Coming Up

More Pacific Books Coming Up

PUBLISHERS Peter Davies and William Heinemann are both publishing books about the Pacific shortly.

From Peter Davies will come “Towards Tahiti,” by W. I. B.

Crealock, a member of the crew of Arthur Rogers (the boat with six girls in its crew—PlM has published quite a lot about it in the last year).

The story evidently covers that part of the voyage up to Tahiti. If the writing is as good as the illus trations—some of which we have seen—it should be worth reading.

Heinemann soon will publish a book called “Friendly Queen ” about Queen Salote of Tonga. It is by Hector MacQuarrie.

If you don’t know MacQuarrie, there are numerous people in the SW Pacific who do. He is appar

ently something of a literary oppor tunist—during the Pacific War when anything about the Pacific was in demand by publishers, and when Vouza of the Solomons was receiv ing much publicity for his work for the Allies, MacQuarrie wrote a book called “Vouza.” It was in teresting enough—but it contained a lot more about Hector than about Vouza.

MacQuarrie apparently came out to the Pacific as ADC to a Fiji Governor. When the Governor re tired, no one seemed to know what to do with MacQuarrie, so he was sent off to the BSIP as a District Officer. ff Mr. H. H. Hickling, who recently relinquished the position of Educa tion Officer, Cook Islands, is now engaged in New Zealand in writing text book material for Cook Islands schools. Mr. Hickling retires this y®?. r after 22 years teaching in Fiji, the Cook Islands, and Niue.

ITie principal research officer of the Land Research Section at the CSIRO, Dr. E. Phillis, left Canberra on January 8 for Lae, New Guinea, where he will join a South Pacific Commission team which is conduct ing a grassland survey of the Pacific Islands. Dr. Phillis will be away for about two months, visiting Dutch New Guinea, Papua, New Guinea, Fiji and New Caledonia.