Do You Remember?

From PIM of 20 Years ago.

BOOM times make for short memories—but there is a lot to be learned by consulting

history. Twenty years ago producers

of Pacific products were concerned about their markets, just as pro ducers are today. It was from a different angle ... but those times

might come again!

Here are some of the matters discussed in our issue of November, 1934: Messrs. Ray Parer and G. E. Hemsworth had been forced to withdraw their Fairey Fox plane from the London-Melbonrno Centenary air-race because of radiator trouble.

Another aviation note was to the effect that Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith, with Navigator P. G. Taylor, had completed a Sydney - Suva - Honolulu - Oakland (Cal.) flight in Lady Southern Cross. In Fiji, they had landed at Albert Park. Suva: and taken off from Naselai beach. * * * “Mr. Jack Hides. ARM. well-known for his remarkable patrols into the interior of Papua and New Guinea, leaves Moresby this month with Patrol-Officer O’Malley, and will undertake a lengthy patrol into the district between the I'pper Strickland and Purari Rivers.”

At the same time the Leahy brothers, Mick and Danny, were reported on a walkabout in an unknown region west of Mt. Hagen. * Some scathing comment came from some planters in the BSIP. No adminis trator. however able, they said, was capable of combining the dual offices ot

Governor of Fiji and that of High Com missioner for the Western Pacific—and that the “sooner the shackles which fetter the island administration to a bureaucracy at Suva, are severed, the better.” (However they had to wait about 18 years more before these particular shackles were severed in the arrival of Sir Robert Stanley who was the first HCWP w r ho was not also Governor of Fiji.) * * Hi Another note from the BSIP stated that residents appreciated the new flogging laws which enabled certain types of natives to be dealt with in the “only way likely to impress them.” (From a distance of io years we can only remark, “Tut.

Tut!”) * * * Asa reprisal for “submarining” their banana export trade to Australia, Fiji put a 60 per cent, prohibitive tariff on Australian flour. This caused some panic in Australia and at the end of the month, Australian officialdom was trying to re trieve the position by announcing that Fiji bananas entering Australia would, in future, not be subject to sales tax, and probably not to primage. * * * A London correspondent commented on the copra market thus: “Our friends of Unilever are annoyed and refuse to buy.

We just have to meet their wishes, as they are the only buyers in the market. * * * “Svdnev interests are making a strong effort to organise in Australia, a market for New Guinea cocoa beans. It is re ported that Australian confectionery manufacturers have displayed indifference, if not hostility to the NG product and a move is afoot to urge that a tariff be placed on beans other than from Aus tralian sources.”