Tropicalities

Pacific Islands Monthly

Magazine Section

"Do You Know Where The

Solomons Are?"

HONIARA businessman A. c.

Blair would like to see that phrase used as a tourist slogan for the British Solomon Islands Pro tectorate. He would like to see it writ large on tourist publicity over seas. particularly in Australia and New Zealand.

Mr. Blair, an Australian who is a member of the BSIP Advisory Coun cil and vice-chairman of the Honiara Town Council, is merely one man who thinks that the BSIP has a first-class tourist potential, and who is hoping for big things from the projected Fiji Airways link be tween Fiji and Honiara, and from the Trans Australia Airlines take over of the NG-Solomons service in September.

“We have a lot to offer here,” he says. “The war history alone in the Guadalcanal-Savo Island area would bring people in. And Honiara is a very pretty town, and growing.

“But when you talk about the Solomons outside, they haven’t any idea where it is. I have had so much experience of that in Australia, that whenever I am there I make sure I carry a small map in my pocket —and when the question comes up I whip it out and show them where the Solomons are!”’

Another Honiara businessman, Mr.

Alvin Blum, plans to run a tourist bus around the war-time sites that can be seen by road, including, pre sumably, some of the wrecks piled up in view along the Guadalcanal coast. However, these wrecks are fast disappearing as a Japanese salvage team continues to make headway in that area, and there is a good pos sibility of there being nothing left to see. Some Honiara people, as a matter of fact, would like at least one wreck left there as a kind of memorial of the war, as well as tourist bait.

And, of course, there is plenty of hidden history left near Honiara — especially in the 20 miles of sea that separates Honiara from Savo Island which can always be clearly seen from the mainland.

One of the big sea battles of the war was fought there in August, 1942, and in 60 fathoms in what is now known as Ironbottom Sound, there rest the Australian cruiser Canberra, together with the US cruisers

Vincennes . Quincey and Astoria.

Many members of their crews no doubt still lie down there with them.

War history or not, Honiara and places like Gizo can more than hold their own for scenery and general interest, and there is no reason why the Solomons can’t be one of the big tourist areas of the future.—Sl.

P/VTs First Car Engine Would Not Lie Down THE first motor-car into Port Moresby was second-hand, and arrived in 1915. Its owner was very proud of it; but when other cars arrived in 1916-17, he decided it was too shabby, and sold it to a merchant, who had it converted into a delivery truck.

The wooden body, made by a local carpenter, fell to pieces in 1919, and the car went to tough transport work outside the town.

In 1923, the chassis collapsed; but the motor still was good, and was installed in a launch. It failed the launch-owner at a critical time, and he was nearly drowned; so he sold the machine to a sawmiller, who in stalled it in a shed, to drive some thing or other. It was “unreliable”, so the sawmiller sold it to a planter.

It did some work there, and then it was bought by “an engineering experimentalist”.

Finally, after some years of rest and neglect, it was taken over by an ambitious prospector; and in December, 1937 (reported the PIM of that date) it was merrily pump ing water from a creek in a remote corner of Papua.

The Plastic Palms of a Restaurant to Remember Following last month’s Tropicality about the proposed Polynesian restaurant (The Beachcomber) in London, we have now had an on the spot report from Alan Fitzgerald, who has actually been there: FROM the moment you step be tween the Totem Poles at The Beachcomber entrance you walk into another world, according to the Public Relations Officer —a tropical island paradise of over 50 tons of heavy-duty, reinforced plaster.

Dazzled by sufficient bamboo to stretch from London to Brighton,

and bewildered perhaps by the sight of rare Nile crocodiles (brought at “great expense”) you step gingerly over 25 miles of cable and wire, gazing all the time at Terrapins from the Everglades of Florida, and multi-coloured shells from “the four corners of the Pacific”.

Thus May Fair Hotel —the place where a white man’s burden is more likely to be his surtax —announces its £145,000 pastiche of the “lush, heady atmosphere, informality, romance and magic of the South Seas”, which it claims to be the first Polynesian Restaurant in Europe.

Should you by any chance be nostalgic for the old Polynesian triangle, the sound of a friendly Macaw “nodding his greeting” as you make your way to the Castaway’s Corner ought to overwhelm you.

The most philistine of us should be moved to shed a tear over the 40,000 flame-proof plastic leaves and tropical flowers, pondering all the

while on the stringent London County Council fire regulations which caused much of this Pacific to be manufactured, from corner to corner, from Cinemoid, a Celanese plastic.

At the Aloha Bar, where the man agement “extend the traditional greeting of the islands” (everybody duck!) you may sample a Missionary’s’ Downfall, while keep ing a friendly, Christian eye on the “native girls wearing tradtiional Muu Muus”, running bare-foot through the Chicken Po Lo Kai and Kahana moka Salad.

Take your time to consider the panorama of the far-off plastic islands . . . the palate-pleasing Chinese dishes . . . the Angel fish from the Amazon . . . the alligator filled lagoons . . . the 2,000 Honolulu utensils made by the best crafts men in the 50th State of the Union . . . the seashells, tropical palms, fishermen’s net —consider all these things, but for God’s sake try and forget those NILE crocodiles.