Up Front

with the editor

Have the South Seas become duller in recent years? many ways, I think they have. Two particular reasons for it £ the passing of the beachcomber and the local character; and t islanders recent preoccupation with politics

AS a race, beachcombers have been gone a long time now. As New Guinea’s J. K. McCarthy wrote a few years ago, the true beachcomber was never a mere drunken loafer. He had to have some sort of innate charm so that other men would bear with him; he had to be prepared to refuse all work that might put him on their level; and he had to have sufficient education to let him ex pound on life, thereby guaranteeing drinks from his listeners.

Beachcombers, McCarthy believes, supplied a want in an isolated country. This is true, and with the end of isolation, so came the end of the beachcomber. He was forced to remoter corners elsewhere, or to be come a semi-respectable character.

South Seas Paradise

Julian Dashwood, of the Cook Islands, is one of the later breed of beachcombers who only a year or two ago reached the respect ability of Minister of Police in the Cooks—only to become involved in a political scandal which resulted in his friends having, reluctantly, to chuck him out of office. Anybody who has read his autobiography, South Seas Paradise, which he pub lished under the name of Julian Hillas, will forgive Dashwood any thing. There is no more enjoyable, nor accurate, account of Islands’ philosophy than this book—through which pass fellow characters. These include Jim Carfax-Foster, still liv ing in Fiji although PIM prematurely killed him off in its issue for Decem ber, 1944. (The next month Carfax- Fo.ster phoned us up in Sydney and pointed out he “was not speaking from hell”).

Characters, as distinct from beach combers, do not die out so much as become eclipsed by political and

administrative progress in the Isl with its proliferation of p servants of all colours, fearing offbeat mind. There are many acters still in odd corners, but hears from them less frequent] time goes on.

Some go out at the top of form, such as “Gerry” Adams, died in Fiji in 1962 (how incre fast time passes) at the age o; Gerry’s good friend Len I described his characteristics Gerry’s obituary: “There was no commonplace about Gerry. He I gift for the striking phrase, the beat act that amused and stimul and he hated, and fought devastating effectiveness, the dil: hidebound ways of the nai obstructive breed of bureaucrat, was always stimulating, always to talk to, always fun to be w It was the typical Adams who < attention to the poor state of a pi road by flooding it from a hydrant, floating some toy duck the lake thus created, and encoi ing the local children to cast in fishing lines. And it was typica official reaction that he finished episode in court.

But changes come

Those of us closely involved South Seas life are inclined no notice the change wrought by gress on the kind of attitude pressed by the Dashwoods Adamses. It is more instantly obv to the outsider taking his first I as for instance Sydney scl teacher F. S. Topham, who pi( up his first copy of PIM a yeai two ago and sent up a poem he written entitled “Give Me Back Daydreams”, the first part of wl went:

le-hipped doe-eyed maidens h flowers in their hair; -kissed palm-fringed beaches %nolia-scented air; Hess days of languid pleasure e and laughter without teasure, I’ve longed for since my birth! now I read of education, our . strife and arbitration, strips, cartels, market prices, ial service, rise in vices ling beaches, exploitation, ependence, legislation! jpendence and legislation with- Dubt are a large part of South ife today. Never in the area’s Y was politics so much a part ; scene as now, unless it was eriod at the end of last century the big powers were fighting issession of the island groups.

Local politics now

lay the political fighting is all g from within. Leaders like K. K. T. Mara, of Fiji; Fiame afa, of Western Samoa (himself el in his younger days, who ed with responsibility); Albert r , of the Cooks; Hammer hurt, of Nauru, are setting the 1 it all seems to be a serious, ny business. Perhaps when the iries have found political ty they will take themselves less sly. Perhaps then they may >p their indigenous beach jrs, their own characters, ready oot at bureaucrats and idiots, bring a much-needed general in the process.

Stuart Inder