Tropicalities

MOST Australians have heard of the large quantities of food which their Mr. Beasley carried with him to starving Britain, and they have reacted to the story according to their personal convictions. But everyone up north — especially men in the shipping business— has laughed over one aspect of the inci dent that is not generally known down south.

The ship which carried the Beasley family went “north about,” and it spent a couple of days in Townsville. Towns ville, like all Australian ports, has a full quota of waterside thieves, and the ex perienced noses of these expert gentlemen guided them unerringly to the High Com missioner’s store of food. The extent of the cargo-broaching is not known; but It was on a scale sufficient to cause a ship board sensation when it was discovered.

A renort which came subsequently from Australia House on the subject of cargo pillaging blistered the gum on the air mail stamps.

The spectacle of a former Leftist Labourite being expertly robbed by tne watersiders (whom the Labour Govern ment has so consistently protected) has given keen delight to some simple-minded people. * ♦ • A RECENT Gallup Poll taken in Aus tralia from a representative cross section of the public, showed that 45 per cent, were against America tak ing over Manus (Admiralty Islands, TNG) as a permanent air-sea base; that 42 per cent, were in favour of it, and 13 per cent, had no opinion about it whatever.

Some of the comment:— Australia cannot afford to hand over its outposts. (Clerk, NSW.) It is Australia’s first line of defence. (Farmer, Qld.) If it came to a disagreement, the US would have us covered. (Farmer, Qld.) A friendly power in the north would protect us. (Farmer’s wife, SA.) America has the men and equipment to hold it. (Pensioner, NSW.) ♦ ♦ ♦ fTTHE scarcity of scissors and razors — JL they are totally unprocurable has had its effect on Mangaia tonsorial fashions. As in the Navy, one has ’em all on or all off! The luckless ones who cannot borrow a safety razor or clippers from a European go “bearded like the pard”; and sport Cavalier love-locks—fit to be tied with ribbon, too.

Others, managing an occasional loan of the tools to do the job, are shaven to the skin, and cropped to charm Cromwell.

We can get some Gillette blades still; but frames to hold them in have been off the local market since ’4O.

The Japanese used to make, in pre-war days, a “Good Morning” razor, at 2/6, that was ideal for the islands. Here, now, is a chance for Birmingham or Coventry.

The Polynesian market is crying out for scissors, knives, razors, needles (includ ing the musical variety), fish-hooks, etc., all formerly foreign-made. This trade

should now go to Britain.-

Eti.

HERE are some of the ships well known to Pacific travellers before the war which will not be seen again:— Three well-known ships of the E. and A.

Line, which were on the run from Aus

tralia to Japan. The “Tanda” and the “Nellore” were torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in the Indian Ocean, and the “Nankin” was captured by a German raider and taken to Japan.

“Rangitane,” of the NZ Shipping Co. line, which was captured and sunk by the three German raiders which bom barded Nauru and Ocean Island.

The Union Company’s “Awatea,” the blue-ribbon ship of the Tasman. Com manded by Captain A. H. Davey, she arrived in Sydney from New Zealand time after time ahead of schedule. She started her war service in December, 1939, by transporting troops from Wellington to Sydney. At the end of October, 1942, she joined the famous 500-ship armada bound for the Mediterranean. On November 11, during the North African landing the “Awatea” seemed to have been singled out by the enemy for special attention. Six or more bombers were over head continuously. The “Awatea” fought back with all her anti-aircraft guns and equipment, and claims to have shot down two aircraft and damaged others. Hit several times by bombs, the ship had to be abandoned. Left ablaze from stem to stern, the “Awatea” sank during the night.

Three of the Burns Philp island fleet.

During the bombardment of Darwin on February 19, 1942, the “Neptuna” was sunk after her commander, Captain W.

Michie, had been killed, and bombers got the “Macdhui” at Port Moresby four months later. Captain L. W. Millar went down with his ship, the “Tulagi,” when it was torpedoed in the Indian Ocean on March 28, 1944. There were only four survivors.

Based on article in “SMH.”

WHEN American troops landed on a certain island in the central Solo mons, news despatches informed the outside world that the landing was unopposed. But the story might easily have been different. Here is what hap pened during the period immediately pre ceding the American invasion.

A British officer had been sent to the island some time before to prepare the way for the landing parties. He had made his headquarters in the interior, and about a week before the date set for the invasion he left with some native scouts for the coastal area which had been selected as the beach-head. When he got there he found 300 Japs, most of them survivors of a recent naval action, bivouacking in a village overlooking the stretch of shore on which the Americans were to land.

It was a disturbing situation, but he devised means of coping with it. He sent two of his Solomon Island scouts down to the village with instructions to make friends with the Japs and persuade them that there was a much better bivouac area in the next bay.

The Islanders did their job thoroughly.

So glowing an account did they give of the facilities available at this alternative site (“plenty food, plenty water, plenty everything”) that the Japs moved off at dawn the next morning to seek this Shangri-La. As soon as they had gone the officer got to work preparing the beach-head for the American arrival and everything was ready at the appointed hour.

The landing, as the news despatches truthfully declared, was unopposed and the invasion force, a couple of days after

getting all its supplies ashore without interference of any kind, was able to make quick work of the unhappy Japs who were still searching vainly for the milk and honey which they had been told they would nnd flowing freely in the nexi

Bay.—Harold Cooper.

* * ♦ ONE sidelight on the Tongan centenary celebrations last December was strictly off the record. The cruiser “Euryalus” took some guns down there, and apparently the Navy wanted a record of this, so they sent a photographer to gether with Fox Movietone and Cine sound men from Sydney on the COMSOPAC’s personal plane.

The crew of the plane were all officers with the exception of one rating who had been attached to the plane as a sort of steward and valet. The plane was in structed to land at Nadi (Fiji), and the photographers were to come to Suva and join the cruiser for the Tongan trip. Com ing via Auckland, they discovered that there was a strip at Nausori, so they landed there.

On the evening prior to the cruiser’s departure, a cocktail party was thrown aboard, and all the notables in Suva were invited. The officers of the crew of the aircraft were also to be guests. Being a democratic bunch, they cast around for some means of taking the rating along with them, and, as he had a Fighting French badge, he was dressed up in Air Force uniform (without the tabs), and taken aboard in the guise of a Fighting French correspondent.

All went very well until the captain and commander of the cruiser bore down on the hapless “correspondent” and bom barded him with voluble French. The perpetrators of the hoax closed their eyes and slid beneath tables, but opened them in amazement when their steward burst forth in French so fluent that it made the captain (who spoke really good French) look like a novice.

The “correspondent” was a huge suc cess, the onlv lapse being when he absent mindedly took the caps off beer bottles

and filled everyone’s glasses.

W.

A FORMER District Commissioner in the Western Solomons, Major W. F. M.

Clemens, wrote from Bedford, Eng land, recently, to “Sydney Morning Herald,’’ challenging the accuracy of the finding of Justice Sir William Webb re garding the Japanese murder of Catho lic missionaries in Guadalcanal. Sir William found that the nriests and nuns were murdered, and that the nuns had been raped. Major Clemens gave details of various incidents which, according to his information, preceded the death of the missionaries, which he apparently thinks did something to explain the crime, and he declares there is no evi dence that the women were outraged. But he agrees that the missionaries were “despatched.”

'Hie letter was published on March 15.

Within three days it was answered, in vigorous style, by the secretary of the Australian War Crimes Commission, Mr.

W. E. Cuppaidge. He pointed out that Major Clemens’s statements were rash and offensive; that Sir William’s findings were based on the sworn oral testimony of the naval officer who found the bodies soon after the murder: and that, although Sir William was well known to have been seeking evidence of war crimes in the Pacific, from June, 1943, until January, 1946, Major Clemens did not communi cate with him—he would have been very pleased to take the major’s evidence.”

One gets the impression that Major Clemens, to use an Americanism, “stuck his neck out.”