yesterday

The issue of PIM for September, 1944, carried the announcement that an Australian Cabinet sub committee, dealing with territories matters, had decided that civil administration would be restorerd in Papua early in 1945. However, the administration of the Trust Territory of New Guinea was to remain the responsibility of the Army.

OTHER news items in that issue of PIM of 20 years ago were: The promotion was announced in Suva of Major Ratu J. V. L.

Sukuna (later Sir Lala Sukuna) to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. * * sis After being completely cut off from France for four years, New Caledonia contracted to sell her 1944-45 harvest of Robusta coffee to the Provisional Government of France at 11 francs a kilo, fob. * * ♦ The effects of a January cyclone were still evident on Mangaia, Cook Islands. Verandahless houses were leaning askew, or were pro ped up; the native chestnut crop, a standby between February and June, was totally obliterated; and so was the breadfruit crop. * * * Fifteen Fijian men and women lost their lives on August 11, when a small sailing boat, which was taking 27 of them from Lautoka to a small island off the coast, was swamped by heavy seas. All of

them managed to cling to the over turned boat from noon until 2 o’clock next morning when the boat began to break up. Six men and six women finally made their way, clinging to small pieces of wreckage, to the small island of Narara. * * * Noumea businessmen were talk ing of forming a hotel and tourist company in New Caledonia to develop tourism after the war.

They considered that Noumea should have two good tourist hotels, and that there should be a string of hotels at scenic spots on the east and west costs. * * * A special general meeting of shareholders in Morris Hedstrom Ltd. unanimously approved a pro posal by the directors to give £25,000 from the company’s funds to establish an annual scholarship

worth £2OO a year, with a tenure of three years, to help selected Fijians to finish their education at a university. * * * A second returning contingent of Tahitian and New Caledonian soldiers from the Fighting French Pacific Battalion, arrived in Mel bourne on July 14, Bastille Day.

They were on their way home from the Middle East after chasing the Germans across North Africa with Montgomery’s Bth Army. ♦ ♦ ♦ The head of the Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit, Major-General Basil M. Morris, was badly burned in a plane crash.

His native chauffeur hauled him from the burning plane on the Cape Gloucester airstrip. General Morris suffered a broken right arm, and badly torn muscles and ligaments in the left arm.

CONTRAST: These two pictures, taken from virtually the same spot on Iririki Island in Vila Harbour, illustrate vividly how Vila, the New Hebrides capital, has grown in the last 30 years or so. The top picture was published in PIM for January, 1932. The one below was taken recently by Fiji PRO photographer Rob Wright.