The Editors' Mailbag

BSIP History—Ancient

and Future

Captain Brett Hilder—currently on Burns Philp’s Tulagi— writes from Tenaru, BSIP. . . “just as a good excuse to send you, on the envelope, my three stamps of the new Solomons issue which came out on March 1.”

The stamps which, as he says, have just emerged, were designed by the Captain a year or so ago and are the Bd, 6d, and 5/- denominations of the new series.

The 8d stamp shows the old war time control tower at Henderson Field, just outside Honiara, with a modern airliner flying over it. This, no doubt, will give a lot of people the impression that the famous war time airstrip is still in use—which, of course, is not so. The Field is down for reconstruction —one of these days.

The sea-green 6d stamp shows a trading schooner; and the sepia 57stamp which the Captain says he likes best, shows Mendana and his ship.

That should send people scurry ing for their history books —few people remember Mendana’s connec tion with the fabled islands of Solomon.

In Fiji She Missed

Butchers 7 Shops

The old pre-war islands idea that shooting-a-line to newspaper re porters was just not done, has gone overboard with a lot of other tradi tions. Scarcely a day passes when some returning wanderer does not entertain newspaper readers with lurid tales of privations in the cannibal islands, or alternately, lush love-feasts among the Polynesians.

However, people who know Fiji and its sugar-industry must have blushed for a certain Mrs.

McConochie when she recently went on record in the Brisbane Courier Mail as the woman who had to travel 50 miles in Fiji to get her hair trimmed.

The story went on (according to the newspaper, anyhow): With no household amenities, only tinned foods, and no social activities except a few parties and a picture theatre, Mrs. McConochie is not very happy with her life at Penang Mill.

After nine months away from Brisbane, Mrs. McConochie said; “It was wonderful to come back to Bris bane and see those butchers’ and fruit shops filled with so much meat and fruit.”

A reader sent this clipping to us from Brisbane with the comment: “Good God—and I always thought Fiji a much better place to live in

than New Guinea.” Then he adds, perhaps with a certain amount of male virtue-triumphant, “I dismiss this as the kind of utter tripe some returning women give out to the press.”

We could point out to our Bris bane reader that returning men fre quently give out with the utter tripe too; and to poor Mrs. McConochie that there are a couple of million women in Australia, too, whose only social activities are “parties and a picture theatre.”

Homosexuality—Skeletons

in Many Cupboards

Although opinion on the Poole murder case is divided, most residents of long standing in the SW Pacific are unanimous about one thing—homosexuality always has existed there, if not in one district, then in another.

As one Administration officer has put it in a letter to us: “Canon Warren, who had not heard of one case of homosexuality in Papua, is talking through his hat.” (PIM, March, page 28). He goes on; “I have dealt with dozens of cases— and the least said about the Euro peans, the better.”

He then mentions a few of the Europeans—one of which would sur prise a number of people.

Few people with any length of residence in this part of the Pacific have to think long before recollect ing natives who practised the vice, or recalling one European known or suspected.

These observations should not give the impression that the vice is rampant amongst Europeans. It isn’t.

But for anyone afflicted in that manner the opportunities are greater and, because of isolation, so is the compulsion. However, in a native community “keeping it dark” is virtually impossible and discovery is inevitable. . . whereupon the Euro pean involved was, in the past, usually persuaded to fade silently from the scene and no scandal re sulted.

Like our reader, we think that the less said by Missions and every one else about homosexuality in the SW Pacific the better. The mere mention of the word must produce the sound of rattling skeletons from many cupboards.

The Atom and the

Ancient Pacific

Professor and Mrs. E. W. Gifford, of San Francisco, who have done some notable archaeological work in the South Pacific, now have gone to Yap, in the Caroline Islands, in

Micronesia—a field considered wj worthy of archaeological researu' They were in New Caledonia 1952, and their report on what thi found in excavations there is nx in the hands of the University California’s press, awaiting pm lication.

Professor Gifford informs us tlf “an interesting feature of the Nl Caledonian research is the sen of radiocarbon dates the td earliest of which are in the 2 and sth centuries BC” —that 2,800 and 2,500 years ago. T 1 Professor made some investigatio in Fiji, also, and certain radJ carbon dates which he fixed respect of Viti Levu will be pv lished in the Journal of ft Polynesian Society (New Zealanu Mankind’s increasing knowleb of the atom enables archaeology fix approximately the century, at even the decade, when prehistoc man handled materials in eart works and building.

The Buka Boss Boy

Had Had It!

The other day, I met a Bn boy who was on his way home Buka, after long residence Rabaul. I expressed surprise his preference now for a quiet ax primitive village life. TM approximately, was his reply: “You savi, Masta. Before m Govmint ’e strong. All plant tion boy can work good, ’ear * talk, an’ stop good.

“Now, behind ’long war, Govnu ’e no more strong—spoil ’im finii all plantation boys ’long silly taj talk. So boy no more work go* no more ’ear ’im talk, no mo. stop good.

“This way makim planty wo more ’long all boss boys. Mou belong me fella pain finish ’la planty talk-talk. Now all b cheeky back ’long me fella b« boys.

“ ’Long talk belong white nut Masta, me finish.”

In other words, he had “had —and this about describes my ox feelings, too —From a planter in 1W Guinea. t A group of five new scho< teachers arrived in Rarotonga : cently by air. They include PI Peterson, formerly headmaster ofi NZ Maori school, who became hes master of Tereora College; I Hardy, B.Agr.Sc, formerly fro Nelson College, NZ; Mrs. Han MA; Mr. Robert Wilson, BA, w, has been appointed to the loc Teachers’ Training College; E R. D. McEwan, who has speo qualifications in Arts and Crafts as who has been appointed Chi Organising Teacher; Mrs. Keartl who becomes an Infant Mistress? a Rarotongan school.