Yesterday

Political repercussions, stemming from statements by Colonel H. T. A llan at an RSL conference in Canberra in Octo ber, 1947, had given New Guinea “the largest slice of publicity since the Japanese invasion,” according to the issue of PIM for 20 years ago this month. Colonel Allan (who died in May this year) had sharply criticised the “frustrations and disabili ties” that Europeans, many of them returned servicemen, had to put up with in New Guinea. As a result, Australia’s Minister for Territories, Mr. Eddie Ward, was planning to visit the territory.

OTHER items in PIM for December, 1947, included: IN Western Samoa, fires at J.

Ah Soon’s Apia store and Mr.

Theodore Wulff’s Falealili home had gutted both buildings.

“T OCAL discontent has -Li obviously not been com municated to the pre-natal world, for the birth rate is still rapidly accelerating,” PlM’s correspondent in Port Moresby said. ‘The hospital is now running a weekly welfare clinic to care for new arrivals.”

THE French Government had decided to close down the French Navy base at Noumea’s Baie de I’Orphelinat. The base had been set up during World War II and employed about 120 men.

MORE than 1,500 natives at tended displays for the French Army commander in New Caledonia, Colonel Labadie, when he paid an official visit with his wife to Mare Island in the Loyalty Group. Mare’s Grand Chief Naisseline and his “lively and intelligent sister”, the Dada, enter tained Colonel Labadie.

THE inaugural session of the newly-constituted Cook Islands Legislative Council had opened in Rarotonga.

THE biggest pearl to be found since post-war pearling began in Torres Strait had been dis covered by Mr. Hilton Bell. The pearl weighed 19i carats, was button-shaped and would just pass through the neck of a beer bottle.

It was reported that an Islander had made four attempts in one night to steal the pearl from the hotel where Mr. Bell was staying on Thursday Island.

THE acute shipping position in the Solomons was to be relieved by a 60 ft trawler, to be sailed from Queensland to Guadal canal by Fijians.

PIM commented: “The Southern Cross, the small motor-vessel of the Melanesian Mission, took about a dozen planters back to the Solomons in March, 1946.

Since then these people have been literally swallowed up in the mighty silence that surrounds the Solomons and all pertaining thereto.”

ENIWETOK Atoll, in the Marshall Islands, had been

chosen by the United States Navy and the Atomic Energy Com mission as the site of what news papers described as “a super secret atomic weapon testing ground”.

THE BSIP Government vessel Kurimarau was sporting the Solomons Islands coat-of-arms, recently granted by King George VI. The coat-of-arms conisted of a formalised turtle on a red ground surmounted by a black and white frieze.

QANTAS Empire Airways, which was running air services between Australia and Papua-New Guinea, was, expected to make a survey of an air-route from Australia to Nauru, via New Britain and Guadalcanal. The British Phosphate Commission was expected to help operate the projected air-route. However, Nauru is still without a regular air service, although charter flights are made to the island occasionally.

THE Very Rev. Sidney Gething Caulton had been appointed Bishop of Melanesia to succeed Bishop W. H. Baddeley.

BRIG. -GEN. Thomas Griffiths, Administrator of Nauru from 1921 to 1927 and acting Admini strator and Administrator of New Guinea from 1931 to 1934, died in Melbourne on November 16, 1947, aged 82.

Among the pictures in PIM for December, 1947, was this one of Mr. Tom French and his Taylor craft plane. Mr. French had been running an aerial ferry service for two years between Nadi and Nausori. "No one in the group has a better geographical knowledge of Fiji and its vagaries of weather and flying conditions than French," PIM said.