Tropicalities

SAVA RORE, a Solomon Islands native chief from Gaudalcanal, was not very impressed with Australia’s national capital when he visited there on June 6.

The reason the temperature at one stage of the day fell to 15 degrees and never at any stage reached 50 degrees.

Sava, who is an ordained Seventh Day Adventist minister on tour of Australia, shivered as he 'surveyed Canberra’s leaf less poplar trees and decided it was time he high-tailed it back home. The most enjoyable part of his stay was when he spent an hour in the steam heated in terior of Parliament House.

Accompanying Sava Rore were Pastor Norman A. Ferris (well known in the Solomons, where he has spent 20 years), and Pastor G. Branster, SDA president in southern NSW.

Pastor Ferris explained that the native chief had been on tour of the Common wealth since January, and had seen more of the country than most Australians but that Sava, at the moment, was interested more in getting back to tropical warmth, than anything else.

He would soon make his way to Towns ville, where both he and Pastor Ferris would leave, aboard the mission ship “Melanesia,” for the Solomons.

Sava Rore’s tour was financed by the mission, but was partly prompted by the British Government, which thought highly of his work on Guadalcanal against the Japanese. Sava’s main im pression of Australia, after travelling

through it for six months was; “Aus tralia’s a big place . . . and a cold one.”—G.S. * * * IT is reported from Noumea that Gov ernor Sautot, now on three months’ leave of absence prior to retirement from the French Colonial Service, is con sidering returning to Noumea as a settler. Prior to being put on board ship and Sent to London by Admiral d’Argenlieu, in May, 1942, M. Sautot, who afterwards became Governor of Übangui- Chari, in Central Africa, often said he would settle in Caledonia on his retire ment. Caledonians have never forgotten the role he played in September, 1940 (when Sautot, in New Hebrides, was the first French Colonial Administrator to declare for de Gaulle), and in subsequent years, when the Colony was cut off from France. —H.E.L.P. * * * IT seems that if you want an ocean going yacht within a reasonable time, the place to go for it is Suva, Fiji.

When Captain J. R. Gray returned to the Colony in January, after war service with the Navy in Australian waters, he planned a yacht for travelling to and from his coconut estate in the Lau Group.

Captain Gray’s dreams have, with the help of Mr. Charles Wippy’s shipyard at Walu Bay, Suva, already materialised and in early June the 26-ton “Siren” was launched and christened by Mrs. Gray.

Captain Gray is best known outside Fiji as the author of “World’s End,” a book published last year in Australia which tells of the adventures of the Grays on their plantation on one of the isolated Lau islands.

The 44 ft. “Siren” should be a welcome change after the small craft in which the Grays have previously junketed over the often-wild sea waves that surround the Colony of Fiji. She has been built for comfort. Amidships there is an owner’s stateroom 13 feet long by 12 ft. 6 in. wide and with headroom of 6ft. 9 in.

It will be fitted with two bunks, a dress ing table, writing desk and settee. Next door is a galley with an oil stove, refri gerator and a sink with running water; and next to the chair-locker there is a combination bathroom and dressing room.

“Siren” is ketch-rigged and has an 18 h.p. diesel engine. She is the fifth ocean going yacht owned by Captain Gray. * * * RUMOUR has it that Ray Parer is off adventuring again —this time in a boat purchased from Australian War Disposals Commission.

It is said that he intends to sail around Australia’s north coast and through the Gulf of Carpentaria to inspect a gold find which a friend of his is reported to have made on an island somewhere off Cape York.

Parer was decorated in World War I when he was one of the original members of the Australian Flying Corps. In 1920, he, with Macintosh, made history by fly ing an old military plane from England to Australia. A few years later Parer was in New Guinea operating his own air service over the mountains of Morobe.

He was there in the Territory right up until the Japanese occupation; but, in later years, he devoted his energies to

gold-mining, using a plane merely as his own private means of transport.

For part of World War II he served in American Small Ships. A couple of years ago Ray Parer married and bought a grocer’s shop in a Sydney suburb. Ap parently the novelty of the grocer’s shop soon palled and it was said that Ray could more often be found in the back yard with his head in some engine than behind the counter. ♦ * • WESTERN SAMOA, like almost every other country in the world at the present time, has a housing short age—a housing shortage. moreover, which extends even to hermit crabs.

Recently an Apia citizen, walking on a local beach, was struck by a strange, moving object. Close examination re vealed the head of an old clay pipe, broken off at the stem and the bowl realistically carved in the shape of a woman’s head. Means of locomotion was a hermit crab which had made its home inside.

These peculiar old clay pipes were given out to the “black-boys” in the days of the old German Long-Handle firm— maybe as long ago as 30 or 40 years.

Possibly it was broken and thrown away on the beach by its owner and then adopted as a congenial and artistic abode by succeeding generations of hermit crabs! —A.M.G. ♦ ♦ ♦ EAST from Astrolabe Bay, on the main land of Mandated New Guinea, runs what is commonly called the “Rai Coast”—and occasionally the “Maclay Coast.” The reason for the latter name is easy to find —it was named thus by Nicolai Miklouho Maclay, Russian scien tist-explorer-adyenturer, who as far back as 1871 was, in the cause of science, voluntarily marooned on that wild piece of coastline.

But why “Rai” Coast? No Territorian has yet been able to tell me.

F. S. Greenop, in his book on Maclay (“Who Travels Alone”) has this ex planation : “Maclay gave his own name to the coast between Cape Croiselles and Cape King William, and wrote of ‘my coast’ and the ‘Maclay Coast.’ When Mr. T. F.

Higgins (in recent years) was on the coast studying the natives, missionaries told him that the modern term ‘Rai Coast’ is a corruption by the natives of ‘Maclay Coast.’ ”

Has any reader any further light to throw upon this problem of New Guinea geography? Greenop’s solution may be the correct one; but the Rai Coast seems a too well-known piece of Territory nomenclature to be derived from a scientist whom the natives have long since forgotten, and whose very existence is completely unknown to the majority of present-day Territorial.—J.T. * * ♦ FIJIAN affairs were under the micro scope in the Wentworth Hotel, Sydney, on July 5, when Mr.

“Tommy” Horne entertained the follow ing gentlemen at luncheon: Mr. J. Dowl ing (retiring manager, Sydney branch of Morris, Hedstrom, Ltd.); Mr. Claude Israel (succeeding Mr. Dowling in Sydney); Mr. J. T. Johnstone; Mr. Arthur Rutledge (of Brown & Joske, Ltd.); Mr.

Coggins (secretary of Emperor Mines); Mr. Pat Costello (of Suva—holidaying in Australia); Mr. Hubert Sabben (mech anical engineer); Mr. Norman Casey (late Superintendent of Prisons in Fiji).

Mr. Horne was in his best form, and the rafters of the dignified Wentworth echoed to laughter as he told jsome of his choicest stories of Old Suva.