yesterday

There was no world-shattering news coming out of the South Pacific 20 years ago this month but an epic voyage from South America to French Polynesia had begun which would revive universal interest in the enigma: Where did the Polynesians come from? Thor Heyerdahl, in his raft, Kon-Tiki, had left Callao, Peru, on April 22 and by May 10 had drifted 500 miles westwards towards the Tuamotus.

Other items in PIM for May, 1947, were; SEVEN overseas airlines term inated at or passed through Fiji. On April 25 the first Sky master on a new Auckland- Vancouver run operated by Aus tralian National Airways landed at Nadi. Qantas Empire Airways ran a fortnightly flying-boat service between Sydney and Suva and Pan-Am planes were expected to start a Sydney-San Francisco service via Nadi.

NATIVES on Bougainville were reported to be starving. “They are too lazy to plant their own gardens and have arrived at the state when they are quite satisfied to sit down and be dependent on the Government which has been supplying food to them at inter vals,” a PIM correspondent claimed.

MORE frequent cargo services between the United States and Australasia were planned fol lowing the announcement that the Oceanic Steamship Co., of San Francisco, had been granted sub sidies from the US government.

The company planned eventually to operate 13 round trips a year making calls at Pacific Islands ports en route.

THE Burns Philp ship Malaita, after suffering much damage when she was hit by a Japanese torpedo in Port Moresby during the war, returned to the Sydney- New Guinea run in April.

DESPITE difficulties and dis ruptions in trade during the war, Burns Philp, Sydney and its subsidiary, Burns Philp (South Sea) Co., Ltd., both reported good profits. The Sydney company made £258,063 and the Fiji company, £89,085, both for the year ended January 31.

A COMMISSION of the Trustee ship Council of the United Nations was to visit Western Samoa to investigate requests by a number of Western Samoans for self-government.

“POLYNESIANS Are Threat- A ened With Nakedness” ran a PIM heading inspired by the fact that not enough cloth was available to provide the Tahitians with their famous wrap-around garment, the pareu.

THE people of the Manua dis trict of American Samoa were to have their own merchant marine—a refitted 256-ton former minesweeper renamed the Manua Tele. The Manua Tele was due to sail from Hawaii in late April to begin services between the villages of the Manua district and Pago Pago.

IN Fiji there was dengue in epidemic proportions over the larger part of the colony. The Suva Mosquito Control officer appealed to householders to eradicate all possible mosquito breeding places and the British Government made an additional grant for the anti mosquito battle.

AREALLY weird epidemic of some sort had ended on Mangaia, in the Cooks. “The female patients who had it, and have recovered, have found that their once abundant tresses, came right away, leaving only a downy growth between them and a humiliating state of baldness,”

PI M’s correspondent at Mangaia wrote. “It’s a major disaster to Islands girls, proud as they are of their crowning glory.”

SUVA’S month-long beer drought was broken when supplies ar rived at the end of April. Said our report: “There may be some con nection between this and the fact that although HMAS Bataan was recently in Suva for a four-days visit, the occasion gave rise to not a single ‘incident’ worthy of com ment.”

THE South Seas writer, Charles B. Nordhotf, the collaborator of James Norman Hall, died in California. Both lived for many years in Tahiti.

THERE was quite a bit of insect watching going on. The war and the speeding-up of plane services had brought at least 28 new immigrant insects to the Pacific area, and entomologist had their work cut out discovering what the insects were like. Three were classed as major pests, five were listed as beneficial and seven had “an unknown effect on agri culture”.

This picture of the South Seas writer, Charles B. Nordhoff, as a young man, appeared in PIM of May, 1947, when his death was reported from California.