Nutshell
p. 14 · Read in the full issue
In A Nutshell
TWO hurricanes in December, only 15 days apart, just missed the main centres of Fiji. Both originated as depressions near Rotuma, about 240 miles to the north, and most hurricanes which have devastated Fiji have originated in that area.
The first of the December hur ricanes, on the 6th and 7th, threatened the eastern tip of Vanua Levu, Taveuni and Northern Lau, and then veered away.
The second, on December 21, passed to the west of Viti Levu.
Two Fijian children, both about seven, were killed at Narewa Village, when high winds on the fringe of the hurricane uprooted a tree and sent it crashing across a house.
Fiji Airways cancelled all their flights for the duration of the hur ricane, but international operations through Nadi were largely unaffected.
A Qantas Boeing, en route from London to Sydney, via Mexico, was diverted to New Caledonia.
Coconut palms in the Yasawas and Mamanucas were blown down in the storm, and copra production in that area is likely to drop sharply.
Lautoka and Nadi towns suffered minor damage. • The 25-year-old Royal New Zealand Air Force station at Laucala Bay, Fiji, which now has only two Sunderland aircraft, will be officially closed on January 31.
But a reduced establishment will remain there until the middle of 1966 as a detachment of the RNZAF Station, Hobsonville, New Zealand.
The New Zealand Defence Minister, Mr. D. J. Eyre, said during a visit to Suva in December that agreement had been reached in principle between the NZ and Fiji Governments for the base to be used for an educational institute after the RNZAF withdrew.
Mr. Eyre’s statement followed suggestions in Fiji that the buildings and facilities at Laucala Bay could be used as the nucleus of a university. • Nine New Zealand meteoro logists, who were driven off Raoul
Island, in the Kermadecs, on November 22 by a volcanic eruption (PIM, Dec., p. 23), resumed work there on December 11, after being brought back from New Zealand by HMNZS Lachlan. Puffs of steam were then still rising, and there were two or three seismic tremors every hour, but earth tremors have always been common on Raoul, and the steam was hardly more than New Zealanders are used to at such geothermal centres as Rotorua and Wairakei. • Hornibrook Construction Ltd. began shipping plant and equipment from Port Moresby to Misima Island in late November for the building of a £43,000 airstrip. • Tonga can look forward to more visits from cruise ships following the announcement in Nukualofa in De cember that the contract for construc tion of a new £500,000 wharf for Nukualofa has been given to Dew and Company, of Oldham, England. The wharf will be at Maufanga, and will take ships up to 30,000 tons. Work should start by the middle of the year. • The 5,957-ton British ship South bank ran aground in heavy surf off Washington Island, about 1,000 miles south of Hawaii, in late December. The ship was extensively damaged, and its second officer was drowned as Gilbertese copra workers on the island were helping to get the 63 passengers and crew, including two women, ashore. The Southbank, had just finished loading copra when she hit a reef. • New Caledonia’s tourist office.
Office du Tourisme de la Nouvelle Caledonie, will become a Govern ment body from the beginning of 1965. But private interests such as hotels, airlines, shipping companies, travel agencies, the Chamber of Commerce, etc., will be represented on the board. The office’s new status will probably give it more weight in Administration circles. • The United States Soldier’s Medal, a rarely awarded peace-time decoration given to those who have voluntarily endangered their own lives to save another, has been pre sented posthumously to a 27-year-old American Samoan, Specialist Fifth Class Aoese Osimalo. Osimalo saved the life of a child in the disastrous fire at All Hallows’ Church, San Francisco, after a Samoan fire dance last May {PIM, July, 1964, p. 35), and eight days later died from burns suffered in doing so.