Met At The Dogs!
pp. 78-83 · Read in the full issue
WHEN Mr. Vince Costello, of the well-known Garrick Hotel, Suva, returned late in May, after vacation in Australia, he told of a surprise encounter at a dog meeting somewhere back in the cactus, behind his home town of Maryborough, Q.
Intrigued at the way his country men evade the law which forbids mechanical hares, by towing dummy hares —footballs with wool tales at tached —behind galloping horses, he was even more interested to see a face that seemed vaguely familiar.
Presently its owner, in a double breasted suit and a French beret, presented himself.
“Well, don’t you know me?” he inquired.
Vince looked him over, then whipped off the beret to reveal Captain Jimmy Richmond, of the little ship Miena, in Maryborough loading timber for the Solomons.
Miena and Captain Richmond are known in the vicinity of every hostelry between Wailangilala Light house and the Australian mainland.
Dog meeting over, and the dozen or so official bookies on the way home with their takings, the Islanders sped to the Maryborough equivalent of the Garrick, to comn pare notes.
If Mr. F. J. H. Grattan, Secretary to the Western Samoan Govern ment, paid a short visit to New Zealand recently.
• gravel. The place itself is at eactive enough and will no doubt time become even more so. In imparison with Rabaul, for ex rnple, the port for what is probably »ie richest area in the whole of ;:h Papua-New Guinea, Honiara :ins hands down.
IRabaul, once a town in a beautiful zopical garden, started after the nr, like Honiara, as a military ink-heap. Rabaul is still a junk sap—untidy, unsewered, its roads jsintegrating in the wet, its tern wary buildings still far out umbering the permanent. With all i> tribulations, its straitened cir imstances, its lack of labour and aterials, its frustrations, Honiara is done better than this. ’THE European population of Honiara is small —probably not more than 150, even with the :;w influx of Colonial Service per mnel which occurred early this ;ar when Honiara became the jadquarters of the Western Pacific igh Commission.
By overwhelming majority, most these people are connected in me way with the Government rvice —some who joined the flonial Service in the regular way the United Kingdoms—some who ined in Fiji; and the remainder ostly post-war arrivals who have me in from Australia.
En many respects, this last division,
is like a Polynesian migration that has spread out too far: Honiara is at the end of the line, therefore the most useful elements of the wave have stopped off along the way at Port Moresby and New Guinea and Rabaul. Honiara got what re mained.
A large number of those who come within the latter category are female. Anyone who can pick out words on a typewriter with two fingers can get a job in Honiara as a typist and receive anything up to £l5 per week for the effort.
mongst some of these people— it. of course, by no means all, re amsibility is thought to end with e receipt of a pay envelope and sey are more concerned with jquiring a reputation for drinking Eeir whisky straight than for hard rk.
Although the proportion of tee al residents is small in any Kcific Island, Honiara is the only ace where I have seen a civil ser mt the worse for liquor in the iddle of a working day; and the lly place where I have seen female 11 servants regularly drink to ex « in a public bar. Maybe there not a bigger proportion of dip oianiacs in Honiara than else tere —maybe it is because they s less fussy about the business at there seems to be more. The naviour of some of these people luld not be tolerated elsewhere ere deportation is still an effective apon in the hands of the Admin ration, and probably it will not tolerated much longer in Honiara. }ne woman resident is alleged to ve said that she could not afford eat and drink—so she drank, and >k vitamin pills.
Chere is little public entertain nt in the town; most of it of the jp-for-a-chop (or maybe I
>uld say, a whisky-for-a-whisky)
lety takes place in the people’s n homes. Although they in idually deplore the expense, ich is considerable, Honiara »ple are proud of their enter ing—which they lump together 3er the one term, “parties,” and lect as other less energetic folk lect postage stamps.
ROBABLY born of the long years of post-war frustration in the Solomons, the arrival of the ;h Commissioner for the Western lific to make Honiara his head irters has given a boost to BSJP rale that was sadly needed. So day, in spite of the cost of ng, the crippling expense of hav to send one’s children away to 001, the disadvantages and even Jomforts of living in Honiara, isolation, the stultifying effect continued frustration on those n for progress—there is a feel of optimism amongst that tion of the people who really ;ter. Much is expected of the i administrative set-up, simply of desperation and not because my firmly-based economic facts. iey,” you are told, simply must something about the Solomons rtly; the Solomons “must come he whole Solomons problem be thus placed firmly in the lap the High Commissioner and his r departmental chiefs, we can wish them well. They will need best wishes and our prayers if 7 are to become the miracle kers that their wishful “bodies” ;he BSIP expect.