Tropicalities

11HE ketch, Sue, departed from Sydney , for New Guinea (where she will be used as a plantation boat) on Empire Day, May 24. It was one of Sydney’s really wet days—something like three inches fell in 24 hours. Crew of the Sue consists of Mr. Alex Cann, as navigator and radio operator, and two others. They will go inside the Barrier Reef and ex pect to reach Rabaul in four weeks.

As the ketch drew away from a Sydney wharf, amid the frantic farewelling of family and friends of the crew, there was a signal to return. Authority was on the telephone to say sailing papers were not in order. She returned and the navi gator-radio-operator leapt ashore, falling flat on his back on the slippery wharf.

Friends and family gathered in anticipa tion but were surprised to hear Cann giving his height—6 ft. 2 in. That is what Authority had wanted to know.

THE United Nations Trusteeship Coun cil party which is at present making investigations in New Guinea (and will later look over Western Samoa) may be important in some foreign parts, such as Russia, but it cuts little ice with the Aus tralian Press. The only time it made any headlines in May was when some Bou gainville luluai spoke his piece and de manded the right for New Guinea natives to drink hard liquor.

The Chinese member of the party pointed out that this would probably cause trouble in village life but our luluai

said they wanted the right to drink just the same.

Presumably, the party discussed other problems with the local natives, but in Australia drink (intoxicating) is always regarded as top priority news. (IROWN Prince Tungi of Tonga was the J speaker in the Australian Broad casting Commission’s Guest of Honour programme on May 13. The talk, made without script or notes, was re corded in Suva by ABC’s Colin Simpson during the recent South Pacific Con ference.

The Prince supported the White Aus tralia policy—if Australia was to make a full contribution to life in the Pacific, he said, she must “retain her own native race.” It is not clear what Prince Tungi meant by that: Europeans are no more native of Australia than they are of Tonga. And despite the fact that the South Pacific Commission is Australia’s baby there was no effort made to have Torres Strait Islanders or Aborigines rep resented at the recent conference. If these are not “dependent Pacific peoples,” what are they? Skeletons in Australia’s cupboard?

That, however, is by the way. The Prince is an impressive speaker and his broadcast was received with considerable interest. Advance publicity told Austra lians that he had been educated at Newington College, Sydney; Wesley, in Melbourne; that he gained his BA and LLB at Sydney University; and that he was a lover of gadgets—luminous fish hooks from the US being men tioned.—MM.

INDIRECTLY, wasps on Wardang Island, off Port Victoria, South Australia, will soon be doing their bit to wipe out the Rhinoceros beetle pest in Western Samoan coconut plantations.

In November, 1945, we reported how Mr.

H. W. Simmonds, formerly of the Fiji Agricultural Department, had been re sponsible for collecting black wasps from Zanzibar and sending them by air, via Cairo, India and Australia, to prey upon Samoa’s Rhinoceros beetles then playing havoc with copra production.

The wasps were established success fully, after a few preliminary set-backs and became parasites of the beetle, but the trouble has been to find sufficient food for them.

Recently, Mr. Simmonds visited rela tives on Wardang Island, SA, and there found wasps related to the Zanzibar variety. The Wardang wasps feed on sunflowers, and flourish. So Mr. Sim monds has informed the New Zealand government and it is expected that sun flowers will soon be giving new strength to Western Samoa’s wasps.

IN PIM for June, 1949, a reader on Nor folk Island advertised a modern bungalow for sale at £A2,000. In May, 1950, an American ex-Marine, 43-year old Franklin Boyer, landed in Sydney en route to Norfolk. He had seen the ad vertisement in PIM and bought the bun galow from the builder, Mr. K. G. Tuck.

Mr. Boyer has never seen the house, or Norfolk Island. But he has served for 21 years in the Marines as a technical sergeant; three years were spent as a POW of the Japs in the Philippines.

During the war he decided that when he was free he would settle on a Pacific Island and “do nothing.”

He says that all he knows about Nor folk Island he has learnt from travel folders.

THIS macabre tale was told by Colonel H. T. (“Blue”) Allan, now retired (more or less) from mining and planting.

It was the early days of the New Guinea goldfields, and before the advent of air-freighting. The all-too-limited supplies were brought in painfully over the mountains by lines of native carriers.

Medical officers had not yet arrived to check the malaria and dysentery, which worked havoc among the natives. As a result, the carriers died in scores along the terrible mountain trails.

Blue Allan’s party were so short of pick handles that their operations were crippled. Something had to be done about it. One day, Blue was approached by a rough and tough Manus native, who was said to fear neither man nor tambaran.

He said that, if Masta was agreeable, and would let him go for a couple of days, he would get plenty pick-handles. He de parted, alone, with the blessings of the party, and in a short time he was back, with a dozen handles.

The explanation was simple. As their earners died, the miners buried the bodies beside the trail; and it was the practice of many of them to mark the spot with a pick-handle, stuck upright in the earth. The average native would die rather than go near the graves, but the rough and tough Manus native was contemptuous of all spirit-world mani festations—and thus obtained a good sup ply of pick-handles.

MENTION in Pibruary PIM of lonely graves on the Mortlocks and the Tasmans, New Guinea, recalls to me what may well be the loneliest graveyard of the Pacific. I saw it on the 300-acre speck marked as Nassau Island, 50 miles from inhabited Pukapuka in the Northern Cook Group.

About 40 years ago, Nassau, formerly a barren sandy isle, was planted with coconuts. Until the Pacific War began in 1941, Nassau had a small village of labourers recruited from Puka Puka who were engaged in making copra. Near the recognised landing place are a num ber of graves with rough headstones of coral rock and cement made from coral.

From inscriotions which were scarcely readable in 1945, it seemed that some of the burials had been made in the years of World War 1.

Since 1945 there has been some talk about working Nassau’s plantation again, but apparently no one has volunteered to try to get the copra across one of the worst reefs in the Pacific. In pre-1942 days this task was accomplished by Cap tain Williams who lived happily on Nassau with his family. He was evacu ated to Western Samoa and Nassau has been deserted since a party of NZ coast watchers departed in September, 1945.

Another lonely burial ground I viewed was at Pagoumene, near the northern tip of New Caledonia, where for 40 years an overseas metal corporation had been ex tracting chrome ore from a mine a few miles inland.

Tucked away in a corner beside the lagoon was the burial place of Pagoumenes’ workers for several decades.

Inscriptions on locally-made concrete headstones told of Tonkinese or Javanese workers who ended their days far from home. Standing out from these was a headstone obviously sent out from Britain recording the death of a ship’s officer of a vessel of the Clan Line. What caused his death at lonely Pagoumene? I won dered at the time. Perhaps there is no place like home when the time comes to die.—AJS.