Mr. Courtenay
p. 61 · Read in the full issue
FPA's Tankard And Mr. Courtenay
I WAS pleased , to see, in the November issue of PIM, a letter from Mr.
William Courtenay, of the London Daily Graphic, which conveys an apology to me for certain inaccuracies, concern ing my domestic affairs, that were con tained in his account of the loss and recovery of my old Charles the Second silver tankard. Mr. Courtenay has now made honourable amends so my ruffled feelings have been smoothed and soothed.
I trust that, as he suggests, we may one day meet and talk things over!
I was present among the audience at the Brisbane Town Hall in March, 1943, or thereabouts, when Mr. Courtenay lately from the ardours of the famous Kokoda March—and still looking ill from the effects of dysentery—gave a talk on that episode. Sir Leslie Wilson, Governor of Queensland, and himself a soldier of con siderable merit, introduced the speaker.
The graphic description, and the sincerity of the tribute paid to Australian courage and tenacity, greatly moved the audience.
At the same time some of Damien Parer’s documentaries were shown, which de picted the difficult terrain encountered— mountains, rivers, swamps and then some.
NOW a few final remarks about the tankard. It was brought out to Tas mania by my great-grandfather, who settled there with his family and chattels in the early part of last century. The old gentleman had spent most of his life on the seven seas—sailing and fighting for the East India Company, Then, ap parently, feeling that the service was going to the dogs he quit and sought new lands. Thereafter he stayed ashore but, what’s bred in the bone is born in the flesh and two of his grandsons went back to the sea. They joined up with the King’s Navee and both got along quite nicely as each acquired Admiral’s rank and a knighthood.
The tankard sits in its place in my leaf thatched house. It is squat, dour looking, and with its silver darkened by the sul phurous fumes that sometimes blow this way when Bougainville volcanoes are restless. According to family legend its original owner, in the 1660’5, was a gay cavalier who drank deep. The old tankard has seen some merry times and functions, at some of which, so they say, the Merry Monarch himself was present.
Once, when I was in mellow mood, I took the liberty of addressing a few questions to it about those days of silks, satins and high wassail, but, like the famous Tar Baby. “She jes’ sat thar and said nuffin’.” —F. P. Archer.
Mrs. Elizabeth Williams, an American woman who served during the war with a US Red Cross Unit on Guadalcanal, BSI, is back again for a five-year visit to that island and other parts of the South Pacific. She has already visited Penryhn, Manihiki, and Puka Puka (in the Cook Islands), Tahiti, and 249 of the 250 islands in the Fiji Group—she had bad luck with the 250th; her boat got stuck in the mud. In Australia at the end of March, she was planning trips to Papua-New Guinea, BSI and Singapore.
Finally she will settle down in the French Riviera, which should be quite a change.
Mr. David Ferris, SDA missionary in charge of that mission’s leper hospital in the New Hebrides was on leave with his family in New South Wales in March.
He has been on various stations in BSI and New Hebrides since joining the Mis sion in 1931.
Mr. and Mrs. John Watts and their two children, of Nauru (where Mr. Watts is a pharmacist in charge of the Chinese hospital) are on three months leave in South Australia.