Voyage

Second Caldwell Pacific Voyage

Mr. And Mrs. John Cald

WELL and sons John and Stephen left California in their schooner Tropic Seas in May for Sydney via the Pacific Islands. They hope to be in Sydney early in 1953.

Fiji will remember John Caldwell —presumably the same American sea-adventurer —who was wrecked in the Lau Islands towards the end of 1946 while sailing the 30-ft Pagan from Panama to Sydney to see his wife, an Australian, then of that city.

The voyage of Pagan was une ventful until near the Northern Cooks when a hurricane was en countered. After a 21-day drift Caldwell put his boat up on one of the Lau Group deliberately, for fear he would miss the island altogether, and there Fijians found him in the last stages of exhaustion.

If memory serves us aright, Cald well later wrote a book of his ex periences getting to his wife Mary aboard Pagan—and which Austral asian reviewers received with sin gular lack of enthusiasm.

Anyway, Mr. Caldwell apparently hopes to do it again but this time without benefit of hurricanes and misadventures in Lau.

Dr. Tony Tonakie has abandoned his medical practice in Port Moresby to taKe up a musical career in Brisbane. He was in Moresby for five years and was P NG’s first post-war private practi tioner.

Australian artist William Dobell will shortly leave for a painting trip to the New Guinea Highlands. He will paint mountain scenery between Garoka and Mt. Hagen. He made a trip to Nondugl, in the same area, about two years ago but has not ex hibited any paintings he made—he says that he is still working on them.