Their Shorts fell You Who

Those who didn’t come in contact with Englishman David Attenborough during his two trips to the South Pacific in re cent y ears have probably heard about him in the last few months that the films of his expedition have been getting such a , r , . ° £ ° T i A wide distribution. They have been seen m many of the Islands and are currently causing comment on Australian TV.

To date he has shown us, in some detail, the New Hebrides, Fiji, and Tonga and they are a pleasant change from another series at present being shown on national TV—a series hav ing to do with Adventures in Paradise, allegedly sponsored by James Michener, but probably written by the copy boy—not that Michener himself has a reputation for sticking very close to the truth in his South Pacific writings.

In Quest in Paradise, Attenborough gets the same material as his TV

shows into a book. Chapters on the New Hebrides, Fiji and Tonga deal with a visit he made to those places last year, but the first half of the book is comprised of an earlier trip to the Jimi Valley, in the New Guinea Highlands, to film the dance of the Bird of Paradise. On that expedition he went on patrol with PO Barry Griffin, whose work gets a flattering amount of attention as a result. PO Griffin, incidentally, has since then been host, on a patrol, to Gavin Souter of The Sydney Morning Herald, dur ing which Souter wrote a series on New Guinea which won him a Walkley Award for Journalism —Australia’s Pulitzer.

Attenborough’s account of his New Guinea visit, and indeed, of his visit to the other islands, is generally accurate and of interest, although he breaks no new ground. The result is a well-illustrated travel book.

Among some of his local descrip tions is this one I like: “Vila, New Hebrides, the seat of this curious administration, is even more cos mopolitan than one might suspect, for there are people of many more than two or three nationalities to be seen in the untidy main street which straggles along the waterfront. The diagnostic character, the distinctive field mark (to use ornithological jargon) which enables you to dis tinguish between various Europeans is provided by the short trousers they wear. If the trousers are exceedingly abbreviated and in some such colour as tomato or powder blue, then you can be reasonably sure that the wearer is a Frenchman. If, on the other hand, the shorts are so long that they flap around and half conceal the kneecap, and are in a more severe colour such as white or navy blue, then the owner is very probably English. Intermediate lengths usually indicate either a New Zealander or an Australian”.

Attenborough’s book gives an ac count of the Beqa firewalkers of Fiji, the Jon Frum cargo cult movement of Tanna, New Hebrides, and the Pentecost land divers, who jump from high towers with vines around their ankles.

In explaining the tradition con

nected with his unusual Pent! practice, Attenborough forgets! mention that it is only the paymo quite a decent sized lump sum v these days gets the local genti] jump, and that without paymenn practice would probably die a ns

death.-

SI.

(Quest In Paradise. Lutteir

Press. 27/-.)