About Islands

People

Rev. J. H. Spivey? of the London Mis sionary Society station at Abaiang, Gil bert Islands, is at present doing deputa tion work in South Australia.

Mr. David Hammer, of the Church of Christ Mission in the New Hebrides, is at present servirTg temporarily as min ister of Tumby Bay, South Australia.

Monsieur Maurice Schwob, who is in charge of the economic section of the Free French High Commissioner’s staff at Noumea. New Caledonia, visited Australia last month.

Rev. Godfrey Gilbert, of the Austra lian Board of Missions staff on Moa Island, Torres Strait, has been trans ferred to the Lockhart River Mission in Northern Australia.

Monsieur Henri Basquin, of La Foa, New Caledonia, was killed in a motor car accident last month near La Ton touta. The vehicle ran off the road and overturned, M. Basquin being killed and the two other occupants injured.

Mrs. Maud Payten, wife of Mr. H. A.

Payten, of Lord Howe Island, was brought to Sydney, critically ill, early in April, by flying'-boat. When the Lord Howe Island Board of Control in Sydney learned that an urgent operation was necessary, it contacted the military authorities and a seaplane was des patched early one morning; it alighted on the lagoon at LHI a few hours later, took aboard Mrs. Payten, and returned immediately to Sydney. From the land ing-place, she was taken by a waiting ambulance to Prince Henry Hospital.

Her condition on May 12 was described as “progressing favourably”.

Rev. John Gilkison, of the London Mis sionary Society, who died recently from blackwater fever at Mogubu, in the Mailu District, Papua, had been in the Territory only three years. He was just 28. Born in NZ, he studied for the min istry at Trinity Theological College, Auckland, and then was in charge of the Lower Hutt Congregational Church.

After receiving training in Sydney in tropical medicine and dentistry, and in anthropology, he went to Papua at the end of 1938. The following year he mar ried Miss Ngaire Hill, formerly an LMS worker in Western Samoa. A fortnight before Mr. Gilkison died, his wife and baby daughter were evacuated from Papua in company with other women residents. They now have returned to New Zealand.