other items, p. 34 (2 items)

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London Copra Quote

p. 35

Has Been

Under Mof Rate

London, July 24.

AFTER having fallen from £B5 Stg. per ton, cif European port, down to £7O, the copra price has improved in the last fortnight, and to-day it is £74/10/per ton. This is a little under the price which the British Ministry of Food now is paying for South Pacific copra under its nine-years contract—namely, £65 Stg. per ton, fob South Pacific port. Freight and costs added to that would make the price approximately £77 per ton, European port.

Ceylon and Straits coconut oil is between £ll2 and £ll4 Stg. per ton, cif.

Both copra and oil markets have been affected by irregular offerings from Indonesia,

Increasing Mekeo Rice

p. 35

Production

From Our Own Correspondent

Moresby, July 20.

A STEP-UP of rice production in the Mekeo area of Papua is hoped for following recent staff reorganisation there.

Production of rice is to be directed jointly by the District Commissioner of the Central District, Mr. S. Elliott-Smith, and the Director of Agriculture, Mr.

R. E. P. Dwyer.

The DC will be in charge of pro duction, processing and marketing of all rice, which will include out put from both mechanised produc tion and individual village plots.

The Agricultural Department will supervise the technical side of pro duction, and will have , two Agri cultural Extension Officers working in the Mekeo.

Rural Progress Societies of the Mekeo are to be replaced gradually by co-operative organisations which will handle the buying, processing and marketing of rice.

There are to be five European officers working in the district in connection with the rice production scheme, and at present preparations are under way for the planting season.

It has been proved that the

Mekeo can produce rice, and the new system will be watched with interest to see if this area can be come the “rice bowl” of Papua.

Output of Bulolo Gold Dredging, Ltd., increased by 49 per cent, for the year ended May 31, 1953; 118,495 oz gold was won from 16,901,200 cubic yards of gravel. Value was 4,147,325 US dollars.

American Cessna aircraft are popular with New Guinea Missions The Lutheran Mission at Madang has one in use and is bringing another from the United States shortly, also a Piper Pacer. Two other Cessnas have been ordered from America, one for the Catholic Mission at Alexishafen, and the fourth for Bishop Arkfeld of the Wewak Catholic Mission.

Advertisements & other items, p. 35 (1 item)

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Norfolk Island Notes

p. 36

From Our Own Correspondent Mr. C. R. Lambert, Secretary to the Department of Territories, has been on an official visit to Norfolk. He appears to be of the opinion that if we can afford an expenditure of £22,000 per annum on liquor, we should be more self supporting. It must be remembered, how ever, that tourists are responsible for a goodly proportion of that sum.

There is no doubt that the island’s income could be greatly increased if more land were cultivated as recent results have shown from the sale of Norfolk Island green beans (up to 4/7 per lb in Auckland), kumaras, avocados, guavas and cut flowers.

Dr. Stephens, of the Wade Institute, Adelaide, is conducting a soil survey at the invitation of the new Administrator, to ascertain if there is a shortage of mineral elements as alleged by private investigators.

Much to the regret of everyone, Norfolk Island is losing its Medical Officer, Dr.

K. Wise, who is moving to Darwin. He will be succeeded by Dr, Neumann.

A strong resurgence of “Nationalism” was noticeable during the Advisory Council elections, and with the exception of one “Mainlander” councillor, whose term of office has another year to run, the Council is now composed entirely of “Islanders.” This new interest in Council affairs may have been prompted by the Administrator, who, since his arrival, has

shown much social interest in the com munity.

Mr. L. A. Harris, an expert on land titles, has been visiting the island.

Following the re-survey of the island there will be a change over to the system of Torrens titles, old permanent boundaries being recognised as valid.

Mr. G. Buscombe, air port manager, is being transferred to Mascot, his position here being filled by Mr. Holmes.

In Greenslopes Military Hospital in July 1 found three Papuan “Bills.”

Bill Simpson (famous as PXI in W/War II) is still there under treatment. Bill O’Brien, Treasury Officer, was in there for a general check-up. Bill Brazier, Pay Officer, came south with a heavy, deep seated cold, and was undergoing a couple of wee k s’ treatment.—

Sanasi.

Advertisements & other items, p. 36 (1 item)

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Fiji Aviation—25 Years Ago

p. 37

The Solomon Islands Arts Club, which includes sketching, music and dramatic groups, is going ahead in Honiara. A recent musical evening, held at the home of the District Commissioner, Central Solomons (Mr. G. A. Skipper) was much appreciated. The dramatic group held a play-reading evening at Gov ernment House on July 2, when “The Taming of the Shrew” was read.

The opening of the new Vuda Pt. oil terminal in Fiji—the purpose of which Is primarily to serve Nadi airport—is a good time to look back 25 years to 1928, when Sir Charles Kingsford Smith first con quered the vastness of the Pacific Ocean by air. To-day trans-Pacific commercial services take a matter of hours to do the job, whereas “Smithy’s” epic flight of 7,054 miles from Oakland, California, to Brisbane was achieved in a flying time of 83 hours 11 minutes.

The middle and longest hop of “Smithy’s” flight (Honolulu to Suva, 3,138 miles) was probably the greatest aspect of his memorable flight. The “Southern Cross” landed at Albert Park, Suva, on June 5, 1928, and, although un realised then, foreshadowed the part Fiji was to play in the years ahead during the great development of international aviation.

These events are recalled in a booklet

issued recently by the Vacuum Oil Co. on the occasion of the opening: of their oil terminal at Vuda Point.

Our photograph shows the “Southern Cross” at Albert Park after it landed there on June 5, 1928.

Advertisements & other items, pp. 37-38 (1 item)

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£1,663,055 in P-NG Copra

p. 39

Stabilisation Fund

WE have received from the Secretary of the Department of Territories the following statement on the two copra funds that have operated in the Terri tory of Papua and New Guinea since the end of the war: ' Until 31st December, 1949, moneys were accumulated for the purpose of maintaining the Territory’s copra industry on a sound basis, by set ting aside part of the sales receipts of copra purchased by the Produc tion Control Board.

Rates at which funds were

Accumulations at these rates, to gether with profits, amounting to nearly £40,000 accumulated from copra trading by the Production Control Board from July, 1943, to June, 1946, and interest on invest ments, totalled £771,958.

From January 1, 1950, part of the export duty from copra has, under the provisions of the Customs (Ex port) Tariff Ordinance, 1951, been paid to the Papua and New Guinea Copra Fund established by that Ordinance. The payments have been made at the rate of £5 per ton from January 1, 1950, to July 1, 1951, and £2 per ton from August 1, 1951, to date. The total of amounts accumulated under the provisions of this Ordinance to March 31, 1953, was £891,097.

What It Means

IN the above statement, what is usually unofficially called the PNG Copra Stabilisation Fund is regarded as two funds. The first operated during the Wardist regime from December 1, 1946, to December 31, 1949, and together with £40,000 accumulated from PCB trading dur ing the war years, totalled £771,958.

However, it was never clear what legal right the Commonwealth Gov ernment of the day had to levy “stabilisation” deductions of this sort, and in Australia other primary producers who had been forced to make “stabilisation” payments had fought the Government in the High Court and won their case.

From January 1, 1950, the com pulsory deductions towards the “stabilisation” of the copra industry were embodied in the Customs (Ex port) Tariff Ordinance, and the payments at the rate of £5 per ton (and later £2 per ton) were paid into the Papua and New Guinea Copra Fund established under that ordinance.

The total accumulation in the Funds from 1946 to the present day are therefore £1,663,055.

Planters have always been re sentful of the stabilisation fund collections—particularly so after a nine-years’ buying agreement was made with the British Ministry of Food. They felt that the MOF con tract was all the “stabilisation” that the copra industry required.

At the end of last year, the Min ister for Territories stated that the Government would not accede to requests of planters for distribution of the fund to individual planters.

The New Guinea Planters’ Assn, then announced that having re ceived the advice of leading con stitutional lawyers in Australia, the Association would take legal action against the Commonwealth and force it to return the accumulation in the fund to the people from whom it was taken compulsorily.

Nothing has been heard of this legal action since.

accumulated were: p er on From December 1, 1946 .. £1 0 0 From May 1, 1947 .. .. 2 12 0 From August 1, 1947 .. .. 6 17 6 From April 1, 1948 .. ..8 5 0 From January 1, 1949 ..5 0 0

Preparing For Action

p. 39

Rabaul, July 25.

The Planters’ Association is not moving hastily against the Govern ment on the Stabilisation Fund.

There has been much correspond ence in recent months, and Australia’s leading constitutional lawyers have been consulted. It is likely that action will be taken fairly soon. The planters seem confident they can recover the money taken from them up to mid-1946. The subsequent deductions may call for more expert legal treatment.

Advertisements & other items, p. 39 (1 item)

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Local Representatives in the Islands: OCEANIA AGENCIES CO., BOX 284, SUVA, FIJI.

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Moresby

p. 40

New Bank Opened in Moresby

The new Port Moresby branch of the Australia and i New Zealand Bank, Ltd., is expected to open on September 3, in premises now be ing completed next to Steamships Trad ing Co., in Port Road. This will give Moresby its third bank (the other two being Commonwealth j and New South Wales). Mr. F. A. S.

Robertson has been appointed manager of the ANZ branch at Moresby and. with Mrs. Robertson,

arrived there at the end of July in Soochow. Mr. Robertson, until recently, was manager of the ANZ Bank at Crow’s Nest, NSW.

Mr. Robertson.

Ball at Mangaia

p. 40

Accident Follows Coronation Ball at Mangaia

SEVERAL people were injured in June when a truck got out of control following the Corona tion Ball at Mangaia, Cook Islands.

The ball was held in the Kaumata Hall and proved to be a most colourful function, lasting until midnight. A large truck returning

dancers to Ivirua village encountered trouble while ascending a steep rise and ran backwards out of control until brought to an abrupt halt by rocks. Many of its passengers were thrown out, several of them sustaining leg and head injuries.

White residents, in view of past accidents, are of the opinion that local drivers are apt to drive too recklessly and feel that stricter measures should be adopted to en force more responsible driving of

motor vehicles.-

E.G.

Advertisements & other items, p. 40 (1 item)

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Prospectus and full information from the Principal.

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Pacific Travellers

p. 41

Some travellers snapped in Suva in July: Mr. K. M. Patel, President of the Suva Indian Chamber of Commerce, meet ing Mr. C. W. Mansell (of Mackay Kerry Pty., Ltd.), on the latter’s arrival from Sydney.

At the BP inter-island vessel Yanawai, left to right: Miss Mabel McKenzie, Mr.

K. S. Lyons of Debo, Buca Bay, Vanua Levu, Miss Mona McKenzie, Mr. W. M.

Pearman of Suva, Mr. A. P. Ward return ing to Buca Bay after one of his rare visits to “town”.

Captain W. R. Percy of Yanawai, off on another round of the Group, was farewelled by his wife.

Malaita Natives

p. 41

Grow Cocoa and Rice

From Our Own Correspondent

Honiara, June 30.

THE Acting Senior Agricultural Officer, BSIP (Mr. C. B. Mead) recently visited Malaita and has stated that Auki, the Agricultural Department’s two acres of cocoa, which is now two years old, is generally healthy and thriving.

These trees should start bearing in another year.

With seed supplied by the Roman Catholic Mission at Rokera, Malaita, several other small areas of cocoa have been planted near Auki by Malaita natives, arrangements hav ing been made by the District Commissioner, Malaita (Mr. V. J.

Andersen).

There are quite a number of small areas of cocoa throughout the Pro tectorate and these could provide seed for a considerable area of new planting each year.

At Hauhui, the Government’s Community Development settlement on Malaita, over two acres of rice were being harvested, producing a good crop. Hulling is being done by hand-operated wooden denkis intro duced by the Agricultural Depart ment. Considerable interest is be ing taken in these machines and a number of variants have been con structed by the natives in an endeavour to find the best method of hulling. Interest in rice seems to be spreading in the area and seed is being sold to natives in sur rounding villages. f Warrant Officer August Watson, of the Fiji Military Forces has been awarded the Efficiency Medal.

Advertisements & other items, pp. 41-42 (1 item)

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Pammel is by far the most easily applied enamelised paint for exteriors and interiors —dries with an intensely hard tile-like gloss. Pammel is washable and resists heat and steam. Companion product of Pammel is PAMMATT Pammatt is an interior matt finish, and dries with a rich velvety finish so desirable in artistic interiors. Pammatt flows evenly from the brush, and has excellent spreading and obliterating properties. Pammatt like Pammel is washable, durable, and economical.

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B. & S.

Admin’N

p. 42

Why Not Keep The

School In N. Guinea?

SOME experienced observers of Territories conditions are in clined to argue that the Terri tories Department’s School of Pacific Administration should be in a central place in Papua-New Guinea, instead of in Mosman, Syd ney. I am told that academic gentlemen connected with the School ridicule the idea that it should be anywhere else. lam no expert in these matters, but I have some sympathy with the critics.

The young men selected for this training put in a brief time in the Territory, and then are sent South to the School for two years. The weakness of this system, according to the critics, is that the young officials, during this period of train ing, are completely out of touch with the natives. Yet they, above all, are the men responsible in the future for satisfactory European- Native relationship.

The critics also say that too many of these cadets come under the in fluence of academic sociologists, whose idea of what should be the white-brown relationship is gener ally idealistic, rather than practical.

Events of recent years give some colour to that argument. No one can rule this country satisfactorily unless he has learned about natives through direct personal contact with them.

The critics contend that most of the specialised knowledge provided by the School could be given just as well in the Territories (where the chief lecturers would have to reside); Chat the School’s curriculum should be revised, to keep the students in more constant touch with natives and native activities; and that the students could, in some degree, be available for limited help in the Administration during their two years’ specialised training.

I found that in the District Offices in both Lae and Rabaul there is a serious shortage of per sonnel, and administration is suf fering accordingly. Yet there are scores of able young officers im mured in Sydney, undergoing special training.—R.W.R.

Sigatoka Valley Road

p. 42

EXCELLENT progress is being made on the Sigatoka Valley Road, Viti Levu, which will open up much country in the centre of the main Fiji island. The road has now reached a point 26 miles up the valley, and an access track has been cut through the final seven miles to Keiasi Village. Five bull dozers are engaged on the job.

Tough for

p. 43

Tonga Makes it Tough for Away-From-it-Allers

MANY of Tonga’s early European settlers arrived by the simple method of jumping their ships and never going away. Others merely come on visits and stayed a lifetime. These days, would-be seekers of a South Sea island paradise do not find it so easy to get into Tonga which, like other Pacific island countries, has tightened up considerably on regula tions concerning entry.

Just in case any penniless artist, frustrated city dweller, or victim of wanderlust thinks Tonga the ideal spot in which to settle down and “go native,” here is a copy of ques tions he will have to answer to the satisfaction of the Tongan Govern ment before he will be admitted: Surname, Christian names, sex, occupation, marital status, place of birth, date of birth, nationality at birth, present nationality, race, reason for going to Tonga, connec tion with and name of business, if visit for business purposes, dates of any previous visits to Tonga, pro posed address in Tonga, last per manent address outside Tonga,

names of any references in Tonga, passport number, date of expiry, conditions of physical and mental health, the amount of money possessed on arrival in Tonga. He or she will also have to make a declaration as to good character and reputation, and that “if called upon to do so will defray the cost of maintenance, deportation and any other expenses incurred on behalf of any person herein named who will accompany me and myself, and that if called upon to do so I will give such security by bond.”

Visitors to Papua-New Guinea who have complained about “Per mits to Enter” that Territory may be interested in above. —Tonga Cor respondent.

Margarine

p. 43

Rising Consumption Of

IN his opening speech at the In ternational Congress of Edible Oil Manufacturers at The Hague, in July, the Netherlands Minister for Agriculture stated, inter alia, that the consumption of margarine in the Western world has in creased considerably in recent years.

Domestic consumption of margarine per head has increased in:

From To Britain .. .. 9.9 lbs 18.2 lbs W. Germany 13.2 „ 22.0 „

Usa

3.0 „ 6.6 „ Netherlands . 14.3 „ 40.0 „

Advertisements & other items, p. 43 (1 item)

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Rhino Beetle

pp. 44-45

Fiji's Fight Against

LATEST move in the Fiji cam paign against the rhinoceros beetle was the proclamation by the Governor in mid-July of the whole of Viti Levu island and islets within 5 miles of its coast as an infected area, and the total pro hibition of removal of root vege tables from this area to other parts of the group.

Vegetables may, however, be taken on inter-island vessels as ship stores after they have first been washed down under supervision.

The danger with vegetables lies in the possible transfer of beetle eggs on the root soil.

During July, evidence of the presence of the beetle was discovered on palms in the Viti Levu Bay area of eastern Viti Levu south of Port Ellington. So far there has been no evidence of beetles discovered on the north-west coast between Sigatoka and Raki Raki.

In view of the widespread, if light, infestation of the beetle on Viti Levu, the Eradication Board has announced a new plan of campaign which may be summarised under the following headings: extension of the system of inspection of shipping; maintenance of a small mobile labour force to work in areas where breeding has been discovered; maintenance

of several small mobile units of skilled workers to detect further areas of infestation; further re search to discover what probable factors are at present holding the beetle in check —as it is believed that some predator, such as per haps the toad, must be responsible for preventing a more rapid spread of the pest; and finally, continued

support of the SPC scheme for the investigation of control measures on a regional basis.

The South Pacific Commission will soon appoint an entomologist for the work. Research is com mencing on palm-leaf material to discover what it is that attracts the beetle to palms.

The Fiji Eradication Board has

engaged Mr. H. W. Simmonds, former Government Entomologist and lately retired, to carry out field work in collaboration with the Government Entomologist in the search for natural predators of the beetle.

Meanwhile, wherever beetle dam age has been discovered compost “traps” have been established. In these the beetles tend to breed and the grubs are then killed as they hatch. Experiments are continu ing with chemically treated com post, it having already been dis covered that certain poisonous chemicals actually attract the grubs and cause their death.

Though the compost traps offer the best counter measure at the moment, there is a very great danger that such traps, if not closely attended could become pro lific breeding places and have the very opposite effect to that intended.

The Board is fully alive to this danger.

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In Tongan Group

p. 45

No Let Up on Rhino Beetle In Tongan Group

From Our Vava’u Correspondent THE rhinoceros beetle has not yet gone from Vava’u, Tonga, but it is now well under control and it is expected that the group will be free of this copra-destroy ing pest in the not remote future.

If earlier criticisms concerning the laxity of authorities and the levity and unconcern of the teams of beetle hunters were, in some in stances, justified, they are so no longer. Once the average Tongan came to realise that the beetle could destroy his economic security and all chance of obtaining the European amenities and goods which have become so important to him, he was only too glad to co-operate with control regulations and to take his turn with the hunting teams.

At present, all able bodied males between the ages of 16 and 60 give one day a week to hunting the beetles. Beetle traps have been laid in various places and a rigid inspection is maintained of people and goods moving from one island to another in the Vava’u group as well as of those travelling to the other Tongan groups.

The fact that the beetle has not spread to other parts of Tonga nor to the outer islands of Vava’u speaks well for the present system.

The latest control advance is a fumigation station which will be established at the port of Neiafu and will be in charge of Sione Vaipulu, who has recently returned from NZ where he was sent for special training in fumigation tech nique.

The entire programme is under the direct supervision of Mr. Mickey

Miller, whose skill at winning battles against the rhinoceros beetle was proved some years ago when he completely eradicated it from Niuataputapu, another Tongan island which was far more badly in fested than Vava’u has ever been.

fl Assistant Police Superintendent A. D. Pysten, of Fiji, who is on his way to Britain on leave, was so impressed by one-man police stations he saw in Australian country areas that he hopes to in troduce similar stations in the out lying islands of Fiji on his return there.

Cars Smashed at Rarotonga

p. 45

THREE almost new cars were badly damaged in separate accidents at Rarotonga re cently. Captain Andy Thomson’s new Austin, driven by one of his sons, left the road at Arorangi; the driver was unhurt but the body of the car is wrecked. Next, a car be longing to Mrs. Lucy, of the Raro tonga Hotel, crashed into a tree near Black Rock. Mr. Gordon Cald well then overturning his car. Mrs.

Caldwell was admitted to hospital shaken and slightly injured. The three cars will be shipped to New Zealand for repairs.

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Hebrides

pp. 47-55

France’S Grip On New

Picturesque But Forgotten Story of John Higginson

By H. E. L. Friday

rtE French hold on the New Hebrides was the work of one man, English-born John Hig ginson, whom the London Morning Post dubbed the “Cecil Rhodes of the South Pacific.” He had previ ously made a fortune in Caledonian nickel, and with Rothschild capital had founded the great French Nickel Company, which has since virtually run the older colony. For this work he was given special naturalisation papers by the Presi dent of the French Republic, who loaded him with honours.

Higginson was very much in volved in the Hebridean labour traffic, and employed some of the most notorious of the blackbirders.

It was neither the whalers, the mis sionaries, nor the secretive sandal wood traders, but the recruiters who revealed to the outside world the riches awaiting exploitation in this seductive yet treacherous and fever-stricken group.

Yet when Higginson began to take notice he found the British planter and trader in possession from the tiny Banks islands in the

north to Anatom in the south, with not one single Frenchman settled in the entire archipelago. While British settlement was going on, French national ambitions had been weakened by defeat in Europe, while New Caledonia was exclusive ly occupied with the first nickel rush and the great native revolt which followed in 1878-79.

HIGGINSON’S colonisation of the New Hebrides, which he aimed to make a dependency of New Caledonia, has been termed his epic achievement; the way he turned the tables on the casual British was dramatic in the ex treme.

He was the first to boost the eco nomic possibilities of the group, the first to hold out promises of ade quate protection for the white settler, and at one time he came near to securing right-out annexa tion to France. His idea was to secure a French preponderance of interest so that the British would be prepared to exchange their in terests for concessions elsewhere; and it took him only a few months to make this result seem possible.

Higginson claimed that New Hebridean soil was so fertile that it could become a garden colony, con tributing its quota to the wealth of France and to the rapidly develop ing mining colony of New Cale donia, to which he considered its resources were complementary. His was a real 19th century imperialist’s dream. The French Cabinet told him to go ahead, though it was felt that proclamation of French sovereignty should await the es tablishment of active branches of French trading concerns. (Over)

Higginson returned from Paris at a time when Sir Arthur Gordon, the first British High Commissioner for the Western Pacific, was mak ing it known that titles of land ac quired from natives in the New Hebrides could be registered with the British authorities in Fiji. This guarantee of possession was en couraging British planters and traders to stake a claim in this primitive, forbidding no-man’s land where death was never far away.

A copy of the British proclama tion quickly fell into Higginson’s hands; and he read it as a move designed to draw the group into the British orbit; but it gave him the idea how to beat the British at their own game. And behind the scene, of course, the diplomats were busy, France protesting that the move was not in accordance with the tentative understanding that neither country would do anything to prejudice the independence of the group without first consulting the other.

Higginson was not dismayed by the fact that the British already had a score or two of adventurous traders and planters scattered thinly among the innumerable isles.

If the Fijian Registration Act was legal, then a New Caledonian

Registration Act would be equally legal.

His plans were far more prompt, decisive, wholesale and ruthless than anything the British had thought of. He saw to it that the widest publicity was given to the announcement that settlers, no

matter from where, could secure titles to New Hebridean territory by registering their claims in Noumea. rpHOUGH it may seem strange to JL us to-day, practically all the British settlers discouraged because warships of the Australian

station did not adequately protect their lives, while they were apt to apply too strictly the liquor and re cruiting laws—rallied to Higginson’s banner. His only opponents, and they were implacable, were the Presbyterian missionaries; but to them the British planters were antagonistic because of their ten dency to hamper recruitment of kanaka labour.

Sir William Morgan, ex-Premier of South Australia (who had de serted politics in 1881, when his ministry was defeated) was, with his two sons, already closely in volved with Higginson’s mining and other ventures in New Caledonia.

He owned the blackbirding schooner Energy, and had founded in Noumea what was described as “a speculative company for de veloping the New Hebrides.” He now threw in his lot with Higgin son’s famous Compagnie Cale donienne des Nouvelles Hebrides, whose initial capital of £20,000 was quickly raised to £BO,OOO, or two million francs. Its avowed object was to assist French settlement of the group and “to inaugurate a reliable and unobjectionable sys tem of procuring native labourers for New Caledonia.”

The French Government gave the company its blessing, and at differ ent times down to our own day has been ready at crucial times to weigh in with political and economic aid.

IT was in the latter half of 1882 that the Australian Colonies and the British in Fiji woke up to find that Higginson had stolen a march on them. His move had been to charter the small steamer Caledonien, which he loaded up with 100,000 francs worth of mer chandise and lots of ready cash.

Leaving Noumea, the ship called at just about every settlement or port of call where white storekeepers, planters or native chiefs had land, labour or other assets for sale.

The temptation proved irresistible-; within a few weeks practically all the then settled areas of the New Hebrides, apart from the missions, had changed allegiance.

The Caledonien, master Captain Vidal, had on board three of Higginson’s most influential agents; Alphonse Bernier, a rich Efate settler named Peterson Stuart, and Higginson’s lifelong friend, the capable Captain B. Gaspard. Their job was “to supervise and ensure the legality of all transfers, purchase and agreement entered into on be half of the company”. The scramble for the cash and trade goods—gin and carbines, beads and calico, tobacco and axes, jews harps and so forth—was such that the company quickly had on its books most of the fertile coastal areas.

Although for trifling payment many of the natives blandly signed

away whole areas which on sub sequent inquiry turned out to be tribal or family rather than in dividual property, the Caledonian administration hastened to re cognise their marks, duly witnessed by Higginson’s envoys, and issued titles to the lands thus acquired.

The full extent of Higginson’s coup was only realised in Australia following a loud outburst from the Protestant missionaries, who pro claimed with bitter vehemence in the Sydney and Melbourne papers that much of the land had been “sold” by natives quite incapable of understanding the nature of a legal contract; that the price paid in goods was in most cases, derisory: that a good many thousand

hectares (a hectare is nearly 2.5 acres) had been already “sold” by the same natives two or three times over; and that they were quite ready to “sell” them all over again to the next European who came along with a bottle of gin or a bale of cotton.

The French ignored these pro tests, and many of the Europeans, feeling as has been said, that the French would give them better security of life and property and a greater latitude in trade and re cruiting matters, were induced to stay on as salaried managers and agents of the company.

On Efate alone Gaspard, on this and subsequent trips, bought 92,000 hectares from the natives, besides acquiring the pick of the planta tions formerly in British hands.

The key to his success was that the most influential settler in the group, Captain Donald Mac Leod — by all accounts an extraordinary man as well as being the richest of the original planters, and the founder of Port Vila—threw in his lot with Higginson. He brought in most of the other planters, who de clared they were tired of asking the Fijian and Australian authori ties to take some practical interest in their welfare.

SO, by the end of the year, from Efate to Espiritu Santo, the French company was able to

boast that it had acquired three million acres of the choicest land, for situation and fertility, in the archipelago. MacLeod was likewise of great use in inducing the chiefs, who looked upon him almost as a god, to sell their coastal lands and move their villages elsewhere. He also engaged native labour for the company’s plantations and for Higginson’s New Caledonian mining and agricultural ventures.

The “salt water” chiefs, informed of the ship’s impending arrival by MacLeod, went on board at bay after bay to make their marks on title deeds already prepared.

Wherever possible the company bought up big lots of from 8,000 to 10,000 hectares at a time; and wherever parties landed the French flag was ceremoniously hoisted.

At the same time the Caledonien was commissioned to recruit labour.

On Efate, where the missions had been the longest established, the labour situation was the most un satisfactory, for the men generally refused to work for the white man, though they did not object to going to other islands to work. The depopulation of this thickly in habited group was already under way. Most of the natives sent to Higginson’s nickel mines died within a year or two. (The Noumea papers used to print periodical lists of them, running to several columns, but suddenly gave up the practice.)

To fill the labour gap caused by the decline of blackbirding, the French later introduced thousands of Japanese, Indo-Chinese and Javanese coolies to do plantation

and mining work in the French Pacific, but this source of labour has been denied to those planters in the New Hebrides who have re tained British nationality.

HIGGINSON was so well satisfied with Gaspard’s report that he decided to make a tour of the New Hebrides on his own account.

He did so on a ship named after him, the John Higginson, an iron vessel of 400 tons and finest of the Caledonian coastal craft, belonging in the first place to Higginson, Morgan and Co. (A year or two later she was wrecked on the Kouakoue Reef.) Higginson’s tour was a triumph.

With him were directors of the Compagnie, including John and William Morgan, sons of Sir William, importers in a very big way who had built the Noumea flour mill, then the tallest building in the port, and who ran it with huge orders from the French peni tentiary. Also on board were the Mayor of Noumea, Mr. J. B. B.

Dezarnaulds (grandfather of the present Sydney solicitor of that name), businessmen named Violette and le Granval, a penitentiary boss named Verignon (who was investi gating the possibility of introduc ing convict labour to the New Hebrides), and Paris journalists named Mourot and Julien Bernier.

Higginson clinched deals with Bush and Co., a British concern owning several rich plantations, and

with MacLeod, Peterson Stuart, Young and other planters, as well as with the chiefs, adding a further 240,000 acres to the company’s hold ings. There was so much flag wagging that the missionaries accused Higginson of taking posses sion of the group, not only in the name of the company, but of France. This charge seemed justi

fled two or three years later, when France sent soldiers to occupy strategic points in the Hebrides; they were only withdrawn after strongly-worded British protests.

With much to report, Higginson again visited Paris. He returned with a French Government promise to survey the company’s territory free of charge, and with a contract

from the penitentiary to furnish him with 2,500,000 days of free con vict labour for his Caledonian nickel mines. In return he handed over 20,000 hectares of Hebridean soil to the French Government and agreed to establish a coaling station for French warships and to carry mail between Noumea and the Hebridean group.

HIGGINSON paid several other dramatic visits to the Hebrides, two of them in 1884. He took staff with him for a new store at Port Sandwich, on Mallicolo, to be on the same scale as those already operating at Havannah and Port Vila. The coastal chiefs came on Board the Chevert, where the great man stood surrounded by French officers and representatives of the company, and were presented with military uniforms in which, with sabre at side and kepi on head, they strutted about with con siderable pride. Higginson explained to Nearn Bangere, Sam (his son), and Timbou, chief of the Bangaou: “You white chiefs now. When white ship come you put on uniforms and say you French chiefs.” The as sembly toasted La Patrie in bumpers of champagne.

On returning to Port Vila, Higgin son was presented with an illum inated address praising his work as empire builder, but hoping it was not France’s intention to turn the place into a convict colony. In Paris, his offices at No. 8 Rue de la Paix, were deluged with inquiries from would-be colonists, but out of 2,500 applicants not more than 50 seem to have reached the group and most of these perished miser ably. In addition to managers, agents, and planters, a few score convicts of good behaviour were allowed to work at the company’s depots in the Hebrides and on plan tations owned personally by Higgin son, who built up a personal estate in the group worth £150,000, quite apart from his interests in the company.

Ballande and Sons, of Bordeaux (“the Burns Philp of the French Pacific,” as M. Milliard, a former managing director in Noumea, once described them to me) also started a shipping service and bought up plantations wholesale, particularly in the south-east of Mallicolo and around the south of Santo. France granted Ballandes 200 convict em employees for a ten-years period, and L. Henriques, a member of Higginson’s board, got a further BUT the Presbyterian missions found a strong supporter in James Service, the Victorian Premier; but for his prompt and determined action it is more than likely that France would have annexed the New Hebrides without real opposition from the British Foreign Office.

The French story is that Britain was disposed to cede her interests in the New Hebrides for the island “f.RfPa (south of the Society group), on condition that France should agree to suppress transportation to New Caledonia, but the French Government refused. In any case Service roused Australians against the dangers of French recidivist policy, his argument being that were France allowed to annex the Hebrides yet another colony at this continent’s eastern threshold would be swamped with “the worst type of colonist.”

Australia therefore enthusiastically supported Britain in 1889 when she successfully demanded the withdrawal of French armed forces

from the New Hebrides Soon after when the Societe FrancaSe di

Nouvelles Hebrides too” ttaS

Compagme Caledonienne’s “and and assets, the New South Wales Government replied to French shipping subsidies by subsidising Burns Philp to operate a servicl calling at the New Hebrides everv second month The New Hebrides officially

ceased to be a no-man’s-land only on December 2, 1907, when the Con dominium was proclaimed at Port Vila.

The ensuing years have shown the tenacity of French settlement as established by Higginson, for although the white population has regularly increased, the British colonists are still relatively fewer than the French, who solved their labour problem by bringing in Asiatics. Nevertheless, two World Wars have shown all New Hebri dean whites how dependent they are on Australian goodwill; the nationals of both countries are to day excellent friends, now that the Age of John Higginson has passed— or is rapidly passing.

Advertisements & other items, pp. 47-54 (1 item)

W. S. Tait & Co. Pty. Ltd.

“OUR

HANDS

MAKE

GOOD

ARM S.

For your Fishing and Shooting Wants Consult Us, Llthgow .22 Cal. Repeating Rifle .. .. £l5 19 3 l Post Lithgow .22 Cal. Single Shot £8 19 6 Extra.

C I I f* U (Prices Subject to Change Without Notice.) 5I L KOHU, 143 ELIZABETH STREET, SYDNEY.

ESTABLISHED IN 1890.

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W. S. Tait & Co. Pty. Ltd.

8 SPRING STREET, SYDNEY, N.S.W.

General Importers and Exporters

INDENT AGENTS—BUYING AND SELLING AGENTS— with over 60 years experience of the requirements of the South Sea Islands and in the disposal of their produce at best prices.

Cotton and Rayon Textiles —we specialise in Island designs.

Associate Company: W. S. TAIT (HONGKONG) CO.

All enquiries through Sydney Office.

We Live to Serve and Serve to Live

■ DAY OLD CHICKS*

Quality Chicks from Acclimatised Stock

NEW HAMPSHIRE REDS, W. LEGHORNS, AUSTRALORPS

and CROSSBREDS.

PRICES: £9/-/- per 100 or £4/17/6 for 50. (Hampshires SO/- per 100 extra)

AIR FREIGHT AND PACKING EXTRA.

MIXED SEXES ONLY

SAFE ARRIVAL GUARANTEED GOVT. TESTED STOCK.

AVAILABLE UNTIL OCTOBER

Aywun Poultry Farm

(KNOPKE & BRADFORD, Proprietors)

ANDERSON STREET, CAIRNS, NORTH QUEENSLAND.

Aywun Stock is Always A 1 Quality.

THE SURE WAY OF GETTING THE VITAMINS

SO ESSENTIAL TO MAINTAINING ENERGY/

Buoyant health, reserves of energy and correct nutrition are not possible in any region if sufficient vitamins are not CONSTANTLY available to the body. A large proportion of the vitamins in our everyday food is lost through storage, cooking, etc.

'AKTA-VITE' contains FOUR vitamins in definite and stated amounts: sufficient of each for supplementing any modern diet in tropical or temperate areas. It is not just a common food drink with vague amounts of one or two vitamins.

Be SURE of your vitamins —moke 'AKTA-VITE a family routine.

AKTA-VITE

'AKTA-VITE' is mode in oven-crisp chocolate malt flavoured granules which are delicious when served in hot or cold milk, sprinkled over ice cream, cereals or stewed fruit or other foods. Children love 'AKTA-VITE' direct from the jar.

'AKTA-VITE' is available in 5 and 10-oz. trial size jars or economical family-size tins through chemists and island trading houses.

Ethical Division NICHOLAS PTY. LTD. Melbourne, Sydney, Z r x \ s.

V "5?

A.E.P.6

An overage serve of two teospoonfuls contains: Vitamin A 2000 International Units Vitamin B 1 300 International Units Vitamin C 300 International Units Vitamin D 1000 International Units Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.

PACIFIC ISLANDS

YEAR BOOK

(Sixth Edition—l9so).

This standard reference book of the South Seas, with 500 pages and numerous maps, is available at leading stores throughout the Islands, or direct from the Publishers. Price: 25/- per copy.

Add postage, etc. (Within the British Empire, 1/3; Foreign, 2/6) when ordering direct. (In U.S. Currencv: $3.50, Including postage.)

PACIFIC PUBLICATIONS

PTY. LTD.,

247 George St., Sydney, Australia,

COPRA PRODUCERS OF FUI

YOU HELP YOURSELVES when you consign your Copra to any of the Fiji Copra Board’s Agents in Suva.

In 1952 approximately £F 1/3/3 per ton was saved by the Copra Producers of Fiji on every ton of Copra crushed in Suva.

You can help to do the same again THIS year

HELP YOURSELVES, HELP THE COLONY,

HELP LOCAL EMPLOYMENT

ISLAND INDUSTRIES LTD.

P.O. BOX 299, SUVA, FIJI.

Agents in Suva for Fiji Copra Board: W. R. Carpenter Cr Co. (Fiji) Ltd.

TieffiffffT POWER

FOR NEW GUINEAS DEVELOPMENT

the idea!

CATERPILLAR

GENUINE

CATERPILLAR PARTS

Available from stock. A comprehensive range of all parts is carried at the Hastings Diesels Sales and Service Branch at Milford Haven Road. Lae.

New Guinea is

Caterpillar proving

ground. Its different and

difficult pioneer-engineer-

ing operations have demonstrated the suitability of Caterpillar Diesel engines for hard work in bad conditions. Caterpillar Diesel Power has been successfully harnessed to mining, pumping, dredging and all other work requiring reliable power for electrically driven machinery.

Caterpillar Diesels are easy and economical to operate anywhere.

Hastings dieselS

IMPORTANT! CATERPILLAR owners, please forward to Hastings Diesels /New Guineal Limited. Lae, the following Information; — Your CATERPILLAR Model Immediate and future parts needed Details of work being performed— Other equipment in use

YOUR NAME

YOUR ADDRESS

Serial No._ NG-2

HASTINGS DIESELS (NEW GUINEA) LIMITED

MILFORD HAVEN ROAD. LAE. Service and Parts.

Specialising in Pacific Island Insurances.

FIRE—MOTOR VEHICLE—MARINE

—HULLS AND CARGO-

EMPLOYER’S LIABILITY.

BONDS—In accordance with Administration Ordinances—COPßA insured from drier to buyer—and all other classes arranged at lowest current rates.

Established Agencies throughout the Territory of Papua and New Guinea.

RABAUL, T.N.G.

Managing Agents; New Guinea Co., Ltd.

Island Representative: O. D. A. Kent, Rabaul Branch

SUVA, FIJI

Colony of Fiji Branch Office: W. R. Carpenter & Co. Fiji), Ltd., Bldg., Suva.

Branch Manager: R. W. Connolly.

Southern Pacific Insurance co., LTD.

Head Office: 60 Hunter St., Sydney.

A. B. DONALD LTD.

RAROTONGA COOK ISLANDS

Telegraphic Address: “DONALD, RAROTONGA."

General Merchants (Wholesale fir Retail) and Shipowners—lmporters fir Exporters

—Branches Throughout Cook Islands

Fire, Marine fir Motor Vehicles Insurance Agents for Yorkshire Insurance Co.

Lloyd's Agents

Agents and Distributors for: ENGLAND,—Austin Cars & Trucks, Pye Radios, Dunlop Rubber Co., Ltd., Vauxhall Cars & Trucks, R. A. Lister & Co., Ltd., Phillips Cycles, Marples Tools.

D.S.A.—Remington Rand Corp.. Radio Corp. of America, Champion Spark Plug Co., Firestone Tyres, General Steamship Corp.

NEW ZEALAND.—Vacuum Oil Co. Pty., Ltd., Petroleum Products.

AUSTRALlA.—Wunderlich, Ltd., Cement Asbestos Products.

NORWAY.—O. Mustad & Sons. Pish Hooks.

SWEDEN.—B. A. HJorth & Co., Primus Products.

Head Office:— A. B. DONALD LTD., Auckland.

Associate Houses:—

ETA BLISS EME NTS DONALD TAHITI,

Papeete, Society Islands.

DOMINION FRUIT CO., Suva, FIJI Island*.

CODES: Bentley's Complete Phrase, Acme

Sydney Agents:

BURNS, PHILP A CO., LTD.

London Agents:

BURNS. PHILP A CO., LTD.

San Francisco Agents:

BURNS-PHILP CO. OF SAN FRANCISCO INC.

SIMPLEX

300 WATT, 12 VOLT

GENERATING SET

This set comprises a 300-watt ballbearing generator belt coupled to a U H.P. J.A.P. Engine and is available in two models either 12 Volt or 32 Volt.

It is a sturdy battery charging set and is ideal for lighting, say, 7-40 watt globes, or 10-25 watt globes, using either 12 or 32-volt batteries. Set is started by pressing button on panel. ★ This is a standard line made by the manufacturers of Simplex Marine Engines.

Trade enquiries are invited.

HARDMAN and HALL

161 Missenden Road, Newtown, Sydney, Australia.

Weight: 76 lb.

Price: £75.

STEAMSHIPS TRADING COMPANY LTD,

PORT MORESBY AND SAMARAI PAPUA

Wholesale b Retail Merchants, Shipowners, Planters, Sawmillers, Engineers, Slip Proprietors Shipping, Customs and Insurance Agents.

MANAGING AGENTS for:

SAWMILLERS & TRADERS LTD.

CORAL SEA INSURANCE CO. LTD.

ACME BAKERY COMPANY.

MARIBOI RUBBER LTD.

RUBBERLANDS LTD.

KEREMA RUBBER PLANTATIONS LTD.

COCOALANDS LTD.

AGENCIES:

HARVEY TRINDER (N.S.W.) PTY., LTD. (In-

surances effected at Lloyd’s.) NEW GUINEA AUSTRALIA LINE OF THE CHINA

NAVIGATION CO. LTD.

ROYAL INTEROCEAN LINE.

KOKE BAGU PTY., LTD.

LOLORUA RUBBER ESTATES LTD.

DISTRIBUTORS IN PAPUA for:

ARMSTRONG-HOLLAND PTY., LTD. INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER CO. OP AUST. LTD Earth Moving and Logging Equipment. International Trucks, WILLYS-OVERLAND EXPORT CORPORATION. McCormick-Deering Farming Machinery, Defender Refrigerators.

Jeep cars, etc.

HILLMAN MOTOR CARS.

SYDNEY AGENTS: NELSON Cr ROBERTSON PTY. LTD., 12 SPRING STREET.

ART POSTCARDS OF TONGA

Per Dozen (Including a Tin-Can Mail Cover), Postage Paid: 6/- (or one US Dollar).

TONGAN PHOTOS BUREAU,

Nukualofa, Tonga

For

LIGHTER,

FLUFFIER

OTHER

FAMOUS

FOUNTAIN

PRODUCTS

mmm

#***£ ThtuliSUiU. tomato sauce

BSeHliv

T2'hl

*Er r

C °SiCS'

SELFRAISING

FLOUR

FOUNTAIN food products are famous throughout the. South Pacific for their consistent quality and suitability of packing for tropical conditions.

You are assured satisfaction when you specify FOUNTAIN brand.

Trade inquiries are welcome and all orders are promptly despatched.

FOUNTAIN

W.C DOUGLASS L ,M -iI- ED

FOVEAUX ST. SYDNEY AUSTRALIA

gRIAKi^Sf

FOUNTAIN

nii'ium’M. l l m'.Vliim.iil.

PUJM PUDDI^

1 FA,Alcrr when pacAT O

TTieQSJI

ELECTROLUX

BUILT FOR

EFFICIENCY

Just What You’ve

Wanted . . .

Built-in wall-to-wall

Ice-making & Frozen

Storage Compart-

ment clear across

the top.

CAPACITY: 7.1 cu. ft.

SHELF AREA: 13 sq. ft. • Redesigned interior gives easier access. • Removable rust - proof grid-type shelves. • One-piece porcelain interior lining glistening white and food-acid resistant. • Easy-release ice trays. • Exterior in gleaming oven - baked cream enamel. • Lower running cost with a new freezing unit designed for even greater efficiency. • Kerosene or electrically operated, it can be easily converted from one medium to another. • Precision-built freezing unit with no moving parts, trouble - free and guaranteed for five (5) years.

EARLY DELIVERY.

Ask your local Electrolux

agent for further particu-

lars now.

PAPUA:

J. R. CLAY & Co. Ltd.,

Port Moresby.

T.NG.:

NEW GUINEA Co. Ltd.

V V.

MHI

I 1 111 ■

ssi

m Model LT 701

ELECTROLUX IS ALWAYS SILENT

—Or write to the Distributors:

W. R. CARPENTER & CO. LTD.

16 O'CONNELL STREET, SYDNEY.

Passage

p. 55

Coronation Day at Buka Passage

Sohano was the centre of the Coronation celebrations held by the Buka Passage (NG) community. European residents from surrounding plantations and natives from Buka and other islands all congre gated in Sohano for the great day. The wharf and Administration buildings were gaily decorated and the craft were festive with flags and pennants.

Mr. Cornwell, of Skotolan Methodist Mission, conducted the Church Service after which a parade of natives, headed by a detachment of the Royal Papuan

and New Guinea Constabulary marched into position round the flag pole. The District Commissioner, Mr. CoUn Maclean, gave an address, followed by the Oath of Loyalty, two minutes' silence, cheers for the Queen and concluding with the singing of the National Anthem. At the march past, the salute was taken by the District Commissioner supported by Mr.

Alf Long, president of the local sub-branch of the RSL. A tree-planting ceremony, displays by the police squad and the schoolchildren, and native pageants com pleted the day’s programme. Special mention should be made however, of the Marist Mission’s pupils, who formed a living Union Jack in colour, and of the children’s whistle band with its en thusiastic drummer and diminutive drum major.

In the evening the District Commissioner held a reception and dance at his residence, where guests were able to listen to the broadcast of the Westminster Abbey service. The Royal Toast was honoured after the Queen had been crowned.

Fireworks and bonfires added to the enthusiasm of the natives feasting and dancing on the football ground.

A Fiji army rugby team which was flown from Malaya to Indo China in June, defeated a com bined French army-navy team at Saigon 42-3—and a French air force team by 76-0. The Fijian team was headed by Battalion Commander Lieut.-Col. Edward Cakobau.

Replacing the Matua, which is re lieving on the New Zealand inter island service, the USS Co’s freighter Katui made a trip to Suva early July, loading nearly 15,000 cases of bananas for Lyttelton, NZ. She was to make another trip late? July.

Matua was expected to leave Auck land in resumption of her normal service August 22.

Advertisements & other items, p. 55 (1 item)

layer**

If Back Aches

Tjnr A Kidney

HOUSKlEAMKl

Are you embarrassed and bothered by too frequent elimination during the day and night? These symptoms, as well as Bladder Irritation, Backache, Swollen Ankles, Leg Pains, Nervousness, Dizziness, Lumbago.

Interrupted Sleep, Circles Under the Eyes and a generally rundown feeling, are usually due to germ-caused kidney and bladder troubles. The very first dose of Cystex, the scientifically compounded medicine, goes right to work overcoming these troubles in 3 ways. 1. Quickly kills germs causing troubles. 2. Gets rid of poisonous acids. 3. Strengthens and reinvigorates the kidneys and bladder. Get Cystex from your chemist to-day under the guarantee of complete satisfaction or money back.

-a . M ta»'«r A

layer**

/ 0 m i icot thirst than ’s „„ /tner tray •» reihi „g K.B. fl" jg^ a S l«ss of sparkling, There with a glass and women with men favourite fir *r?i e E •

lageb

n » \io

tooth

Western Samoa’s Coronation

p. 56

Awards

From Our Own Correspondent APIA, June 30.

AT the official Coronation Cere mony at Government Central Office, Apia, on June 2, the fol lowing awards of Coronation Medals to residents of Western Samoa were announced by the High Commis sioner: Guy Richardson Powles, High Commissioner; Tupua Tamasese, Faut u a; Malietoa Tanumafili, Fautua; Joseph Darnand, RC Bishop of Samoa; Charles Croft Marsack, Chief Judge; F. J, H. Grattan, Secretary to the Samoan Govern ment; Tualaulelei Mauri, Member of the Executive Council; G. F. D.

Betham, Member of the Executive Council; Emily Richmond Smyth in recognition of outstanding contribu tions to social welfare; Alesana, Head Teacher at LMS Malua Col lege; D. R. Eden, General Manager New Zealand Reparation Estates; C. L. Williams, head of the Meth odist Mission; P. Kightley, London Missionary Society; Gatoloai Peseta Sio, chairman Fono of Faipule; L. M. Cook, President Returned Servicemen’s Assn.; H. Gow, presi dent Chamber of Commerce.

Tokelau Awards

A. E. B. Macdonald, resident Catholic Priest in the group, Manuele Preira magistrate and faipule Tokelau Islands.

H Mr. and Mrs. E. F. Paul of Apia travelled to Tahiti in July for the National fete celebrations.

II Private Semisi Vulivosa, Ist Battalion, Fiji Infantry Regiment, was wounded on July 1 when a truck in which he was travelling was ambushed in the Yong Peng area of Malaya. He was evacuated to the British Military Hospital, Kluang.

Mr. C. L. Cheng of Suva made a trip to Sydney in June to visit his sons David and Cecil who received their Bachelor of Engineering De grees while he was there. David is on the staff of Malley’s Ltd., electri cal engineers, and Cecil has joined the staff of Chloride Corporation, Newcastle, The boys were educated in China before attending Sydney University.

Advertisements & other items, p. 56 (1 item)

Qrnotts fiuncuA Biscuits

fiiuauviHj

The Perfect Way

Relax!

to Here is the luxury hammock of your dreams! It’s easy to carry, easy to assemble and, best of all, it’s at home indoors, in the garden, on the terrace or even at a picnic.

PRICE: £9/7/-

plus Sales Tax

DELIVERED EX

STORE SYDNEY.

Obtainable direct from the manufacturer

B. H. WINN PTY. LTD.

103 Australia St., Camperdown, N.S.W.

LA 3527 LA 3437

Qrnotts fiuncuA Biscuits

There is no Substitute for Quality, We wish to announce that Arnott's famous Cabin Biscuits are again available for the Island Trade.

These biscuits are of the same quality as the Cabin Biscuits supplied to the Royal Australian Navy.

Packed in hermetically sealed tins in cartons containing approximately 30 lbs. nett weight of biscuits,

WILLIAM ARNOTT PTY. LIMITED,

HOMEBUSH, N.S.W.

Western Samoa

p. 57

News Items From

From Our Own Correspondent APIA, July 10. ▲ N acute beer shortage, which \ caused criticism of the Samoan Government’s administration of tie liquor scheme, was partly re eved when the Government re ently imported 200 cartons of .merican canned beer from neigh ouring American Samoa.

A pint can of beer is being sold t 1/8 by the Customs.

The liquor regulations governing tie importation and issue of beer nd spirits will shortly be revised— robably on the basis of the report ibmitted by the recent commission f inquiry into the Liquor Scheme.

The Secretary to the Samoan Gov rnment, Mr. F. J. H. Grattan, left .pia by plane on June 27 to at md a meeting of the UN Trustee tiip Council in New York as special spresentative of the New Zealand rovernment. The meeting held in arly July discussed the report on Western Samoa, and the NZ Gov rnment’s Development Plan.

Dr. J. S. Armstrong, of the amoan Health Department has left Western Samoa after completing his econd term of service in the Ter- Itory.

The repeal of the Trade Debts ►rdinance, 1925, under which amoans could not be legally sued ir trade debts, came into force on uly 1. All debts for goods supplied r money advanced to Samoans by raders will now be recoverable at iw. The measure repealing the rdinance was passed by the Legis itive Assembly at its April session.

Petty thieving and pilfering has mr a long time been prevalent in nd around Apia. Recently, poultry wners in Vaimea district lost nearly 11 their best fowls when some night rowler broke into their properties.

The Police Department later dis- Dvered over 100 head of poultry, in luding imported stock, on the pre mises of a Chinese restaurant eeper. He bought the stolen fowls rom a Samoan for 2/- a head normally fowls fetch some 6/ach). Subsequently, the Samoan ffender was arrested and is await mg trial.

Owners of the stolen fowls were tappy to recover their property still alive) from the Police Station.

A Boy Scouts’ Association has een formed at Apia recently to sup port and assist the Scouting Move ment in Western Samoa. The meet ng at which the new body was ormed was sponsored by the High Commissioner, Mr. R. G. R. Powles.

There are at present four scout troops in Samoa—the Anglican, Pesega, Avele and Marist troops. A strong Committee was elected and Mr. S. Fish, Assistant Director of Education was appointed District Scout Commissioner. Represent atives of the various troops will go to the next Scout jamboree in New Zealand.

Residents of Savu Savu, Vanua Levu, met early in July at the re sidence of the District Officer, Mr.

C. A. A. Hughes, to discuss the formation of a social and sports club there. Proposals put forward by the District Officer met with general support and a committee was formed to consider ways of imple menting them.

Advertisements & other items, pp. 57-58 (2 items)

51

ACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY AUGUST, 1953

/

y Clean your teeth with IPANA directly after eating . . . that’s the surest way to prevent tooth decay and gum troubles! Cool, refreshing IPANA has extra cleansing power . . . keeps your teeth spark ling white...your whole mouth fresh and wholesome. Use IPANA always!

A PRODUCT OF

BRISTOL-MYERS

BM2-53

Take your choice...

from this list of quality canned foods . . . tasty hot meals and cold meats ready for any occasion. Stock up with

Imperial, the Friendly Foods.

HOT PACKS

16-oz. Braised Beef Steak Stew. 16-oz. Steak and Kidney Pudding. 16-oz. Sausages and Vegetables. 16-oz. Steak and Tomato. 16-oz. Irish Stew. ★

COLD MEATS

12-oz. Trim (Pork and Beef). 12-oz. Meatreat. 12-oz. Hampe. 12-oz. Camp Pie. 12-oz. Corned Beef W/C. 12-oz. Taper Corned Beef. 6-lb. Taper Corned Beef W/C. 6-lb. Taper Corned Beef. ★

CONDENSED MILK

14-oz. Sweetened Condensed Milk. 12-oz. Unsweetened Condensed Milk. ★

CANNED FISH

8-oz. Flair Fish Cutlets. 12-oz. Flair Fish Cutlets. ★ Norwegian Sardines.

FRUIT JUICES

16-oz. "Mildura" Brand Orange. 16-oz. "Mildura” Brand Grapefruit.

TOMATO PRODUCTS

8-oz. Tomato Soup. 16-oz. Tomato Soup. 10-oz. Tomato Sauce. 13-oz. Tomato Sauce. 28-oz. Peeled Tomatoes. ★

SAUSAGES

16-oz. Beef Sausages. 16-oz. Oxford Sausages. 16-oz. Cambridge Sausages. 16-oz. Pork Sausages. 10-oz. Vienna Sausages. ★

TONGUES

12-oz. Sheep Tongues. 12-oz. Lamb Tongues. 12-oz. Calves' Tongues. 2-lb. Ox Tongues. ★

MARGARINE

56-lb. boxes Cake Margarine. 56-lb. boxes Pastry Margarine. ★

"RIVERMEDE" BUTTER

56-lb. boxes Bulk Butter. 16-oz. pats Butter, i-lb. pats Butter. 12-oz. tins Butter. 16-oz. tins Butter.

AGENCIES

CANNED FRUITS

16-oz. Grapes. 30-oz. Peaches. 30-oz. Pears. 30-oz. Apricots. 16-oz. & 30-oz. Raspberries. 16-oz. & 30-oz. Loganberries. 16-oz. & 30-oz. Gooseberries. 30-oz. Cherries. 16-oz. & 30-oz. Strawberries. 16-oz. & 28-oz. Solid Pack Apple. 16-oz. & 30-oz. Sliced Apple in Syrup. ★

CANNED JAMS

12-oz. & 24-oz. Gooseberry. 12-oz. & 24-oz. Blackcurrant. 12-oz. & 24-oz. Loganberry. 12-oz. & 24-oz. Plum. 12-oz. & 24-oz. Raspberry. 12-oz. & 24-oz. Apple Jelly. 12-oz. & 24-oz. Quince. 24-oz. Quince Jelly. 12-oz. & 24-oz. Marmalade. 12-oz. & 24-oz. Sweet Orange. 12-oz. & 24-oz. Strawberry. 24-oz. Redcurrant Jelly. 12-oz. & 24-oz. Peach. 12-oz. & 24-oz. Apricot.

Maize Products Ltd.. N.S.W.

"Kream" Cornflour.

"Acme" Starch.

"Cameo" Custard Powder.

Bernard Jones (Aust.) Pty. Ltd., N.S.W.

"Zippy" Liquid Starch.

Fish Canneries of Tasmania Pty. Ltd., Tasmania.

"Flair" Canned Fish.

Gartside Products Pty. Ltd., Victoria.

"Gartside" Canned Vegetables.

Tongala Milk Company, Victoria.

"Jersey Cow" and "Mont Blanc"

Condensed Milk.

Mildura Co-op. Fruit Co. Ltd., N.S.W.

"Mildura" Canned Orange and Grapefruit Juices.

Port Huon Fruitgrowers’ Co-op. Association Ltd., Tasmania.

"Huoncry" Canned Fruits and Jams.

RIVERSTONE MEAT CO. PTY. LTD.

5-7 O'CONNELL STREET, SYDNEY

How to Grow Cauliflowers

p. 59

in New Guinea

ALTHOUGH the New Guinea Highlands produce good peas, potatoes, beans, cabbage and other European vegetables, cauli flower culture has not been entirely successful. Yet in Fiji, in the dry season, excellent cauliflowers are grown—and down at sea-level.

A former agricultural officer of Fiji says that this is how it is done: • First, you import the seeds from Suttons, of Calcutta. • Secondly, you plant them in seed boxes or beds and as soon as possible you transplant them into rows, fairly close together. When the plants are about four inches high, you transplant them again, with wider spaces between; and when they are six or seven inches high you transplant them finally into their rows, about eighteen inches apart.

These shock tactics are called “vernalisation” (or something like that) and it agrees with cauli flowers. If transplanted once you produce cauliflowers about the size of a tea-cup—but those transplanted several times produce something that is large and white and family-sized.

Anyway, cauliflower-growers in the NG Highlands might like to try

out the idea.

JT.

Mr. and Mrs. O. Denny, of Lae, NG, were in Sydney in July.

Jute Market

p. 59

Interesting Moves In

PEOPLE in Papua-New Guinea who say that kenaf fibre has already achieved its purpose in that the price of jute has fallen to about half its peak price, may be interested in the Australian version of this fall.

There the impact of kenaf, or the threat of kenaf in the future, is believed to have little to do with the present price of jute. It is be lieved, instead, that Australia’s de velopment of bulk handling of wheat and sugar supplies the answer to the spectacular fall.

Bulk handling was itself a direct development of the high cost of jute,

but this method of dealing with wheat and sugar is now likely to stay, no matter how low jute prices fall.

In addition, Australia has large stocks of jute on hand and this year will take only about 40,000 tons of jute—half normal purchases.

It is believed that the Indian Government is worried about the new trend in their lucrative Australian market and may make a move to put a ceiling on the export price of jute.

At a meeting at the Lautoka Mosque, Fiji, on July 5, a Fiji Muslim Women’s Association was formed. The patron of the new association is Mrs. M. T. Khan, and the President Mrs. M. S. Khan

Advertisements & other items, p. 59 (1 item)

C. Sullivan (Export) Pty. Ltd.

FIBRE TRAVEL and ATTACHE

CASES OF ALL QUALITIES!

In sizes to serve all needs and at prices to suit all types of trade. Write for full particulars to—

FORD SHERINGTON LTD.

Makers of Olobite, Airway and Pordlte Travel Cases.

Kippax St., Sydney, Australia.

C. Sullivan (Export) Pty. Ltd.

HEAD OFFICE

379 KENT STREET, SYDNEY, N.S.W.

Telegrams and Cables: "CHASULL,” Sydney. Telephone: 8X6381 (6 lines).

And at Melbourne, Victoria—Brisbane, Queensland.

Associated Companies : C. SULLIVAN (PACIFIC ISLANDS) LTD., Suva, Fiji.

C. SULLIVAN INC., 230 California Street, San Francisco, U.S.A.

Over 30 Years' Pacific Island Experience

Expert Buying Service

Original Invoices Furnished

Overseas Indents Arranged BEST PRICES FOR COPRA, COCOA, SHELLS AND GENERAL ISLAND PRODUCE

Noted Anthropologist

p. 60

Revisiting NG

From Our Own Correspondent.

Port Moresby, July 10.

rE well-known American anthro pologist and author, Dr.

Margaret Mead, is back in New Guinea. This makes her fourth anthropological visit to New Guinea, and this time she is going back to Manus, where she made her original study of New Guinea natives. That was around 20 years ago, and she then made a special study of the native children who to-day will be the adult population of the com munity.

Dr. Mead is being assisted in her present study by two other Ameri can anthropologists, Mr. and Mrs.

T. Schwartz, and the expedition is being financed by the American Museum of Natural History and a grant from Rockefeller Foundation.

The expense of such an expedition is now six times as great as on her first visit. However, the party is equipped with all the very latest type of recording equipment and other special gear for the work.

They plan to be at Manus for about six months, and will live in the village where she made her original study of the children, and gathered material for her first book, “Growing Up In New Guinea.” Since then she has written three other

books about New Guinea natives.

A new popular edition of her first book has just been published in the United States.

Dr. Mead is at present Associate Curator of Ethnology at the American Museum of Natural His tory, New York. She visited Aus tralia in 1951 as the guest of tiie Commonwealth Government on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Federation.

Encouraged by the success of the Coronation race meeting, big social event of the Coronation season at Nadi, Fiji, the Namaka Racing Club is holding a further meeting on August 1, Bank Holiday week-end.

Principal event will be the Johnny Walker Cup, presented by Sir Hugh Ragg, with £5O, £2O and £lO prizes for winning horses. The races are run over a straight course —an old road which connected a former fighter strip with the main Nadi air strips.

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Where Should The

p. 61

Ng Natives

Be Paid Off?

ON this question of where time expired labourers in Papua and New Guinea can be most con veniently paid off, it is interesting to examine the practices of former years (writes Mr. S. H. Chance, a former RM in Papua).

On the Manus plantations in 1920 most of the natives from othfer districts were sent with their con tracts of service to Rabaul, and there paid off and sent home. This system was bad. The locals were paid off at Lorengau, and were able to buy their needs locally, at Makaring, and get home with them.

This was a good system.

In the Western Islands (the H. R.

Wahlen-GMBH concerns) the pay ing off of labourers in “trade” was still permitted (early 1920). The common labourers were very prim itive and it would take 6 months to tame them enough so they would not go bush when a white overseer appeared. A trade-box of goods was made up at the local store, and the T/E labourers would be handed it, with no questions asked or desired.

All the goods were invoiced out, and all seemed fair; but such a system could not possibly work these days!

In Papua, for many years after 1922, paying-off was mainly in Samarai or Moresby. The natives would be herded into the stores, and expected to spend most of their earnings! What was not thieved from them (or lost in gambling) before they got home was, appar ently, no concern of the employers.

This system was wholly had. Trade stores along the coast were kept mostly by poor-white types, and the goods available were so much trash. Once, on my way to the Delta Division with about 60 “Pay offs,” several boxes were lifted from the native owners while their at tention was distracted, and the re sult (bad for recruiting) was that the “pay-offs” got home with next to nothing.

When the late Commissioner for Native Affairs, Mr. J. T. O’Malley, brought in, with certain exceptions a law enforcing “pay-off at home stations” he was attacked by every body except the outside traders (good types like Percy Hinds—who had to stock up with lots of good lines) and the shipmasters who got the freight on the bulk goods. That system worked admirably.

Except in very special cases, a native should always be paid off at the Government Station nearest his home. It is better for the native himself, and for his past and his

future employer; it makes for a healthier coastal shipping service, and decentralises the white popula tions, and the centres of industry, stores, etc. A good thing for any Territory.

An Auckland Provincial women’s hockey team is to visit Fiji for a short tour in July, arriving July 18 and returning at the end of the month. Managed by Miss P, Hick son, the fifteen players are paying their own expenses.

Twenty-year-old Diane Cilento, daughter of Sir Raphael and Lady Cilento, made a big hit in London recently in a Shaw play. She was born in NG when her father was CMO there.

Mr. H. Standen, of the Bamu River Mission, Papua, was in northern NSW on leave recently.

Advertisements & other items, pp. 61-62 (1 item)

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Spc Research Council Plans For 1954

pp. 63-65

fITHE fifth annual meeting of the X South Pacific Commission’s expert advisory body, the Re search Council, was held at Noumea headquarters, New Caledonia, June 8-11. Chairman was Mr. D. R. A.

Eden, General Manager of the New Zealand Reparation Estates in Western Samoa.

Twenty-two members attended: 18 economists, doctors, agr i culturalists and educationists working in Pacific territories, and four specialist officers in charge of the Commission’s work programme of economic development, health and social development.

Work carried out by the Com mission since the Research Council last met in June, 1952, was re viewed, and plans were made for its continuance during 1954. These plans will form the basis of dis cussions by the Commission at its twelfth session, to be held at Noumea in October.

Pacific Copra Survey

The copra industry in French Oceania is now being investigated by the Com mission’s coconut officer, Mr. W. Y. D.

Pieris, who left Noumea for Tahiti on June 19.

French Oceania is the eighth Pacific territory visited by Mr. Pieris in his investigations of the copra industry for the SPC. Mr. Pieris believes that copra storage is a major problem of the area.

Each year producers suffer heavy losses, due to shrinkage and deterioration of copra through mould and insect infestation.

There is urgent need for the development of a well-ventilated, insect-proof copra store of cheap construction which can be easily sealed for fumigation purposes.

Cattle Breeders’ Interest In

Santa Gertrudis

Cattle breeders in New Caledonia have shown keen interest in the articles that appeared in the Commission’s “Quarterly Bulletin,” April, 1!)53, relating to Santa Gertrudis cattle, a new breed specially developed for tropical conditions at the King Ranch, Texas, by the crossing of European and Indian species. Several station owners are considering importing sires to improve their herds.

In Fiji also, the early importation of Santa Gertrudis stock for a local grading up scheme is contemplated.

The improvement of stock and pastures in South Pacific territories forms an important project in the Commission's work programme for economic develop ment in the area.

Improving Pacific Food

Resources

The Commission is studying ways of improving the production and utilisation of subsistence foods in the South Pacific.

Last April it appointed M. Jacques Barrau for three years as technical officer to work on this project. (Next Page)

M. Barrau, who was formerly Director of Agriculture in New Caledonia, will concentrate on subsistence crops, assemble information on existing methods of

preserving and processing foods, taking into account the close relation between village agriculture and food production.

Leprologist Returns To

Headquarters

Dr. N. R. Sloan, United States leprologist appointed by the Commission last year to undertake leprosy investi gations in the South Pacific, returned lo headquarters on June after surveying leprosy conditions in the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, American Samoa, Western Samoa and the Cook Islands.

Previously he had carried out a six months investigation of leprosy in Netherlands New Guinea.

Pilot Community Development

Project

The Commission's publishers are now

printing a report on n pilot communitj development project carried out undei Commission auspices on the island o!

Moturiki in the Fiji Group.

The report is by Mr. Howard Hayden then Director of Education in Fiji, wht was chairman of the advisory groui directing the project.

Other Commission Reports

In Book Form

Two volumes on social anthropology “Social Anthropology in Polynesia,” bj Dr. Felix M. Keesing, and “Socia Anthropology in Melanesia,” by Dr. A. P Elkin, form the second and third experl reports prepared for the Commission and published in book form under its auspices by Oxford University Press. The first

was “Vocational Training in the South Pacific,” by R. A. Derrick, Director of Technical Training, Fiji.

Other reports scheduled for issue in the next six months include “A Linguistic Survey of the South-Western Pacific,” by Dr. A. Capell, Reader in Oceanic Languages, University of Sydney, and “Community Development on Moturiki Island,” by Howard Hayden, Director of Education. Fiji.

Advertisements & other items, p. 63 (1 item)

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SPC Research Council Meets

p. 64

The Fifth Meeting of the South Pacific Commission’s expert advisory body, the Research Council, was held at Commission headquarters, Noumea, New Caledonia, from June 8 to 17, 1953. Shown are some of those who attended: (left to right).— Sir Brian Freeston, (Secretary-General), Mr. B. E. V. Parham, Mr. Homer L.

Baker, Dr. A. Perk, Dr. A. H. J. Kroon, Dr. E. M. Ojala, Mr. W. C. Groves, Mr.

H. E. Maude, Mr. D. R. A. Eden, Dr.

Homer G. Barnett, Mr. J. E. Willoughby, Dr. Ch. J. Grader, Mr. H. H. Hickling, Mr. M. Legand. Dr. R. W T . D. Maxwell, Mr. John Ryan (Deputy Secretary- General), Dr. J. T. Gunther, Col. P.

Filippi. Dr. E. Massal.

Advertisements & other items, p. 64 (1 item)

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Snowsill-Bolton Wedding

p. 65

Developments In Fiji

Communications

From Our Own Correspondent SUVA, July 10.

THE Fiji Department of Posts and Telegraphs annual report for 1952 gives some interesting de tails of developments in the Colony last year.

It shows that when the hurricane struck early in the year, 1,500 tele graph poles on Viti Levu were either snapped clean off their cast-iron mountings at ground-level or bent at grotesque angles. In the few hours blow, about 500 miles of copper wire were written off —hopelessly tangled, broken in small lengths, or blown away. Replace ment costs are estimated at £50,000.

Since then the policy of laying underground cables whenever pos sible has been instituted, especially in Suva, and 37,000 yards of trench ing, with cables carrying from 26 to 208 pairs of lines, was completed by the year’s end.

Although equipment for the new Suva automatic telephone exchange came to hand, work is lagging on the building and it is not expected now that the job will be completed before the end of 1953.

Also scheduled for this year is a considerable extension to the Suva- Lautoka telephone service, with carrier equipment to provide six speech channels over the land lines and a new very-high-frequency radio circuit across the island via Nadarivatu. (Since the report was issued a radio telephone connection has been established with Levuka— a service which has not been avail able since the telephone cable broke 15 years ago).

During 1952 radio stations were opened at 13 new points, 3 of them privately owned, bringing the total outstations to 58. No island of any importance in the Fiji Group is now without radio contact with Suva.

Eight more inter-island vessels were equipped with radio telephone, bringing the total to 18.

Improved radio telephone trans mitters were established at Lautok* Labasa, Savusavu and Taveuni. To serve all these outstations, improve ments were made at the Suva re ceiving station at Vatuwaqa.

The radio telephone service especially to the outer islands, is becoming very popular, it now be ing possible to pick up a telephone m Suva and speak direct to passengers aboard - inter-island

vessels or at many points that were formerly very isolated.

The report shows that Fijians have a natural aptitude as tele graphists and that before long all wireless operators will be Fijians.

Snowsill-Bolton Wedding

Tyjtiss Shirley Jean Snows1Ll,

A daughter of Mr. and Mrs. H. B.

Snowsill of Rarawai, Fiji, wore a white embroidered-organdie frock when she married Mr. John Bolton, of the CSR Company, on May 16.

The wedding ceremony took place in the CSR Co.’s Hall at Rarawai and the re ception at the home of the bride’s parents.

Miss Susan Snowsill was bridesmaid and Mr. David Strong bestman.

Advertisements & other items, pp. 65-66 (1 item)

Day-Old Clucks

The Pacific Islands Society

(Founded 1937).

Visitors from the Pacific Islands to Sydney, or persons interested in Islands affairs, are Invited to communicate with the Honorary Secretary of the above Society which was formed to constitute a social and cultural centre for those Interested in the Pacific Islands.

Regular meetings and social gatherings, with lectures, are held at the Feminist Club Rooms, 7th Floor, 77 King St., Sydney, on the fourth Thursday of each month, at 8 p.m.

Address for correspondence:—

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Box 2434, G.P.0., Sydney. (The President may be contacted by telephone at XJ 3205.)

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aluminium adventure

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reversing a RIVER SYSTEM

Reversing the course of a river system was one of the first problems to be overcome by the Aluminum Company of Canada Ltd. in their new hydroelectric project now taking shape in British Columbia. This is being done by means of a huge dam across the Nechako River, which, by the skill and ingenuity of modern engineering, will convert the river system into a huge reservoir, with a surface area of 350 square miles. The water in this reservoir has only one escape route —through a tenmile tunnel drilled through the coastal mountain range. At the farther end of this tunnel, half a mile lower than its intake, the water will become power.

Here, in a cavern carved out of the mountain, will be the largest underground power station in the world. When fully developed, it will generate sufficient power for the smelting of nearly half a million tons of aluminium a year at the great new smelting plant of Kitimat. All this to attain one end—the large-scale production and distribution of aluminium and its alloys, from mine to market, by members of the Aluminium Limited Group of Companies.

As demand for aluminium increases, and its usefulness as a major raw material becomes more widely recognised , so must production he expanded.

One of the leading organisations engaged in this task is the Aluminium Limited Group of Companies, whose resources encompass many zvidespread activities. These cover every aspect of the industry—the mining and shipping of raw materials, the generating of hydro-electric power, and the ultimate extraction and fabrication of the metal. To these must be added world-wide selling services and a programme of continuous research designed to improve production methods and to find nezv alloys.

IM (Incorporated In Canada) Principal British Commonwealth Distributor of Aluminium Ocean House, 34 Martin Place, Sydney, N.S.W.

An ALUMINIUM LIMITED Company

SALES AGENTS:

New Zealand: RICHARDSON, McCABE & CO. LTD., Wellington Auckland, Christchurch.

Fiji, Western Samoa and Tonga: MORRIS HEDSTROM LIMITED Suva, Fiji.

Cook Islands: A. B. DONALD LTD., Rarotonga, Cook Islands.

French Oceania: ETABLISSEMENTS DONALD TAHITI. Papeete.

Tahiti.

New Caledonia and New Hebrides: AGENCE ALMA, Noumea New Caledonia.

Territory of Papua—New Guinea—BUßNS PHILP (NEW GUINEA) LIMITED. Port Moresby

LONDON

MONTREAL

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SYDNEY

KARACHI

In Some Pacific Islands

pp. 67-69

Prospects For Cocoa And Coffee Growing

A Summary Issued by the South Pacific Commission

A SERIES of reports on surveys made for the South Pacific Commission envisages the pro duction of cocoa and coffee on a large scale in the South Pacific area.

Mr. D. H. Urquhart, former Director of Agriculture, Gold Coast, was engaged to assist in these in vestigations. In past years he had made a special study of cocoa and since his retirement three years ago has visited various tropical countries on behalf of Cadbury Brothers Ltd., to assess potential cocoa production and give advice and help to planters, interested companies and Govern ments.

The territories visited in the course of his SPC engagement last year included New Caledonia, New Hebrides, Western Samoa, Fiji and Netherlands New Guinea.

Mr. Urquhart says that it is im possible to forecast world prices of copra, but if they fall it will mean serious reduction in the incomes of many of the territories he visited.

He believes that cocoa prices are likely to remain high, and that a possible loss of copra income could be offset if a policy of cocoa plant ing were embarked on now.

There is, of course, the chance that if Mr. Urquhart’s suggestions for increased cocoa acreage are adopted by all the Territories, there is a possibility of a world glut of cocoa developing with a consequent

drop in price.

His surveys cover territories where cocoa flourishes—as in Western Samoa —and range through others where little has been at tempted, to the New Hebrides which presents a picture of neglect of a once flourishing industry. The reports are summarised below.

Fiji Islands

trees were first planted in Fiji towards the end of last century, and despite long periods of neglect some of them survived. Mr. Urquhart noted that vegetative growth was good, some trees were in bearing or flowering, leading to the conclusion that they would have done well with normal attention.

The texture and depth of the soils in the wet zone of Fiji (Viti Levu) appeared suited for cocoa, and areas would also be found on the islands of Vanua Levu, Taveuni, Kandavu, Koro, Ngau and other smaller islands. The total area would be considerable.

As European (and Indian) interests are mainly concerned with coconuts, sugar cane and pineapples, the main hope of buiiding a cocoa industry lies with Fijian peasant farmers.

The native system of farming annual crops where the bush or forest is cut, burned out and farmed for four or five years and then left to grow to bush or forest again, lends itself to the easy establishment of ?. permanent crop such

as cocoa. Instead of leaving the garden to return to forest, cocoa can be planted between food crops in the second or third year and some food crops, such as yams and cassava, would provide primary shade. Permanent shade could be established in the meantime.

Netherlands New Guinea

npHERE is a small amount of cocoa already growing in Netherlands NG.

The trees were derived from Java and bear beans of good shape and size. The rainfall is adequate for any tropical crop, but the difficult nature of the terrain and the widely scattered population are factors which make for difficulties in develop ment.

As the climate everywhere in the low lands, excluding Merauke, is suitable, cocoa can be grown where the soils are suitable, although considerable experi mental work is required.

The most satisfactory way to plant cocoa here would he to clear the forest completely and grow the cocoa under temporary shade and later under per manent shade. As the local people are generally lacking in energy and industry, it may be impossible to induce them to undertake the necessary labour of clear ing the forest completely. A compromise is a partial clearing of the forest, leav ing some of the forest trees as shade, Local people might be encouraged to plant suitable trees gradually as permanent shade, and w’hen these grow up the forest trees could be removed.

Western Samoa

of cocoa from Western Samoa began early this century and by the year 1910 had reached just short of 500 tons. The average export figure between 1911 and 1930 was under 1,000 tons per annum and between 1941 and 1950 it had risen to an average of 1,857 tons.

In 1951 3,212 tons were exported, valued at £BOl,BOl. (For the same year 14,619 tons of copra were exported. value £781,172).

Climate and soil conditions are suited to growing cocoa, and nests and diseases are less prevalent than in most parts of the world where cocoa is grown on a large scale. NZ Rep?, rations Estates control 1,600 acres of cocoa, and on both

main islands (Upolu and Savai’i) there is much spare land capable of cultivation.

Western Samoa has far the largest and most important cocoa industry in the Pacific and it has maintained a steady increase over the last 50 years but there is considerable risk attached to the com placent attitude which appears to assume that the increase is likely to continue.

More detailed soil assessment is neces sary, more research directed towards in creasing the yield per acre, more study of disease-resistant trees, and considera tion to the types of cocoa required by the world markets.

Cocoa might well become the country’s main source of income if these steps were taken. Samoa has a more promising prospect for increasing output under these conditions than any other cocoa-growing country to-day.

New Hebrides

TN dismal contrast with the flourishing -*• picture presented by W’estern Samoa, is that of the New Hebrides, where neglect of the plantations owing to labour difficulties has resulted in a startling decline in production.

In 1935 the production of cocoa was given as 2,770 tons, whereas in 1951 the export figure was only 400 tons. The decline is partially due to labour shortages—the cocoa and other industries flourished when indentured labour was available from Indo-China. Now that it is not, some plantations have been neglected and others abandoned.

If the New Hebrides is to avoid serious decline in income it must rebuild its plantation industries. The natives will not come to work on European plantations in sufficient numbers to enable the Euro pean plantation industry to expand.

This is Western Samoa’s Lafi No. 7—a cocoa tree which won some fame last year when it was called a “wonder tree.” With high yield it combines extreme disease resistance and considerable breeding has been done from it. Under the tree are Mr.

W. P. F. Kelby, manager of Central Group, NZ Reparation Estates, and Mrs. D. A.

Dcnald, wife of the Chief Agricultural Officer, BSIP.

The report suggests that the only alternative is to take the plan tation industry to the natives. Although the natives are primitive, says Mr.

Urquhart, much of the palm oil and cocoa of Africa have been produced by natives just as primitive.

The estimates for 1952 made financial provision for a Department of Agriculture and much will depend on its adequacy and efficiency. The climate is suitable for cocoa and there are extensive areas of good soil on both Santo and Efate.

Coffee In New Caledonia

nPHE SPC has issued also a report by Mr. Urquhart on coffee growing in New Caledonia. In 1951 there were 14,570 acres under coffee cultivation in the area, where it grows well and is capable of giving high yields of high quality.

Cyclones and floods are the outstanding features in the climate which are un favourable to coffee.

The limitations to the extension of coffee planting are decided at the present time mainly by the availability and cost of labour and lack of access to more land suitable to the crop in favourable climatic conditions. The difficulty of finding regular labour has led some planters to adopt a system of employing tenants with their families to tend the plantations and harvest the coffee on the basis of one-third of the crop going to the farmer and two-thirds to the tenant.

The natives of New Caledonia number about 30,000 and, as they are natural agriculturalists, it is suggested that the future of coffee in New Caledonia rests with them. The report suggests that surveys of the soil should be made and an experimental station established to investigate coffee problems. Low-yielding trees should be replaced with trees giving a high yield and efforts made to improve juality. It is generally admitted that the skill applied to the preparation of the JUlk of New Caledonian coffee to-day falls far below the standard which was applied n the early days when coffee from this sland enjoyed such a high reputation in France.

Cook Islands

A SMALL section of the report on cocoa growing in Western Samoa is levoted to the Cook Islands, where the dimate is marginal for cocoa.

There are a few cocoa trees growing in Rarotonga and it is considered possible 0 grow cocoa in the valleys, provided hat the trees are well sheltered. It should be possible to obtain rooted •uttings of high-yielding trees from >amoa, when there is a supply available.

In past years, there was an export of offee from the Cook Islands. A certain mount of this cron is found growing in 1 semi-wild state in all the Lower Group slands. The Department of Agriculture us recently planted some Arabica coffee •n its experimental station. Rarotonga is n approximately the same latitude as

New Caledonia where coffee grows well.

Given adequate shelter by trees or hills it should be possible to grow coffee profitably on the foothills and in the valleys of Rarotonga.

The foregoing are only brief summaries of what Mr. Urquhart has to say about cocoa (and some coffee) growing in the Territories mentioned. In his reports he covers each Territory thoroughly as to soils, climate, history of the crop, agri cultural research, su’tabfe varieties, etc.

Each Territory is treated in a separate report and the reports are available from the South Pacific Commission, Noumea, New Caledonia, or from the South Pacific Commission, GPO Box 5254, Sydney, Australia, for 2/- Stg. per copy.

(I T.orlv IVTovoic 4- r-,- Lala Suklina, Was 300 guests presented to the Queen Mother at a garden party given bv the Women’s Corona Club in the grounds of Lambeth Palace. Ratu L f la , Su kuna and Lady Maraia

September. On thes Way "back to

Fiji they win visit th e Ist Battalion Fiji Infantry Regiment, in Malaya LeSS than 3 per Cent, of the 148,000 Indians in Fiji were Christians, Mr. Sultan Ali, an Indian missionary from Fiji, said recently When Speaking at Maughan Church, Franklin St., Adelaide. The WOlk of Community was the biggest task remaining for Christians in the South Pacific.

Advertisements & other items, pp. 67-70 (1 item)

Foot Itch

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STAMPS

ALBUMS, CATALOGUES

AND ACCESSORIES.

QUEEN ELIZABETH II

DEFINITIVES

These have already started to appear, and from now on there will be an increasing flow of new stamps for most of the British Countries, either in single denominations or complete sets.

If you are a member of our New Issue Service, you will receive them automatically at the regular New Issue concession rates. If not, it will be to your advantage to join, or otherwise please let us know in good time what you will be needing, as with the present import and currency restricts it is most essential that we can plan our ordering well in advance.

Our regular price basis for these Queen Elizabeth II stamps is Mint sets to 1/- face or equiv. 1/8 Single values above 1/- or equiv. 1/7 Used sets to 1/- face or equiv. 1/10 Single values above 1/- or equiv. 1/9 Aust. per 1/- sterling.

Canada, mint, 2d. per cent below 20c., Ud. above 20c.

KING GEORGE VI CURRENT

ISSUES

It will be wise to fill any gaps in your collection while these stamps are still on sale, for immediately they are withdrawn they will start to increase in price. These can be supplied in mint condition on the same price basis as is set out for the new Queen Elizabeth II stamps.

OTHER ISSUES

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In Praise of the Papuans

p. 70

MEMBERS of the Royal Papuan and New Guinea Constabulary Coronation contingent made a favourable impression on those who came in contact with them during their visit to London. Dr. Stefan Wurm, Lecturer at the Vienna University and authority on native languages and anthropology, met the contingent for the purpose of linguistic studies.

He has now written to Mr.

Hasluck, Minister for Territories, warmly praising the men. “I am convinced,” he says, “that the P-NG Service can be rightly proud of their policy which has produced such outstanding men.”

In his letter, Dr. Wurm points out that in the course of his studies of native languages he has met numerous natives with a certain European background, and that in the majority of cases he has found a number of unpleasant features.

Natives having a superficial ac quaintance with European civilisa tion despised their own native culture and looked down upon everything connected with their former tribal life, developed a remarkable laziness, laxity and lack of interest, and showed loss of in dividual personality.

Dr. Wurm could find none of these negative features in the RP-NG Constabulary contingent. He found them to be keenly interested in everything, active, well-disciplined without submissiveness and servility, and of natural and unconstrained behaviour, manners and politeness which would put to shame many a European.

Mangaia’S Orange Crop

p. 70

THE May pay-out for oranges from Mangaia, Cook Islands, was £9,000, the highest on record for any month in the season. The islanders had worked hard, often under unpleasant weather condi tions, to ensure bumper shipments of fruit to the NZ markets.

Though this return sounds good, it should be remembered that it has to be divided among the island’s adult population of 2,000.

However, trading stores did good business following the pay-out.— E.G.

Coastwatchers’ Memorial

p. 70

A permanent memorial, in the form of a navigation light, is to be erected somewhere in the P-NG area to Coastwatchers who lost their lives in the last war.

The organising committee hopes to collect £1,500 for this purpose, and recently substantial cheques have been received from business houses in NG and from individuals in Australia.

In Defence Of

pp. 71-73

Bods And Smells

BODS have softly and suddenly vanished from Honiara, as though Judy Tudor were a boo jum. Involuntary users of the word may be seen looking furtively back wards. Close behind them treads a reader of the June PIM.

It’s a pity, really. The word in Honiara grew up, gradually, and as your correspondent now sees, un noticed, from the usage of certain Administrative Officers, most of whom have transferred to other Colonies, and it became not so much a habit as a custom.

Its essence was the genuine and most sensitive courtesy of the Eng lish towards strangers and other people you aren’t on familiar terms with. By inference, as J.T. has partly seen, it implied the oneness of humanity—His Excellency the High Commissioner, Heads of De partments, tourists, cookboys and the poor native labourer with the polio withered leg. There was neither Jew nor Greek, Government nor free, male nor female; but all Bods.

I don’t know where we’ll get a better word.

Honiara is more used to critic ism than to the generous praise J.T. has given to those aspects of the

settlement she saw and appreci ated, but I should like to speak for Government staff.

The arrival of the High Com mission intensified both the hous ing shortage and the shortage of junior staff. For a time every avail able resident applicant (or bod), together with staff already em ployed, was needed. All were given a trial and most proved very good value. Few 7 earned anything like £l5 a week.

I believe that in general no Gov ernment staff in the British Com

monwealth has worked harder, and for longer hours of voluntary un paid overtime, than both senior and junior members of the Western Pacific High Commission, during the last six months.

Our total losses usually deport themselves, in due course, drifting back to Sydney hotel bars, where over the years, and beers, they have gained publicity by anathematising the incompetence of any Govern ment which failed to appreciate their worth. In most small tropical communities, they come, and they

go, and are forgotten, except for an occasional reminiscence.

One more word, mainly about Rabaul, which has so many greater attractions than indoor outhouses.

Tourists are ex officio preoccupied with plumbing, since travelling in small ships is hard on the works, and nature does not automatically lead people to the right place, I have been grateful to my nose for guidance more than once.

Rabaul may be primitive in patches, but it has charm and colour, and it is arguable that colour to the mind is the result of a variety of smells combined with visual im pressions. Nostalgic memories of the gorgeous East are almost in separable from stink. Memories of post-war Rabaul pleasantly combine frangipani, wet grass after rain, the salt sea smell of the harbour, an overtone of beer and sulphur fumes and dust, incense and mildew from Chinatown (with an occasional acrid undertone of drains) the fresh, clear coolness of morning at first light; the strong scent of wharves slippery with copra, and the aromatic warm smell of the lovely tree-lined Kokopo road by moonlight, where the fireflies flash their brilliant fairytale signals.

There is no colour in the sight or smell of a scrubbed orphanage, or of asepsis in a hospital theatre, though admittedly there is no glamour in a dirty saucepan.

Most of us coming back from leave have scrambled ashore from

a dinghy somewhere on the way home, or landed on a tumbledown rickety wharf, where a few old coconuts and bits of driftwood and pumice are bobbing on the tide, and taken a deep breath of copra, and mildew, and something unidentifi able which is possibly not quite

clean, and suddenly with an in describable thankfulness known that we were back again in the islands.

This is not a song about Please don’t burn our Outhouse Down, taut a plea for the unabashed variety of tropical smells, by contrast with the

grey disgusting combined odours of tens of scrubbed basement restaur ants, hundreds of washed early morning delicatessens, thousands of hygienic dieseline bus exhausts, and half a million deodorised workers, all breathing our civilisation.

I like Rabaul.—KAY POOLE. (Mr. D. S. Askew, writing from Wewak, TNG, says that “Bod” is a war-time word —e.g., “How many bods will be needed for a certain operation?”)

Advertisements & other items, pp. 71-72 (1 item)

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‘Exploiters’

p. 73

The Natives and the ‘Exploiters’

THESE (South Pacific Islands) are the only remaining regions where colonial powers are carry ing out their work of control with reasonable security.

“The peonle of these areas have learned nothing of unity to press their own claims, and have become pawns in the hands of nations.

Tonga, alone, is an independent kingdom, controlling her own way of life.

“For years the South Pacific peoples have been sources of material profit for those who would exploit them.

“It took the war to bring them from the seclusion of their tropic isles to the front line of world interest.

“New and sweeping changes have come across the lives of these people by the contacts they made as hostilities sweat around them. Now comes the swift impact of the world through our twentieth century life and thought. They know a great deal of the way in which the West is thinking and acting at the pre sent time.

“They have now exploded the myth of the infallible white man, and they are coming to feel that they have the power to build their nations.

“As we have a White Australia Policy, so they are telling us ‘We have a Brown Pacific Plan,’ and ‘Tonga for the Tongans’ is a cry that is heard in not so isolated groups.

“There is a strong claim that they should share the fruits of their own labours and lands. They claim the right to some responsibility in the government of their land, and a greater-share in external respon sibilities.”

The foregoing is an extract from a report, in “South Coast Times” (NSW), June 18, of an address de livered in Corrimal by Rev. C. F.

Gribble, General Secretary of

Methodist Overseas Missions, Aus tralia.

The 1953 Goulburn (NSW) Lilac Time Queen will win a two weeks’ cruise to Fiji and other S. Pacific islands on the Orcades.

Beqa Firewalkers

p. 73

Booked For Auckland

Prom Our Own Correspondent SUVA, July 15.

THOSE Beqa firewalkers are booked for Auckland. (See PIM Tropicalities for July). Mr. A. W.

Sands, who went to Fiji in June on behalf of the Auckland Public Relations Office, reported before de parture from Suva that 18 men will be flown down to give three per formances at the Auckland Indus tries Fair in January, 1954.

The Firewalkers’ Union, it appears, normally demands a four-day cool off period between walks, but after some hard dickering they finally

settled for three days to allow the three performances to be given within the period of the Fair.

They also insisted that their own Beqa stones be used for the job— so a large consignment will go for ward by ship in time for the event, which should prove a major draw card in New Zealand, where the last fire-walking performance took place in 1907, at Christchurch. fl In Adelaide en route for the UK in the Stratheden, Josua Rabuka waqa, a local preacher of the Methodist Church in Fiji, recently addressed the Blackwood branch of the Methodist Women’s Auxiliary to Oversea Missions.

Advertisements & other items, pp. 73-74 (2 items)

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Troicalities

pp. 75-76

Magazine Section

With Music Extra

“ A ND what’s the price of beer in A Panpptp nnw?” wp inmiirpH of a recent visitor mc l uired “Well, at what timer was the rather puzzling reply.

“You see,” he continued, “it’s 25 francs a bottle until the music starts—then it goes to 35 francs, And the music starts at 8 pm Saturday and Sunday—so advise them to get the serious drinking in before then!”

Golf On Wheels

TT ak :rZr r i d y en a tS SenL E Dl s: H. Secretary of Fijian Affairs) have mechanised their golf at Manly, NSW, and so have made the newspaper headlines.

With a third friend (a retired NSW Deputy Commissioner of Taxation) who has a mechanical caddy (a golf bag with a pneumatic wheel) they all admit to over 70 years, and have been playing golf together for many years.

The Baker and Monckton bicycles are fitted with a steel carrying rack at the front for the golf bag and swinging arms at the side which prop the bikes up when their owners are playing. Between shots the bicycling golfers mount their bikes and their friend trundles his

caddy. (The Manly course on which they play is very flat).

Granny Herald—Best Smoke

Paper

THERE’S a big trade in old news papers from Sydney and Auck land. Maybe the shippers think they are being used to wrap paresis there. Perhaps some are; but on Fiji’s outer islands a Sydney Morn ing Herald is worth a penny per sheet to-day to the Fijian smokers of twist tobacco.

Other papers have varying values on the smokers’ market. The yellowish, rather fragile type is only used as a last resort; and the ex pensive, glossy finishes don’t get a look in. That’s what a Buca Bay trader reported in in July on one of his rare visits to town. (The SMH has always been top-favourite as smoke-paper among New Guinea natives).

Wanted—Whales’ Teeth

WITH a Royal visit in the offing, tabua, the ceremonial whales’ teeth which Fijians use for presentation on important occasions, are likely to be in short supply.

A Sydney paper reported recently that Fiji was in the market for anything up to 500 of them and that an official was looking through New Zealand museums with a view to

easing the current shortage.

Since that paragraph appeared, however, Fiji possibly now wants only 460 tabua —as a sort of wish fulfilment on a grand scale, a 57-ft sperm whale, from which the teeth come, was stranded on Wakaya Island a few weeks ago and Fijians working there were able to extract 40 teeth from it!

Tabua are now more or less pro hibited exports from Fiji but it was not always so and a campaign in Australia and New Zealand would likely unearth many of these large teeth—probably from peopla who have small idea what they represent or even what they are.

A year or so ago the writer of this paragraph saw two healthy looking specimens in the surgery of a Sydney dentist. Apart from the fact that he may have thought they were good ornaments for the workshop of one of his craft, this dentist had no affiliations with Fiji.

He said that they had been given to him by a missionary who had lived in Fiji long years ago.

Unrehearsed

Sightseers in Lautoka, western Fiji, had an unre hearsed thrill on Coronation Night. An athletic Fijian, burst ing with goodwill, climbed 85 feet, to the top of the framework which supported the set-pieces for the fireworks. When the display com menced the Fijian, to the horror of the spectators, began to sing and dance, amid the sparks and the rockets. His favourite song appar ently was “God Save the Queen”.

After the distressed organisers had howled themselves hoarse, order ing him away, he climbed quietly back to the street. The law had its talons out—but no one had the heart to arrest him. (Over)

Viennese Motu

A PORT MORESBY resident tells us that Dr. Stefan Wurm, a lecturer at the Vienna University, who was in London at Coronation time, astounded the native members of the P-NG Royal Constabulary Contingent by talking fluent and pure Motu and excellent Pidgin, although he had never visited Papua and New Guinea.

In talking with them he further disclosed his close academic know ledge of the Territory by naming the local district of each member as he gave his home district.

The natives were so impressed by his fluency that both Motu and New Guinea members asked how he could know their language so well when he had never been in their country.

It is believed that in the early post-war years, Dr. Wurm applied for a position with the Adminis tration as a native language expert, but the salary offered was too low.

Menace To Navigation

A SUVA POINT resident tells an amusing tale of a little Fijian odd-job boy and the RNZAF.

Like boys everywhere, this one loved flying kites. But some of the Suva kites are works of art, feather light, beautifully finished, and the pride and joy of their owners. Some time ago, shortly after the boy had finished his morning chores, the RNZAF Lauthala Bay fire-tender was heard roaring down the road.

The lady of the house was surprised when it came to a screaming stand still at the front gate and an aggressive looking sergeant jumped off and sprang to the door.

“Madam!” he barked, “is that your kite?”

Amused at the sergeant’s aggressive manner, the lady had a mind to say that she was beyond the kite stage, but it was evident that this was no time for flippancy.

She admitted that it might belong to the house boy.

“Then it must come down in stantly, madam. That Catalina up there is endangered by the thing.

The control officer insists that it be immediately grounded.” So there was a general movement to the back yard where the offending obstruction was secured to the branch of a tree. It was certainly flying at a great height.

The sergeant leaped to the cord, then a look of dumbfounded amazement came over his face. He had obviously expected at least string, possibly even some very heavy wire. But all that was hold ing this little work of art was ordinary machine cotton. For a moment he hesitated. No, orders were to ground the thing. There would be watchers at the control tower, so down it came, hand over fist, the delicate cotton a hopeless tangle on the ground—and the kite

itself, when finally landed, no larger than two hands, and as harmless as a moth.

Duty done, the sergeant roared off in his juggernaut—looking slightly red and just a little guilty —and the Catalina made a final circuit and came in. The little boy, sighting the descent of his kite from afar, and hurrying to the scene, was obviously very, very puzzled—and annoyed. The action

cost six new reels of cotton.-

J.P.S.

A Brett Hilder drawing of James Murray Joyes of Iwi and Kekere plantations, Bougainville. Mr. Joyes has been in New Guinea since 1921, when he arrived at Rabaul to work under the late C. I. H.

Campbell at the Commonwealth Bank. In 1927 he bought Iwi plantation from the Ex-Pro. Board, and later took over Kekere as well.

In 1937 Jimmie Joyes married Irmgard, elder daughter of Dr. Kroening, of Bougainville, who had been Doctor and District Officer there for the German Government until 1914.

During the Second War Jimmie joined the Australian Army, and was loaned to the US forces on Bougainville, with the rank of Captain, piloting ground patrols through the country he knew so well, and he was responsible also for native

intelligence. After the war he passed through ANGAU on his way back to plantation life, and *n 1950, to overcome the inefficiency of local shipping, he joined a syndicate of local planters in the Bougainville Company Ltd. An English coastal firm supplied the m.v. “Pollurlan”, which has developed an excellent service between Rabaul and Bougainville, and most of the management has lately been in the capable hands of the subject for this month’s drawing.

With or Without Coconuts . . .

p. 75

This green oasis in the centre of Suva’s business centre is called the Triangle—its coconut trees gave a graceful touch—and

a tropical touch that tourists liked. But alas, the coconuts are no more—felled because they were said to be a “menace

to public safety” (though they survived the January 52 hurricane) and the Triangle is now as shown right. —Photos, Fiji Public Relations Office.

Pim Crossquiz No. 42

p. 76

(Solution on page 84)

Across

I.—What pseudonym was used by the spy who stole British military secrets from the Ambassador’s safe in Ankara during World War II? 4.—Which Queen was killed in a motor car accident? 7.—Who devoted his life to caring for lepers on the island of Molokai? 9. —What is the term for American soldiers of Japanese parentage?’ 10. —What gas is associated with petroleum? 13. —What is the term in knitwear when the jumper and cardigan match? 14. —What was the earlier name of the Duchess of Windsor?

19. —What does the sign “ampersand” stand for? 20. —Where is Australia’s only burning mountain? 21. What violet-blue dye is obtained from the stalks of a plant? 23. —Which range of mountains separates Spain from France? 24. —What are burned on the sth November?

Down

1. —What foreign quarter of San Francisco is one of the tourist attractions of the city? 2. —ln which range of mountains did Rip Van Winkle go to sleep? 3. —What is the term for half the diameter of a circle? 5. —What are the colours of light called when separated by a prism? 6. —Where is the Taj Mahal?

B.—Which insect is noted for its attitude of suppli cation?

11. —Who composed “The Barber of Seville”? 12. —What popular American singer entertained troops in the South-West Pacific and visited Australia during World War II? 15. —On which river do Stephen Foster’s “old folks” live? 16. —East and West of which islands are on opposite sides of the globe? 17. —Which flower did Christ tell his disciples to consider? 18. What is the name of an “S”-like mould? 22.—What is a harrier?

Samarai By

p. 77

The Sea

SAMARAI, a tiny story-book island off the extreme eastern point of Papua, has recovered from most of its war wounds (it was effectively scorch-earthed) although virtually all of its old landmarks are gone—the pubs, for example.

Newer and bigger buildings have been constructed or are in the course of being so; the gardens are flowering again and the sea, some times blue, often misty grey, is there within a hop and a step of anyone’s back door.

The same road, with leaning coconuts, encircles the island —and you can still walk right round in

20 minutes. .But now you are apt to meet a truck coming round one of the bends —there are three (trucks) on the island.

In comparison with many of the other P-NG natives, those around Samarai seem happy, polite, willing

and, as house-boys, the best in the S-W Pacific. Of happy memory are my hosts’ house-boys, particu larly the one in the spotless white lava-lava with his name lavishly embroidered in lazy-daisy stitch: JIM ROSSEL BOY. He said his

girl-friend executed this piece of finery. Spotless white lava-lavas, with or without lazy-daisies, are mighty rare in P-NG these days—possibly as a direct reflection on the price of cloth (about 5/- per yard as against the pre-war 4d or ( 6d).

The photographs show, top: Some

of the elaborately shell-decorated sailing canoes of the local natives.

Centre, left: The old church on the waterfront—almost the only building to survive the war. Right: part of the new wharf showing the new store of Buntings, Ltd., on the left. The interior of the store is very modern and attractive and

most of the work was done by Papuan carpenters and workmen, Lower left: Native sailing boats tied up along the sea wall. The boat in the foreground was bum entirely by its native owner who lives across the water at Kwato Mission. Right—the coastal road. —JT.

Tongan Jack-in-the-Box

p. 78

By J. D. Whitcombe

FALCON ISLAND, reported some months ago as “currently miss ing,” flickers in and out of the sea, and PIM pages.

This is an account of its early life.

Falcon is a marine volcano. When it is in eruption, and shortly after wards, it consists of volcanic ash and cinders. The sea then sets to work to wash it away, and succeeds, until the next eruption.

THE curious Tongan jack-in-the box island, known as Falcon Island, which lies to the west ward of Haapai, between the two ports of Nukualofa and Lifuka, was most likely first se~n by the Spanish discoverer, Maurelle, who reported a bank in this area in 1781. There is also little doubt that it was also seen by the Frenchman La Perouse.

Its first authenticated appearance was in 1865, when it was seen as a reef by HMS Falcon; some time later the warship Sappho reporting that smoke was seen issuing from it. In 1885, it appeared as an island, and was surveyed by the British surveying ship Egsria, in 1889. It was then found to be 1.3 miles long, north to south, and one mile wide, shaped like a wedge, the highest point being 153 ft above sea level at the southern end. It was formed of loose volcanic ashes and cinders which were constantly slip ping down into the sea so that the size of the island was as constantly being reduced.

By April, 1894, Falcon Island had to all intents and purposes dis appeared but renewed volcanic activity in December of the sam 1 year caused it to re-appear. It was then 50 ft high, 3 miles long and V, miles wide. Four years later the island had disappeared again and its place was occupied by a shoal

about 100 yards in extent. By April, 1900, the “shoal” was about 9 ft above water, but it had disappeared again by 1913.

When HMS Veronica examined the site of Falcon Island in 1921, a continuous break in the sea was observed at the south-west corner of the area, caused by a rock about 15 yards in diameter. By 1927, the island had re-appeared, HMS Laburnum reporting that it ex tended 1,730 yards in a north-south direction and 1,430 yards in an east west direction. Steam was seen issuing from the island.

On March 17, 1928, Captain Gunderson of the Panamian motor ship Beulah passed that way and re ported as follows: “ I saw the island about 2 miles long, one mile wide, and 600 ft high, by angle bearing, my vessel being three miles off. At the time, the island was in heavy eruption, but as the wind was from the east, the hill was building up west of the volcano. The volcano had encircled itself with a. high bank on the eastern side so that no steam or water was coming up. We passed around the island and saw it was bordered by a cliff about 60 to 80 ft high. There was some coarse material, but the bulk seemed to be of the nature of dust. There did not seem to be any shoal water from the island as the sea broke close-to.”

Two years later, Falcon Island was reported to be about 1.2 miles long and 475 ft high.

Falcon Island was first annexed for the Government of Tonga in 1892 by Sateki, the then Premier of Tonga. Sateki and my late father, C. D. Whitcombe (then Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Tongan Gov rnment), took with them the Min ister of Police, and a number of prisoners, who were to help plant

some 2,000 sprouting coconuts after the Tongan flag had been broken out on the staff.

These coconuts flourished and were doing well until 1894, when Captain William Ross, of the schooner Ysdbsl arrived at Nuku alofa and reported that the island had once again disappeared.

The captain of the SS Upolu arrived at Nukualofa the next morning and reported seeing some hundreds of young growing coconut palms floating in the sea in the vicinity of Falcon Island.

I remember when it appeared again in October, 1927, when clouds of smoke and steam rising thous ands of feet, could be seen dis tinctly from Nukualofa 45 miles away. In May, 1928, the island was visited by a party of scientists and also by the Premier of Tonga, the late Prince Tungi, who annexed the island for the second time for the Government of Tonga.

ANOTHER jack-in-the-box island appeared off Tonga about 1909, and thereby hangs an amusing tale.

After a number of earth tremors, reports arrived from Hihifo that a new island had appeared some ten miles off the. coast, and the then Premier, the Hon. J. Tubon Mateialona, and the Auditor Gen eral, Mr. Thomas V. Roberts, de cided to go at once and annex the new island for the Government.

Instructions were accordingly given to prepare the Government launch for the trip, plenty of provisions and liquid refreshment being ship ped as well as the flag of Tonga.

However, the Premier’s launch was not to be alone. The manager of the German firm (D.H. & P.G.) also thought that it would be an excellent idea to annex this new island for his Imperial Government, so his launch was provisioned and started on the journey in the wake of the other launch. It promised to be a great race and nearly all Nukualofa gathered on the water front to watch events.

When the boats were about half way on their journey there was a severe submarine disturbance and the new island sank beneath the Pacific Ocean. On seeing this both launches headed for the lovely island of Fa Fa, where they turned their great adventure into a glori ous island picnic, arriving back at Nukualofa in the early evening after a wonderful outing..

New Zealand House, a treatment clinic donated by the Lepers’ Trust Board of New Zealand, will be opened at the Ducos leprosarium near Noumea in August. His Ex cellency Governor M. Angemarre will perform the opening ceremony.

The building will bear a plaque commemorating the 200 New Zea landers who died in New Caledonia during the war and who are buried at Bourail cemetery.

A photograph taken of Falcon in 1928.

Additions to t Bookshelf

pp. 79-85

TF for no other reason than it holds -*■ the largest concentration of Europeans in the Oceanic area, Australia is important to Island residents. Sooner or later the majority spent some time in the Com monwealth and whether they like what they find there, or not, the tendency is, more and more, for Australia to intrude into things Pacific.

There is much that the Islands dweller can learn with profit about Australia and in recent years, no dearth of books from which to learn it. Most of these books —when their authors keen away from the fiction medium—are excellent, and excellently produced.

The first two books reviewed herewith can almost be regarded as companion pieces: another, is concerned with Aus tralia’s largest post-war human experiment —migration; and the fourth comes within the realms of culture—something which overseas highbrows say Australians have not got much of! npHE FACE OF AUSTRALIA (by Charles Francis Laseron, FRZS). Many people coming to Australia for the first time from countries softer, more super ficially spectacular in the scenic sense, are repelled by the local country-side.

The red soil, the monotonous green of the eucalynt, barren hills, bare plains.

Small use to tell these folk that the country “grows on you” (as it surely does), but they might be helped to understand it better by reading Laseron’s book, for, if nothing else, they could become interested in antiquity in place of mere prettiness.

If you have the imagination this book will completely fascinate you. Forget about the Australia you know to-day— its cities, its political merry-go-round, its man-made problems of what man has done and not done—think only of a vast land, some of which came into existence 1,500 million years ago and has remained unchanged for the last 700 million years.

A land in which the forces of erosion have played an important part, yet in one area—the Barkly Tableland west of Cloncurry—where the land, 600 million years old, has never been high enough to permit erosion on any great scale and the shales and limestones that lie beneath their protecting layer of soil, remain un disturbed just as they were deposited in the sea that divided Australia into two parts in the Cambrian era.

Laseron tells us about Yilgania, a “land of such antiquity that figures alone are beyond the conceivable,” the remnants of which now form part of Western Australia, and the eastern bastion of which was probably the Musgrave Ranges in Central Australia. He tells us also of the effect of the various ice-ages on the topography of Tasmania (the warm era through which we are now passing may be just another brief—l«,ooo years or so—interlude in the last ice age!); something about the glaciers and vol canoes and great earth disturbances that went into the making of the more

spectacular scenery of the south-east and east of Australia: what caused the Aus tralian coast and the Barrier Reef to be as they are; the origin of that region of strange beauty, the Alice, and Australia’s Centre; how Australia’s typical bush and stranger flora came to the country, adapted itself and lived on.

This and much more you will find in “Face of Australia”—a book about a LAND and refreshingly not concerned at all about that upstart, man. If you are contemplating a touring holiday in Aus tralia soon, read it before you start out; better still, take it with you on your trip. (Published by Angus and Robertson, Australian price, 21/-). ★ the SUN ON MY BACK, by ’ ’ J. K. Ewers. This is quite a different kettle of fish. It goes over much of the same country as does “Face of Australia,” but this time it is the story of man, particularly man as he is in the l!)50’s and what he has done and not done with the land that was formed, maybe, 1,500 million years ago.

This is one of the best books in years about the Australian outback —those little populated regions of the Centre and the Territory and the North-West of West Australia—and its problems of black and white, of isolation, of climate, of the dilatoriness of men and Governments and the dead hand of remote Canberra control. Ewers, like many modern Aus tralian writers, is inclined to over sentimentalise the Australian aborigine.

It is obvious that all black men cannot now be good, any more than the opinion of 50 years ago, that they were all bad, could be correct. Moreover, he says him self, where black and white become as two opposing forces, black always wins; there appears to be something about the Australian aborigine that reduces the European who has to deal with him to a state of baffled frustration. Colour, however. Is one with the overall problems of the region.

Of Derby he writes: “When Japanese fighter-planes machine-gunned Dutch sea planes in Roebuck Bay, white residents took to the bush. Figuratively they are still there . . . Here are mixtures of all colours from full-blooded aborigine to blendings of Malay, Koepang, Indonesian, Chinese, Japanese, black, white in every known combination. The visitor feels the vitality of these people. In the resi dential area the whites pursue a round of social functions—influenced to a certain extent by the fact that more than half of them are Government officials removed from the hazards which the majority of whites shared in the past . . . Meanwhile the coloured people form a rising tide of arrogance and self assertion Obedience is no longer one of their qualities. Like hermit-crabs

they have taken over and forage for some sort of living in the ruins of the past.

They are alert, watchful, waiting—and breeding! In the shanty town along the foreshore, the coloured people are rich in their fecundity. ‘Someday we will come back,’ said Samsudin ben Kalib” (an Indonesian under threat of deportation).

Meanwhile the pearl-shell which has been worked only in a small way since the war scattered the pearling luggers matures on the seafloor and it seems no-one's business to do much about It.

Ewers writes with insight of this vast area of Centre and North which has provided platitudes for a century of politicians. Of problems that are not without solution but which will probably remain unsolved until outside pressures compel Australians to do something about it. The question is—will it then be too late?

Tourists have found the Territory now, of course, but the country and the people Ewers describes are still unknown to the great majority of Australians who could not care less about what lies beyond their cities or the narrow coastal belt and to whom the problems of the wide open North are much more remote than the mystery of peace in Korea or the private lives of our Royal Family in London.

It cannot, of course, be said that those who have peopled the North and the Centre have acquired merit simply by the fact of their being there. Most are there because they wish to be; many have taken what they wanted from the country and put nothing back. But they are a different breed of men, and women, and although so far removed by geography and climate and conditions from the dwellers in the Pacific Islands —not entirely without some of the same kind of problems.

It is an interesting book, well written and with humour “At the Governor Broome Hotel we slept three in a room my com panions maintained such a chorus of snoring I lay awake until long after midnight. One snored in high treble, the other in a deep, reasonant bass such as I have never heard before. The owner of this remarkable nasal trombone was a Scotch rubber planter from Malaya.

As we were nearing Port Hedland next morning in the plane he touched me on the back.

“ ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘but would you mind telling me if I snored last night.’

“ ‘l’m afraid you did,’ I said.

“ ‘Was I very bad?’

“ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘l’ve never heard any thing quite like it before. It was magnificent!’

“ ‘Oh,’ he said, crestfallen. ‘l’m terribly sorry to hear that. You see, I’ve always snored noisily and I’ve had an operation to cure it. I havn’t seen my wife for 10 years and she’s waiting for me in Perth. I hone she doesn’t find it as bad as you thought it was.’

“What could I say? I have often wondered how his wife reacted to the result of the operation.” (Published by Angus and Robertson; Australian price, 21/-.)

(Continued on Page 79)

Australia and the migrant (published by the Australian Institute of Political Science from papers read at their Summer School in January, 1933).

This tells the how and why, the good and bad of Australia’s migration drive that in the peak years 1947-31 gave over half a million “New” Australians to the country.

The pros and the cons (and it was generally agreed that there were more desirable features in the experiment than undesirable ones) was debated by leading citizens and scholars of the Common wealth in Canberra at the beginning of this year. The small book that results from those discussions gives ample statistics of the economic and social repercussions that have and will result from this large influx of new people.

The human side of migration has been touched on only lightly—that is usually left to the daily newspapers and their reports of battles between the migrants and their would-be governmental bene factors who stand as father and mother to them in their new country. Migration —large scale migration—is, of course, of human problem. But this book will at least give you the figures and the science behind it. (Published by Angus and itobertson; Australian price, 12/6i.

'Powards An Australian Drama

"*■ (by Leslie Rees, Federal Drama Editor of the Australian Broadcasting Commission). The history of Australian day-writing, acting and presentation from he earliest days, through the Bland Holt sra to the present day when most of the Australian local talent in this direction s in the medium of radio.

A very small proportion of Australians ire actively interested in this form of irt expression. Most Australians at some irae listen to Australian radio plays—but he vast majority prefer to take their ntertainment at American or British novies.

The book is likely to be of considerable 'alue to those who are interested in the heatre or in writing for the theatre or adio, but is unlikely to do very much owards influencing the majority towards n interest in drama. (Published by Angus and Robertson; Australian price, 8/-).

A member of the East and West ndies Bible Mission in the NG iighlands has imported a hive of

>ees. They were obtained in New

South Wales by Mr. W. Bromley

yhen he returned bv the Bulolo rom leave in Australia. The bees

:ot their first experience of “fly

ng conditions” in the Territory vhen they were released for an

exercise flight during the Bulolo’s

lorthbound call at Port Moresby.

L-hey were given their liberty from

Jpper Port Road, and all but a ew stragglers found their way back o the travelling hive after a short nterval.

(I Dr. J. Legg, Director of Research, Yeerongpilly (Queensland) Animal Health Station, is going to New Guinea to inspect cattle imported from Queensland and to ascertain whether stock disease control measures recommended by him are being correctly carried out.

ft The British Resident Commis s T IO^ r er - New Hebrides (Brigadier H. i Flaxman) arrived in Honiara, BS Ip , by Qantas aircraft on June 22 to confer with the High Commis sioner for the Western Pacific, Mr R. C. S. Stanley, and left again by air on June 30 for Vila via Sydney

Danger

pp. 80-81

Unlimited !

By Judy Tudor

ONE day towards the end of April I arrived back at Lae with the design of a Foden diesel truck firmly imprinted on my back and a slightly stiff neck from the concertina action of bouncing in and out of river beds on the Wau- Labu Road.

The driver of the truck was a taciturn Scot with the unusual name of Jock who was full of dire fore bodings about the whole trip. It had rained heavily for some weeks and the evening before all the creeks had been in flood. “Likely as not,” he said with deep gloom, “we’ll not get there till tomorrow.”

It was then about 8 a.m. and he left no possible doubt that the prospect of spending the night in the bush, alone with me and the mosquitoes, had no appeal whatever.

I had been wished on Jock by the management of BGD whose amazing hospitality I had enjoyed the previous day when I had been shown the new Bulolo that had risen from its war-time ashes, and the new plywood factory then in the course of construction. It was Jock’s job to cart some of the 17 tons of cement they were using each day to make the three acres of floor.

We left about 9. The last trip I had made down the road was also under the auspices of BGD—that was in 1946 in a jeep with Messrs.

Fred Rose and Bob Gay. That was a social occasion; this was strictly business. Anyhow, I defy anyone to make particularly animated con versation in a diesel truck that has to be literally fought round all the bends of that road.

Until we reached Mumeng no word was spoken. Sad, in a way, as I will probably now never know who owns the many acres of peanuts (I think) on the flat land where the river (Snake?) S3ems suddenly to flow the wrong way.

We wound up the hill to the Mumeng Hotel. We drew up and Jock excused himself and departed.

A little later a small man in khaki

pants sawn off just below the knee came out on a sort of back verandah and yelled out to come and have a “kola or something.” The Mumeng Hotel was temporarily defunct, and in fact, apart from selling a few drinks to wayside travellers, one wonders what purpose it could ever serve as a hotel.

I was shown around with a sort of proprietorial pride (although I never did discover whether the lad in the sawn-off pants was the owner); the lounge, dining-room, bedrooms, kitchen—each a grim, gaunt apartment shrieking of the ghosts of departed travellers; empty and forlorn. It had the air of a derelict pub in a Western movie ghost town. Only the creaking doors, the dust storms and the tumble weeds were missing.

But out in front of the pub, spread out in the sun, were hundreds of sealed tins of cigarettes, small, cup board locks and trade goods gener ally. Our host and his jeep had got caught in a creek (crick or drift?) the previous evening when a flood came down. This filled Jock with renewed pessimism. The worst of the road, he said, was between the hotel and Zenag which we could see away up there on top.

Before we left, Host led me round to a side verandah and from it pointed down the valley to a pocket handkerchief sized piece of rough, overgrown grass that ran steeply uphill. This, he said bitterly, was the Mumeng airstrip, now, like the hotel, abandoned.

“All for the want of £3O per year,” he said. “The Administration won’t pay that paltry amount for its maintenance. Put that in your paper!”

I promised that I would, while privately considering that—for once in a while —I couldn’t agree more with the Administration, or who ever was responsible. Locked in there among the mountains and hills it looked about the most unpropitious place for an aerodrome that I had seen for a long time.

BACK into the truck; down to the Mumeng which you cross six times in the next quarter mile and where I saw at last in concrete form, all the reasons for Jock’s dire predictions. The Mumeng is a canyon of madly shifting gravel; a many-mouthed funnel down which a sudden storm in the moun tains above could send an avalanche of water. Presumably something is to be done about this crossing be fore the Bulolo factory begins freighting out its plywood early next year.

One wheel at a time, the Foden waddled into the crossings, churned and rocked and kept afloat some how by Jock, waddled out the other side. Six times, then back onto the road, a good road now, straight up the mountain to Zenag at about four thousand feet and down the other side, looping and twisting through heavy timber and occasion ally a village.

About noon we stopped by the wayside to eat our sandwiches, and Jock told me sorrowfully about the 16-hours’ day the transport drivers worked and the huge money they made as a consequence. He seemed glad about neither the one nor the other. In an effort to be cheerful, I suggested that, as far as this particular journey was concerned, the worst was behind us. But not a bit of it. “The most dangerous part is the last five miles,” he said.

This surprised me and I said so.

“Yes, that’s where I want to fall asleep. Just can’t keep awake. Not only me, all the drivers feel it.

Some of them have ploughed their trucks into the bank.” He thought it was some miasma—although he didn’t call it that—that came out of the swamps.

Happy thought. We set off again, round the bends at high speed, looping and curling around the mountains and hills and, sure enough, when we reached com paratively flat going in and out of banks of tall kunai with an occa sional glimpse of the Markham

Foden outside Mumeng Hotel.

River, Jock’s eyelids drooped and he went at snail’s pace alternately with sharp bursts of speed. But nary a bank did we plough and in the nature of such things eventu ally pulled up at Labu. ‘Now,” said Jock, “it remains to be seen if the sea is rough. I certainly don’t like crossing in those old barges when the sea is rough.”

The sea was not rough at the Markham mouth but we had to wait 2% hours at Labu for the barge in order to find this out.

We pulled into the depot about hours after starting out—all in one piece, sound in wind and limb.

All the potential hazards were there, Jock—let’s hope your next passenger is an easy scarer!

Labu and the Foden from the back of the barge.

More About Tahiti's Nature Man

p. 81

IT is easy to guffaw at the nudist, and jeer at E. W. Darling, but the “PI Monthly” for February, 1953, at least published his photo graph—a very handsome and dis tinguished face it is.

Mr. Oscar Nordman does not tell a tithe of the Nature Man’s story, which I heard when I visited Darling in Tahiti in 1912.

How did he become a “crank?”

Apparently by the same route which jreates many other nature enthus :sts —ill health. At Stanford Uni versity he contracted tuberculosis, and was told that he had not long to live. Well, that is discouraging to any young man who has no neans to buy himself an expensive jure, and give himself the best Jhance.

“If I’m going to die, I’ll die the way I want to, at least,” he said, [t seemed worth taking a chance on i totally different way of life. He ;ook his clothes off and went to ive in th Q Arizona desert. He ate whatever he could afford and was jasy to prepare: I do not think he was a strict vegetarian. The doctors shook their heads; they said he would merely hasten his end, but somehow it did not!

He threw off the infection and aecame healthier than he had ever asen before, and in his delight and surprize he became slightly be wildered. Perhaps he had stumbled m a truth —that all the petting and ’are of consumptives was wrong?

He had risen from the near-dead, md he wanted to tell the world.

But it laughed at him.

Having lived for a year or more without conventional clothing, and ;aken great pleasure in simple mdity, he began to believe that per haps God and the Indians were not so far wrong as respectable people mought; but it was a lonely life.

He was cold-shouldered everywhere.

By Stephen Haweis

No place in the United States would tolerate his way of life. He tried several, but the respectable always hurried him along; he was despised by people with colds in their noses.

There must be some place, he thought, where a man could live without pills. Eventually he took ship and went to Tahiti.

There he bought a few acres with the last of his slender resources, and built himself a shack. “U.R.

Free 2 D-nude rite Now,” he wrote up for visitors to read, and other similar information. He did not have many visitors, but he worked hard at growing his food, and he kept rabbits. He told me that he allowed the bucks to run free, be cause they would always come home to their does.

Most of the time he wore shorts because they made his work in the bush easier, but the simple life is not an easy one anywhere, and the trouble with a cult is that it mav always turn around and bite you: He often hurried back to his hut when he saw visitors approaching —to take off his trousers! Then life had become too hard, his money ran out, and in 1912 he put on clothes and got a job in the Customs House in Papeete. He loved to go naked, but could not afford it.

Later I heard that he was gone.

When I arrived in San Francisco and saw my first American New Year’s Day celebration, with elderly gentlemen in paper hats, blowing whistles and shaking rattles, the Nature Man’s life did not look so ridiculous or childish, and then sud denly I saw Mr. Darling again.

He passed me so quickly in the passages of the San Francisco Ex aminer Building that I did not speak to him, he did not see me.

He was striding along wearing nothing but shorts and carrying a

sack upon his back containing, pre sumably, his food and all his worldly possessions. The glow of perfect health was still upon him. He was the only man in San Francisco who was not cold on that bleak, damp January morning in 1913.

I do not think that he went to the United States to find a wife, but rather a job and an audience. He still felt that he was an apostle bearing good tidings which he felt would save doctor’s bills, if not the world. He, the tuberculosis patient, was the living proof of the doctrine he preached, but nobody would listen. He was twenty years ahead of the nudist-camp craze.

Linger Longer,

p. 81

O Queen

This jingle appeared in a London paper after Queen Salote of Tonga had driven through the rain in the Coronation procession and told a reporter she liked English weather.

LINGER longer, Queen of Tonga, Linger longer wiv us.

Longer while the English summer Gives us all the shivvas, While the summer east winds blow And shake our English livvas.

Queen of Tonga, linger longer, While the blizzards blow.

Wait to see the hail at Henley, Ascot in the snow.

See our flooded cricket fields Awash before you go.

Linger longer, Queen of Tonga, Till the summer’s through.

Watch ye Englyshe Maypole dancers Dance with noses blue. (Dancing round with naked toe In ye slush and in ye snow Round ye merrie merrie-oh).

Linger longer, Queen of Tonga, Linger longer, do.

Advertisements & other items, p. 81 (1 item)

75

ACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY AUGUST, 1953

Keep Fit

p. 82

What To Eat To

In The Tropics

(Extracts from a talk broadcast from

ZJV by the Nutrition Section of

the South Pacific Health Service).

Very often we are told that it is diffi cult to keep really fit in the tropics; that boils, skin rashes, sores and fatigue are unavoidable.

All this is untrue. The food we eat and drink is largely responsible for our general health. So :t is very important that we should know how to plan and prepare nutritious meals.

Meal planning in the tropics requires special thought and consideration. In the first place, there are the unfamiliar new foods and new recipes to be learnt; there are the difficulties of keeping foods; and sometimes difficulties in buying what we want.

But there is a second reason why planning meals in the tropics is im portant—that is, the lack of appetite or interest in food due to the heat.

But while heat and humidity may lessen our appetite they do not lessen the body’s need for body building material— for the foods containing proteins, vitamins, and minerals.

We can do with less of the energy giving foods such as starchy potatoes, bread, cakes, and biscuits, or sugars or the fatty foods.

Seme people find they put on weight in the tropics, and this is partly because they continue to eat the same amount of these starchy, sweet and fat foods as they did in a temperate climate. In between meals, such as morning and afternoon teas, are not really necessary in a hot climate. Sweet cakes and scones and biscuits should be replaced by cold fruit drinks, iced tea, iced coffee or a piece of raw fruit.

On the other hand, there are the people who always lose weight. These are usually the ones who try to carry on with normal work and play on a smaller amount of food. If you continually cut down on the amount of food you eat, ill health will inevitably result.

So while it is permissible to cut down a little on starches, sugars, fats and fried foods, especially if you are over weight, you still need the vitamin containing fruits, vegetables and the wholegrain cereals such as in oatmeal, wheatmeal, and wholemeal bread and the rich sources of protein such as meat, milk, eggs, cheese and fish.

So let us get down to the practical business of planning the days’ meals for the family. Firstly we should replace hot stews and soups of cold climates by cold salads and iced foods, and we should remember f hat our menus must tempt the family’s appetite.

Did you know (hat fat'gue affects appetite? So don’t try to force tired people (o eat. Always relax for a while before a meal, especially at the end of the day. Even ten minutes will do good.

Don’t drink large amounts of any fluid

before z meal—this will temporarily satisfy one’s hunger and lessen the appetite.

Too often breakfast is the one meal that is skimped. This is bad, as in the tropics most work is done in the mornings so a good breakfast is necessary, especially for school children. Check up on your breakfast this morning. Did your family have the best breakfast pattern, starting with fruit or fruit juice followed by cereal, preferably a wholegrain one, and milk. Then, a protein dish containing egg, bacon, meat or fish, and finally the energy foods, toast and butter with marmalade, honey or vegemite. And a drink of tea or coffee or milk.

Midday is the hottest time of the day, so lunch should be a light, attractive meal. But even a light meal or a sand wich lunch can still follow the rules of good nutrition. One of your sandwiches should be made from a protein food such as egg, meat, fish or cheese; add some salad vegetables, fresh fruit and a drink of tea, coffee, milk or fruit juice. Or at home, follow the same pattern by re placing the sandwiches with a light savoury dish from fish, cheese, meat or eggs with salad.

It is a good plan to serve the main meal of the day at the coolest time— in the evening. Start your meal with an appetiser such as fruit or avocado cock tail, or iced fruit or tomato juice or an iced savoury gelatine mould with salad.

Then the main course, with the protein food—meat, fish or a cheese or egg dish accompanied by a root vegetable, and at least one green or yellow vegetable.

And lastly, a hot or cold sweet to suit your own taste, or some fresh fruit.

Check over and make sure that each day you’ve served three good meals and that you’ve included these protein, mineral and vitamin-containing foods somewhere during the day’s meals:— MILK: At least Vi pint for you and the other adults, and for the children at least I pint for each one up to about 12 years, and IVi pints for the adolescents.

FRUIT; At least one serving of citrus fruit, or fresh tomatoes, or pawpaw, etc., and 1 serving of another fruit.

VEGETABLES; One serving of potatoes or kumala or other root vegetable and at least 2 to 3 servings of other vegetables preferable green or yellow, including one serving of raw vegetables.

CEREALS AND BREAD: One serving of whole grain cereal such as oatmeal, wheatmeal, or wholemeal bread.

MEAT AND FISH: One serving of meat, fish, eggs or cheese. Use liver and kidneys once a week and, in addition, have eggs and cheese three times a week each.

You need extra fluid in hot weather.

Train every member of the family to drink plenty of water or fruit juice. If fruit is not available make lemon tea by steeping lemon leaves in hot water, cool the liquid and sweeten with a little sugar.

This drink has been made since time immemorial by Pacific Islanders.

And here is a very economical and most useful recine for lemon essence. You can substitute oranges, grapefruit or limes for the lemons.

Lemon Essence

1 oz Tartaric acid.

Packet epsom salts.

Rind of 2 lemons. 2 lb sugar.

Juice of 6 lemons.

To these ingredients add 2 quarts of boiling water. Cool and keep in the refrigerator. To use, take quarter of a tumbler of essence and fill up with cold water.

The theory that tropic dwellers need extra salt in the form of salt tablets has been considerably over rated. For the newcomer to the tropics, it is wise to take more than your usual amount of salt with your meals. Once you have become used to the temperature, extra salt may only be needed after profuse perspiration as on a very hot day or after violent exercise. In any case all the salt required may be taken with the food we eat. Salt tablets and saltine drinks are not necessary for the average person.

Pacific Cook Book

p. 82

The topical, tropical recipes of Renata Cochrane which have been a feature of the "South Pacific Post” in Port Moresby have now been reprinted in the form of a handy little recipe book.

The recipes are 184 in all and cover methods of dealing with tropical fruits and vegetables, egg, meat and fish dishes, some exotic cookery from other parts of the tropics, and last, but by no means least, how to deal with the übiquitous tin that all too frequently turns up on the menu of outport dwellers.

The recipe book is obtainable from South Pacific Post, Port Moresby for 4/- Australian currency, and as a sample of the goods here is how to make "Lodua” —that is, Pumpkin a la Eastern Papua.

Toast a piece of coconut meat in 4i le oven until well browned. Grate it and mix it with mashed pumpkin. Add half a cup of coconut cream, season with salt and pepper and serve very hot.

Recipe Corner

pp. 82-84

READERS are invited to send in recipes using Pacific Islands in gredients or ingredients readily ob tainable in the Islands. Ten shillings will be paid for each one used.

Egg-Fruit In Coconut Cream

Peel and slice egg-fruit into a fire proof dish alternately with sliced onion, a sprinkle of salt and some finely chopped green chilli. When the dish is full, pour coconut cream over, add a layer of bread crumbs (if liked) cover and bake slowly in a moderate oven.

Coconut Cream (or Lolo) Grate the flesh of a ripe coconut.

Pour a cupful of very hot water over it and squeeze the mixture well to express all the goodness. Strain the liquid through muslin. As well as with the egg-fruit, this cream can be used with many other vegetables and fish or as a substitute for cream with sweet dishes. —“Marsala.” NSW.

(Continued on Page 78)

Pawpaw Upside-Down Cake

2 cups sliced p?.wp?.w. 2 tablespoons lemon juice. 1/3 cup brown sugar.

I I A cups flour. 2 teaspoons baking powder. 94 cup sugar. 1 egg.

Vi cup milk.

Vi. cup shortening.

Vi teaspoon salt. 1 tablespoon butter.

Pour lemon juice over pawpaw and allow to stand 15 minutes. Melt butter and brown sugar carefully in an oven proof flat dish. Place layer of pawpaw on sugar mixture.

Cream shortening, add 94 cup sugar and when beaten add beaten egg.

Sift flour, salt and baking-powder to gether. Add to mixture alternately with milk. Pour batter over the pawpaw.

Bake in moderate oven 50 to 60 minutes.

Serve lemon or lime sauce.

Lemon or Lime Sauce 1 tablespoon butter.

Vi cup sugar.

V-t cup cold water.

I tablespoon arrowroot. 94 cup boiling water. 2% tablespoons lemon or lime juice.

Mix sugar and arrowroot to a smooth paste with cold water. Cook until mixture clears and thickens, stirring all the time. Take off stove and add butter and lemon juice.

Mrs. E. J. L., W. Samoa.

fl A young lawyer from Queensland is now practising in Port Moresby with Mr. Norman White. He is Mr.

Desmond Gordon Sturgess, who was admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court on July 3.

II A Malaria Research Officer, Dr.

Laird, and his wife, who are en gaged in the South Pacific Commis

sion’s research scheme for investi gating the conditions under which anopheles mosquitoes will breed, arrived in Honiara, BSI, in early July. From research conducted in various islands of the Pacific, it is hoped to find out why malaria is prevalent in some Pacific islands, while other similar islands are malaria-free.

Advertisements & other items, pp. 83-86 (3 items)

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Recipe Corner

AUGUST 1953 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY

Recipe Corner (Continued from Page 76)

For The Bookshelf

ACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY AUGUST, 1953

(Continued from Page 73)

Mountain

pp. 87-89

Missionaries Go Over The

Road Building at 10,000 Feet

By Renata Cochrane

There has been much publicity given to roadmaking in Papua-New Guinea in recent issues of PIM.

But this story tells of a private enterprise, unpublicised effort.

FEE French Fathers of the Mission of the Sacred Heart, Yule Island, have just completed i road across the massive range of ;he Owen Stanley Mountains of Papua. Very few people know of ihe effort that has gone into this Temendous undertaking. Very few jeople, in fact, know that the build ng of this newest section of road s the culmination of 600 miles of •oad-building.

After penetrating into the in credibly rugged mountain country >ehind the Mekeo plain, the mission tries, dependent on their head luarters at Yule Island for essential upplies, were obliged to build a net vork of roads where before only jack-breaking native tracks had existed. During the last 30 years, he roads have been extended to ink together six main mission itations and seventy secondary stations. The roads are well graded

and wide enough to take a fully laden pack-horse.

Soon after his appointment as Bishop, in 1947, the Most Reverend Andre Sorin, MSC, decided that the Mission should extend its activities to the Chirima valley on the other side of the Owen Stanley Mountains.

This meant that a road had to be surveyed and pegged across the heights of the dividing range.

The Bishop chose Father Dubuy, ace road-maker of the Mission, for this tremendous task. He had founded Ononge Station, in the Goilala Sub-district, in 1913, and had remained in the mountains every since, combining his mis sionary activities with a prodigi ous programme of building, which included the magnificent church at Ononge, schools, dispensaries, and many miles of expertly graded roads.

When Father Dubuy set out to survey the new road, he was already over 60. He took with him 50 natives from Ononge and the Chirima Valley. In the six months it took him to complete the survey, he lived under canvas in the dripping, cheerless rain-forest of the high

mountains. He found that the road would have to cross the Owen Stanleys at the very foot of the three peaks of Mount Albert Edward at an altitude of 10,000 feet.

Qn the other side of the range, he was confronted with a wilderness of cliffs and overhanging precipices 400-500 feet deep. Across this night marish country he had to peg the

road so that it would gradually descend to 5,600 feet. He used red paint to mark the places where ex plosives would later blast the track.

Many of the places were in accessible on foot.

Nothing daunted, Father Dubuy had himself dangled over the edges of precipices with ropes of lawyer vine.

IN 1948, he was able to write to Bishop Sorin;—"The pegging of the road is completed. It will be a tremendous work, especially from Murray Pass to Jongai (in the Chirima Valley). In my long ex perience of road-making, I have not yet found such dangerous cliffs as the ones through which this road will have to be blasted.”

From his own experience, the Bishop knew what such an under taking meant for his missionaries.

In 1935, while working on a road, he himself had been caught in a landslide and severely injured, and his companion, Father Garreau, had been killed. Yet he decided to go ahead.

He notified the Administrator of his intention to open up the new road and asked for financial support. A total sum of £2,444 was granted as part-payment for the new section of road which was to link Urun in the Vanapa Valley with Jongai in the Chirima Valley.

Father Dubuy set to work with natives who had volunteered from nearly every village of the Vanapa

Valley. The first step was the planting of huge gardens to pro vide food for the workers. Father Dubuy appointed Brother Hilaire, MSC, another veteran roadmaker, to help him, and within two years the road was completed up to its highest point. Thereafter, he had the enthusiastic help of three young priests, Fathers Bel, Cadoux

and Barthe who had insf hppn appointed to’ evangelise the Chirima District g It was at this point that all sorts

of difficultiesWduJ

work could be started on the north eastern slopes new gardens had to be planted. In the meantime a tribal war had broken out between the Uruna people and the Chirima

people. It led to several payback murders which at times made the work of the three young Fathers very hazardous.

Another holdup occurred when an officer on patrol reminded the natives that, being free Papuans, they were under no obligation to work for the Mission. The people took this to mean that the Admin istration did not wish the road to be built.

When work was finally resumed, Father Cadoux nearly lost his life while blasting a cliff. In another place the road, which was being built on solid rock, slid down the precipice no less than six times, until finally it was firmly estab lished by Brother Hilaire over a vertical chasm of 300 feet. In spite of everything, the young Fathers pushed on with the road, with the result that it was finally opened in April, 1953.

IT is now possible to ride on horse back from the Papuan coast at a point across from Yule Island, to the Government Station and air strip at Tapini, in the Goilala Sub district, and to cross the Owen Stanleys into New Guinea as far as the village of Jongai, three days’ walk from Kokoda. It is hoped, be fore long, to continue the road as far as the Government Station there. The journey on horseback, from the coast to Jongai, given good conditions, takes a minimum of 11 days.

The only other road ever to be built over the Owen Stanleys was the wartime road from Bulldog to Wau, built by Australian Army Engineers. That was a tremendous feat. But the achievement of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart is all the more astonishing when one remembers that for tools they had only picks and shovels, crowbars and dynamite.

Father Dubuy did not live to see the completion of his last and most difficult road-building task. He was killed in a landslide near his own station of Ononge on August 16, 1952.

There still, from time to time, appear a few irresponsible people who assert that the Territory of Papua and New Guinea would do much better if it were not for the presence of missionaries. They should go and make a survey of the Kairuku and Goilala Sub- Districts, and see for themselves how the Fathers are not solely con cerned with the teaching of Christianity. The work of the French Missionaries of the Sacred Heart should be better known, as it reflects this spirit of unselfishness which is not discouraged by any difficulty and which has maintained unabated the enthusiasm of the old pioneers.

If Mrs. J. Hodgkinson, of Pymble, recently left Sydney with her two small daughters to join her hus band at Lautoka, Fiji.

Advertisements & other items, pp. 87-88 (1 item)

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Fiji Broadcast Services

p. 89

Extended

otjva Tnnp SUVA broadcast station ZJV ha s uva broadcast station zjv has ex * tei Sf?S of broadcasting hours to 10.30 pm, except on Sundays, as from July 1.

This is the latest move in a steadily improving service provided by the station under the management of Mr. Frank Exon and his small but active staff.

The station gave a particularly good coverage of the Coronation celebrations in June, not a single important event being missed. The new short-wave outlet provides good daylight reception in all parts of the Group.

To date, the morning and mid

day sessions have not been broad cast on the short-wave channel except during the Coronation period.

It is anticipated that the short wave transmitter on 3980 kc/s will, however, be brought into full use in July in parallel with the broad cast-band frequency of 930 kc/s.

U Two boxers, Kitione Lavae, a 13stone Tongan, and Jone Roke Soro, a Fijian, arrived at Auckland late June for a programme of fights in New Zealand. Lavae, aged 19, having won all his five contest fights in the Islands, claims to be heavyweight champion of the South Pacific Islands. Soro, a middleweight, is champion in his class in Fiji, having won all his nine fights there.

Advertisements & other items, pp. 89-90 (1 item)

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p. 90

From Our Own Correspondent

Moresby, July 15.

VIT'HEN the Papuan and New Guinea.

Coronation Contingent arrived back in Moresby from Britain on July 7, they were still rather tongue-tied about their experiences abroad, and few got farther than saying everything was “Number One too much.”

But it is a safe bet that by now, and back among their own people, they are telling some wonderful stories about the trip.

Sergeant Major Guiz gave a clue to the Papuan policeman’s view r of their Queen when he repeated a remark made by one of the lads who described Her Majesty as “a beautiful little Sinabada.”

Apparently it was a great surprise to find that the Queen was young; and they all agreed that she was beautiful.

From their talks over the A.B.C. Native Session at Port Moresby, it was clear that among the many wonders of the great town of London the sight of double decker buses was really one of the Big Things. The Spithead Naval Review left most of them speechless, and while on sea topics the boys were intrigued, and perhaps a little concerned, when they learned from some chance conversation that people who died at sea were buried at sea.

But no doubt the best accounts of their experiences and reactions are being given to their own people, to wide-eyed village groups, and their comrades in the police force.

It was gratifying, and a tribute to the Force, that on their return Inspector Sinclair, the officer in charge of the Contingent, was able to say that the men had gone through the trip with exemplary behaviour. “They were splendid,” he said, “I didn’t even have to speak to them once on the point of

conduct.”

Moresby Correspondent.

IT Mr. McKenzie, Secretary to Gov ernment, Gilbert & Ellice Islands Colony, who recently resigned, left for New Zealand in June.

Advertisements & other items, p. 90 (1 item)

Solution to Crossquiz

from page 70

Mother Agnes

p. 91

Legion of Honour for Mother Agnes

During the visit of the French patrol [?] aft "Tiare” to Suva in July, Captain [?] oudayer had the pleasant duty of be [?]owing on the Rev. Mother M. Agnes, [?] f Makogai leper station, the award of

Legion of Honour. Mother Agnes now lives in retirement on Mokogai.

Accompanied by His Excellency the Governor (Sir Ronald Garvey), the French Consul (Mr. M. Helsen), the Director of Fiji Medical Services (Dr. J. M. Cruikshank) and Wing Commander Trignance of the RMZAF, Captain Houdayer was flown across to Makoga s in a RNZAF Catalina. There a Boy Scout guard of honour greeted the party. They were welcomed by Dr. T. Jefferson.

Speeches were made and the photo shows Commander Houdayer pinning the decoration on Mother Agnes. —Fiji Public Relations Office Photo.

American Samoa?

p. 91

Another Governor for American Samoa?

GOVERNOR T.nwrpnn* TnHH J ’ V JLKJNUK LawrenCS Judd, Who was appointed to Eastern Samoa about three months ago and arrived there in mid-April, departed again On May 25 due to ill health, It is believed that Ml'. Judd has not actually resigned as yst, although his return to Samoa appears to be in doubt.

Advertisements & other items, p. 91 (2 items)

85

ACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY AUGUST, 1953

Impuoh Lighting

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Sydney Agents: BURNS, PHILP & CO., LTD., 7 Bridge St.

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Shipments Increase

p. 92

Samoan Banana

HELD back by a dry season last year, Western Samoa’s promised large exports of bananas have definitely “arrived” this season.

To the end of June, this year, 129,663 cases had been shipped— with reasonable prospects of a further 100,000 cases before the season closes, if weather and ship ping behave.

Last year only 35,784 cases were shipped in the entire year.

W. Samoa’s Director of Agricul ture, H. S. Newton, reports that the new smaller crate, holding 20 less fruit, is proving very popular with ah who handle it—and especially with the producers who are receiv ing the same 9/- for the smaller quantity of fruit.

Another Malaria Cure?

p. 92

Dr. L. T. COGGESHALL, dean of the division of biological sciences at the University of Chicago and a well-known auth ority on malaria, is reported to have claimed that primaquine, a drug derived from coal tar, has been proved as a cure as well as a pre ventative for malaria. It is taken by mouth once a week for a period of ten weeks.

A well-known medical authority

says that primaquine, also known as pentaquine, is one of the very new drugs being tried out in the USA and Great Britain, and so far very little about them has appeared in medical journals.

The works committee of the Lautoka (Fiji) town council recom

mended late June that a loan of £15,000 to £20,000 be raised for the erection of new council chambers and offices. The committee con sidered that an alternative site might be investigated, other than the park opposite the Lautoka Hotel. Use of that site would de prive the town of an attractive park.

Advertisements & other items, p. 92 (1 item)

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Race Meeting

p. 93

Apia’s Coronation Race Meeting

Spellbound is shown here winning the Coronation Purse at a race meeting held in Apia, Western Samoa, on June 3.

Valant was second and Sonny II, third.

Highland Trainee Nurses

p. 93

Two native girls from the Chimbu District in the New Guinea High lands have started training as nurses at the Saiho Infant Welfare Centre in the Northern District.

They will probably go home on leave after the first year, and then return for another two years’ train ing. By that time it is hoped that other Chimbu girls will have started the course.

Eventually they will return to help in the care of mothers and children at the Chimbu Native Hospital.

Several other native infant nurses are doing courses at Port Moresby and Saiho.

New School for Tarawa

p. 93

THE new King George V govern ment boarding school was opened at Tarawa, Gilbert Islands, on June 3, by the wife of the Resident Commissioner of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony, Mrs. M. L. Bernacchi.

It is not yet completed, but will eventually accommodate about 150 boarders. In June, 30 Gilbertese boys were attending, and a further 30 were expected from the Ellice Is.

The new school, which is located at Bikenibeu, about 8 miles east of Bairiki, replaces one of the same name formerly at Bairiki and de stroyed during the war.

The new Government hospital will eventually be built in this area close to the school. f Mr. A. Henderson, officer in charge of the Meteorological Office, Suva, left Suva in June on three months’ leave in New Zealand.

Advertisements & other items, pp. 93-100 (3 items)

87

ACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY AUGUST. 1953

Nmmww

Streamlined

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In old homes or new, enjoy the advantages of a Wunderlich "Wunderbrite" Stainless Steel Sink now.

Available 4', 4'6", 5' and 6' long, the latter also with a double bowl.

Ask your local Hardware Merchant, Phone MX 2411, or write to Wunderlich Limited, Box 474, G.P.0., Sydney, for illustrated leaflet and prices. s

NMMWw

COMBINATION SINK & DRAINER

WM. BRECKWOLDT & CO,

P.O. Box 22, Millett Bldg.,

RABAUL. I SUVA.

Cable address: BREWO.

Representing throughout Pacific Islands: Breckwoldt G* Co., Hamburg, Germany.

Brewo-Export, 5.r.1., Milano, Italy.

Konishi & Co. Ltd., Osaka, Japan.

India Cp East Asia Export Co. S.A., Antwerp, Belgium.

SOLE AGENTS THROUGHOUT PACIFIC ISLANDS FOR:

PFTR nivi?v y Brand ? Cer ' FEUERHAND Hurricane BREWO Brand Perlon Fish- Pressure Lamps. Lanterns. ine Lines “Snnw’ Rr v • OLYMPIA Typewriters. BREWO Brand Briar Tobacco IWO LIONS Brand Knives. HMG Diesel Marine Engines. Pipes.

Enquiries Invited. Enquiries Invited.

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bur Capstan

finejcut Tobacco

always fresh

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TO OPEN. TWIST A COIN

The patented s||aled lid is easily opened by molely inserting a coin and twistpg.

CAPSTAN

FLAKE FINE CUT & NAVY CUT-FRAGRANT VIRGINIA TOBACCO / / ///> ii

THE

YORKSHIRF

INSURANCE

CO. LTD.

(Incorporated in England)

ALL CLASSES OF

INSURANCE

Including Fire—Accident—Guarantee —Motor—Workers—Marine Island Representatives: PORT MORESBY . . E A. James RABAUL G B. Black LAE . New Guinea Industries Ltd.

MADANG . . . . R. Macgregor MANUS . . Edgell & Whlteley Ltd.

SUVA Williams & Gosling Ltd.

NOUMEA . . . Y. Mortensen

NORFOLK ISLAND A E. Martin

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The can't-be-copied flavour of Heinz Tomato Sauce makes a magical difference to stews, gravies and countless other dishes. It's made from Heinz famous "Aristocrat" tomatoes.

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HEINZt.

omafo Sauce

H. J. HEINZ CO. PTY. LTD.

479 Bourke Street, Sydney.

HEIKZ

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W. H. GROVE & SONS LTD.

Established 1896.

Islond Merchonts

16-18 FANSHAWE ST., AUCKLAND.

Telegraphic and Cable Address: "Grove,” Auckland. P.O. Box 490, Auckland, New Zealand.

Entrust your requirements to the firm with more than 55 years practical experience in the Island trade.

REPRESENTING ENGLISH MANUFACTURERS

THROUGHOUT FIJI, SAMOA, TONGA, NEW HEBRIDES, NEW CALEDONIA SOLOMON ISLANDS, SOCIETY ISLANDS, COOK ISLANDS, NIUE, ETC. ' SHIPPERS OF ALL CLASSES OF NEW ZEALAND MANUFACTURES AND PRODUCTS SPECIALLY PREPARED FOR THE ISLAND TRADE WE HANDLE ALL KINDS OF ISLAND PRODUCE.

IN FIJI as ; W. H. GROVE & SONS (FIJI) LIMITED.

Office and Sample Boom; Bank of New South Wales Chambers, Sura, Fiji.

Throughout

the

South-West Pacific

ck * i The development of the South-West Pacific Area has been fostered by the Bank of New South Wales since 1817. Today, comprehensive banking travel and trade introduction services are provided in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Papua and New Guinea by over 800 branches and agencies of the Bank. Residents of, and visitors to the Islands are invited to avail themselves of the “Wales” complete banking service at the following points:—

FIJI

PAPUA

NEW GUINEA

Branches —Suva, Lautoka, Ba.

Agencies—Nadi Airport, Vatukoula.

Branch—Port Moresby.

Branches —Lae, RabauL : :' . 4 •< < ft of New South Jfalet Suva Branch

Consult and use

BANK OF

NEW SOUTH WALES

Head Office — Sydney, Australia.

FIRST AND LARGEST COMMERCIAL BANK IN THE SOUTH-WEST PACIF (Incorporated in New South Wales with limited liability.)

AND

NILE ATHLETIC

SHIRTS

Available in all sizes (men and boys), in white, navy and a large range of bright, attractive colours.

NILE SLEEKS & TRUNKS

Masculine comfort calls for the '’freedom fit” of Nile sleeks and trunks.

Fashioned from the finest Egyptian yarns, Nile underwear withstands constant laundering . . . gives lasting satisfaction.

LADIES’ BRIEFS AND SINGLETS

Nile offers a particularly fine range of ladies’ and children’s cotton and rayon cotton briefs, pantees and singlets.

BUY

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Nile products include a beautifully varied range of ladies’ and men’* handkerchiefs, including printed bandana in assorted designs and colours.

PRODUCTS

FROM YOUR

SYDNEY AGENT

Pioneer Distributors Ply. Ltd., 134 Broadway, Sydney.

NILE SHEETS, PILLOW CASES AND TOWELS

An attractive range of Erin-Art sheets and pillow cases in all sizes; te towels and brightly coloured bungalow cloths are offered by Nile. Further more, there are cotton prints suitable for lap laps or cotton frocks, as we] as all sizes and colours in Nile jacquard towels, Nile beach towels am bath towels. NL2A-52

ASTHMA

(MM Don t let coughing sneezing, wheezing attacks of Asthma and Bronchitis poison your system, sap your energy, ruin your health and weaken your heart.

Mendaco, a famous new American scientific medicine, starts Immediately to circulate through the blood, quickly curbing the attacks. The very first day the thick phlegm is dissolved, thus giving free easy breathing and letting you sleep the night through in peace and comfort. Get Mendaco from your chemist or store to-day under guarantee to stop your Asthma coughing and to give you free easy breathing the first day or money back.

NELSON and ROBERTSON Pty. Ltd.

Established 1895. 7

ISLANDS MERCHANTS, IMPORTERS AND EXPORTERS

All Merchandise purchased for Clients at Best Factory and Wholesale prices. Original invoices supplied. Cocoa Beans, Coffee Beans, Shell and all Islands Produce sold on commission.

Entrust Your Requirements to the Firm with the Record of Fifty-eight Years’ Faithful Service to Island Clients.

Representing throughout Pacific Islands :

GENERAL MERCHANDISE

E. WHITE AW AY & CO.. England.

KUNST & ALBERS, Germany.

AOIMER COMPANY, Italy.

INCOVER COMPANY. Italy.

CALVERT & COMPANY. Sweden.

KANEMATBU & CO., Japan.

SKANDIA DIESEL ENGINES—

BERGBOLAGEN, Sweden.

SHOT GUNS.—

EL TRUST, Spain.

BEER.—

HOLSTEN BREWERIES, Germany.

World Renowned NANDR Quality Products.

OVERSEA INDENTS

ARRANGED

FOR CLIENTS.

Managing Agents : " Tusculum "

PRIVATE HOTEL

Potts Point, Sydney.

NELSON & ROBERTSON

PTY.

LTD.

12 SPRING STREET, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

Telegraphic address: “IVAN,” SYDNEY.

Branch Office: Burke Building, Stanley Street, South Brisbane. Telegrap Address “IVAN,” BRISBANE.

Never a dull meal

when you serve

RALEIGH

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Canned Foods

RALEIGH CORNED BEEF LOAF

12 oz. cans. Corned Beef with Cereal —53 A5 3 A lb. taper cans. Stewed Steak and Steak and Kidney Always keep a good supply of Raleigh quality foods in your pantry for instant main course variety, or for quick, easy salads. 12 oz. and 16 oz. cans.

GREEN GARDEN PEAS

French Beans IOVi oz., 16 oz., and 28 oz. cans.

Sliced Carrots, Mixed Vegetables, Beetroot, 16 oz. and 28 oz. cans. Sweetcorn—B oz. and 16 oz. cans.

RICH TOMATO SAUCE

10 oz., 13 oz., 20 oz., 26 oz. bottles. Peeled Tomatoes 16 oz. cans. Whole tomatoes, 28 oz. cans. Tomato Juice, 16 oz. and 28 oz. 1 cans. Spaghetti in Tomato Sauce and Cheese; Baked Beans in Tomato Sauce 8 oz. and 16 oz. cans.

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There’s lots of nourishment in RALEIGH Canned Meats and Vegetables. Good eating and good for you too.

Trade Enquiries:

RALEIGH PRESERVING CO. LTD

501 Albion Street, West Brunswick, N. 12, Victoria. Cables: ‘“Raleighpres,” Melbourne.

Solve Fiji-Solomons Problems by Indian Migration

PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY— A U G U S T , 1953

Solve Fiji-Solomons Problems by Indian Migration (Continued from Page 20)

War Against Communism

p. 101

101

High Cost of France’s War Against Communism Tahiti’s New Secretary- General Speaks Out

Monsieur t. h. diffre arrived in Papeete, Tahiti, from Paris on July 9, as new Secretary General and Deputy Governor of French Oceania. M. Diffre suc ceeds M. Gaston Sully, who was withdrawn to Paris in June.

Madame Diffre will join her hus band in the Tahiti capital in August, travelling from France by the new MM liner Tahitien.

M. Diffre was active in the Re sistance Movement under General du Gaulle, and served in the Bth Army at Bir Hakeim and elsewhere under General Koenig. He was awarded the Legion of Honour and the Liberation Cross. He has cently been Chief of Staff to the Minister of French Overseas Terri tories, and prior to that, Technical Adviser to the French Premier on Overseas Territory problems.

En route to his new post, M.

Diffre, in the United States and again in Fiji, made a plea for a greater appreciation by English speaking peoples—especially those in the Pacific —of the enormous, and

perhaps unappreciated, price that France is paying in the fight against Communism in the Far East.

The English-speaking press, pre occupied with the war in Korea, tends to overlook the struggle that continues in Indo China, he said.

For France, World War II has never ended. Month by month thousands of young Frenchmen are dying in that struggle, and the financial burden is tremendous.

When people return from a brief visit to Europe and speak adversely of the reconstruction in France as compared with Germany, let them remember what a fortune in treasure and lives is being poured out over seas by' France, M. Diffre said.

Let them remember, too, he con tinued, that beneath the surface game of party politics in France there is plenty of stability. It is perhaps not appreciated that since 1944 there have been but two French Foreign Ministers—and both of the same party. The French political system is very different to that of England, Australia or New Zealand.

Even when a government resigns the same Ministers carry on with their jobs until a new government is established. There is no inter ruption to programmes of public works, etc., which have been approved by a retiring government.

While in Suva, M. Diffre paid a courtesy visit on the Governor, Sir Ronald Garvey.

Advertisements & other items, p. 101 (1 item)

A. H. Bunting Ltd.

To keep clothes really white always use a little Reckitt’s Blue in the last rinse.

SAMARAI PAPUA

Branches at: ORO BAY AND POPONDETTA.

SAMARAI AGENTS FOR:—

Vacuum Oil Co. Pty., Ltd.

South British Insurance Co.

National Mutual Life Association

SOLE AGENTS IN PAPUA/NEW GUINEA FOR:

Polarizers (U.K.), Ltd.—Polaroid Sun Glasses.* C.S.A. Industries, Eng.—Dual Freeze Refrigerators.

Webley & Scott, Ltd.—Shot Guns, Air Pistols, etc.

E. K. Cole, Ltd., London.—“Ekco” Radio Receivers.

“Getula.”—Nylon Monofilament Fish Lines.

Davison Paints, Ltd., N.S.W.—Paint for Tropical Conditions. • Trade mark patented In U.S.A., Great Britain, and other countries.

REGULAR SUPPLIES OF EASTERN GOODS

WHOLESALE & RETAIL MERCHANTS IMPORTERS PLANTERS

More Expert

p. 102

102

Study Of

South Pacific Natives

I WAS not favoured with a review copy of The South Seas in Transition : A Study of Post- War Rehabilitation and Reconstruc tion in Three British Pacific Dependencies, by Mr. W. E. H.

Stanner, a lecturer at the Austra lian National University, Neverthe less, because of the respect I have for Mr, Stanner (he is now Aus tralia’s junior Commissioner on the South Pacific Commission) I procured a copy, and tried con scientiously to read it. I wanted to see what Mr. Stanner is bringing to the SPC. Frankly, I don’t know.

An enormous amount of work has been put into the compilation. Any one who wants facts and figures relating to the post-war adminis tration in Papua-New Guinea, Fiji and Samoa may find this record helpful. But, because of the pro fessional style of writing, and the long involved sentences, no one will read the book unless he is com pelled.

Fiji and Samoa each get 100 pages of intensive sociological study: 170 pages are devoted to New Guinea; and there are nearly 70 pages of weighty conclusions. Here, among 9

the New Guinea conclusions, is a

typical sentence:

The breakdown of all shape and line in the traditional native social structures and the dissolution of traditional cultures into unrelated fragments continue in a context in which, it can safely be said, the number of new coherences appearing is unequal to the number disappearing,

though some fascinating native experi ments in mixing new and ancient ways are occurring very widely. The upshot is completely unpredictable.

Well, we at least are assured that the SPC will be guided conscien tiously through the mazes of sociology, as applied to the natives

of the South Pacific Islands-

Rwr.

Advertisements & other items, p. 102 (1 item)

Nchor

TURNERS & GROWERS LTD.

AUCTIONEERS FRUIT & PRODUCE MERCHANTS

AUCKLAND NEW ZEALAND

WE SPECIALISE IN THE EXPORT TO THE TROPICS

OF NEW ZEALAND PRODUCE, POTATOES, ONIONS,

APPLES AND FRUITS IN SEASON

All Inquiries to our Export Organisation:

Turners Supply Company Limited

Box 1370, Cables: Auckland, N.Z. “Tusco,” Auckland

fon oven zs vbaks

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noun BKANV in THB

PACIFIC islmos

GILLESPIE'S

★ Gillespie’s Anchor Flour is milled from selected high quality Australian wheats and is enfolded for purity. Its consistent high quality has made it the best-known, most asked-for brand of flour in the Islands. (Enlolelion is a special new purify ing process which reduces the risk of insect infestation).

NCHOR

FLOUR

GILLESPIE BROS. PT Y. LTD., ANCHOR FLOUR MILLS. SYDNEY

Suva “Welcomes”

p. 103

103

Tahiti’S Mayor

SUVA, July 15.

M. ALFRED POROI, Mayor of Papeete, leader of the Right Wing political coalition of French Oceania, and leading citizen of Tahiti, will probably not quickly forget Suva, Fiji.

He passed through there recently on his way to and from France.

It might be thought that some one in the Colony of Fiji would be well aware of M.

Poroi’s status in the community, but when he arrived from Papeete in June no one in Suva made the slightest move to welcome him officially.

On his return to Tahiti by TEAL via Auckland and Suva in July, he arrived in Fiji to find himself with out so much as a bedroom, although PlM’s representative had passed the word to several interested quarters that M. Poroi would be in Suva.

Inquiry revealed that TEAL’S booking department, noting that the name on the passenger list “appeared to be that of an Islander,” booked him in to the poorest hotel in town and one of the few that will accom modate “natives.”

This error was rectified to the extent that M. Poroi was trans ferred to the Grand Pacific Hotel —and given a bed in a passageway, and the use of a bathroom-lavatory in which to hang his clothes.

Sir Alport Barker, a resident of the GPH, and Mr. W. H. Grove did some pleading on his behalf in vari ous quarters but it appeared that nothing could be done.

If nothing better than this awaits a distinguished visitor it seems high time that Suva looked into its machinery for showing a little more hospitality to unexpected guests.

The slight offered M. Poroi would certainly never happen in Tahiti.

Fiji’s New Broadcasting

p. 103

103

Policy

AN important policy decision reached at the first meeting of the newly formed Fiji Broad casting Commission on July 3, was that commercially-sponsored pro grammes will be used to help cover operational costs.

It was also decided to seek the services of a manager of proved out standing ability on secondment from one of the broadcasting organ isations of the British Common wealth.

Due to delay in the building of the new Broadcasting House, the Commission will not take over full responsibility for Broadcasting in the Colony until the middle of next year.

Mr, Len Usher was appointed in terim Secretary to the Commission.

Mr. S. G. Marshall, Acting Colonial Secretary (Development), attended the meeting by invitation.

Re-opened

p. 103

103

Hotel Les Tropiques Re-opened

ON July 4, about 500 people at tended the gala re-opening of Papeete’s popular Hotel Les Tropiques, now altered, extended and improved. The new joint owners, Captain F. I. F. Barnes, of Sydney, and Mr. Don Beachcomber, of Honolulu, arranged a special feast and floor-show for the occasion, with hula dancer Augustine the star performer. Eddie Lund provided the music. Special cock tails, invented by Don Beachcomber for the occasion, were an important feature.

A considerable fall in the net profit of Lolorua Rubber Estates Ltd., Papua, has been announced.

Net profit for the year ended April 30, 1953, was £9,920, showing a fall of £22,382 on the previous year.

Dividend has been reduced from 20 per cent, to 8 per cent.

Advertisements & other items, pp. 103-104 (2 items)

99

PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTH L Y AUGUST, 1953

Tyneside Foundry

We specialise In

COPYING AND ENLARGING FROM OLD

PHOTOGRAPHS AND COLOURING IN

NATURAL COLOURS.

Mail orders solicited.

CAINE’S STUDIOS. SUVA

P.O. Box 8, Sava, Fiji. (Estb. 1904). ’Phone: 68.

Couple constant production

with labour reduction . . . using

CHULA' COPRA DRYERS

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RUBBER ?

CHULA” COPRA DRYERS

Cut your labour costs.

Produce highest grade copra.

Operate continually in all weathers* There is a model to suit any sized plantation.

If you are in England this

summer COME 1 0 NEWCAS iLE UPON TYNE and see an Exhibition of Rubber and

Coconut processing machinery

at our Factory

MAY 18 TO OCTOBER 31.

If so, let us supply you with the latest Huttenbedi Rubber Machinery as supplied to Malayan Rubber Estates. 1 Agents: Papua: The B.N.G. Trading Co. Ltd.

Port Moresby.

New Guinea: Burns Philp (New Guinea) Ltd.

Rabaul, Lae, Madang and Kavieng.

Fiji, Samoa, Tonga: Morris Hedstrom, Ltd. Suva, Fiji.

Solomon Islands: K. H. Dalrymple Hay Pty. Ltd.

Honiara.

For more information about "Chula’* Dryers and other plantation machinery, please contact your nearest agent or write direct to us.

TYNESIDE FOUNDRY

& ENGINEERING CO. LTD.

Patentees and Sole Manufacturers. Established 1896.

Elswick * Newcastle upon Tyne * England Telegrams and Cables: " Foundry , Newcastle-on-Tyne Cades: ABC sth and 6th Editions.

Tk fimt Fomilif hoi

B "i 5^6 H Js#: ■ss£ 3 4> JN

Sit

£a

Sit

The most delicious fruit cake ever baked.

Rich with the choicest ingredients, "Big Sister" Fruit Cake, packed to stay fresh longer. Sealed in moisture-proof cellophane to preserve its full fruity flavour.

In 3 lb. and 6 lb. cartons The very heart of the Wheat Grain in its most delicious, easily digested form. Nourishing, vitamin-rich Wheatola the ideal food for infants, invalids and growing children.

Packed to stay sweet and fresh the choicest raisins, sultanas, currants, citrus peels and red cherries. Big Sister Fruit Mix for cakes, puddings, pies, tarts and desserts. In 12 oz. packets. £

feta 'Dtob*

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MADE BY ULUS & CO. LIMITED

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Down

p. 105

105

Flooded Rewa Brings

Driftwood And Soil

From Our Own Correspondent SUVA, July 15.

FOLLOWING a Suva dry-season week-end, in which 11 inches of rainfall was measured in 24 hours, heavy flooding took place in the Rewa River and its tributaries early in July.

On the morning of July 7, when the TEAL flight was due to leave Auckland for Lauthala Bay, the bay was a mass of floating logs, drift wood and debris of all kinds —an obvious danger to a flying-boat. As a result, the Solent, which had a full load of holiday-makers bound for Papeete Bastille celebrations, was delayed 24 hours.

Just how many hundreds of tons of rich, brown Viti Levu soil went swirling seaward from the Rewa during the first week in July would be interesting to discover. It was an instructive demonstration of how serious is the erosion problem in Fiji.

Aircraft pilots tell of a broad, clearly defined, brown band of water from the Rewa mouth, which extends south-east towards Tonga for 150 miles or more when the big river is in flood.

Advertisements & other items, p. 105 (2 items)

Rabaul Basketballers

Rabaul basketball finalist teams for the Coronation Cup—Banks and Comets.

Comets had a comfortable victory, 20 goals to 10.

Needham & Co. Pty. Ltd.

Allen Taylor & Co. Ltd.

COMMERCIAL ROAD, ROZELLE, SYDNEY.

Sawmillers and Wholesale Suppliers of Hardwoods for Constructional Purposes GIRDERS ... PILES .. . POLES . . . SLEEPERS, Etc.

Exporting to the Pacific Islands Since 1893.

NEEDHAM & CO. PTY. LTD.

307-309 QUEEN STREET, BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA.

G.P.O. Box 908. Cable Address: “BRUCECO,” Brisbane.

IMPORTERS - EXPORTERS

MANUFACTURERS' REPRESENTATIVES

Distributors for Leading Australian and Overseas Manufacturers.

Sole Agents : Papua-New Guinea and Solomon Islands for — Docke & Co., Bremen (Cardock Bush Knives, Hatchets, Axes, etc., including: All Trade Lines).

“Geo” Spanish Shot Guns.

Dominion Flour and Wheatmeal.

Sunnyside Canned Fruit.

Palm Brilliantine.

Ashby Bicycles.

Webster’s Biscuits.

“Can’t Tear ’Em” Sanforized Drill Shorts and Trousers.

Faultless Shirts. Pyjamas.

Northgate Axe and Hammer Handles.

Inner Spring Mattresses, Pillows, etc.

Specialising in Piecegoods and Mosquito Nets for Native Issue.

TRADE ENQUIRIES INVITED—ALL TYPES OF MERCHANDISE

OVERSEAS INDENTS ARRANGED

SUPPLIED,

From Nightclubs To

p. 106

106

Nukulaelae

Mr. Cyril Ander sen, a part-Polynesian who recently com pleted a four-years’ tour of American nightclubs, was a passenger on the Matua to Suva in May, en route to visit members of his family in Nukulaelae, Ellice Islands.

As a soloist, and also in partnership with a Hawaiian girl he met in New York, Mr. Andersen per

formed Polynesian songs and dances at nightclubs in Canada and the USA, in cluding the famous Copacabanca Club and the Hawaiian Room in New York’s Lexington Hotel.

His professional name is Tonoa, a title selected from a list of Polynesian words supplied to a Canadian theatrical agent.

It means “big bowl!”

Mr. Andersen, who says that Canadians and Americans showed great interest in Polynesian songs and culture, will return to Canada early next year.—JACK

Thornton.

If The Rev. C. W. Whonsbon Aston, representing the Anglican Diocese of Polynesia, has recently been on a lecture tour in Adelaide and the south-east of South Australia. He has spent 22 years in the South Pacific as a missionary, including four in NG and 18 in Polynesia.

If Mr. and Mrs. B. P. Rattan, school teachers from India, who joined the staff of the Deebandhoo High School, Suva, were welcomed by a large section of the Indian com munity of Suva at a gathering late in June. Mr. J, F. Grant, MBE, presided. Other speakers included Mr. S. Pratap, Mr. G. Patel (acting headmaster), and Mr. A. I. Deoki.

Plans have been approved and the

foundations of a substantial school were about to be laid on a beautiful site near Suva. Mr. and Mrs. Rat tan are graduates of Benares Uni versity.

If Mr. Tom Crowe, a former deck officer in CSR vessels, and now at tached to the staff of Suva Meteoro logical Office, returned to Fiji in May after leave in New Zealand.

Advertisements & other items, p. 106 (1 item)

1 SJ 1 '* 1 \v fti"

VICTOR KARP, TIM & CO.

350 George Street,

SYDNEY, N.S.W., AUSTRALIA.

EXPORTERS AND

MANUFACTURERS' AGENTS

Specialising in: Foodstuffs of all descriptions, Wheaten Products, Semolina, etc., Potatoes, Onions, Dried Peas, Jam, Canned Fruits, Canned Vegetables, Dairy Products, Wines, Cordials and Liqueurs.

ENQUIRIES INVITED

Cables: “ VICTORKARP ” SYDNEY.

1 SJ 1 '* 1 \v fti"

V/A 0$ m sf* <s>»° By Appointment Gin Distillers to the late King George VI Tanqueray, Gordon & Co. Ltd.

Gordon’s

Stands Sup’tztHJL

Before Court

Samoan High Chief

From Our Own Correspondent APIA, July 10.

HIGH Chief Fautaga, of Upolu, Western Samoa, was charged and convicted of “intimidation” in the Apia High Court in June, was fined £2O and subsequently de prived of his seat in the Fono of Faipule (Samoan Parliament).

Fautaga tried to compel two youths of his village to sell their copra to a certain co-operative store in which he was interested in stead of to a private store, as they wished. When they refused, he fined them.

Coronation Celebrations

Pitcairn Islanders’

Three days were devoted to Coronation celebrations by the population of Pitcairn Island. Games and parades occupied the first day, which ended with a concert in the new school. On the second day Pastor Ferris, SDA missionary, conducted a service in the church, then the colours were broken out and each child received a commemorative medallion. That night will be long remembered by the islanders for the grand display of fireworks which followed another concert in the school.

Some of the children were frightened at the noise the rockets made but all agreed it was very beautiful.

On the third day people assembled at the Courthouse by 2 a.m. to listen to the broadcast descriptions from London of the Coronation processions and of the service in Westminster Abbey. The cele brations concluded with a dinner and a concert in the Courthouse. Mrs. Ferris had made a three-tier Coronation cake surmounted by a crown. After the dinner each child was given a piece of the cake and a flag.

The islanders intended to hold a tree planting day in memory of the Coronation.

Each family had a tree to plant and the ceremony will take place when the elements have provided a suitable quantity of rain.

Oil Exploration in Papua

A USTRALASIAN Petroleum Company Pty., Ltd., and Island Exploration Company Pty., Ltd., reported in mid-July that operations to free the stuck drill pipe in the Omati bore are in progress.

An expert from USA, with special equip ment to assist in these operations, in now at the well.

The companies’ general manager, Mr. L.

A. Pym, and chief Geologist, Mr. N. A.

Osborne, have recently returned from a visit to UK and USA, in the course of which future exploration programme in Papua was discussed with overseas technical advisers. It has been decided to commence road construction to an additional drilling location early in 1954 and, also, at an early date to employ helicopters for jungle transport In order to speed up seismic surveys.

MM For Fijian Sergeant