Phosphate Islands
p. 20 · Read in the full issue
Air Service For
“/ANE good result of the Japanese V/ occupation of Nauru was that they left behind them a large airstrip,” said Mr. John Howse, MP.
Assistant to the Australian Minister for Territories.
Mr. Howse said that when he visited Nauru with the Minister in November their DCS landed smoothly on the Nauru strip; and it now was hoped that an aircraft will, every two months, carry freight and passengers from New Guinea, via Honiara (Solomons) to Nauru, and Tarawa Island, in the Gilbert & Ellice Colony.
The plane, going from Nauru to Tarawa, flies almost directly over Ocean Island, which is the big in dustrial centre of the Gilbert & Ellice Colony. But there is no land ing-strip on Ocean Island, which is simply a huge, upheaved mass of broken coral.
“I once made a land survey of Ocean Island,” said Mr. H. E.
Maude, formerly Resident Com missioner in the Gilbert & Ellice Colony, “and I think I walked over every acre of it. Nowhere is there a bit of ground suitable for conver sion into an airstrip, except at enormous cost.”
Mr. and Mrs. R. A. Derrick re turned to Suva, from the UK, in the November Aorangi.
A snapshot of a small family party at the christening of newly-arrived Jeffrey William Reid, son of Mr. and Mrs. William Reid, of Port Vila, New Hebrides. The god-parents were Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey Seagoe. The photo shows Mrs. Reid, hold ing the baby, Mr. Reid, and Rev. James Edwards, who performed the ceremony.