Leslie Love—Condominium

Welshman

LES LOVE, chief of the Radio Service of the New Hebrides Condominium, whose voice, speaking English or French, has become, thanks to the radio-telephone, one of the best known in these islands.

He is a Welshman, born at Newbridge, Monmouthshire, in 1902, and ran off to sea as a cabin boy in the "H. H. Asquith" of Cardiff, which was sailing for the Americas.

Baltimore, then through the Panama Canal to the Chilean ports of Tocopilla, Mejillones and Iquipui, loading copper sulphates, to New York, then off to Mediterranean, tramping to Algiers, Oran and Naples, before returning home to Cardiff. This should have cured any one of the sea, but Les had made up his mind to become a ship's radio operator.

He took a course at the Cardiff Radio College, and was later able to join Alfred Holt's Blue Funnel Line as a radio operator. He visited Australia in "Nestor" and "Ascanius", fell in love with the country on his first voyage.

After some time on the Eastern run, he decided to settle in Australia.

These were depression years, and his new love was a hard mistress. He humped his bluey around central NSW, doing any work he could find—helping in shearing sheds, sucker cutting, cattle droving. After 16 months of this outback life he was able to get into radio engineering work in Sydney, but in 1937 he decided to take a look at the South Sea Islands, going to the New Hebrides as radio operator of BP's "Mirani".

On the outbreak of war in 1939, he joined

the Condominium service as radio operate Vila.

When France fell and the hot bloo France officially turned to Vichy water, French and British in the Hebrides sh have gone to war with each other. Inst Governor Sautot declared for de Gaulle Free France, amid streams of radio traffii In 1940 Les Love married Noel Kennedy 1 Narrabeen, NSW, and their children Billie, Anthony and Gillian. Les hold: Diploma from General de Gaulle for his service; and also the Queen's Coronation M(

Brett Hill