Tropicalities

Agazine Section

Ie On The Deep—With

Geisha

seems that there is going to be a hot time in old Rabaul in the next few months —according the Sydney Mirror, anyway, cast is that yachting and ing generally will become liar. while back Rabaul citizens ted hotly whether a Jap salvage would be allowed into Rabaul Jean up the old ships sunk ag the war that have been curing the foreshore and our ever since. Some people against it but the majority led sensibly that as no one was interested in doing this it was better to let the Japs on with it. order to do the job properly as agreed that the Japs would to be allowed ashore but that would have to live aboard the ige ship and that they should trevented from having contact the natives. a bit of free embroidery to the Mirror says that they have to stay on the ship all time but infers that they will be bored because they will j their own Geisha girls along.

Shuafoou’S Swimming

Mailman

ME clippings and illustrations :rom the Sydney Morning herald of a 1912 issue, sent to y Mr. C. Buchanan, of Victoria, es pretty conclusively that Mr. •les Ramsay was not the first iming mailman of Tin Can d, or Niuafoou, in the Tongan ip. (PIM May). ie illustrations were from tings by Miss Gardner King, dbed as a “well-known English t” who passed Niuafoou in a boat; one of them shows a le of natives swimming out the assistance of poles and ving the incoming mail in d kerosene tins, ys the SMH : “The arrange :s for the mails are most irkable and probably unique. r are delivered and taken up a month by the USS Co. The ner stops half a mile from 3 and puts up a flag; then a figure carrying a long bamboo with the island’s mails ;hed to it lets himself down the to the sea and swims out to vessel. A string is let down and mails are drawn up. In the

meantime, the foreign mails, with some periodicals, papers, etc., have been sealed up ready in a kerosene tin and this is thrown overboard.

The man attaches it somehow to his bamboo pole and swims ashore with it.”

What had given rise to this interest in remote Niuafoou, was the fact that on October 7, 1912 volcanic eruptions had broken out around the island is no less than 13 places.

The South Seas In

Cartoons

r:E role of the comic-strip or cartoon book in present-day life cannot be ignored and even the Church is harnessing it to its work.

In a note from the Rev. Father Edward A. Tremblay, well-known Tongan missionary, written from Georgia, USA (where he had gone to escape the northern Spring) he tells us that he will shortly bring out a cartoon book for teenagers called Grins and Chuckles in the Land of Upside-down.

Father Tremblay says that it will deal with the amusing side

of life in Marist mission areas in the Pacific.

Lese-Majesty

A GREAT deal of unconscious humour appears in some of the press sheets of the various Pacific Islands territories, probably because, due to limited space, all sorts of information such as weather, mails, advertisements and news items are put in all together.

However, we have wondered what story lay behind the somewhat stark item that appeared in the Cook Islands Press News of April 9: LOST: Would person who removed collar from Mr.

Nevi H’s dog please return same to avoid further trouble.

Mr. Nevill, it should be pointed out, is Cook Islands Resident Commissioner.

Missing—The 12,576 Th

Elephant

Mrs. Ralph Bedell, Wife Of

the Secretary-General of the South Pacific Commission, who recently was in Suva during the South Pacific Conference, has an unusual hobby she collects elephants.

She has been doing this since she was a small child and on latest census has 12,575 of them, from elephants made of soap to jewellery made like elephants. So far she has no live elephants but even this seemed a distinct possibility some time ago.

In the course of duty, the

Bedells met an Indian Government official to whom Mrs. Bedell described her hobby, adding that she had just about every variety except a real Indian elephant.

"Ah," said the official, the gleam of Eastern generosity lighting up his face. "You would like one? I probably can arrange it."

Hastily reviewing the somewhat limited facilities of Anse Vata, Headquarters of the SPC in Noumea, as they related to elephant husbandry, Mrs. Bedell had to assure the official that it just was not possible—the first time she had turned down an offer to add to her collection.

Honolulu Tells All

fT\HE way we read it, the Hawaii X Hotels Association and the Hawaii Visitors’ Bureau are, June 4-9, going to lay bare the secrets of hotel-keeping the Ameri can way to less fortunate Pacific hotel proprietors.

This information comes from a Fiji Visitors’ Bureau pamphlet which praises this effort to raise the standard of hotel accommoda tion, meals and management.

This is well enough as far as it goes, of course. But the trouble is that the first basic requirement in the South Pacific is the hotels themselves; the know-how can come later. Such hotels as now exist can be divided into two classes —those which are owned and/or operated by people who, knowing they have a commodity that the public must have, could not care less whether the customer likes what he gets or not. And the others who honestly desire to give service.

The former are probably quite incapable of learning anything from anybody: and the latter, in relation to the peculiar economic background of hotelkeeping down here in the southern hemisphere, have likely gone as far as they can go.

But we agree with the FVB that it is a nice gesture from Hawaii, anyhow.

Free Ad Dept.—Air Borne

Brew

ONE or two favourite stories emerged from the South Pacific Conference and the one, going the newspaper rounds in May concerned a new cocktail allegedly popular in Fijian circles. It is one of those neat little stories that probably would be a pity to spoil through misjudged cynicism, or the view that it does not fit in any too well with native character.

It is attributed to Fiji’s Governor, Sir Ronald Garvey.

Sir Ronald says the brew is composed of methylated spirit cold tea and chewing-gum, and is called "Fiji Airways.” The reason for the name; After the second one you take off.