GPS Clamour For A New Hebrides

Paradise

THE following remarkable story was published in a large number of United States newspapers on April 29:

“Do you want to get away from it all, to a plantation in the South Seas where most all the cultivation can be done from a hammock while beautiful island girls feed you tropical fruit with music and dancing? Well, for the plantation part, at least, there’s some 100,000 acres of land for rent in the New Hebrides at 20 cents a year per 50-acre plot.

“Left for British settlers by the will of Sir James Bums, founder of the Burns- Philp group of companies, the Australian government as trustee has declared Gls eligible, reports “Pacific Islands Monthly” of Sydney.

“There is a catch —no doubt only minor to some enterprising GI —in that the neighbours are mostly cannibals. Other wise, it’s a cinch and the soil is as fer tile as one could find anywhere in the world”

NEEDLESS to say, the story is a fig ment of some worthy pressman’s imagination. Such a report was never published by the “PIM.”

Ever since the beginning of May, the “PIM” has been getting excited letters from former servicemen. They are most eager to get to this new Elysium. Every one of them seeks more details —how do they obtain the land, to whom do they apply, how soon can the matter be ar ranged—and what are the girls like?

We could not answer all the letters, so we have appealed to the Press Association which distributed the silly story to make a correction, and let us sleep in peace.

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IT is a fact, of course, that something like 100,000 acres of New Hebrides land belongs nominally to the Aus tralian Commonwealth. A company in which the late Sir James Burns (founder of Burns Philp and Co., Ltd.) was in terested acquired rights over this land in the course of trading in the group, at the latter end of last century. Early this century, Sir James gave those land in terests to Australia, evidently in the hope that Australian settlement in the valuable group thereby would be encouraged.

The Australian titles, however, still have —to a large extent—to be confirmed by the Condominium Land Court; and that Court, judging it by what it has accomplished in the last 30 years, will take another 500 years to finish the job. Until World War 11, Australia kept a solicitor established in Vila, whose duty mainly was to protect her land rights and ad vance her claims before the Land Court.

Since 1920, British interests in the Con dominium, as the result of British official indifference, have dwindled greatly, while French interests have correspondingly in creased. France now probably would sharply contest any Australian claim for bigger interests in the Group, although the New Hebrides chain is a vital part of the north-eastern perimeter of islands that guards eastern Australia against in vasion from the north.

Someone suggested, jokingly, at the end of the Pacific War, that a difficult problem might be solved by encouraging Gl’s to settle on Australian lands in the New Hebrides; and that may have started the extraordinary story quoted above.

Two Roman Catholic missionaries, Father Alexis Maye, and Father Charles Ramuz, passed through Brisbane recently on the French freighter, “Le Verdon,” on their way home to the Rhone Valley, Switzerland, for 12 months holiday. Both

went to the Gilbert Islands as young men and have been there for many years be cause nobody had been available to relieve them. They have even forgotten how to speak their own native tongue. They ex pect to return to the Gilbert and Ellis Islands’ Mission in 1950.

Dr. Harold Norrie, a Macquarie Street (Sydney) eye specialist, and Mr. S. Went

worth Jackson, optometrist and optician, will make a business tour in Papua and New Guinea next month. They will be in Port Moresby on July 7-16, and in Rabaul on July 22-August 4.

Miss Doreen Quilty was recently enter tained in Brisbane before her departure for Port Moresby where she will marry Mr. Stan Came.