Tropicalities

Pacific Islands Monthly

Magazine Section

life With Mother •'E with mother-in-law has been jot down to a fine art among ;he languri tribe in the Southern lands of New Guinea. Patrol er J. B. Battersby reported the r day, after making a study leir customs, that the bride-to -5 taken into the house of her *e mother-in-law for about months’ instruction in cooking the running of her household, e is instructed in such things ardening, pig husbandry, child and the likes and dislikes of future husband. During this the boy’s male relatives catch animals, give them to the girl ok, all the time passing critical aents on her culinary skill. The is not allowed to eat anything future wife cooks during her ing under his mother —in fact as to cook his own food, as his er is busily engaged in her is. st languri boys are married be i 15 and 17—the girls about years younger. Obviously, they :oo young to know how badly tiey are.

"Cheapened" Ceremonies

SOME Fijians have been com plaining lately that Fijian customs have been cheapened by being used in tourist ceremonies.

So the Fijian Affairs Board dis cussed the matter and decided that the chiefly yaqona (kava) ceremony and the presentation of the tabua (whale’s tooth) should not be per formed to tourists “either for profit, or for exhibition purposes”.

It also decided “that the per formance of meke (a dance) or any other Fijian ceremony on Sundays is a matter for individual conscience”.

This last decision was the result of complaints by Fijians that meke shouldn’t be performed on Sundays for tourists.

Fiji’s tourist interests have been pushing solidly ahead in the last two or three years, and it was probably inevitable that there would be a minor clash of interests some where along the line.

Properly done, there is nothing wrong with the performance of age

old ceremonies in front of tourists.

In fact, this kind of performance could help the ceremonies endure.

Badly done, they can soon give the appearance of being phony, and bring them into disrepute.—G.

Counting Your Chickens

Dr. BLANCHE BIGGS, who is to be in charge of a new TB hos pital, St. Luke’s, to be staffed by the Anglican Mission near Popondetta, Papua, has been visit ing her home State of Tasmania lately. She told a group there of how a neighbour of hers in Papua discovered a large snake curled up in his duck pen. The snake had 13 humps. They “operated” on it and found 13 precious duck eggs. But it wasn’t a tragedy, said Dr. Biggs.

The mother duck was set on the retrieved eggs, and the ducklings were hatched safely.

The New Monarch ON our desk the other day came a colourful and beautifully pro duced little magazine, Marist Missions, published from Massa chusetts, USA. We liked the story and pictures about the Duke of Edinburgh’s visit to the British Solomons earlier this year. But we were a little surprised to find His Royal Highness referred to as “His Majesty, the Duke of Edinburgh”, be cause we don’t think it’s dawned on them in London yet that they now have a King as well as a Queen.

On The Roof Of

New Guinea

HOW many people know that, as part of the Post and Telegraph Department’s essential radio organisation in Papua and New Guinea, there is a VHF radio repeater station at the top of Mount K This point is in the Morobe District, 8,000 feet above the Bulolo River Gorge.

The station was inspected not long ago by a high OTC official, Mr Ron Knightley. He went by Landrover from Wau to Edie Creek, and then walked over a rough bush track to the station. He says: “Surveying the two steel-frame huts, the Lister diesel engines, the

electronic equipment and the fabricated steel antenna tower, I asked the supervising technician, acting as my guide: ‘How on earth did you get all that up here?’

“ ‘Quite easy,’ he answered non chalantly. ‘You call up a few boys; point up the track and say: ‘That pala i go longa top. Now up ’im.’

Then you walk away and forget it.

The boys will get a few poles, tie them to the engine, or whatever it is, with lianas and carry it up. Just like that.’ ”

An "Islanders" Station

Broadcast-band station iyz, with studios at Rotorua, NZ. recently celebrated its tenth birthday—an event which might appear to have little significance to Pacific Islanders. But by a happy freak, the location of the trans mitting station, out near the Bay of Plenty coast and far from Rotorua, makes it one of the best-received broadcast stations in the South Pacific, and evidence of its popu

larity pours in from the Islands month by month.

Apart from the fact that it is well received, its emphasis on Maori music, its special request sessions which cater for people in the Islands, and the fact that it has a Samoan-born announcer, Mr. Alf Sanft, who knows his Islanders and speaks Samoan, are all points towards the station’s Islands popularity. A typical request session includes calls to Campbell Island weather station far to the south, the Kermadecs, New Caledonia, Fiji, the Cooks, and even to much more distant countries. Some of its programmes also go out on shortwave via Radio New Zealand.

The station is heard on 800 kc/s.

Ivory Nut Hunting

r:E late Bill Russell, onetime outside boss for Carpenter’s in Tulagi, was apt to enliven the tedium of his job with a practical joke, and steamer days usually saw him at the top of his form. Bill

and a couple of cobbers lounjj outside Carpenter’s big copra si one day as the boys sorted iw nuts and threw the discards onh heap near the door. A boat fn the Marsina, freshly arrived fn Sydney, tied up at Carpenter’s, s a gaggle of tourists excitedly stepji ashore, their first footfall on Islai. soil. Eager for new sights s smells the heap of ivory intrigr them at once.

Bill was a picturesque figure s a couple of elderly touring scho marms mentally composing lectures with which they would be their charges on their return Sydney, aimed their Kodaks at 11 and at the natives busy with th sorting.

Then the questions began.

“What are these queer lit things?”

“Where do they grow?”

“Aren’t there a lot of the (there were another 200 tons in copra shed).

“What are they used for?”

Bill’s answers came pat as he gj a highly-coloured account of ' deadly perils of ivory nut harve ing.

“It’s hard work”, he said, “1 it‘s worth it, they’re good to es “Ooh, how do you cook them asked one of the tourists.

“Boil ’em,” Bill replied, “Put in salted water and boil tin slowly. They’re better than potato Here, have a few to take back Sydney. Give your friends a trea Grabbing a copra bag he ha filled it and put it into the boat; take back to the Marsina as t visitors ambled off discussing i preparation of the exotic Islai vegetable.

They dragged that half-hundrr weight of ivory nuts ashore in S? ney, because some of the boys w were in Marsina described the see on her next trip. What they did: see, of course, was the drama in Sydney flat as the innocents u;j up half the output of the Mortis gasworks in their attempts to co

the iron-hard vegetables.

Baverstock.