The Wagers : A ‘Kai Viti

Family

THAT New Caledonian timber-getting

operation, mentioned in May'“PlM,” is an undertaking by Bryant & Mays, Ltd., of Melbourne, hard-pushed ap parently to get suitable timber for match making.

In charge of the operations is Captain Guy E. Wager, a Fiji-bom man, who had service in the AIF in Australia and New Guinea, later served with the Buffs and the Durham Light Infantry in India, Malaya and Burma, finishing up with a couple of years of War Crimes Investiga tion in Burma and Siam. He was in the jeep accident you mentioned and, with a broken collar-bone, he was the least seriously injured of the party.

Of the other Fiji-born Wagers, Barbara (now Mrs. de Bohun Helm) is busy, with her husband, raising fat lambs and babies near Wagga. “Dick” Helm will be re membered by many of the planting fraternity of pre-war New Guinea. Solo mon Island friends of Fred Wager will be interested to hear that he is well estab lished in Victoria, producing fat lambs and wool. The other “Kai Viti,” Dorothy (now Mrs. Judge, of Waitara), is well known in Sydney golf circles—she was several times champion of the Cromer Club, and is the present holder of the Gatland Club championship.

The father of the flock (who was once spoken of in the Suva press as “that Beau Brummel of the Fiji Constabulary”) is usually to be found, with his good lady, at the Pacific Islands Society meet ings, enjoying a monthly hobnob with old Fiji friends.—ST.

The retiring governor of French Oceania, M. Maestracci, and his wife, spent a few weeks in Sydney, before leav ing for France in mid-June.