Do You Remember?

From PIM of 20 Years ago.

fFHE topics of the day in November, 1932, were not a lot different from those of November, 1952. Copra

was “slightly easier.” Government

ships were losing money; there was

the question of a lingua franca for

New Guinea; mysterious vessels,

thought to be Jap, were poaching in

North Australian and Territory

waters. One big difference, of course,

was that in those days a £ was worth 20/-. Now it is worth about 5/- —but then people had fewer of them.

This was the news as we saw it, in November PIM of 1932: A reader was of the opinion that the Mandate of Western Samoa should have been given to Australia, and the New Guinea mandate to New Zealand.

“Australia with her super-sensitiveness about the rights of subject peoples and her willingness to let any fool get up and bawl his opinion in the marketplace, would have got on splendidly with the Mau. While swashbuckling New Zealand, who apparently believes in governing Pacific Islands communities on a basis of strict discipline, with plenty of snap and polish, would have been popular in New Guinea”. * * * Another reader pleaded for Pidgin English as the language of New Guinea.

Teaching plain English was hopeless, he insisted, and “nothing but pig-headedness on the part of the Adiminstration and Education authorities hold Pidgin’s official progress back”. * * ♦ The cost of running the Government vessel Maui Pomare was also declared a hopeless case. Loss on the vessel for ’3O-’3l had been £20,000; loss for ’32-32 was expected to be £4,500. A report from a special commission advised the Govern ment to dispose of her at the earliest possible moment. (Maui Pomare is still in operation, still piling up losses and still the subject of reports and dire predictions). * * * London price of copra was £l4/5/- per ton and had remained around that figure

for several months. To quote: “Best informed opinion is that the trend of prices is upward but it is very gradual and desperately slow”. * ♦ ♦ A Labour member in the Australian Federal Parliament asked in the House why the 900 Chinese employed on the phosphate workings on Nauru could not be dismissed and their jobs given to 900 Australian unemployed. At the same time he complained that phosphate from Nauru was costing NZ and Australian farmers too much. * * * There were howls of rage from NSW and Queensland banana growers over the “concession” made by Australia under the Ottawa Agreement whereby 40,000 centals of Fiji bananas were to be allowed into Australia at a reduced duty. Politicians, fearful for votes, tried vainly to explain that Fiji had made concessions also, and that Australia, In order to try to get back Fiji trade worth £750,000 per annum was to admit 50,000 cases of bananas to a market that consumed 2,000,000 cases per year. * * * On her maiden voyage from Sydney to the new Hebrides, the Anglican Mission vessel Southern Cross VI, of 200 tons, was totally wrecked at Aneityum. The vessel had cost £25,000. * * * As a sign of the times it was reported that native people in the Cook Islands were going back to candlenuts for lighting purposes. Kerosene and petrol being too dear for the empty purses of 1932. * * * There were no less than seven anthro pologists doing field work in the SW Pacific. Miss Camilla Wedgwood was spending a year at Manam, off the Madang-Sepik Coast, NG; Dr. lan Hogbin was in Guadalcanal; Mr. J. H. Todd was in the Gasmata District, New Britain; Dr. Gregory Bateson was up the Sepik River; Mr. W. C. Groves was in Kavieng, New Ireland and expected to move on to the Huon Peninsula; Dr. R. Fortune and Dr Margaret Mead (then man and wife although later divorced—Dr. Mead then married Gregory Bateson) were at work in the Wewak District, NG.