yesterday
p. 95 · Read in the full issue
PIM reported in October, 1948, that in the year 1948-49 the Australian Government intended to spend £3 million of Australian funds on the territory of P-NG. We commented: “This outpouring of the Australian taxpayers’ money on behalf of the territories does not matter very much while the Austra lian Socialist Government is engaged in an orgy of wasteful expenditure. Two or three million pounds scarcely count against a total dissipation of overburdened taxpayers’ funds running into scores of millions.” And now, 20 years later, a Liberal Government has announced that it will spend $l,OOO million on P-NG over the next five years.
AMONG other items of that issue of 20 years ago: IN October, 1948, the movies had been established for a couple of months in Santo, New Hebrides, and they were causing some unexpected repercussions.
Planters who were in a position to promise prospective labour a free trip to the pictures each week had a distinct advantage over those who could not. Our corres pondent in Santo wrote: “Labour is so difficult these days that any inducement to obtain it is eagerly sought”.
THE missionary society of the Church of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons) of Salt Lake City, USA, had laid the founda tion stone of a group of build ings (chapel, assembly rooms, missionary quarters) in Papeete.
The buildings were to cost $200,000 and were to be paid for by the Mormons.
THE breaking of four teeth in the main cog wheel of the blower equipment of the port motor caused the crash of the Guinea Air Traders’ Lockheed aircraft near Lae, in April, 1948, in which 37 people were killed.
This information was given privately to PIM in September, 1948. (A report on the crash, prepared by Civil Aviation Department, had not been re leased by the Australian Govern ment). Apparently the breaking of the cog wheel had caused the motor to fail suddenly. It was the territory’s worst air crash, then or since.
SEARCH teams by the Ameri can Graves Registration Service had arrived in P-NG to undertake work that was expected to close the territory to any further searching for American
dead. The teams were to cover the territory thoroughly. They were to travel on foot and were either to interrogate natives on the spot or have representatives of outlying villages brought to them. They were to work out of Lae, Madang and Port Moresby. an alligator with a gut line,” announced PlM’s headline. The man with this fisherman’s tale to end all fisher man’s tales was Mr. Aubrey Ede, acting captain of the Talasea, who
caught a 7 ft crocodile off Gavit Wharf, New Britain. He used a gut line No. 18, with a 5/0 hook.
The boys of Gavit later ate the reptile with relish.
FROM January 1, 1949, the Tokelau Islands were to be come part of New Zealand, PIM reported. The Tokelaus, British possessions since 1916, had been administered by New Zealand through Western Samoa since 1925.
THE American forces garrison on Christmas Island, in the remote Line Island Group, was to be completely evacuated by October 15. Administration was to be carried out by occasional traders out of Tarawa, Gilbert Islands, but the British resident officer on Christmas Island, former Solomons planter, Mr. H.
A. Markham, was to stay.
THE ashes of Judge H. F.
Ayson, who had died in May, arrived in Rarotonga from NZ on September 18 aboard the trader Maui Pomare. They were placed in the LMS churchyard.
Judge Ayson spent 27 years in the Cook Islands, first as Judge of the High and Native Courts, and then as Resident Com missioner from 1922 to 1943.
This picture of Miss Polynesia, 1948 (Miss Johnny Frisbie) appeared in PIM 20 years ago this month. Miss Frisbie married C. F. Hebenstreit in 1956, and the couple live in Dunedin, NZ.