Yesterday
p. 91 · Read in the full issue
When the December, 1945, issue of PIM went to press, the Administrator of Papua-New Guinea, Colonel J.
K. Murray, was “slowly bringing some order out of the chaos” he had found on reaching Port Moresby at the end of October. Industry and transport had come to a virtual standstill after all contracts of conscripted native labourers had been terminated on the change-over from military rule to civil government.
OTHER news items in that issue of PIM of 20 years ago were: IT was announced that the Pan- American Airways’ weekly trans-Pacific service, between San Francisco and Auckland, via Fiji and New Caledonia would be re sumed at the end of January, 1946.
The North America-New Zea land service had been inaugurated before the war by Harold Gatty.
THE New Caledonian General Council was planning to spend 10 million francs on en larging Magenta Airport, on a beach near Noumea. The strip was built in the latter part of 1942 by US Seabees and Marines, and was used considerably by the Americans in their offensive in the Solomons.
THE first post-war session of the British Solomon Islands Pro tectorate Advisory Council opened at Honiara, Guadalcanal, on October 22, 1945. Colonel D. C.
Noel, the Resident Commissioner, presided. Previous meeting of the Advisory Council had taken place on November, 1941, before the Japanese invasion.
IN a special article on the future of Tonga, a writer said: “Today, superficially at least, Tonga is the poorest country in the South Pacific. Nowhere else are the store shelves so un ashamedly naked, the inhabitants so ragged, the prices of such con sumer goods as there are so ex orbitant. It is almost impossible for the visitor to get off the wharf at Vavau, which is some degrees worse off than Nukualofa, without scores of huge Tongans surround
ing him or her, each clamouring for attention and the favour of an old shirt or frock.”
T EN USHER, Public Relations Officer in Fiji, told the story of how a 24-year-old Gilbertese had drifted in the Pacific in a canoe for seven months in 1944. The Gilbertese, Nabetari, was one of a party of seven fishermen who had escaped from the Japanese on Ocean Island. He drifted 1,800 miles before reaching Ninigo, 140 miles north of Wewak, New Guinea. The other six men died.
MR. E. J. WARD, Australia’s Minister for External Terri tories, had expressed resentment that planters of Papua had appealed to the British Prime Min ister, and that a section of the Pacific Territories Association had tried to appeal to the United States and Britain against oppressive Australian rule in Papua and New Guinea. In an address to members of the Pacific Islands Society in Sydney, Mr.
Ward explained and defended his administration in Papua and New Guinea. He said that natives had had no recognised protectors from exploitation in the old set-up, but they would have in the new.
Mr. Alex Wilson, Mp, Had
been appointed Administrator of Norfolk Island in succession to Sir Charles Rosenthal.
Mr. Leslie V. Waterhouse, in Sydney on November 26, aged 59, after a long illness
caused by an accident, Mr. Water house was one of the founders of Bulolo Gold Dredging and Guinea Airways; Brigadier-General E. A.
Wisdom, CB, CMG, DSO, VD, Administrator of New Guinea from 1921 to 1932, died in Mel bourne on December 9, aged 76: Mr. Charles Robert Finney, Ad ministrator of Norfolk Island from 1932 to 1937, and also well known in Papua where he served in the Government for many years, in Sydney on November 18, aged 62.
AN item in the Tropicalities section said: “Territories folk will be glad to know that Brigadier D. M. Cleland, who was the executive head of the Production Control Board in the Territories, is now a high executive official in the Australian Liberal Party.
If the non-Labour parties should get control of the Australian Gov ernment next year—a consumma tion for which all Territorians nightly pray—we shall have, close to the people in authority, a good friend who understands Terri tories’ problems and conditions.” (Brigadier Cleland, now Sir Donald, has been Administrator of P-NG since 1953.)
• Papua's Misima goldmine is very much in the news these days. According to reports there are rich reserves, and these are shortly to be worked.
Actual discoverer of the Umuna lode was Mr. Bob Boyd, seen here on the job at Misima in an early PIM photograph. He died at Samarai in December, 1939.