lights

Central Pacific Side lights

UNUSUAL and interesting sidelights on administrative conditions in the South Pacific appeared in an address to members of the British Empire Society given in November by Sir Harry Luke, KCMG, late Governor of Fiji, and High Commissioner for the Western Pacific. * * * He said that he would not describe Pitcairn Island as “a British possession,” which was a term wrongly used, and implying that Britain extracted some thing profitable from such places. The relationship between Great Britain and the countries under her flag was precisely the converse. He said that Pitcairn was an island that was British by settlement. * * * There are only three Condominia in the world —the Soudan, governed jointly by Britain and Egypt; New Hebrides (Britain and France); and Canton and Enderbury Islands (Britain and United States). * * * “The Polynesians are probably the finest and most lovable of the primitive peoples of the world—doughty fighters and capable of a very high level of civilisation.” * * * The native Fijians now have a degree of literacy of 95 per cent. * * * More gold was exported from Fiji in 1941 than from New Zealand; and Fiji contains the biggest sugar mill in the Southern Hemisphere. * * * Anyone who wanted to see true demo cracy functioning should study the system in vogue in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands —a system evolved by the natives them selves and preserved by the British and incorporated in the colonial adminis tration. * ♦ “The Tongans have contrived the per fect blend of native institutions, and such European customs as the present age makes necessary.” * * ♦ Captain Cook left, as a present to the High Chief in Tonga, a pair of tortoises.

The female died, but the male is still alive and well on into his third century.

“He is blind, and his shell has a great dent in it, but otherwise his vigour is unimpaired.” * * * “The Suva Medical School was started in the 1880’s for Fiji alone and at that time enlisted only Fijians; but as its value became known other Governments asked to be allowed to send their specially selected natives, with the result that the school now takes students, not only from Fiji and the High Commission Territories, but from the New Zealand mandated islands, from Nauru, and from the United States and French islands. It is, in fact, a rpedical University for the natives of the Pacific, and its expansion as such has been made possible by the generosity of the Rockefeller Foundation.” $ * * “The treatment at the Makogai leper Colony, in Fiji, is so humane the patients are not afraid to notify the disease as soon as they knew they have got it, with the result that the island has a higher percentage of discharges as cured than almost any other leprosarium in the world.” * * * “Ocean Island, the tiny capital of the Gilbert and Ellice Group, has an abori ginal population of 750 in all. From certain funds belonging to them they said they wished to give £lO,OOO to war funds.

I said it was far too much and that £2,000 would be more than generous. They re plied that the figure of £lO,OOO stood but would now be paid in pounds sterling, which raised the gift to £12,500 in their Australian pounds.”

Their offer to care for 35 evacuated British children having been refused, owing to transport difficulties, the 190 people on Pitcairn Island began to make walking sticks for disabled soldiers, and up to 1942 they had made and supplied about 1,000 sticks.

Since her return to South Australia from New Guinea, Miss E. M. Devitt, of the Anglican Mission, has been doing de putation work. She has visited many parishes in the country and the metro politan area delivering addresses, and her services are eagerly sought.