Marquesas

News From French Polynesia New Deal For The Isolated Marquesas

The isolated Marquesas Group of ench Polynesia will receive a new al from December 22 when the essageries Maritimes passenger ughter “Tahitien” calls there on her ly from Sydney to Marseilles.

IROM then on, the Tahitien and her sister-ship Caledonien will ake regular stops at the Marquesas, le Tahitien will call on each dney-Marseilles voyage, and the iledonien will stop there between arseilles and Sydney. The Cale mien’s first visit will be on January The port of call will be Tai-o-hae, . Nukuhiva, which lies along the ore of a precipitous bay amid uiriant vegetation. The ships will rive about 6 a.m. and will leave at p.m. The purpose of the calls to pick up cargo.

No big ships have called at the arquesas regularly since Mes geries Maritimes abandoned its rvice about 12 years ago.

Tai-o-hae is the former administra te centre of the Marquesas. It was ice an important place, and saw imirals, governors and bishops sit ig in state on the broad verandahs government buildings.

It was the headquarters from which i ambitious administration was es blished. All vanished—because most the freedom-loving Marquesans, lable to accept the new conditions, Tiply perished. The population has :en slowly growing again in recent :ars. * * * T has been announced in Papeete that Pouvaana a Oopa, the former ader of a native nationalist party Tahiti, will be released from a rench prison soon after serving only iree years of an eight-year sentence ir attempted murder, arson and the egal possession of arms. How rer, he will not be allowed to return i Tahiti.

Pouvanaa, after being held in gaol i Tahiti without trial for about a jar, was sentenced to eight years’ nprisonment and 15 years’ exile in ctober, 1959, for his part in political isturbances in Papeete in October, )58.

During these disturbances, an :tempt was made to burn down

several buildings with Molotov cock tails and there was fighting with police. Pouvaana’s home was found to be equipped like a fortress. * * * THE Senator for French Polynesia, M. Gerald Coppenwrath, said in the French Senate recently that he was totally opposed to the French Government’s mooted plan to build an atomic testing ground at Mangareva in the Gambier Group.

He said the local population would strongly resist such a project, and that, in his opinion, either Clipperton

or Kerguelen Island would be a better site. (Clipperton Island is off the coast of Mexico; Kerguelen is in the southern Indian Ocean). ♦ * ♦ FOLLOWING a reduction in Japanese purchases of phosphate, the production of phosphate at Makatea has been reduced. A num ber of laborers at the deposits have been put off. Makatea Island, the most north-westerly of the Tuamotu Archipelago, is one of the three main phosphate producers in the Pacific— the others being Nauru and Ocean Island.