The Editars' Maillag

jiyone Got A

pare Island?

Distant hills look green—and all lat. But we were much cheered iring the month to find that meone still yearns for the Dmantic South Seas, even in these iys when we are being urged on I sides to give the whole she-bang ?ht “back to the Indians”.

The interested party is Mr. Dan ilcomb, of California, who served New Guinea during the war, and •w at “50-ish” as he puts it, is ken with nostalgia for a bit of ad somewhere in the South -cific; or for preference, a whole and.

He writes; “I have some plans as agriculture (cows), a degree in imal husbandry—and 30 years’ perience in journalism, which has bearing on the matter whatever; 10 three fine little girls and two )wn sons”.

Vlr. Halcomb says elsewhere in > letter that he has a tax-free nuity of $554 per month— proximately £2,000 a year. doubt there are many people the Islands who would swop at Mr. Halcomb has got for what ty’ve got. So how about it you lows who reckon you see the itmg on the wall—what about ne advice for a friend? His Iress is Rt. 1, Box 906, Grass Hey, California.

)re Islands

comotives

4r. D. M. Askew, of Madang, r, challenges the statement in a cent issue” of PIM that Misima Id Mines used the earliest known muptive in the Pacific Islands. l bit late, we think—as we dis ed of the railway question about • years ago (PIM Nov., 1958), 3n it was apparently proved to ryone’s satisfaction that the first in in Papua was owned by New mea Copper Mines Ltd. to run from the Laloki and Dubuna les to the smelter at Bootless 3t (near Port Moresby). That i around 1920-21. he question then was which was first railway line in Papua— in the Pacific Islands as a )le. i the wider field, Mr. Askew ms the distinction for the }mons. He says that the Kauri iber Company, of Vanikoro, in Eastern Solomons, used two >™tiyes for the haulage of logs ut 1924. The photograph he as is unsuitable for reproduction .it is a locomotive, all right .owever as a matter of historical rest, it is probable that loco

motives were used by the CSR Co. for the haulage of sugar cane in Fiji long before 1924.

The Chinese Poets

Fight Back

Contributor Lew Friday’s article on Rabaul’s Chinatown (PIM, Sept., p. 87) in which he pats Rabaul’s Chinese on the back—and also gives one or two of them a few kicks— has brought a reply from one Rabaul Chinese, who asks to be re ferred to as T’sui. Furthermore, what he has to say he says in verse!

Chinatown—My Chinatown

Lew Friday’s article seems so far from the point!

“PIM” Please—Has he ever been in this joint?

We are wicked, unfair. Oh! and selling the natives diluted boozes, Of all these things he quite calmly accuses!

Short measure in sugar, short measure in rice For this (ref. the news today) four Euro peans and two natives paid the price!

And last month Steamship’s, a firm so big and strong— Well now, they too were caught doing wrong!

Who on the Gazelle Peninsula is trying to create ill-feelings?

Just who, damn it! uses shady dealings?

Has an Asiatic for this been “kicked out” of the place?

No? Europeans? No! but “requested to leave”—(it’s still a disgrace! i Oh! —Big-hearted Friday admits we have our good sides (Like others, to save our homes we risked our lives!) And by mentioning that some lost their heads when caught, Perchance, he hopes to take the edge off the sword!

What gives with Honourable Friday, what’s he trying to lodge?

Doesn’t he like us, has he got a grudge?

As Chinese poetry, this might be very pathetic, But then, I’m only a citizen and not very poetic!

Sequel To That

Buka Wedding

“Do you remember the day two months ago when Pat Roberts married Buka native Vicky Mah in the Methodist Mission Memorial Church in Rabaul?” asks our Rabaul correspondent, Gus Smales, this month.

Well, we do, of course, but Gus wants to tell it his own way. He writes; “That was the day when a crowd trampled the church garden to get a look at an Australian-born man, successful in business, marrying a young Bougainville native girl. It was the day when some people stayed at home because they were insulted to be invited to such a wedding.

“It was the day when the town

stopped for an hour to see the spectacle, when the minister had to raise his voice above the hubbub in the church grounds. It was the day when cameras ran hot, when the papers cried out for more copy, when some people even had the cheek to say they only went along for the fun.

“Today the wedding and the : publicity it received are parts of Rabaul’s history. Some of it is good history, some of it is bad. It is true, too, that some incidents which have occurred since the wedding have not helped provide plain sailing for Pat and Vicky.

“For that reason, as much as for any other, here is an after-piece to the wedding story that everyone deserves to know: “No matter what New Guinea has said, the world outside has been warm-hearted. Pat Roberts has re ceived a flood of letters from all parts of Australia, and the world, patting him on the back.

“And he is a man who has been genuinely touched by the letters. He says, T didn’t bargain on all the papers and the cameras. In fact I got a fright when I saw the cameras.

But people have read about it and I have got letters from all parts of the world. They have all been friendly letters.’

“A wedding is a personal thing which at heart concerns only two people. But if it can accomplish something else as well, there is no commercialism in pointing out what it has achieved.

“And Pat Roberts has achieved more good for New Guinea outside than ever could have been achieved in a score of carefully planned publicity campaigns.”