The Editors' Mailbag

P-NG and the

Oxford Atlas

Mr. Frank Eyre, of the Australian Branch of Oxford University Press, says that he was very interested to read Mr. G. A. V. Stanley’s broad side about the P-NG section of the Oxford Atlas in April PIM. He thinks that Mi’. Stanley must have been working on an old edition be cause some of the corrections Mr.

Stanley suggests have already been made.

He says that Samarai, for example, is no longer on the mainland where it “unfortunately arrived” in a pre vious edition.

The rest of the comment has now gone to the Cartographic Depart ment at Oxford, for comment.

What say you, Mr. Stanley? Were you using an old Atlas?

Back View of the

Anti-Yaws Campaign

Members of WHO’s yaws control project in the Pacific are known now as the people “who stick needles in little boys’ bottoms.” Anyhow, this is what Dr. Freidrich Tross, at present leading his team in the Gilberts tells us . . . and blames the picture on the cover of January, 1957, PIM (“a back-view of the anti-yaws campaign.”) He says it’s OK with him —and that it was a delightful picture.

We thought so, too.

It Could Have

Been Tougher, Mr. Menzies

WHEN Mr. Menzies returned to Australia after his Far Eastern and P-NG tour he was literally a cot-case. But according to some Territorians, he was given the old well-known VIP treatment and a completely wrong impression of what the ordinary Territorian has to put up with in the normal course of duty.

Certainly, the Administ:; never shows much original!!, these red-carpet occasions. Th was treated to a native sing-s;< Ela Beach (Port Moresby), judging by some of the photog that emerged therefrom, some native girls were got up Tahitian hula-dancers. In pupils at the Technical Trs Centre were back in school Saturday morning to give minutes performance for the And so it went on. One irate i from up yonder writes thus; When VlP’s arrive, Ad' tration officers appear imma in long whites and tie. Why u shorts and open-neck shirt op day?

The local War Cemetery is clean of every leaf; every fiower. Why not the wate track, the fallen bloom on the stone? The man who lies bt still sleeps easily.

The Guard of Honour ii hangar. Why not under ti sun and conditions under Territorians go about their jobs?

The people at the Native ii surrounded by products that : the place like the Horn of 0 copia. Why not the usual of betel-nut and darned litth The reception and banquet Residency or Government with a retinue of servants; pean caterer and formally-Q women and their groomed e hand-picked for the occasion, not a meal in an everyday hold where Mrs. Housewife cope with lunch-hour shopph the take At-or-leave-it frozen plies; or in a Mess whet monotony of badly cooket badly served food is the eu fare of most single men and in the Territory?

The overnight stay in

appointed, mosquito-free

Why not an invitation to si night in Lae’s “Bag-Town,” the occupant is expected to* his 21-months term without p invaded by hordes of most and with sanitary condition ; pletely primitive? Or in the house quarters of 9PA, whe. inmates are spied upon by n or in the “Stables” at Port M where female Administration ployees are herded together ii t little laraer than cupboards?.

The Public Service Asso wages a ceaseless battle for conditions, better allowance better housing for Territory ployees, yet whenever a VIP he is shown a pretty pictut everyone aids and abets thu deception.

So, you see, Mr. Menzies, it was you suffered, it coull been a great deal worse.

(Continued on Page 129) (

Birds of Paradise

Vest Indies

l. D. W. EVERITT, a London ’ reader, has sent us a clipping • from an April issue of the lon Daily Telegraph, which is juing in the matter of the in ation it does not supply, e clipping is of a letter to the r, signed by Collingwood Ingram, tent, who corrects something previously by another DT r on the subject of Birds-of iise on the West Indian island ttle Tobago. i island was purchased by Mr. m’s father, Sir William Ingram, )8. with the intention of mak it into a sanctuary for the jr Bird-of-Paradise, then in r of extinction at the hands ►P shooters in New Guinea.

William succeeded in getting st 44 BOP and subsequently others, all from the Aru Is, off the Dutch New Guinea Mr. Ingram says that this ere they came from and not resent Australian Trusteeship ory. birds were released on Little 0, in 1909 —but whether they hed or not is not certain. It be interesting for NG readers dw whether they did or not. ps it was “not”—there is a tion that the Commonwealth nment has been approached w supplies. Mr. Ingram says Jinot imagine why—as the il birds did not come from G mainland, anyway.

Aru Islands, although only 100 to 150 miles off the lands NG coast, are now part Republic of Indonesia. It therefore probably be much to get BOP from the Aus- Territory than from Aru. the death of Sir William 1, Little Tobogo passed to his sons, who presented it to id on the understanding that u 1 d be maintained as a ary. ancy that Tolala had some -0 say about this West Indian of NG Birds-of-Paradise in >me years ago.

ars Since

1 Blew its Top

New Guinea Women’s Club iey reminds us that it is just trs this month since the n m Rabaul that all but iut that town.

Club’s secretary sends along Jrses with the reminder—not good poetry but the senti ?xpressed the feelings of old nans of that time. The was a song, if we remember y, sung at the Frangipanni

Ball to the tune of Mademoiselle From Armentieres. The Frangi panni Ball, an annual May event, was supposed to commemorate the first flowering of the frangipanni blossoms after the town had been covered with ash and pumice dust.

The flowering of this tree had

significance for these Territorians— indicating to them that Rabaul would rise again. The vicissitudes of Rabaul, of course, did not end with the 1937 eruption. Four years later came the Japanese invasion and from that catastrophe Rabaul also emerged.

New Bishop

New Caledonia's new RC Bishop, Monseigneur Pierre Martin, arrived in Noumea on March 29 to receive a tumultuous welcome at the aero drome and later in the day a civic reception The enthroning cere monies took place in the evening of the Bishop's arrival. He is shown here at the hostel for the aged con ducted by the Little Sisters of the Poor.

The majority of the Sisters in this in stitution are Australian.

Bishop Martin is some thing new in Bishops for New Caledonians.

He is comparatively young and was ordained a priest on the battle field in 1940. He was for a considerable time a guest in that in famous Nazi "pensionat"

Dachau. He later joined the Free French Forces as a volunteer.