A Notable Headgear Is On The Way Out

From a Port Moresby Correspondent

There was a chorus of friendly voices at a farewell function in Port Moresby: “We want your topee for the Museum, Judge,” they said.

Judge Gore (who retired on April 30) grinned. He has known for long—because they would never let him forget—that he is one of the small handful of men throughout the Pacific Islands who still wear the pith-helmet, once the badge of the pukka sahib throughout these tropical countries.

“Why should I give up the old topee at fashion’s whim?” demanded Judge Gore. “There is nothing to compare with it in keeping off the tropical sun and shading the eyes from tropical glare.”

Since World War 11, the mass of Australians and New Zealanders and Americans who dominate most of the Islands either go hat-less or wear nondescript things which announce blatantly that they are not pukka sahibs. The more orthodox British, who usually favoured the topee, have wilted and given it away.

In Fiji, Sir Hugh Ragg is one man who still wears the topee because it is the best headgear he knows in the tropics.

In his youth, Judge Gore was an associate of Sir Samuel Griffiths, later Chief Justice of Australia. Sir Samuel gave him a full-bottomed wig, which he has worn on ceremonial occasions ever since. The retiring judge plans to hand the wig over to a Queensland museum, to be retained there because of historical associations.

The fate planned for his topee is not known. But if a Papuan traveller in a Southport street should notice a well-shaped topee on top of a tall man mowing a lawn, he could perhaps make an intelligent guess about the identity of the head under it.