Thopicalities

Pacific Islands Monthly

Magazine Section

A Lei for Rarotonga MERIC AN millionaires are said iL to be rather hard to please, so when the great majority of the (0 wealthy American tourists—pay cg £9OO and upwards—who make 3e round-the-world cruise in the orwegian luxury liner Bergensfjord )te Rarotonga as the most enjoy [.le stop on their entire cruise, that praise indeed. that was the result of a ».estionnaire circulated amongst the :,ssengers at the conclusion of last jar’s cruise.

The liner’s cruise lecturer, Mr. .i Prade, for 35 years Vice-Pre ilent of the famous firm of Cooks, iid this when the 18,500-ton liner Hied at Rarotonga again this year, nd with perfect weather and even htter items of entertainment for ie passengers in their dawn to dusk sit this February, Mr. La Prade tonounced the call a greater suc :ss even than last year. [For the only liner calling at arotonga in recent years—last year jis the first visit—Rarotonga makes \trgensfjord Day a gala day for •e island. There is a great deal of aining of dancing, singing, and .anting teams in preparation for ie big day, and the passengers cast •tes for the best team, which re lives a prize. [Rarotonga has no harbour, no ibs, and no taxis. There’s not a Ike box, restaurant, night club, isino, or other “tourist attraction”.

The tourists are brought ashore in launches and transported in motor trucks and private cars. All of which goes to show that there can be a few tourist plums for places with next to nothing in the way of what is normally considered essential.

Just what the island makes from these visits in hard cash is not known, but an effort is to be made to encourage similar day calls by other tourist liners, and the two highly successful visits by Bergens fjord should certainly be an aid to that end. The Rarotonga Crippled Children’s Society was expected to be a major beneficiary from the Bergensfjord visit as stalls were run on the Society’s behalf. The funds are used for sending crippled children to New Zealand for surgical treatment.

Get Into That Queue! riIAXI drivers who leave their cars JL to solicit business on the wharf when the big liners tie up at Suva, are likely to be in for trouble in future. Fiji Visitors’ Bureau has asked the police to take action. The Bureau is trying to do away with

the unseemly arguments between drivers over which tourist belongs to who, and they don’t like the vulgar shouting for custom. That may go in Marseilles or Port Said or even Taipei, but it wouldn’t have done for the Duke, sir, so in future taxis will approach the pick-up area in a well-ordered queue, and, millionaire or whatever, you’ll take the front car whether it be a 1938 Dodge or a 1960 Holden —at least until you get oif the wharf.

Doctors Were Cheaper Then! r:E following extract from the proceedings of the Cook Islands Parliament of 1897 recently appeared in the Cook Islands News sheet and should interest Islands heads of Medical Departments!

“The chairman (of the Hospital Board), Mr. C. Kohn, announced that he had interviewed Dr G.

Craig, who a few days previously bad arrived from New Zealand. Dr.

Craig held many testimonials as to his skill as a doctor, including strong recommendations from the New Zealand Government Inspector of Hospitals and Lunacy, and others, showing he was an eminent path ologist, and held the position of Demonstrator of Anatomy in Edinburgh, and had also given the greatest satisfaction in the em ploy of the New Zealand Govern ment. It was decided to engage him at the rate of £lBO p.a. Stg. For that amount he was to provide a nurse, medicines, food and attend ance to all patients at the hospital as required.

“Dr. Craig accepted the post and announced that the Government would also have the benefit of the services of his brother, who was also a member of the medical pro fession, free”.

Mysterious Bones

r[E “dragons” which patrol Officer lan Gibbons says P-NG natives declare grow to 20 feet in length and live on wallabies (Tropicalities , Feb.), are probably Komodo dragons not Komono.

Komodo is an island near Flores in the East Indies which has dragons in large numbers. They first came into the news when Sir Alan Cobham saw them on his flight from London to Sydney.

They are the descendants of the

dragons of mythology which in pre historic times were enormous creatures. Australian goannas are their living relatives.

In 1918, a Solomon Island resident found enormous bones in the bush on Gateki Island which had the local authorities on flora and fauna puzzled. He packed them up and shipped them to the Australian Museum, Sydney, on the chance that a zoologist would be able to identify them. But they never arrived. They were part of the cargo of the BP steamer Mindini, and are now among the coral at Meins'll Reef where Mindini met her end. — Bill Baverstock.

Saying It With Bananas ISLANDERS seek pen friends via many avenues —letters to news paper editors, city mayors, and club secretaries but there is probably none more novel than that increasingly employed from Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga, where banana packers are inscribing their re quests with name and address on the skin of the fruit itself.

One such banana arriving in an Auckland suburban fruiterer’s in February bore the following message: “Penfrien wanted. Sefo Naver, Aleisa. This banana, carrying a plea all.”

Life Goes On SOME items culled from recent Islands reading: An advertise ment in the Cook Islands News —“FOUND: False teeth at the LMS School compound. Owner please get from Pastor Aue Orometua. De scription before taking.”

From the Moripi Native Council News-sheet (NG) : “Councillor Kake has been in to complain about passengers who come to stay in his village to wait for the boat. He said the village people did not object to feeding all these people, but they do get cross when the visitors go and take all their hosts’ cups, plates and spoons.”

From the same News-sheet : “The secretary of Uritai Native Society, Ako Kaipu, invited the Kukipi Station people to attend his party.

Ako put mats out in front of t house and everyone sat down ai listened to several guitars. Lat there was singing and dancir While they were dancing sor crackers were let off and Mora Iru got cross about the noise. 1 came from his house and told the to be quiet, and told the Statit people to go back to their Static When he threatened to break th« guitars the people decided to stc Some other comments about wh happened at night cannot printed.”

Just An Old Grass Strip

IT’S hard to realise that FiJ Nadi airport—with its ma runway of 10,000 ft and ult modern terminal—the whole worth many millions as a result its recent monumental face 11 ( PIM , March) was not long a; born as a grass strip hurriedly pr pared on level land near the edi of the sea so that pioneer trar Pacific flyers Charles Ulm, Geor Littlejohn and Leon Skilling col land on it. But it was never us for that purpose. Their aircrs crashed into the sea before reach!

Fiji.

Charles Kingsford-Smith a r Ulm, in the famous Southern Cm had made an earlier landing in Fi in 1928, but this was in Suva. < the pocket handkerchief Albe Park.

Close to the site of that old Na grass strip the first runway f modem aircraft was laid in 1940-* It was built by a constructs squadron of the RNZAF—just gravel stretch. But when the Amei cans came into the war, the Amei cans greatly extended it. And frc those war-time days it has grov to its present position.

Pin-Ups Were Their Pin-Ups

THERE was a sequel to the acts of the Rev. Wesley Lutto chairman of the Method!

Overseas Mission in New Britaj who recently started a minor stoi in Rabaul when he complainr about the circulation of a calenct containing pin-ups in various stag of dress and undress (Tropicalitu March).

Following Mr. Button’s complaiu the Rabaul Town Advisory Count asked the Administration to decii if the calendar was an indecea publication.

In March, the P-NG Admit istrator, Brigadier Cleland, said felt the pictures could be classify as objectionable. He indicated t! legal position would be investigates But while all this was going the calendars were fast disappes ing from the walls in houses a:i shops in Rabaul, and were close becoming collector’s items!