Fiji’S Smithy Memorial Fund

From Our Own Correspondent SUVA, September 25.

A QUIET effort to raise a “token sum” as the nucleus of a fund to erect a Suva memorial to the late Sir Charles Kingsford Smith and the first Pacific flight of his Southern Cross in 1928, has been rather swamped by

other appeals.

The first is Fiji’s large-scale appeal campaign for £27,000 to build a new Suva Fijian Methodist Church to replace the timeworn and hopelessly inadequate Jubilee Church; and the second is the possibility of a one-day appeal on Cession Day (October 10. but to be observed on Monday, October 9) on behalf of the ten year War Memorial Anti-TB Campaign.

Mr. H. Maurice Scott, in charge of the Suva end of the Smithy fund, has been told by the Air Force Association of Aus tralia that there will be no difficulty in raising an Australian fund for the Suva memorial if Fiji starts the ball rolling.

The Meteorological summary of the Apia Observatory for August stated that the rainfall at Apia was “i of an inch above normal,” but that most of the other districts in Samoa experienced a drought, especially in the western areas of Upolu and Savaii. Steady easterly winds pre vailed.

Mrs. Doris Booth, when addressing members of the Queensland Women’s Electoral League Political Club in Bris

bane recently, said that there had been much infiltration of Communism among New Guinea natives in the last few years.

Mrs. Booth is the only woman gold-mine owner in New Guinea, and she has lived there, with the exception of the war years, since 1931.

Miss Lorraine Shennan, of Launceston, Tasmania, recently visited Mr. and Mrs.

R. B. Kirk on Nauru, and Mr. and Mrs.

John Redden on Ocean Island.