People

• Mr. L. E. Ravenscroft, deputy general manager of the British Phos phate Commissioners, became general manager on August 13 following the retirement of Mr. James Bissett. Mr.

Ravenscroft enjoys great personal popularity in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands and Nauru. • Professor Sir John Crawford, Director of the Research School of Pacific Studies at the Australian National University, Canberra, and a director of the Papua-New Guinea Development Bank, is to become vice-chancellor of the National Uni versity at the end of next year, when Sir Leonard Huxley retires. • Goya Henry, long-time small ship master in New Guinea and a pioneer pilot, is a patient in Manly District Hospital (NSW) following an accident in Sydney in which he broke some bones in his left arm and injured his thigh. He growled to some of his many friends in August that he was “cabined, cribbed and confined with enough weights and pulleys to rig a schooner”. • The Mayor of Suva, Mr. C. A.

Stinson, has announced that he will retire at the end of this year. He has been a member of the Suva City Council for 15 years and mayor for seven. He is standing for the Legislative Council. • Fiji’s Director of Lands, Mines and Surveys, Mr. D. T. Lloyd, will leave Fiji in November on retire ment leave. He came to Fiji from Sierra Leone in 1954 as Deputy Director and was appointed Director in the following year. • Mr. George Francis Robbins has become group secretary of W. R.

Carpenter Holdings Ltd., following the retirement from the post of Mr.

C. A. M. Adelskold. Mr. Adelskold will carry out administrative functions in a consultative capacity pending his final retirement from the group. • Departing from the family tradition of politics and administra tion, 21-year-old Ratu George Coka nauto Tu’uakitau has been appointed an executive cadet with Hotel Ser vices, Ltd., Fiji—the operating com pany of the Fiji Mocambo and the Skylodge. Ratu George is the youngest son of Ratu Edward

Cakobau and nephew of Ratu George Cakobau, the paramount chief of Fiji.

He will spend three months at the Mocambo and then go overseas to study hotel management at the com pany’s expense. Ratu George was educated at Levuka and at the Wanganui Technical College, NZ. • Lt.-Col. Frank Rennie, MBE, MC, has been appointed commander of the Fiji Military Forces and rep resentative of the New Zealand Chiefs of Staff in Fiji. He succeeds Lt.-Col.

W. R. K. Morrison, who will return to New Zealand at the end of Sep tember to go on leave before taking up a new appointment.

Lt.-Col. Rennie commanded the New Zealand Special Air Service Squadron in Malaya during the Emergency and was mentioned in dispatches and awarded the Military Cross. He is at present commandant of the NZ Army School at Waiouru. • Mr. E. J. Williams has arrived in Fiji to take up an appointment as secretary of the Decimal Currency Board, which will be set up soon to pave the way to the changeover from pounds, shillings and pence in January, 1969. He was seconded from the Australian Decimal Currency Board. • Mr. Peter Plowman, a former Royal Australian Navy officer and now one of the biggest poultry farmers in Apia, has been appointed Harbour Administrator for Western Samoa. Mr. Plowman, a long-time resident of Samoa, was a member of

the pre-independence Legislative As

sembly, and was the Cabinet Member responsible for marine and transport. • The librarian of Fiji’s Western Regional Library, Mr, R. Pearce, has been appointed Lecturer in Com parative Librarianship at the College of Librarianship at Aberystwyth, Wales. He will be succeeded at Lautoka by Mr. Dennis Edwards, acting director of training at the

National Library School, Canberra.

• At a public ceremony at Apia’s Nelson Memorial Library in mid- August, the Swedish Ambassador to New Zealand, Mr. O. Kaijser, pre sented to the library a microfilm reader as a gift from the citizens of Kalmar, in Sweden.

The gift was to mark historical links between the Swedish city and Samoa. Subscriptions to the gift were organised by the Kalmar newspaper Barometer and the Kalmar Savings Bank.

The father of the Samoan patriot O. F. Nelson left Kalmar for Samoa at the age of 13 in 1851, and Baron Cedercrantz, who was also born near Kalmar and who was later Governor there, was Chief Judge in Samoa after the Berlin Treaty in the 1880’s.

Under the dynamic direction of Senior Librarian Bruce Turner, the library’s use has grown dramatically over the past few years. Member ship of 11,067 last year was almost double that of the previous year. • Professor P. G. Nash in August took up his appointment as the Foundation Professor of Law at the University of Papua-New Guinea, in Port Moresby. Professor Nash was previously sub-dean of the Faculty of Law at Monash University, Mel bourne. The new registrar of the university, Mr. Edwin George Kedgley, took up his new job the previous week. He is a former registrar of the University of New

Zealand, Wellington,

• Captain John Graham de Coverley Veale has been appointed shipping inspector for Rabaul, NG.

An Englishman, he was previously employed by the Moller Line, Hong Kong and London. Captain Ken Edwards, master of Burns Philp’s Montoro (on the New Guinea service) has left Burns Philp to join the New South Wales Pilot Service, thus adding to the roll of former Islands skippers now in that service.

They include Captains Dunn, Edwards and F. Sadler, formerly of Burns Philp, and O’Keefe from the Australia-New Guinea line. Captain

C. MacDonald, former senior sea pilot in Port Jackson (he retired last December after 20 years as a Sydney pilot) has gone in the other direction.

He is now master of Karlander’s new Port Moresby-registered Sarang. • Dr. J. L. Jameson, acting Assistant Director of Preventative Medicine with the P-NG Department of Health, has left Port Moresby for 12 months post graduate study with the University of Minnesota. He is accompanied by his wife. • Mrs. L. M. Foxcroft, who has done remarkable work as president of the New Guinea Women’s Club in Sydney, since 1946, has re linquished the presidency. In pre senting her annual report in August she paid warm tribute to the support she had received over the years. © Mr. Dudley McCarthy, Aus tralian Minister to the United Nations

Ratu George Tu'uakitau

and a former New Guinea man, was named in August as Australian Ambassador to Mexico. For several years Mr. McCarthy has ably defended Australian territories against political attacks launched in the UN, and the grind has been wearing.

PIM predicted in February (p. 151) that sometime this year it was ex pected he would be recalled for a new appointment. Mr. McCarthy was with the Australian Territories Department before being appointed to New York, and he worked very closely in Territories with the then Minister, Mr. Paul Hasluck, who is now Australia’s Minister for External Affairs. • Dr. Jacques Barrau in mid- August was in New Guinea’s Upper Ramu Valley on his preliminary Pacific-wide survey of medicinal plants that may help modern medicine. He has already been to Tahiti and New Caledonia. Dr.

Barrau’s survey is for the SPC.

BACK AFTER 40 YEARS: Holidaying in Tonga with his wife recently was Mr.

Alfred Sanft, of Rotorua, New Zealand.

Mr. Sanft was born 55 years ago in Vavau, Tonga, where his family have been traders for almost a century. He is an Islander who has made good in New Zealand as a radio personality. As chief announcer and presentation officer for the NZBC at Rotorua, he established and compered the 1YZ Tuesday night "Request Programme" which has had wide acclaim throughout the area. Mr.

Sanft left Tonga over 40 years ago.

Photo: Hettig.