Teopicalities

SCHOOL was in at the local pub. The hour was that pleasant one between sundown and the dinner gong. Another round of appetizers was just about to go the way of many others, when the con versation took an epicurean turn. We discussed choice and dainty dishes, most of which had never graced the pub’s otherwise correct and spotless table.

Mine host, “Old Tom,” stood it pretty well till someone broke in with, “Yes, a little Bombay Duck, in its proper turn, takes a lot of beating.” Duck— Solomons’ duck, or teal —was on the menu that evening and “Old Tom” could hold his speech no longer. “Helluva lot you people know about tucker!” he barked.

“Anyway, what’s the difference between your bluddy Bombay ducks, and them bouggers that flies over the ’ouse?” —

A.M.A.

IT is stated e’sewhere that 65 motor vehicles were included in the funeral procession of the late Mr. James Stewart, at Wau, New Guinea, recently. The point of interest lies in the fact that between the Morobe goldfield (of which Wau is the centre) and the coast of New Guinea there is no road —not even a track that a bullock-cart could use. Yet upon the roads of the Morobe tableland there are already some scores of motor cars and trucks. Everyone of them has been car ried in by aeroplanes. Sometimes they are flown in in pieces, and assembled: sometimes, a big, three-engined freight carrier just picks up a car as it stands, dumps it on the inside deck, and flies with it over the 5,000-feet mountains, to Wau or Bulolo. * * ♦ he’d by the New Guinea Admini y stration is of rather surprising pro portions. It amounted, on September 30, to no less than £320,000. This included £59.600 of cash on current account: £258 114 of “investments”: and £9,300 “due by other authorities.” A great pro portion of the total is represented by trust funds —£118,130 being the money of the official superannuation funds, and £133,500 being due to other trusts. It is interesting to note that £70,000 of cash has come into the hands of the Admini stration since it withdrew the Australian money in circulation and, in its place, issued its own perforated coinage.

The Administration is holding the £70,000 as a trust fund; but somehow, it does not seem morally right that merely by a gesture (minting a lot of more-or-less aluminium coins with holes in them) it should be given the advan tage of holding £70,000 —worth at least £3,000 per annum in interest alone. How ever, the N.G. Administration is not alone in this. It has been done by several Pacific Governments. And the same economic principle is involved every time one of them makes a special issue of postage stamps.

'T’IME lies heavy on idle hands; per * haps that is why South Seas people on furlough spin such tall yarns over a “mug” or two. We heard this one re cently, in Sydney, from an Islands man. who solemnly tried to tell us it actually happened in his home port; but perhaps it was the twinkle in his eye that made us take) it cum grano salis.

As a well-known trim white liner came into port (he sa'd) a grimy copra schooner floated immediately in front of her.

“Clear out of the way with that old scow,” shouted an officer on the bridge.

A round face appeared over the cabin hatchway.

“Are you the captain of that vessel?”

“No,” answered the officer.

“Then speak to your equals,” came from the copra-boat. “I’m the captain of this!” ♦ ♦ ♦ /Congratulations to His Lordship the Bishop of Melanesia for the way in which the Mission’s financial state ment for the year ended June 30, 1937, has been set out, as published recently m Australian ecclesiastical journals. The annual accounts, involving expenditure of over £37,000 in Melanesia, have been presented in great detail, showing in a readily-understandable fashion exactly how much money was received in contri butions from each source and how it was at each of the Mission’s stations, incidentally. the low figure for, the over head and administrative cost 6 of the Sydney office (the Diocesan base) sug gests that in Major Robinson, the Mission has, not only an indefatigable secretary, but also a commercial manager of some status.