J. K. McCarthy

Acting

Administrator

J. K. McCarthy leaves For Nauru

A WELL-KNOWN official of Papua-New Guinea, Mr. J. K.

McCarthy, has been appointed Acting Administrator of Naum.

Mr. McCarthy left Port Moresby on April 3, and after a few days in Canberra, will leave, with Mrs.

McCarthy, for Nauru by ship from Melbourne.

Mr. McCarthy will relieve the present Administrator of Nauru, Mr.

R. S. Leydin. who has been ill.

Mr. McCarthy will be at Nauru for at least three months, and probably longer. The length of his stay probably depends on the state of Mr. Leydin’s health.

Before being appointed to a special job in the Department of the Administrator, Mr. McCarthy was a senior member of the Dis trict Services Department. He was District Commissioner, New Britain, and before that DC, Madang.

In recent months he has had the exacting job of travelling around Australia interviewing candidates for cadetships in P-NG.

He has had about 30 years in the Territory. When the Pacific War began he was ADO, Talasea, New Britain, and he played a vital role in organising the rescue of about 250 Australian soldiers who had tried to escape when the Japs over ran Rabaul. He followed this episode with a distinguished military career in other theatres of the Pacific War.

Mr. McCarthy is the seventh Administrator, acting or permanent, that Nauru has had since 1945.

Another Territorian, Mr. H. H.

Reeve, P-NG Treasurer, spent some months there as Acting Admin istrator at the end of 1949.

Nauru is, of course, a Trusteeship Territory, administered by Aus tralia on behalf of herself and her other two partners in the Trustee ship, New Zealand and the UK. The other and older name for the island is Pleasant Island, and most people who have been there agree that is what it is.