New Radio Station In
pp. 25-26 · Read in the full issue
Northern Cooks
From Our Own Correspondent
Rarotonga, Mar. 12.
OADIO communication between Raro tonga and Manihiki, in the Northern Cook Group, has now been established for general use at certain specified hours.
The plant, which only recently has been installed, is worked by the Resident Agent, a former operator on the Sydney —’Frisco mail run.
The utility of the new station remains to be seen, although it is difficult to im agine what benefit it can confer on the 400 or 500 natives and two white men who inhabit this remote and harbourless
atoll. Local optimists have suggested that as a means of communication in times of sickness it will justify its erec tion; but anyone who has read a radio’d diagnosis by a layman realises at once that the seventh state of the patient is likely to be much worse than his first.
EDITORIAL NOTE. —Our correspondent has forgotten the pending establishment of Pan- American Airways Central Pacific service. All islands in the Central Pacific lying in or near the region between Hawaii and Samoa, suddenly have become important. The radio station at Manihiki, like that on Christmas Island, has an Imperial rather than an economic significance.
Archdeacon H. Harris, of the Anglican
Pro-Cathedral, Suva, Fiji, sailed from
Sydney with his wife and child for Lon don by the Straithaird on April 17.
Captain G. B. Nasmyth, Harbourmaster at Suva, returned to Fiji from England in March with his wife and daughter by the Niagara.
Miss Olive Russell, a teacher at the Methodist Mission’s Ballantine Memorial Girls’ School, Muanikau, Fiji, departed from Sydney for Suva by the Mariposa on March 22. Miss Russell spent ner furlough in Victoria.