Do You Remember ?

From PIM of 20 Years ago.

THOSE “good old days” in the

Pacific, of which we hear so much, seem to have been somewhat of a myth judging by our issue of September, 1933. Maybe they were “good” in that it did not cost so much to be happy 20 years ago.

Some extracts from September PIM of 1933 follow: "Copra in the last four weeks has fallen in value to levels never before recorded and the condition of the market can now only be described as calamitous The London price is about £9 (Sterling) and the French Government has quite suddenly imposed an Import duty of about 85/- per ton on all copra entering the country, with the result that the European market has been completely disorganised and partially paralysed.”

Oh, happy days! * * * We published a photograph of a hole In the ground surrounded by the bare hills of (what was to become) Vatukoula, Fiji, and said that £l,OOO had been taken out of it by crude puddling methods. It was, we hoped, a happy omen for the future of the infant gold industry in Fiji. * * * Work was progressing on the small slipway in Rabaul Harbour which was built for W. R. Carpenter & Co. This was expected to be finished before the end of the year and would "be of great service to owners of small inter-island steamers which now have to be sent to Brisbane or Sydney for slipping.” The small slip way, in question, lasted for less than four years. It was built adjacerft to Vulcan Island and in 1937 Vulcan Island erupted and became Mt. Vulcan, 700 feet high; it joined itself to the mainland and obliterated the slipway and left the small steamer that was on it high and dry about a quarter-mile from the sea. * * ♦ “The new motorship Malaita which is being built in Scotland for Burns Philp and Co. is nearing completion and will replace the Mataram on the Sydney- Solemons run towards the end of the year.

Malaita is 3,500 tons gross register;

Mataram, a vessel of 3,331 tons, Is well known in the Islands trade. She was built in 1909." * * * “A notable event In the history of Fiji took place in Suva on August 23 when the Governor, Sir Murchison Fletcher, swore in Mr, M. Mudalier as the first Indian Justice of the Peace in the Colony." * * * An influenza outbreak on the Matson Company’s Mariposa resulted in a large party of tourists to Fiji being quarantined on Makuluva, a small island on the reef off Suva, during the time they should have been seeing the sights of Fiji. The other Matson ship, Monterey, picked '.hem up on her voyage south and they returned home knowing of Fiji only what those of Makuluva know. ♦ ♦ ♦ The population figures of Papua, just then issued, make strange reading in 1933. The European population of the whole Territory was given as 1,131 persons—67l males and 460 females. The population of Port Moresby, including Koki, Granville East and the London Mission was 368—207 males and 181 females. (The present population of Port Moresby is approximately 3,200.) ♦ * ♦ NZ negotiations in Western Samoa to bring about a settlement of political troubles had broken down because Mau leaders Insisted that Mr. O. F. Nelson, recently returned from five years* banish ment in New Zealand, sit in at con ferences. The attitude of Mau leaders was "tending to alienate the sympathies of former friends of the Man.” ♦ * ♦ “The Administration of New Guinea has set aside 3,000 acres of land behind Kerevat Experimental Plantation, Rabaul, to be cut un Into 50-acre blocks on young Chinese will be settled. The settlers will be given direct assistance, be provided with a house, seeds and various other materials and will be en couraged to grow any suitable crop other than coconuts.” Well, it would be interesting to know what happenedl to that experiment. There are no Chinese on 50-acre blocks near Kerevat to-day.