When Yo u Helped Yourself

At the Julagi Pub

By Bill Baverstock

Everybody expects a dose of gush in a women’s magazine, but a vivid word picture that at Sydney women’s magazine recently painted of Honiara’s Mendana Hotel really got me excited..

According to that story, the new Mendana is a vision of immaculate bar-boys serving tourist sun| downers with a plentiful supply of crushed ice, while chefs from Hongkong prepare Cordon Bleui banquets in an atmosphere of giant baskets of hibiscus.

A LL I can say is, if this is true— what a change from the old days!

There were only two pubs in the Solomons in the ’2o’s—Tom Elking ton’s at Tulagi and Fred Green’s at Gizo.

Tom was a bearded figure who’d catch your eye even in a crowd of colourful characters. The gatherings on the verandah outside his tiny bar any evening when a few schooners were in the anchorage would have provided Somerset Maugham with material for a whole volume of stories.

I met Tom frequently in a two-year soujourn in the Solomons and never saw' him dressed in anything but an immaculate “trade” singlet and white pants. He kept a good pub with a reasonable table, and a spotless bar in which he alone presided. There was some archaic law forbidding natives from handling liquor (I suppose it is past history now) and all the beer was bottled and kept in an ice chest infrequently replenished by the ice works the butcher Johnson had just started near Chinatown.

As the men came up from the anchorage and joined the group you’d

hear some marvellous tales of Islands—tales for the most part I lated quietly, but redolent of j history of the development days! the Western Pacific.

There was no electric light an where in the Solomons and not er a road. We’d walk along the coo path and light our way with j hurricane lamp which we’d park ; the top of the steps onto Tor verandah. There’d be quite an am of them when all hands were presft.

Some good poker schools had! durance sittings in Tom’s pub anc remember that one recruiter who 1

ived in Tulagi the day before with schooner-load of recruits had left broke and minus his ship and go. That’s the sort of stakes they’d y for! ifou could visit the pub in working irs and find nobody there, yet the 1 would be open. They seemed to ’t forgotten about closing hours en they framed the Solomon mds liquor laws and the pub was fact open seven days a week, 24 irs a day. iVaiting to join the old Vella as te, I walked up to Tom’s one day h one of the Buffets (I think it was dsay). He, too, was waiting for ;hip; probably it was Mcßarron’s ter, which he took back to Ramada ;r had fallen overboard sea and drowned.

Me found nobody about the pub, on the bar was this pencilled e: All out. Help yourself.” )n our way to Tom Elkington’s one ning for a before-dinner session ey weren’t called anything as ite as “sundowners”), we called a small house the Government led on the beach near the boat d. t was occupied by a popular resi t who had fallen foul of the law 1 was doing a six weeks sentence. i as there was no white man’s 1 he was put in the spotless house i its peaceful verandah and glass ►rs!

Come on Paul, have one before aer,” someone invited.

No boys, not tonight,” he called k.

Oh come on, you can do a couple f.”

No, fair dinkum; I’m giving it a

miss tonight. We made it a bit of a late sitting yesterday and when I got back, blow me down if I wasn’t locked out!”

So now all that has been replaced by immaculate bar boys and Cordon Bleu banquets, eh?

No wonder, “many planters and Government officials speak nostalgic ally of the old pub”, and what a shock Tom Elkington would get if he could see it!

his old photograph shows the Chinatown section of Tulagi, capital of the Solomons before the war.

Bigmouth!

He’s a Giant Frogmouth, known as a mopoke in Aus tralia, and until recently he was the pet of Mr. D. W.

Paxton, of Awar Plantation, Madang, New Guinea. The natives call these birds big mouth, but Mr. Paxton called this chap Cuthbert. Cuthbert was quite fearless, although he also liked to put on an act.

Cuthbert died after his wing broke.