Colony

Gilbert And Ellice

Mr. J. C. Barley Is New Resident Commissioner.

MR. J. C. BARLEY, who has been First District Officer in the Solomon Is lands Administration for some years, and who recently acted for a year as Resident Commissioner there, has been appointed to the position of Resident Commissioner of the Gilbert and Ellice Is. Colony, and already has departed for the Colony’s headquarters at Ocean Island.

Mr. and Mrs. Barley were on furlough in Australia when they received notice of the appointment, with the request that they proceed to Ocean Island as quickly as possible. They caught the “Mariposa” from Sydney to Suva on Oc tober 18, and then went on from Fiji to Ocean Island by the Gilbert and Ellice Is. Administration’s yacht “Nimanoa,” which met them at Suva.

Mr. Barley entered the service of the High Commission of the Western Pacific as a cadet, as soon as he left Oxford in 1911. He went to the Solomon Islands shortly afterwards and —except for 18 months when he was seconded for ser vice in Fiji—he has been in the Solomon Islands ever since, a period of 21 years.

Mr. Barley, therefore, is very well known throughout the Central Pacific and is highly esteemed by officials and resi dents alike.

Mr. Barley was married only four months ago to a Queensland girl. Mrs.

Barley will have an opportunity, such as falls to the lot of few young women, of

making close acquaintance with some of the less known and most interesting groups in the Pacific.

Mr. Grimble For West Indies.

Mr. A. F. Grimble, M.A., F.R.A.I., who had been Resident Commissioner in the Gilbert and Ellice Is. Colony for several years, has been appointed Administrator of St. Vincent, in the West Indies, which is part of the Windward Islands Admin istration. Mr. Grimble went first to the Gilbert and Ellice Is. as a cadet in 1914, after graduating from Cambridge Uni versity, and he has a very creditable record of service in the Central Pacific.

His health, however, has been very un satisfactory in recent years, and it was finally decided to transfer him to a ter ritory with a less trying climate. He sailed from London directly for the West Indies some time ago.