On Sunny Norfolk Island

Macdhui Shows Them How-Some Distinguished Visitors and a Perfect Yacht

From Our Own Correspondent

Norfolk Island, Jan. 10.

AS idle as a painted ship upon a paint ed ocean,” the B.P. motor vessel Macdhui, diverted from her usual run for a tourist cruise, lay off our shores for 38 hours at New Year.

This is the first time that a visitor of such calibre has dared risk a night at anchor in our open waters, where weather conditions change as swiftly as woman’s mind and it is necessary to keep steam up and be ready to shift seaward at a moment’s notice. But Captain Rothery, commanding, and Captain Perry, serving for this special trip as chief officer, are familiar with local peculiarities, and were thus able to take risks that other com panies would not dare.

Not only did they allow their passeng ers to stay ashore for a most democratic dance at the Rawson Hall—attended by a large party from Government House and also by a muster of cooks, stewards and members of the crew of the Macdhui — but all night long, under a brilliant moon, over the sleeping sea, the dancers were transported to and fro without a splash to mar the splendour of fragile frocks and immaculate dress suits.

Laughter and song echoed over the water and strangely conjured up before the mental vision of the thoughtful on looker, pictures of other passengers com ing ashore a hundred years ago; rowing in over the same reef, coming alongside the same stone jetty. Gaunt, hollow eyed, wolfish convicts, shot with broad arrows, clanking with chains; landing never to sail again, but to work like driv en beasts as long as life might last under these alien skies and to die at last un cared for and unmourned —in many, many cases, upon the gallows that their own hands had helped to rear.

Notable Visitors

Among the visitors were the Premier of New South Wales and his family, snatch ing a hasty holiday, and they were enter tained at Government House, where Sir Hubert and Lady Murray were spending a few weeks in a climate a good deal more enjoyable than that of Papua at this time of year.

Sir Hubert has been quartering the is land with our own Administrator and has shown the keenest interest in the prob lems that beset Captain Pinney and his able staff. It must be intriguing for Sir Hubert to compare the bold, immense canvas of Papua, splashed in sheer black and white with the small intricate samp ler that is Norfolk —picked out in shades of varying green, patterned with pine trees and dotted with obstinate little human figures defying change and chal lenging every innovation.

He will have realised that at this par ticular stage of our development it may well be a more difficult task to take cau tious stitches in a sampler without dis turbing the balance and values of the whole design, than to make the sweeping gesture that introduces another shining band of white among the prevailing dark ness of his own territory.

New Zealand Yacht

For ten days past the little auxiliary yacht Morewa, just off the stocks in Auckland, and built for cruising among

the Pacific Islands, has been lying in turn off every anchorage around Norfolk. She really ran down here merely to try out her engines and to secure her ocean-go ing ticket- —if that is what you call it; but her owners, Mr. and Mrs. Macarthur, are having such a good time on the is land exchanging hospitalities with New Zealanders resident here that they can not persuade each other to leave.

Everybody interested in yachts or strangers has been welcome aboard and has come ashore again deeply envious and dissatisfied with their own drab lot.

Not only is the vessel herself a beautiful job—comparable, in the opinion of a resi dent yachtsman of world wide experience, to the best of her size and anywhere in English or American waters —a credit

to her builders, the Wilde Brothers, of Auckland —but her internal fittings are wonderful. There are electric stoves and refrigeration, a powerful wireless set, both for sending and receiving, a comprehensive library, and a baby cinema in stallation for the projection of pictures taken by Mrs. Macarthur as they wander about.

One can imagine no more agreeable lotus life than idling perpetually upon the deck of the Morewa while she sails in and out and round about the beautiful isles and islets of the blue Pacific.

To us, left sorting beans and grading bananas in exchange—as often as not — for debit notes, it is a picture calculated to turn us Bolshevik and Direct Action ists in a body.

Mr. M. Harper, a well-known trader and recruiter of Mandoliana, Solomon Islands, has purchased the A. V. Trader, a twin-screw vessel of 15 tons register, for use in connection with his work. As he now owns three small ships, he is known in his part of the Group as “Inch cape the Second.” Mr. Harper was in Sydney last year undergoing medical treatment, and appears to have made a complete recovery.