People
pp. 141-142 · Read in the full issue
• Captain Brett Hilder, master of ie Burns Philp flagship Bulolo, is » be married in September to Jane obertson, of Tomewin, Queensland, tie was born in Suva, the daughter I the late Mr. Arthur Freeman, who ied in Queensland in October, 1965, the age of 92. Mr. Freeman was pioneer of the Fiji banana export ade. Mrs. Robertson has travelled densively in the South Pacific, and ade frequent trips through Mela ;sia into the Gilberts and Line lands. They first met in 1934 on e Malaito. Captain Hilder’s wife, illy, died in Sydney last year. • After 21 years in New Guinea, r. Harry Plant is to leave the terri ry to become Director of Local overnment and Community Services the Northern Territory, based on arwin. Mr. Plant, one of Papua ew Guinea’s best-known officers, is •NG’s Assistant Director of Local overnment and Commissioner for Deal Government. He launched NG’s first Native Local Govern ent Council, in Hanuabada, Port oresby, in September, 1950. • Mr. Gerald Coppenrath, of ihiti, is the author of one of the test publications of the Societe des ceanistes in Paris. It is a volume 172 pages entitled Les Chinois de ihiti: de I’aversion a Vassimilation: 165-/966. The book traces the story of the Chinese in Tahiti from e arrival in March. 1865, of 350 idies to work on the vast cotton antation of William Stewart at timaono. It is the first detailed tidy to be published of Tahiti’s hinese. • Jack Neale, well-known trader ; Aitutaki, Cook Islands, who took /tx John Harrington’s and Willie r atson’s stores on Aitutaki when he ansferred from Mangaia many years to, has just started on a holiday r at least 10 months. He hoped to ;t on the Northern Star at Raro nga on March 12 to go to Panama, om where he planned to motor 'de through Central America to the S. He will then tour the US by >ad bus to New York and then go /er to Newfoundland, Scotland, ngland (to see his family), Ireland id Wales. Starting in Norway, he ill then tour Europe, and, en route Australia and New Zealand, visit
places previously known to him in India, Ceylon and possibly Burma.
During Jack’s absence, Ted Mel ville, an ex-farmer from Western Australia and an old friend of Jack’s who has retired to Aitutaki, will be running his stores. Both Jack and Ted originally hailed from England. • Two students from Fiji have been awarded scholarships for the 1967 academic year at the University of Hawaii under a programme run by the East-West Center. The award winners are Ratu George Tu’uakitau, of Nadi, and Patiliai Tuisabeto, of Suva.
Ratu George is the son of Ratu Edward Cakobau, Member for Com merce, Industry and Tourism. Ratu George who has studied in Fiji and New Zealand, is now working with Pacific Hostings Ltd., of Nadi. He plans to major in hotel management at the University of Hawaii.
Patiliai Tuisabeto, now in his second year at the Fiji School of Agriculture, will undertake a course in tropical agriculture at the College of Tropical Agriculture of the Univ ersity of Hawaii.
Both students will leave Fiji in September to begin their overseas studies. • After attempting to settle at Queensland’s Gold Coast, the call of New Guinea has again been too much for Mrs. Lillian Barclay-Millar.
She arrived in Port Moresby in March in the Bulolo, and intends to work there. • Mr. Leonard Goodman, FRCS, formerly surgeon specialist in the Gold Coast (now Ghana). Aden, and from 1959-65, Western Samoa, has been appointed Tutor in Surgery at the Fiji School of Medicine. • Mr, Alfred J. Gergely has resigned as Attorney-General of American Samoa. He is to return to his home in Palm Springs, Cali fornia. to look into the possibilities of a law practice there. Mr. Frank Swett, assistant Attorney-General, will occupy Mr. Gergely’s post pending a new appointment. • Mr. J. A. Sutherland, consultant on agricultural education for the South Pacific Commission, visited the US Trust Territory recently on the last leg of a 25,000-mile journey through the island territories of the Pacific area surveying agricultural education. • Na Kiboboua Batiku has been appointed to be secretary-treasurer of the recently-formed Gilbert and Ellice Islands Co-operative Federa
tion Limited. He will be seconded to the federation from the Audit and Supervision Fund. The federation’s office and handicraft store, now being prepared, will be in part of the Mare wen Tarawa Co-operative Society’s Building adjacent to the Betio Post Office. • Dr. Lindsay Verrier, of Suva, recently collected £22 for the Kadavulevu Dependents’ Fund by opening his garden to visitors so that they could see a plant which flowers only once a year and only at night.
The flower is the Cereus grandiflora.
The Kadavulevu Dependents’ Fund was set up to help care for the dependents of nearly 100 people who lost their lives when the inter-island trading ship Kadavulevu, foundered in Fiji waters on Easter Sunday, 1964. • Two old New Guinea families will be joined in Sydney in Septem ber with the marriage of Lynne Evans, youngest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Hal Evans, now of Turramurra, Sydney, to Peter, eldest son of Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd Hurrell, of Wau.
They have known each other since childhood. The couple will live in Brisbane. • A Fijian woman, Vasemaca Muri, will celebrate her 100th birth day this year. But she doesn’t know exactly when she was born. Her birth certificate shows that she was born in 1867—seven years before Fiji was ceded to Britain—but does not record the day and the month.
Vasemaca has five children, 20 grandchildren and 32 great grand children. • Lieutenant Mikaele Yasa, the First Fijian to obtain a commission in the British Army, returned to Suva in March after six years overseas.
Driving from the international airport at Nadi to Suva he was impressed by tourist hotel develop ments and by road improvements.
Of Suva itself, Lieutenant Yasa said: “It was stimulating to see that Suva is now a booming city with many fine new buildings”.
Lieutenant Yasa has been serving in Malaysia with a crack British regiment, the Green Jackets. • Mr. J. M. Carswell, who has just retired as Senior Assistant Direc tor of the Department of Technical Education in New South Wales, arrived in Suva in March to become principal of the Derrick Technical Institute.
In the past few years, Mr. Carswell
has visited Fiji and other SoutH Pacific territories on several occasion:! to advise on technical education prot grammes.
His first visit was in 1960 when Fiji asked the Australian Govern! ment for advice about technical education. Australia sent Mr. Cars* well.
During a visit in 1964, Mr. Cars? well was a guest at the official open! ing of the Derrick Institute. • The Rev. Alan Quigley, MA/ BD, B.Litt, was installed as temporary Lecturer in New Testament at the Pacific Theological College, Suva, on March 1. A permanent appointmem will be made next year. Mr. Quigley studied in St. Andrews, Scotland, ano is a minister of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand. • Mr. James P. Shortall, well I known a few years ago in maritime and journalistic circles in the South Pacific, is still going strong as s radio operator on a ship in the US banana trade.
Says Jim, in a postcard to PIM recently: “I’m still with the bananas —shuttling back and forth, at 20 knots, between Costa Rica or Honduras, and United States ports— a three or four days’ voyage each way. I will never be able to looM a banana, straight or curved, in the eye again, once we get off this trade!”
Jim Shortall is a great traveller and has been into some queer ports in some little-known countries. For a time, he was serving on ships out: of Hong Kong, and his New Yean card for 1966 came from an un pronounceable place, up a big rivet in Red China. • The former Tongan light heavyweight boxer Kitione Lave has been refused a licence to box by the British Boxing Board of Control! according to NZ Press reports. Lave.; 35, recently completed a term in the Royal Air Force and since return ing to civilian life has campaigned vigorously for a licence. The reports say that the licence was refused be cause of Lave’s age and because he has been “out of the game for some time”. • Two schoolgirls from Pitcairm Island, Diane Clark, 16, and Julie Christian, 13, have arrived in Fiji! to attend school at the Fulton Missionary College. Diane who has already done an 18-months’ course at the college, is the daughter oft Pitcairn’s postmaster, Oscar Clark.: Julie, who is attending the college for the first time, is the daughten of Ben Christian.