Origin Of Polynesian
p. 33 · Read in the full issue
Club
(Letter to the Editor) MAY I be permitted to correct a pardonable error appearing in a valedictory article on Mr. Eric Ramsden, in the September issue. Mr.
Ramsden had no hand in the founding of the Polynesian Club of Sydney; neither had Mrs. Page. They were present, at my invitation, at the first meeting of interested persons. This meeting took place at my parents’ home at Woollahra.
I was elected President (an office which I still hold), and Mrs. Waikainga Tipene was elected Chieftainess. At a later stage, Mrs. Page was Chieftainess, for a period, while Mrs. Tipene was absent in New Zealand.
My parents’ home had been a meeting place for Polynesian peoples for more than 25 years. When it was no longer available, I determined to found the Club, so that the men and women of Poly nesian blood would have a meeting-house in Sydney where they would always be welcome and at home. Our subsequent visiting list indicates that they felt just that way about the Club.
We commenced with a simple ideal, and we have maintained it. I should like to make a tribute here to the good heart and loyalty of the Polynesian people who live in Sydney, and those who have visited us. They have shown their ap preciation in that modest kind way for which they are known.
Regarding culture—that is to say, Poly nesian culture. The facts that the officers responsible for military education have seen fit to put the Club’s work on their educational list, and the concert-recitals
have met with unparalleled success at each appearance before the Forces, in dicate that, possibly, culture is not un known among us.
I am, etc.,
LEONARD MORAN, President.
Sydney, 2/11/1942.
Mr. E. J. Doxat, who was police super intendent in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony until the Japanese in vasion, is now a member of the staff of Gold Coast Colony.
Mr. A. J. K. Thomas, well-known in the New Hebrides, where he was a British District Agent, died at Vila on September 3. He started his service with the Con dominium Government as a clerk to the Registrar of Land Titles in 1929, was Acting-Interpreter of the Joint Court in 1931, and was promoted to District Agent, Northern Division, in 1936. Although a young man, Mr. Thomas has been in ill health for some time.