Palmyra Comes To life
p. 125 · Read in the full issue
[?]in-Land Palmyra Comes To life
NCE the US Navy withdrew from Palmyra atoll after World War 11, this privately owned cluster about 50 small islets —administively Honolulu’s most outer urb —has had a one-man popula i. But all this is changed, at >t for a while. a February, a ship went south n Honolulu with men and sntific equipment, and a US mil •y aircraft made several flights the atoll.
Research will be carried out there ough the International Year and an aircraft i fly south with supplies every • weeks. The isolation of Mr. 0 Hornung, caretaker for the lard-Leo family, of Honolulu, ch owns all but two of the islets, be broken, everal times in the past few rs there have been reports that atoll was to be put to/nse. A Pacific Coast tuna fishing com iy was to set up a cannery or izer there —had they succeeded catching tuna in commercial ntities in the area, hen there was talk of a South ific “dude rancTi” or a luxury -game fishing camp being estab ied —a place where the dollar sn Honolulu tourists, bored with ikiki’s attractions, might head a week-end now and again, hen again came rumours that ith Pacific Air Lines might use atoll as a staging point on the d to Papeete. Instead they chose Christmas Island further south, may have been Palmyra’s per ual rain that killed the dude ch, as it has killed the copra ustry. ow it seems that the boffins can 1 a use for the atoll, if only for diile. tr. William Douglas Forsyth, the t Secretary-General of the South ific Commission, passed through imea recently per Tahitien and ewed old friendships at SPC dquarters. Mr. Forsyth has com ;ed his appointment with the ted Nations in New York. It is lerstood that his next appoint it will be an Australian one.
t The Manihiki people at the Tutakimoa settlement, in Rarotonga, turned out in force in January in a big community effort to drain the area which had suffered heavy flooding during the rains of December.
t A RNZAF Sunderland flying-boat from Lauthala Bay, Suva, on a routine training flight, dropped a parcel for the Resident Commis sioner at Rarotonga, Cook Is., from a height of 50 ft on the morning of January 26.