Suffer Nostalgia

New Guinea People Suffer Nostalgia

MOST of those who attended the New Guinea Women’s Club Picture- Night in the Radio Theatre, Sydney, on June 29, suffered an acute attack of New Guinea nostalgia.

The first half of the programme con sisted of a selection of some of the best “shorts” of the past year, most of them concerning the South-west Pacific area, and showing glimpses of nieces that have impressed themselves indelibly upon the consciousness of all those who have been bitten deep by the Islands’ virus.

I never imagined that the day would come when I should hear a whispering sigh of mingled heart-ache and joy ripple through a representative crowd of Territorians at the pictured images of some ordinary - looking Melanesians thrown on a screen. But I have heard it now. If this war has done nothing else, it has taught each and every one of us to count our former blessings.

The sinking of the “Macdhui,” even to those who had seen the film previously, was like resurrecting and re-burying an old friend. It is to imagine a New Guinea without a “Macdhui.” Probably, at some time during the post-war period, the Pacific will revert to something ap proximating the Pacific we knew prior to Pearl Harbour: these Islands Territories have a way of rounding off all sharp angles of new experience and progress, and reducing them all to a common Pacific denominator. But one wonders seriously if an out-port will still be an out-port when there is no “Macdhui” to make a brief six-weekly call—and when this maker and breaker of romances, floating dining-room, pub. bridge to civilisation and bringer of all good things, is replaced bv one of the giant flying boats with which we are threatened “after the war.”

What will tropical bachelors do when ships’ musicians and round-tripping school teachers are no more? Or has the Atlantic Charter taken that one into consideration, also?

Dramatic sketches and musical items made up the second half of the pro gramme, and proceeds amounted to close on £3O. The entertainment committee of the club are to be congratulated on the success of their function.

Annual Meeting

Members, and all women interested in the Territories of the South-west Pacific, are reminded that the annual general meeting of the New Guinea Women’s Club will be held in the Feminist Club Rooms, 77 King Street, Sydney, at 2 p.m. on Saturday, July 17. Membership is not restricted to ex-residents of New Guinea

—all interested are invited to join.-

J.T.

Mr. E. (“Ted”) Taylor, formerly Assistant Director of Native Services in New Guinea and now a high official of the Australian New Guinea Administra tive Unit (ANGAU), with headquarters at Port Moresby, paid a visit to Sydney recently. He spoke of the unit’s enthu siasm and efficiency—achieved after months of organisation and hard work— and of the useful service it now is giving to the New Guinea Force. Many hun dreds of young men, former residents of Papua and New Guinea, are now in

Angau.