Nutshell

In A Nutshell

• The fourth shipload of Viet namese to be repatriated this year to Haiphong, North Vietnam, from New Caledonia and the New Hebrides left Noumea on October 27 in the liner Eastern Queen. The number re patriated was 549, bringing the total this year to 2,204 —1,042 from the New Hebrides and 1,162 from New Caledonia. A further 550 Vietnamese are scheduled to be taken home from Santo, New Hebrides, at the end of November. • Sealing work to be carried out Madang Airport, P-NG’s busiest, will cover the end sections of the 5,150 ft runway, and the apron fronting the building area. The work will cost £50,000. • Although still troublesome on Malaita, yaws had now been virtually eliminated from the BSIP, the Protectorate’s Director of Medical Services, Dr. J. D. Macgregor, told the annual BSIP medical conference in October. He said a mass resurvey for yaws was being made on Malaita. • The first two P-NG natives to be trained as motor cycle police are at present undergoing training at the Port Moresby police station. After training they will carry despatches and other police papers, but later may help with traffic control. • European missionaries in West New Guinea were being given full co-operation by the Indonesian Gov ernment, Mr. L. E. Buck, Pacific Director of the Unevangelised Field Missions, said in Port Moresby in November, “The Indonesian Govern ment guarantees freedom of religion in its Constitution and I must say they are really sticking to it,” he said. • The number of visitors to Fiji has increased by 100 per cent, in the past five years. Between 1958 and 1962, the number of visitors in creased from about 12,000 to 18,000 and this year the number is expected to reach 24,000. • Fiji’s Director of Medical Ser vices, Dr. C. H. Gurd, has sent out a letter urging support for the Gov ernment’s family planning campaign.

It points out that family planning

advice is now available at 55 centres throughout the Colony. • P-NG’s Chief of Secondary Education, Miss B. McLachlan, left for England on November 2 to inter view applicants for Territory teaching jobs in London and other English cities. One hundred and twenty-two teachers in England had applied for jobs in P-NG to October 25. • New Zealand will spend nearly £NZ 1,475,000 on her island terri tories in the current financial year.

The estimates include £809,000 for the Cook Islands (£39,396 more than for the previous year), £323,500 for Niue, and £42,400 for the Tokelaus. • Dr. Richard Shutler, an archaeologist from the Nevada State Museum, arrived in Vila with his wife on November 9 to spend nine months making the first archaeological survey in the New Hebrides. Dr. Shutler will do his first work at Aneityum, the southernmost island in the Group, where he will dig at old village sites in the hope of finding pottery and the remains of old cooking fires, for carbon 14 date testing. Dr.

Shutler did archaeological work in New Caledonia with Professor Jean Guiart in 1952.

Aneityum, which now has a popu lation of just over 200, was the home of about 4,000 people a century or so ago, who differed in many respects from those of other islands in the New Hebrides. It is also the site of a huge boulder covered with ancient carvings not found elsewhere in the group.

Dr. Shutler hopes his researches will throw more light on the migratory movements of the past. • The airstrip at Lae, P-NG, is to have a sealed runway of 5,612 ft, with a 200-ft gravel undershoot area, it was announced in November. • A major plant disease known as American Boil Smut which attacks maize cobs has been discovered for the first time in Papua-New Guinea. • Prospects for copra production in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony for 1964 are now looking better than they have for some time.

The long drought in those parts seems to have broken. • The Universities of Chicago and Washington are undertaking a joint project of study of the religions of the people of New Guinea. As part of the project a graduate

student of Chicago University, Mr.

R. Wagner, arrived in the Territory in October to spend a year doing research work for a thesis on the agricultural trends and religious customs of the Karimui people.

Another team, of five anthropologists from Washington University, is at present working in the Kainantu area. •To speed up proceedings, simultaneous interpretation equipment will be used for the first time at the seventh session of the New Hebrides Advisory Council beginning in Vila on December 3. In the past, speeches were translated after they were made either from French into English or from English into French. • A modern hospital of 45 beds has been opened by the Seventh day Adventist Mission at Sopas, in the Wabag Valley, NG.

Amazement was expressed by visitors that the cost, including three homes for European staff and others for native assistants, was only £50,000, approximated £l,OOO per bed. This will be further reduced as wards are added to complete the plan for 100 beds. • American Samoa’s Government is thinking of building a tramway from the west side of Pago Pago harbour to the top of Mt. Alava, site of the television transmitter station.

The tramway would enable supplies and equipment to be taken up more quickly to the TV station, and would give tourists a wonderful view. • Tenders for the construction of the Administrative College of Papua- New Guinea, in Port Moresby, will be called in January. The college will be built near Ward’s Strip at a cost of £650,000. • More than £300,000 will be spent by the P-NG Administration on two other buildings in the Port Moresby area next year.

Kila Police Training Depot, will be replaced by a new one at Bomana, adjacent to the Police Training College there. The new depot, to cost £282,000, will house 300 men.

It will include 10 barrack rooms and four classrooms. The Kila depot is to be retained as a barracks for police working in the Port Moresby area.

A veterinary station, costing £34,000 will be built to replace the pre-war one at Kila. The station will have two new buildings, one to be used for experiments on animals.