Tropicalities

Agazine Section

Stlucky Chinaman: No

Tradition, No Face

1 traditional view concerning )riental poker-faces was tem porarily shattered in Fiji re y when Chan Chen Ching was £lOO for attempting to avoid ms duty on 3 gold bangles, 12 rings, and a pearl ring, all ted in a tin of tea. sng’s nervous manner in de ig the contents confirmed the •ms officer’s suspicion that no iman in his right mind would 32/- air freight on a tin of vhich could have been bought y for a few shillings, dence showed that Ching had Dusly been an officer of the d Revenue Department and the law on such matttrs,

When In Rome—Or

Rarotonga

HNG last December a Euro 3an residence in Rarotonga was roken into and several valu which included a gold pocket with crest, a crested silver :tte case, a signet ring, a ng ring, and a diamond ring, stolen. These articles had been j possession of the family for il generations, and therefore reat sentimental value as well irinsic worth.

Police were informed, but make no headway in the case, me dragged by the lady of >use became impatient and de to do something herself, local method of advertising s and cinema attractions is truck carrying a native per i band to go around the island, ts advertising the show are n to the crowds of youths and sn attracted by the music, and eculiar method of disseminat iformation has proved very ve. lady set off round the island :r car, accompanied by her hildren. The boy, an expert 3 native slit-gong and kero an technique, provided the and the girl distributed leat hering a £2O reward to any supplying information that lead to the recovery of the ties. ug on information obtained in lanner, the Police were able :over some of the valuables had been buried in swampy i, and a man who was already ; a twelve months jail sentence

mother housebreaking, was

to be the thief—W. H.

[Val.

Columnist Cruise In The

Cannibal Isles

ROBERT C. RUARK, American columnist, who is better known hereabouts for his writing about Africa than for anything he did in the US, was visiting New Guinea in March. Small samples of his wares have subsequently appeared in the Sydney Telegraph.

Robert C. appears to be getting most of his facts straight but you have to dig so deep among the home-spun Americanisms to see it that the average reader is likely to give up and write the author and

the Territory 6ff as some sort of fast-patter act. “I ate grandpa be cause I loved him,” is the head ing on one of his stories; another, in Australian aborigine Pidgin, begins; ‘‘Me fella bin stop along New Guinea to visit the happy cannibals again.”

It probably isn’t necessary to point out to Mr. Ruark that cannibalism is a dying past time in the Terri tory these days and that there are probably about as many cannibals there as there are high-bikes in the US. But whatha!

It makes a good story —which is what columnists are paid for.

There is an in exhaustible supply o f high-minded visitors to NG to probe and examine and make ponti fical reports. It at least makes a change to see the place presented as a two-ring circus.

Mr. Ruark, we understand, is to write a book and interested parties should be warned that if his writ ings about Africa are any criterion, he does not write only high-priced nonsense but

packs a sting in his tail (or in his typewriter).

Two Eyes For Youwiga

YOUWIGA, ex-sergeant in the New Guinea native police, was in hospital in Brisbane in Feb ruary, having some attention to his one good, blue eye. He lost the other eye and one hand on war service as right-hand man of Coast watcher W. J. Read, in Bougain ville, during the Pacific war.

Youwiga sees to-day by virtue of the fact that he was given a corneal graft at Greenslopes military hos pital in Brisbane in 1945—the first operation of that kind performed in Australia.

Before that happened, however, Youwiga had won the Military Medal and the Loyal Services Medallion. And after he was patched up he went back to his village near Yamil, in the Sepik country, and became a leader of nis people.

During his current visit to hos

pital, Youwiga is without his large black beard which, in combination with the patch over his missing eye, and the hook at the end of one arm, made of him a rather benign-look ing native Long John Silver.

In hospital he will receive atten tion to his good eye and be fitted with an artificial eye to fill the empty socket.

Youwiga, of course, has provided meat for the evening and Sunday newspapers. One describes him as “Yau Wiga, MA.” We have heard a lot of stories about Youwiga— but never that he is a Master of Arts.

Atomic Bus—“A” Or "H”?

THE "Atomic-Power Buses,” re ported by PIM previously, as one of the most eye-catching names adopted by Indian bus owners com peting for transport business in Fiji, has been chosen as the most appropriate by the Fiji Visitor’s Bureau by reason of the intermittent explosions emitted by that com pany’s oldest charabanc as it climbs Suva’s hills.

Other intriguing titles (according to FVB’s monthly news-sheet), are “Super Bus,” "Mountain Dew Bus,”

"Goodbye Bus Service” and “Forget menot Transport.” (The current Australian slang term for a motor vehicle past its prime is "Bomb,” of course; but we are sure that the proprietor of this bus line hadn’t anything like that in mind when he named his buses.

PIM published a photograph of of these Atomic vehicles some years ago, and it looked comparatively youthful.—Ed.)

No Time For A Tere

r:E long-established Cook Islands custom of packing up traps and descending en masse onto a neighbouring village or island for a month or so, is to be controlled.

This was agreed at the recent Legis lative Council meeting.

The time, money and effort spent in these joyful jaunts (called a tere party), does not fit in with the world of to-day. There was also a certain hazard in inter-island ships being loaded to the gunwales with the roisterers and their gifts as they sang and drank their way from island to island.

Islands lUe is certainly not what it was although it still has its moments. Recently Atiu Island, in the Cooks, which has a population of about 1,430 persons, all told, opened a new village meeting house. The items of livestock on the menu: Pigs, 130; fowls, 167; goats, 4. t In early March the Cook Islands Mass Miniature X-Ray team arrived at Aitutaki by air from Rarotonga.

The team is led by Mr. Mahoney, an X-ray technician, and will spend some weeks at Aitutaki before re turning to complete their Rarotonga survey.