About Islands People

Mr. Alex Wilson, Administrator of Norfolk Island, and formerly a member of the Australian Parliament, was a visitor to Canberra in November.

Mr. L. H. Trenn, who had been Resi dent Agent on Mangaia for four years, has been transferred to another part of the Cook Group. His successor on Mangaia had not been announced late in October.

Mr. William McKenzie has been ap pointed Superintendent of Native Schools in the Cook Islands.

Dr. C. A. Taylor, Director of the Tuber culosis Division of the New Zealand Department of Health was in Fiji in October to make a preliminary examina tion of problems connected with tuber culosis in the Colony, in the preparation for a full survey which is to be made in the near future. A sum of £14,000 has been allotted by the United Kingdom from the Colonial Development and Welfare Fund for carrying out the survey in Fiji, and a further £14,000 has been set aside for a similar survey in Western Pacific High Contmission Territories.

Miss Evelyn A. Downs, who was well known in the South Pacific as Principal of the Samoan Girls’ High School at Papauta, near Apia, in Western Samoa, has gone to Papua under the auspices of the London Missionary Society to under take special work connected with the education of native women and girls. She hopes eventually to establish in Papua a special school for Papuan native girls.

Miss Downs was 21 years in Samoa under the LMS; and in 1943 she went to Eng land on furlough. She then undertook overseas welfare work under the British War Office and in that capacity she served in uniform in Egypt and in India, until after the end of World War II. She spent a month in Canada before coming to Australia, where she had to wait several weeks for transport to Port Moresby. Miss Downs is the author of two books on life in Samoa— “The Bible and Drama,” and “Daughters of the Islands”—the latter published about a year ago.

Professor E. W. Gifford, an anthro pologist from California, USA, will visit Fiji about next February. He expects to make “an archaeological reconnaissance” of Viti Levu and Vanua Levu and to excavate certain sites where midden and cave deposits are likely to exist.

A Samoan radio operator, Itai, who, for some time had acted as postmaster at Fagamalo, Savai’i, was recently charged in Apia High Court with having in numerous cases stolen postal packets and sums of money from registered letters. A large stack of opened letters was discovered by the police under the mattress in his bedroom. He was found guilty on all charges and sentenced to two months’ imprisonment on each charge.

Messieurs Tupinier and Boyer, French Colonial inspectors, recently paid an offi cial visit to Caledonia and the New Heb rides.

Sister D. L. Beale, of Gladstone (Q.), returned recently to the Methodist Mission station in New Britain. At the outbreak of the war with Japan, Sister Beale was nursing at Vunairima, about 20 miles north of Rabaul. She was taken prisoner of war by the Japanese and interned in Japan. When she returns to New Britain she will live in a small two-roomed semi native house at Raluana, about 20 miles east of Rabaul, and will nurse in a tem porary hospital until the buildings lost

during the war are replaced.

Jmh.