Do You Remember?

20 Years ago.

THE year 1935 was opening better

than any since the Depression; copra price was keeping up— probably as an indirect result of Hitler’s and Mussolini’s sword rattling on the other side of the world—and it was boom-time for

gold-mining.

Here are some extracts from our issue of February, 1935.

The Duke of Gloucester was visiting Fiji and was being given the full treat ment of Kava, mekes, fish drives, etc. * * * The Cook Islands had been swept by the worst hurricane in many years, Aitutaki, Atiu and Mauke being worst hit. * * * We published two photographs of Japanese sampans that had been “caught red-handed while poaching shell beds off Manus”. * * * The conra market, we reported, continued in remarkably healthy condition. At time of writing, price was £l2/15/- per ton, cif, London about £l5 'in Australian currency. * * * Lady Mountbatten was making an ex tended stay in Tahiti—to the delight of local residents. Oddly, not one word was

said about Lord Louis—World War II was still almost five years away. But the fact that Lady Mountbatten was the “richest woman in England” was given a lot of publicity. * ♦ * The first crushing plant on the Tavua goldfield, Fiji, had gone into action and the first four days had yielded 63 ounces of gold. This was from the then privately owned Emperor mine. There followed wild and growing interest in Fiji mining in Australia and bidding was brisk when stock exchanges there offered shares in Loloma and Koroere mines which were adjacent to Loloma. * * * Tonga had passed legislation restrict ing the entry of Japanese into the King dom. This followed the phenomenal growth of Banno Bros., a firm started by a Japanese a few years previously and which, in 1935, employed at its various branches, 20 Japanese. * * * Ray Parer and his flying companion, Hemsworth, were still struggling home from the Melbourne Centenary air race which for most competitors had finished in the previous October. They had with drawn from the race early (radiator trouble) but decided to jog quietly back to Australia. This “quiet jog” had in cluded forced landings, sickness, burnt out magnetos and being lost for four days in Southern Burma.