Tropicalities

MRS. NESTOR QUINTAL, of Norfolk Island has given me this recipe for green banana dumplings. When next you serve cornbeef hash, take grated green bananas, sufficient flour to bind, pepper, salt, and grated cheese, if you care for it. Mould into small dumplings and drop into boiling milk. Simmer at the side of the stove for half an hour.

They taste like our old friend (now, alas, very rare) rice dumplings. There is something about this dish that gives Oomph to tinned It.

Try also Aunt Elsie Adams’ fresh coconut tart. Line a deep tart dish with pastry. Grate one cup of fresh coconut into a cup of fairly thin egg custard. Add nutmeg and butter to top of dish and bake in a moderate oven. There is no better lining for a hungry tummy, believe

me!

A. A. Innes.

ALTHOUGH there are certain advant ages in living in the cliff village of Mangaia, the settlement does not lack its annual inconvenience of some kind. , „ , „ After the great storm and floods of 1944 we had a visitation of myriads of the ’so-called Chinese centipedes which came out from their burrows in the earth.

The year following there was a plague of fleas of truly Biblical proportions. Now we have another pest to worry us; The village huts are full of tiny mice, dwarfs of their kind, which have in some mysteri ous manner ousted the rat population— by sheer force of numbers probably.

These periodical visitations never fail to evoke the local taungas’ prognostica tions of some mighty event pending. In that respect our villagers share with the ancient Romans the belief that mice, etc., mean something—or they wouldn’t be in evidence.

The forthcoming triumph of the notori ous CIPA (if it eventuates) may be laid

at the mouse’s door!

E.G.

rLES from Suva Courts; Chinese ingenuity must have been taxed in the case of the names of a defendant in a petty theft charge at the Suva Magistrates’ Court recently. He was Wong Sing, alias Wong Lee, alias Hong Sing, alias Wong Lee, alias Wong Pak, alias Wong Pat, alias Wong Buck Young, alias Wong Him, Alias Ah Ham.

At the end of the list of aliases he was sentenced to a month’s jail and ordered to return two fountain pens which he had stolen from a Suva shop. * * * HE was doing what?” demanded the Chief Magistrate at the Suva Court when a police officer said that a Solomon Islander, charged with being under the influence of liquor, had been found arguing with a dumb Indian.

The officer repeated his statement and then added thoughtfully, “It was obvi ously a one-sided argument.”

The Solomon Islander, who had an ex cellent war record but no liquor permit,

was admonished ansi discharged.

J.S.

ALL the heavy, mumbo-jumbo machin ery of bureaucracy is being imported into the Territory of Papua-New Guinea. Recently, Mrs. Flora Stewart, Hotel Cecil, Lae, sought permission to supply liquor to the members of Basket Ball Club, Cricket Club and Returned Soldiers’ Club, during a ball, on New

Years’ Eve. Instead of the local authority simply saying “OK,” or words to that effect, there had to be an application to the Licensing Commissioner, solemn de liberation, and the publication in the “Gazette” of a long-winded notice, couched in the jargon of “officialese,” whereby “the said Flora ■ Shaw Stewart” was given the required permission. * * * THERE is personal interest for many Pacific Islanders in the announce ment that about April, General Douglas MacArthur the most colour ful personality of World War II will visit the United States, for the first time for ten years.

When Japan sprang at us in December, 1941, MacArthur commanded the Ameri can forces in the Philippines. His un expectedly long defence there so dis rupted Jap plans that the Jap expedi tions slated to occupy Fiji and New Zea land in February-March, 1942, could not come south until April-May just too late to achieve their purpose. MacArthur, in March, 1942, escaped from Bataan to Melbourne, to become Supreme Com mander in the Southwest Pacific. “I shall return” he told the Filipinos and how he kept his promise is a matter of history. .

MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific strategy was a thing beautiful to watch. The Japs had turned every mountainous island into a fortress, every atoll into a “station ary aircraft carrier,” and they confidently invited the Americans to come on, and batter themselves to pieces. MacArthur waited until he had established air superiority; and then he put his “leap frog tactics” into operation. He ignored most of the Jap-held islands, leaped over them, and at selected points he took islands which he made the spring-board for his jumps at the Marianas, Philippines and Japan. The Allied air and naval forces took charge of the seas and the wretched Japs, isolated in their hundreds of fortified islands, just naturally starved to death. .

Having done a splendid job since 1945 as the Ruler of Jaoan, MacArthur in April will go home, to receive, the Republican nomination to the Presidency; and his

election next year is a cer tainty. He is getting on in years well over 60 but he should be a great Presi dent. * * * Lady Freeston, wife of the newly-appointed Governor of Fiji, Sir Brian Freeston, was passing through Auckland, New Zea land, recently she visited the grave of her great-uncle, Captain Mercer, who was mortally wounded during the war between the British and the Maoris in 1863.

Captain Mercer, a Royal Artillery officer, was wounded while leading a charge against the Maori fortifications at Rangiriri, 50 miles south of Auckland, in November, 1863.

The town of Mercer, on the Waikato River was named in his honour.

Ladv Freeston searched in vain in the cemetery at Mer cer for her relative’s grave;

but, later, was correctly advised that it was in the Symonds Street, Ceme tery, in the heart of Auckland, where Captain William Hobson, New Zealand’s first Governor, and most of the people who died in the first half-century of Auckland’s existence were buried.

Sir Brian and Lady Freeston called on Queen Salote of Tonga, at the home in Auckland in which she is spending the

summer months.-

Ajs.

Australian-born botanist Mr.

Leonard Brass, recently arrived in Brisbane. Queensland, from America where he is attached to Florida biological station. He will lead an expedition to Cape York where six months’ study of plants, animals and birds will be made.

The trip is being sponsored by the American, Mr. Richard Archbold, for the American Museum of Natural History.

The former Archbold expeditions in New Guinea in 1933, 1936 and 1938 are well remembered by Territorians. The present Cape York exoedition will try to find the link between the natural history of Northern Queensland and that of New Guinea. —JMH. ♦ * * Population statistics show curious and often inexplicable trends. For example, the natural increase per thousand of population in Fiji, in the last ten recorded years, was as follows: —

Why did the birth-rates of all four communities so increase in 1941 that, for that year, the natural increase reached figures not previously recorded in any year for a very long time? Was it come kind of war-time reaction? To Fiji resi dents, the war outlook, in 1942-43, w er> very black indeed.

M. Jean Helme and his sister Lisette, of Tahiti, spent a fortnight’s holiday in Sydney in January, and departed by the “Ville de Strasbourg” early in February.

M. Helme returned to Tahiti, but Mdlle.

Helme intended to go to the New Hebrides, there to follow her profession of school-teacher.

CANDID CAMERA. “Blue Lagoon” stars, Jean Simmons and Donald Houston discuss (perhaps) the type of rhythm being played by the Gilbert Islanders at a party given on one of the WPHC ships in Suva Harbour. —Photo by Stinson’s Studio.

Year Europeans Fijians Indians Chinese 1937 .. 8.26 13.09 27.49 6.53 1939 .. 12.21 14.26 26.38 11.67 1941 .. 22.35 20.84 37.15 29.08 1943 .. 9.53 19.09 35.88 22.54 1946 .. 12.37 22.18 33.77 24.81