The Editaves Maillag

Man Who Didn't

To Dinner!

liig and interesting letter from C. Kerkham, secretary and ttor of Burns Philp (SS) Co. very old resident of Fiji, imemory has been jogged by igraph we ran in the People i of April about Lord Tedder, jil of the Royal Air Force. [reported Lord Tedder had Ea nostalgic visit to Lautoka 11, where he was stationed in n the Colonial Service. In flays he had to organise the 9 of Lautoka against possible by the German raiders mau and Scharnhorst. letter makes good reading :nfortunately we haven’t the to get it all in, but the )of it is that Mr. Kerkham a similar “defence” juka, where lived the German for the Pacific, Mr. George “defence” was pretty feeble, [.rd Tedder’s effort at Lautoka. jeers including Mr. Kerkham jorganised and armed with md Mr. Kerkham recalls how it all seemed to most of =as they patrolled the beach and suspiciously eyed off :.isrht that blinked on Levuka’s nillsides. ny of us never had a rifle hands before and I’m sure elf wouldn’t have known how ;it if the occasion had arisen,” l[r. Kerkham. imanding officer of the ;eers was the late A. G. Smyth :ied not long ago in Western the German raiders never or Lautoka for that *, and Mr. Kerkham recalls iFiji’s Governor, Sir Ernest Escott probably bluffed them iding a message in the clear phantom HMAS Australia, ig the captain to dinner with oat night! Australia was no near the place, but the ms apparently intercepted essage and had no desire for light cruisers to meet the or strength of the Australia!

uture of

Ihinese

old New Guinea-hand cur visiting New Zealand, has s a clipping from one of the newspapers reporting that

Auckland Chinese interests have bought the State Theatre in Auck land for £27,000 for the benefit of a group which intends to use it as a social centre for the Chinese com munity and “arrange dances and foster the education, recreation and entertainment of Chinese”. It will also be used for live theatre produc tion of Chinese plays, and there will be a school for the preparation of Chinese dishes.

Says the New Guinea-hand, “In the Islands we all know how the Chinese have developed, especially in their cultural interests, over the last few years, but it is the first I’ve ever heard of the Chinese establishing a training centre of this kind!”

He thinks it might be the begin ning of a new trend in the South Pacific, and that the Chinese are going to expand and expand and expand.

Palm Tree Correspondence

Is Now Closed

As we reported in the March issue, that tv/o-headed palm tree that Lew Friday photographed for us in February, in New Guinea, was a freak, but not such a freak that it is worth getting excited about.

We’ve since had photos of palm trees sent to us from all over the Pacific by friendly readers— some of them in full colour, too. One slide of a palm near Nukualofa, Tonga, is a beauty. It is sent by Mr. Stanley Bolton, of Sydney. That palm has three heads.

The clearest photograph comes from Mr. Jim Corfield, now of New Ireland, and was taken on the Con flicts some years ago by Mr. Doug Askew, now a copra inspector in New Guinea.

Now, before we are reduced to fighting our way into the office through the foliage of twin-headed palm trees, we have to announce that the correspondence is closed.

The High Price Of

Reading Matter

One of our palm tree corres pondents, Mr. Jim Corfield, men tioned above, makes a passing reference in his letter to the high price of books in the South Pacific. He appeals to us to keen our book reviewer going on “with his good work”, because, “in these days of expensive books, readers can’t afford to make mistakes”.

We couldn’t agree more with Mr.

Corfield.

There has been some comment in Australia recently about the high price of books, and the suggestion has been made that with more books coming in from America, prices might perhaps drop. The high price of hard covers is probably one of the main reasons why there has been such a popu lar rush on the paper backs.

Fiji's "Underwater"

Cave Recalled

The article by Rob Wright in the October, 1959, issue of PIM, telling of his experience in Mariner’s Cave, Tonga, caused quite a lot of com ment one way and another —all of it complimentary to that excellent Fiji photographer and skin diver.

The story reminds an old Fiji-ite and namesake of Wright’s—Mr. K. P.

Wright, formerly of Sigatoka, and now breeding stud herefords near Quirindi, NSW—of a visit he and his wife made to a huge cave at the back of the limestone mountain near Sigatoka in 1917.

He recalls that at that time a sizeable creek of clear water ran from the face of the cliff across an old road and by wading into this for some yards into the cliff with their faces partly under water (there was a clearance of only a few inches) he and his wife entered a tremendous cave inhabited by thousands of bats.

He continues: “Our native guides had bamboo torches which they lit when inside. The light disturbed the bats which started to fly in their hundreds or thousands, making a terrific drumming noise and quite frightening in the inky darkness with only a glimmer of light above the water at the entrance.

“We walked into the cavern over damp slippery “guano” for quite a long way, probably 60 or 70 yards— where there was another deep arch over the water. Our native guide and I repeated the process and waded into the second cavern, larger than the first and no more pleasant, and without even a ray of light. My wife wisely stayed back in the first cave with some natives.

“My guide and I trudged a long way farther in, slipping on the slimy floor. The native said, if I remember, that you could walk right through to the other face of the cliff near the Sigatoka River, but you could not emerge there.”

However, that was enough for Mr.

Wright. He was glad to get out of it. He asks, “I wonder how many white people have been in these caves since then? I think my wife and I were among the first”.

Wouldn’t surprise us to learn Rob Wright has been in.