People

o The former British Commis sioner and Consul in Tonga, Mr.

James Coode, has been appointed a part-time member of the secretarial staff of the Bishop of Gloucester, the Rt. Rev. Basil Guy, Mr. Coode, who left Tonga last year after 25 years in the British Colonial Service in the Pacific, now lives at Cheltenham in the Cotswold Hills. © Captain D. M, Thorsen, formerly Port Officer at Honiara, BSIP, and more recently a member of the staff at Waikeria Youth Centre, New Zealand, in March was ap pointed Superintendent of Mercantile Marine at Picton, NZ. • Mr. T. Tutaka, the first Cook Islands Customs officer to train in New Zealand, was due to return to Rarotonga from New Zealand in April, after spending 18 months with the Customs Department in New Plymouth, • Viliame Molera, of Lageregere village, on Viti Levu, Fiji, has been awarded the Queen’s Commendation for Brave Conduct for his bravery in rescuing a two-year-old girl from a turning bure (house). Viliame heard :he child’s cries coming from the interior of the building, and when ae entered, he found the child on he floor with her clothing alight.

He carried her from the bure, but vas badly burned in the process. The :hild died before reaching hospital.

Viliame spent two weeks in hospital ecovering from his burns. • Two senior members of the Hebrides Constabulary, Sergeant ■Ceith Weqas from the Banks Group, md Sergeant Thomas D, Boe from \oba, are soon to leave Vila to ittend the Police Training School at Hendon, England. After completing i course there, they will be posted for a period with the Police Force n the United Kingdom. Also on the igenda is an instruction course on veapons drill, marching and cere nonial with the British Army. • Recently appointed as Deputy Director of Agriculture in Fiji is Vlr. J. D. Yelf, formerly a senior >griculture officer. He succeeds Mr.

C G. Garnett. Mr. Yelf joined the folonial Service in Northern Rhodesia n 1941 and was tranferred to Fiji n 1956. • One of the first New Guineans o win a Churchill Fellowship, Albert

Isikini, a 23-year-old motor mechanic from Lae, arrived in Sydney recently to spend a year in Australia as a motor mechanic with a motor com pany. His trip to Sydney was spon sored by the Lae Lions Club. • Mrs. Valmae Dunn, widow of Seventh-day Adventist missionary, Brian Dunn, who was speared to death in the Solomon Islands, in December, left Sydney on April 18, to serve for two years as a missionary and nurse at the Hatzfeldhaven leper colony, near Madang. Mrs. Dunn had been married only 10 months when her husband was murdered at Uru mission hospital on Malaita Island. • Mr. R. F. Wilby, senior auditor with the Fiji Government Audit Department, has been appointed principal auditor in Hong Kong. A graduate of Edinburgh University, Mr. Wilby has spent the past 10 years in Fiji. He previously served in Northern Nigeria. • Mr. Tom Bakeo, of Ndui Ndui, Aoba Island, recently became the first New Hebridean, studying in the New Hebrides, to pass the examina tion for the Cambridge University General Certificate of Education. He obtained credits in English language and Bible knowledge, and a pass in health science. Mr. Bakeo has been working in the British Office in Vila for the past two years, and his studies were mainly done in his own time. • New Guinea journalist Gus Smales, who has been 10 years in Rabaul, the last five of them as a free lance, has been appointed Papua-New Guinea staff correspondent for the Herald and Weekly Times, Mel bourne, and will set up shop in Moresby. He expects to spend another two months in Rabaul before moving to the capital with his family.

Gus Smales will supply the Group’s overseas service and will not be on the staff of the South Pacific Post, Port Moresby, which is owned by the Herald group.

• Following the marriage in Sydney in April of their daughter Robyn Allison, 22, to Mr. Walter Maryska, Mrs. W. A. N, Allison will join Mr. Allison in Nauru for the remainder of his term on the island.

Robyn is the youngest daughter of the Allisons, who spent many years in the Cook Islands. Mr. Allison, now Director of Education on Nauru, was unable to get to Robyn’s wedding because of shipping hold-ups on Nauru. • Norfolk Islander Mr. Charles Iven Buffett has been appointed official representative on Australia’s Christmas Island, in the Indian Ocean.

Mr. Buffett has been official repre sentative at Cocos Islands for the last two years. Before that he was acting official representative for four years.

He was an officer of the Norfolk Island Public Service and spent 12 months with the Department of Terri tories in Canberra before his appoint ment to Cocos. • Mr. Bernard Hebert, Commis sioner for France on the South Pacific Commission and former Chancellor at the French Residency in the New Hebrides, is the author of three articles on the New Hebrides in the current (1963-1965) issue of Etudes Melanesiennes, the bulletin of the Musee Neo-Caledonien at Noumea.

Mr. Hebert’s articles concern traditional dwelling and meeting houses in the south-central islands of the New Hebrides, megaliths on the island of Emau, and archaeological sites on Efate and nearby islands, some of which were discovered by the author. Among articles on New Caledonia in the bulletin is one on the Star massacre by Ron and Marjorie Crocombe. Ron is head of the ANU’s New Guinea Research Unit in Port Moresby. • An attempt in London to adopt seven-year-old Fiji-Indian girl Nancy Prasad so that she may live in Aus tralia struck legal difficulties in April.

Nancy’s sister Shashi and her husband, Mr. R. Powditch, whose home is Sydney, have been told that they cannot follow the usual adoption procedures as they are not domiciled in Britain.

Nancy and her family came to Australia from Fiji on tourist visas in 1962, All but Nancy, who was sick, returned to Fiji a year later.

The Powditches then attempted to adopt Nancy so she could remain in Australia, but in August last year she was deported (PIM, Sept., p. 65).

Mr. Coode and his wife photographed just before they left Tonga last year.