From Notes Made in the Pacific

By R. W. Robson.

THE breakfast waiter in the Nou mea restaurant waved a card in front of me and said “Feesh”.

“Yes, please, fish”, I said, ment ally thanking the high gods for fresh food.

The waiter stared, and answered, ‘‘Feesh, s’H vous plait”. The man sitting opposite (whom I afterwards knew as Dr. Black, of the Sydney School of Tropical Medicine) had a kind of convulsion.

“He wants you to fill in a form,” he explained, when he recovered.

I looked at the form. It was leaded “Fiche”. Before I could eat, I had to supply the high panjan drums of the French Colony with my name, address, birthday and the maiden name of my mother.

I complied, wearily. Travel in the Pacific to-day, especially when cros sing international lines, is just one long orgy of form-filling. ♦ « * DR. BLACK, a keen young Australian specialist, was en oute to the New Hebrides, on a nalaria quest for South Pacific Com nission.

Every year these research men are getting their fingers further around he windpipe of the malaria bug; and oon they will have it under control, fhey attack it now from two sides— >y drugs, which kill the bug in the luman body; and by destroying the •ug’s host, the Anopheles mosquito. 1 was most interested to learn that hey now are concentrating on “the nystery of Longitude 173"—why nalaria infestation reaching from Africa and Asia eastwards across the stops dead on the line of the olomons and New Hebrides. Twenty ears ago, the PIM was asking why here is no malaria in Fiji, and the rchipelagoes eastward.

Mr. M. Laird, a skilled ento nologist, is now in Fiji, examining gain the Fijian mosquitoes. Other are giving attention to the Inopheles along the eastern coast of Australia, where there ought to be nalaria, and isn't. If they can find nmething peculiar to Fiji and Eastern Australia, the anti-malaria work ould be helped very much. * * * PRONUNCIATIONS cause same - trouble in Suva. The well-krtown lotor-ship Thor was usually called Tor” —which is substantially correct -but her successor, the Thorsisle, has ot even the careful ones bothered. 1

heard a respectable merchant refer to her this morning, when she arrived, as “The Thorzizzle.”

The gentleman in charge of a

broadcast, on the day Sir Ronald and Lady Garvey arrived, referred to them as “The Governor and Governess.” * ijc * HERE in Suva, where the huge mills of the Carpenter group now prepare for the market all the finer products of the coconut, it is sur prising to find some stores offering

>r sale margarine made in Australia, eople in Victoria have been crying loud for margarine, to give them (me alternative to the dear butter, ad have been officially frowned pon. Yet here is Australian mar irine in Fiji, where local industry akes all the margarine needed, and tere is a surplus for export. * * * * TOUMEA shipping agents are full H of wrath over a new French Gov nment decision. In future, ships hich call at Noumea for supplies ■fuel, water, vegetables, and so forth -must pay for same in the currency : their country, and not in New aledonian francs.

Some of the shipping agents there y that often it suits them much tter to pay for service and sup ies in francs, and they and the ship ng companies get whatever benefits ere may be in the exchange adjust ent—a perfectly legitimate com ercial transaction. But a Socialistic ireaucrat naturally will argue that e Government should grab at all change advantages—and there are me very Socialist gentlemen in the ench administrations.

In Noumea, as in Australia, cer in of the wartime controls over ide and industry are maintained; id, of course, the black markets

flourish accordingly. * * * along, one has news of two former NZ Administrators of Western Samoa.

Colonel F. W. Voelcker, that energetic man, went under his own steam to Korea, where he now is do ing a good job as officer in charge of the various instrumentalities created by the United Nations for reconstruc tion and rehabilitation in South Korea.

Sir Alfred and Lady Turnbull now are living in Stamford, Conn., USA.

Their daughter, in wartime, married an American airman, who later was killed at Okinawa.

'EM! I is very hopeful that the Warner Brothers film production—which has brought hundreds of thousands of pounds of new money into the Colony—will be followed by a Para mount production.

But nothing has been settled yet, and Paramount will not come unless Warners leave the basic equipment here for them. Warners are not happy about that; and some sophisticated landlord is to blame.

The Warner studio was built on two acres of agricultural land, worth £5 or £lO per acre. When further enter prise was suggested, Warners thought they might buy the two acres, and leave the studio and equipment there.

They approached the landlord, ex pecting to be kindly received and asked to pay the fair value of the land.

The landlord asked a sum running into three figures. Warners “Well it is not agricultural land,” said the landlord. “You have given it an other classification. It is now much more highly valued.” Warners, who

have never niggled at heavy expendi ture here, merely cursed and withdrew.

Even millionaire shows can be sensi tive in these matters. * « * Mixed up among sweating tech nicians, masses of leads, snoozing folk in costumes, and odds and ends of furniture, we stood around for two hours in the Warner Brothers’

hastily-built studio at Deuba an watched the filming of His Maiesi O’Keefe.

All around us was a kind of mau ness. Engines chugged, Fijian helpe; yelled, gentlemen in highly coloure shirts swore horribly in an America accent, all kinds of nondescript fol< rushed here and there. But right u in the middle, in a Hongkong roor under intense light, there was ord* and method.

A little group of players wen through a scene again and again an again, until one could have screameo Finally, a quiet voice said: “OK that will do. Good work, fellers, and then they began unscrambling thr set.

The bit of film that thus was achieved, after a day’s work by in numerable people and incalculabll equipment, will be run off in the fins production in about 30 seconds. * * * OV chance, I found myself stand 13 ing near the set beside Mis Joan Rice, the star—young, slim an<i very pretty. She stood on one leg and wriggled her bare toes. (At thii stage in the story she is a bare-fooc wench, picked up by the O’Keefe to be made mistress of his empire.) “Pretty tough on bare feet, I shoulo think,” I remarked.

I had struck the right note. Mis;.

Rice was most eloquent on the effec

: South Seas coral on feet trained i the pavements of Hollywood, Lon )n and New York. She ended her »eech with the opinion that her irned soles apparently were never >ing to get tough enough to with and the unpleasantnesses in the soil : the Deuba locations.

Someone else told me of the charge : the bank brigade. The Warner anagers engaged a hefty bunch of iva bank clerks to week-end at euba, and play the part of a pirate mg which creeps up a beach Upon a jeping village, and engages boister isly in rape and allied entertain ent.

They rehearsed in shoes. All went ell, and they prepared for the ake”. Like any youths on a well lid holiday, they howled like wolves they landed on the beach and pre ired to rush upon the promised itertainment.

“Bare feet for this one’’, ordered e director. They removed their oes and, at the word, charged up e beach. Next minute, all sugges >ns of rapine were gone. The oodthirsty pirates were sitting on eir sterns, whimpering, and trying remove the coral splinters from eir feet. It was that kind of a ach.

Tyranny Of Rice

What a New Guinea planter called e “tyranny of rice” is manifest over ! these Polynesian territories. They 1 want more rice, and howl because ey cannot get it. Samoa says it ould have far more than the ggarly 240 tons p.a. it has had tely.

These people were not exactly irving when the Europeans intro iced their economy over a century o, and rice was unknown. Even if ey cannot return to the ancient ods, why do they not try to grow eir own rice, instead of paying this liculous £lOO per ton? Rice can ; grown easily in any of these lands.

Jonas M. Coe

Seeking further material for a book i Queen Emma of New Guinea, I id amazing luck in Samoa. At atautu Point, near Apia, I called •on a charming old lady, Mrs. R. avidson, youngest of all the many iters of the famous Emma; and ere, on the wall of her big and xurious lounge, was hanging a large lotograph of the late Jonas M. Coe, aited States Consul in Samoa over century ago, and father of Emma dof very many other Coes. Mrs. avidson was more than kind—she ve me a lot of family history, and lowed me to bring away that preci

ous photograph—the only one existence, I think.

There are very few Coes left Samoa. Just outside Mrs. Ages Gray’s hotel they are building a nes cement bridge, and I talked to husky carpenter. He is a son of ol< Robert Coe; and he, and his fathes and Mrs. Davidson, and one or tw others, are about all that remain i Samoa of J. M. Coe’s once ven numerous progeny. There are mam in New Guinea, however—desceno ants of the brothers and sisters who® Emma transferred to her New Britaii headquarters in “the German time.;

Shutting Coral Heads

Clearing coral heads out of lagoon, to permit navigation, usualll is a long, laborious task, based oc the complicated process of under water blasting. But Alan Pritcharo who prepared the seadrome at Sate Puala. Western Samoa, for TEAL 1 , service, developed a new and effectivv technique. He went to each cora> head with a big float and a powerful winch; attached a wire rope to thi mushroom-shaped coral; and thei; winched until the head came off. Thei; the head was towed into deeper waten The method was quicker ami cheaper, and now the big seaplanes have miles of clear waterway. Bul the float and the winch are still handy. Coral heads never cease theii slow growth.

Always Fresh Water

All around the lovely island ox Tahiti there are water-supply system:! —some private, some public. As in so many of these fortunate Polynesian islands, the high central mountains ol< Tahiti begin to rise only a mile or so inland, Thjsir tops are always in con i tact with the rainclouds, and the water runs down to the foot of the hills.

I found water under pressure on the wide lawns of my friend Oscafij Nordman’s lovely house at Papara.f “High water rates?” I asked.

“No rates at all,” he said. “Govern-i ment provided the pipes, and we sup-< plied the labour, and we maintain! the line.” It is a system I commendb heartily to many other communities..;

Use Of Pelton Wheel

In the same area, I examined thes water and power supply of Mr. H. WJ Kinney, a once-famous Americans journalist, now happily retired. His 2 installation will interest man y \ Islanders especially in New Guinea..!

A few hundred yards from his house,. 80 feet up the mountain-side, a little t stream is dammed. A 3-inch pipes comes from the dam to a No. 16 Pel-ton wheel in Mr. Kinney’s backyard..

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The Pelton turns a generator, and that gives a power and light supply of 110 volts. The installation runs 24 hours a day; has been running for fears; and no one takes any notice )f it.

Those Conventions

From the Islands standpoint, some >f the NZ reporters with the TEAL >ress' party in Polynesia in October vere a trifle unconventional in dress, n connection with which a friend n Suva told me a funny story.

Mr. Stanley, High Commissioner or Western Pacific, returned to Suva rom a gruelling 10 weeks’ trip on small ship through his new ominion at noon on October 22, dth only one pressed suit. He had vo engagements—to see the press arty at 2.30, and attend a Govern icn House cocktail “do” at 6.30. irst-class sartorial problem arose: hould he wear the pressed whites )r the press, or reserve the suit for rovernment House, He decided to ear the formal clothes for the press, id thereafter hope for the best.

Imagine the feelings of His Ex :llency when half the reporters who

were presented to him at High Com mission headquarters wore very highly coloured Bula shirts, and shorts!

Washing always is a problem in Islands travel—especially so now, when most of the lads who formerly were good wash-boys aspire to white collar jobs and scorn the lowly laundry. Consequently, an increas ing proportion of Europeans go around the Islands airlines looking like ungroomed hobos.

The Indian Rope Trick

Two Indians went into a hardware store in Fiji, and ordered a length of rope. The storekeeper measured off the length on his floor, and then laid the approximate end of the length against a mark on the floor. This was where the rope was to be cut off the main roll.

Then he discovered that he had no knife. He explained to his two customers—who had followed pro ceedings with interest—that he would

liave to go to an adjoining store for his knife; and he departed.

The Indians did not lose the opportunity. They quickly pulled a few more yards from the main roll of rope into the heap measured out for them, and then laid the rope

down as before, to be cut.

The merchant returned, cut the rope, placed it on his scales platform, made out the bill. The Indians paid without a word, and hurried away with their rope. They thought that they were charged for rope at the

rate of so much per foot. But th» merchant —a man wise in the way' of Fiji—was quite happy. He alway' sold his rope by weight. It was no his first experience of the Indian rope trick. (Notes Continued in Next Issue