Tropicalities

SUPERSTITION lives on in Fiji, even among civilisation’s most modern gadgets.

At the Emperor goldmine, suspended over a travelling belt which carries crushed ore into the mill, is a large mag net, powerful enough to pull up and hold any stray bits of iron and steel which may have got among the stone, and which would damage the mill. one day, a Fijian, carrying on his shoulder a metal container of chemicals, came along that way, and passed close by the magnet. Suddenly he found him self off balance: some strange power was dragging him sideways. No one had ever told him about magnetism; but he knew all about tevoras (native spirits)—and so he dropped his burden and, with howls and prayers, he left that place in a very great hurry. • THERE’S a servant problem in New Zealand, as elsewhere. In Raro tonga, as elsewhere, there are many Polynesian maids who have felt the pro found and disturbing influences of war.

So the maids have gratified their urge to travel (with the approval of the NZ Government) and some two or three hundred worried NZ women thus have got domestic servants.

But the thoughtful and serious people of Rarotonga do not like the arrange ment at all. “They are not only taking away the best of our young women.” says one resident. “They are also causing a social upset in the whole native com munity, and they are striking right at the heart of the native birth-rate. It is a stupid innovation, perpetuating many of the social evils of war, and it is un worthy of an intelligent administration.” * WHEN the Commonwealth Oil Re fineries gave Private Fulton, of the Newcastle district, New South Wales some weather recording instru ments, Private Fulton went to work to list the temperature and rainfall registra tions of Lae, Madang and Alexishafen, New Guinea.

The lowest rainfall in the Madang area occurred in October, 1944. when 320 points were registered. The highest recording, according to Private Fulton, was in January, 1945, when 30 inches of rain fell.

The highest temperature was 110 degrees, in January 1945. The average temperature was about 90 degrees, and in 15 months the temperature never fell below 60 degrees.

Average monthly rainfall for the period was 872 points.

THiese figures may surprise some Terri torians. However, we gather that Army Administration has not been able to change Madang’s climate. It is still hot and wet.

It is records like these that probably cause some of Mr. J. T. Lang’s brain storms. It will be remembered that some months ago Mr. Lang proposed to the NSW Parliament that New Guinea’s sur plus water be piped to Australia’s Dead Heart. ♦ rUR sets df brothers who lived and played together as children in Fiji, are now serving in the RAF or Dominions Air Forces. They are Terry and Paddy Fenton, Weston and Keith Brooks. Bruce and Dennis Raker, and Russell and lan Leith.

Terry Fenton is flying Catalinas with the RNZAF, while his brother Paddv is on Venturas. Weston Brooks is with RAF

Coastal Command, and is flying Sunder lands. Keith Brooks is a ferry pilot, also in the RAF.

Bruce and Dennis Baker and Russell and lan Leith are all-with the RAAF.

Bruce has been instructing in Canada, and Dennis is flying Kittyhawks in the New Guinea and Netherlands East Indies war theatre. • TERRITORI AN, an officer in the AIF, who shall be nameless, wrote these verses while engaged in

“mowing-up” operations in Bougain

ville.

We’ve nineteen dead on the Buin Road, Ten more on the jungle track, And all day long there’s a broken tide Of our wounded streaming back.

We’ve fought all night by the Hongorai With never a bite nor sup, And to-morrow’s back page news will quote . . .

“Our forces are mopping up.”

As dawn awakes with a jaded eye, Discarding its mighty pall, White crosses mourn on the Numa Trail For fellows who gave their all; In Tsimba’s ridges, Soraken’s groves.

They drained to the dregs, hell’s cup, But the blood they gave was a trifling thing, They only were “mopping up.”

The screaming silence of ambushed swamp, The horror of obscene bog, The vicious foe, in a filthy league Of blanketing rain and fog, Are trivial things, which the critics know Should never hold heroes up; Good God! Why, this isn’t war at all . . .

We merely are “mopping up.”

We make no claim to heroic mould.

But this little boon we ask: That those armchair critics are sent up here To share in our “simple task.”

When they’ve been on speaking terms with death And have tallied the blood-cost up, Perhaps they’ll coin a more adequate phrase Than casual “mopping up!” * 'Y'HERE apparently is an animal called iC bureaucrati tropicus,” some examples of which have got into Fiji, judging by this letter in a recent issue of the <( Fiji Times”: Sir— I went to a shop to buy six penn’eth of screws. “Have you a permit?” I was asked.

“No! I’ve never had to have a permit for screws.”

“Well, you do now,” said the shopman.

“Sorry, I can’t sell them without the permit, but I’ll tell you what I can do.

If you buy hinges, I can put the screws in the hinges.”

“Don’t I have to have a permit to buy the hinges?” I asked incredulously.

“No, not for under a certain amount. I can sell you the screws you want with the hinges, but not the screws you want without the hinges!”

Now, I ask you, is the Government all there, or am I

“A Screw Loose.”

WHEN the schooner “Cimba” left Suva, Fiji, in April, the owner-skipper.

Mr. G. F. Russell, expected to make the round trip in her to Auckland and back to Suta. He took with him Mr. J. Malloy, of Suva, and Mr. F. Beddes, of Lautoka.

But, as the poet said, the schemes of

mere men often go agley—and this is how Mr. Russell, in effect, has “swallowed the anchor.”

The schooner reached Auckland on May 12—ten days overdue and after a fright ful buffeting—and shortly after Mr.

Russell met a young lady and almost immediately they were married.

He abandoned the “Cimba” and made the return trip to Suva by prosaic “Matua," settled his Fiji affairs, and flew back to New Zealand, where, it is under stood, he has' joined his wife in a busi ness venture. \ * DOES malaria recur after taking atebrin? Australian Repatriation Commission doctors say it does not — that, in effect, -if a soldier takes the prescribed course of atebrin after leaving infected areas he should be malaria-free.

John Isackson, an expert in Repatria tion matters, who writes for “Smith's Weekly,” is not so sure. Neither, appa rently. is the Army. Recently it experi mented upon a bunch of soldiers on leave —Army. instructed these soldiers not to take their atebrin after reaching Aus tralia, although presumably they had been taking the daily dose up until that time.

Result: most of them had several attacks of fever.

Whether wartime atebrin has a little something that the pre-war brew did not, we cannot say. But it was the opinion of most Territorians that atebrin did not always work a sure-fire cure. Those who had recurrent attacks after taking a course of the drug were as numerous as those who had been cured.

Because the Repatriation doctors believe that atebrin really works malaria is not pensionable. There has been a general wail about this in Australia, although few Territorians will quarrel about the deci sion if they do disagree about the reason for it. Only in exceptional cases would a full-time pension be warranted. Most people learn to cope with their fever as easily as they cope with a common cold.

Mr. Robert Dean Frisbie, well-known American writer, who has been residing in Rarotonga for some time, is now an inmate of the hospital at Pago Pago, American Samoa. Stomach disorders are being cured by a course of special treat ment.