Letters

Family History

Sir, —There is Milne Bay in the southeast tip of Papua—made famous during the war.

A Niugini (using Chatterton’s nemenclature) candidate in this year’s P-NG elections bore the name Milne. Ken McGregor in his August article on George Murdoch mentions a Mrs. Ellen Milne, of Brewster Road, Suva. And I have somewhere read— could it have been Lambert’s Doctor in Paradise? —of a part-European family of Milne in either the GEIC or the Solomons.

Can anyone tell me why Milne Bay was so named; and throw any light on the origin of the Milnes in the Pacific?

Incidentally, articles of the type written by Mr. McGregor about George Murdoch are most interesting.

As well as knowing the origin of the Murdochs in the GEIC area, I now know also the origin of the Hoeflichs in Apia, where I lived for three years.

How about articles tracing such names as the McDonalds, Nelsons, Bethams and Annandales in Samoa, and the Guises, Dihms and Tabuas in Papua?

Do you know that there is an old part-Gilbertese, parMrish lady living at the Moa Moa Catholic Mission in Apia who remembers Robert Louis Stevenson? Crippled with filariasis for a number of years, Mrs. Mary Palu is still quite mentally alert. She may be one of the few still living who remembers RLS, who died in Apia in 1894. In 1965 I wrote a letter to the then Samoana, relating the memories that Mrs. Palu had of RLS and his family. She was about 10years-old in Stevenson’s time.

John Milne.

“Bangkok Post”, Bangkok, Thailand.

• Milne Bay was discovered by Captain John Moresby, RN, in the “Basilisk” in April, 1873, and he named it after the then Senior Naval Lord of the Admiralty .

Sir, —My full name is Richard Rutledge Kane, and I am the eldest son of the late Capt. R. R. Kane, MC and Bar. He was Chief Commis sioner of Fiji and Resident Commis sioner of the British Solomon Islands.

Can you give me any details of his career in the Islands?

Our family has a three-generation history of connections with the

Islands. My great-uncle, Sir John Thurston, was second Governor of Fiji. Father, my two brothers and I were born there.

We are distant family connections of old “Bully” Hayes, the buccaneer, through relatives in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands.

D , Mcu; R. R- Kane.

Ryde, NSW.

Niuginians And Happiness

Sir, —As usual, my old friend Percy Chatterton (whom I have not seen in 30 years) is right “to the point” in his rebuttal of the suggestion at tributed (I hope wrongly) to Dr.

Gunther that Niuginians were un happy without the gift of white man’s education. [See Chatterton’s “To the Point” column, PIM, Oct., p. 32].

Like a lot of others of those days, I was the first white man many Niuginians ever saw, and very early on I realised that the raw Niuginians and the indentured labourers in the early transition years were indeed happier as a race than were the in truding Europeans. Sure they had non-controlled diseases, primitive housing, little clothing, no gadgets, non-balanced diets, but I never knew a hungry Niuginian (except on poorly planned European expeditions). They laughed more, sang more in the evening, they looked nice with well placed hibiscus or shell decorations, and were more content in heart.

I went among them, well-vested with university laurels and diplomas, but even before the language barriers were lowered, I learnt from them, and learnt, and learnt, and they could still teach me more the longer I tarried, and their lessons went beyond mere knowledge into the realms of ethics and behaviour.

Erudition is far apart from culture, and wisdom, as I learnt again when I picked up a gem in a Tananarive bookshop, Contes et Legends du Madagascar, which bared to me the hearts of another primitive race.

Percy is also right in his choice of Niugini (the coconuts will still raise their crowns to the sun after we are all dead); and he is also right about the separatist feeling in Bougainville. This was impressed on me when I shared a Goroka hotel table for some days with a Bougainvillian several years ago. As does Percy, I felt then that a valu able heritage we declining expatri ates should strive to leave would be a pan-Niuginian consciousness. This is still a long way off. But I do believe that in the long run all Niuginians would thank us for it.

Even more important is to leave

in them a faith in processes of justice, the belief and confidence that even though the courts may at times be mistaken, the integrity and fairness of police, public servants, magis trates, and judges can be taken for granted.

In this I think we will probably succeed, thanks to men like Hubert Murray, Dinkum Eve, “Kassa”

Townsend, Ivan Champion, Uto Boroma, Keith McCarthy, and a very long list of others who rank with them.

Finally back to Percy. He is no longer a boy. But PIM must never pension him off. So long as his mind remains coherent, Percy’s comments will be true to his label—to the point, and a gem in PlM’s casket.

A fuzzy haired lad once said to me of Percy, “Tau namo herea ia diba momo”. How right he was.

S. Warren Carey.

Geology Dept., University of Tasmania, Hobart. • Translated from the Motu, Pro fessor Carey’s tribute means, “A very good man—he knows a lof’.

Lieut. Pilsbury Goes Home

Sir, —May I be permitted to clarify a matter raised in a letter by Harry B. Ogilvy (P/M, Sept., p. 51). Father O’Sullivan, an ex-Army chaplain and with over 30 years’ missionary service in Bougainville, at no stage claimed to be the first to discover the Ameri can wartime plane in question.

But when he did he acted effectively.

The wreck was only then officially ex amined, with the result that the re mains of the pilot were discovered underneath.

The Buin office reports that there is no record of any official notifica tion of the finding of the plane.

Several people had removed souvenirs from it and passed on. Mr. Ogilvy admits to having removed a Bren gun and live ammunition many months before Father O’Sullivan’s report to the RAAF at Canberra. As a Patrol Officer, Mr. Ogilvy could have been the first to make an official report.

(Rev.) W. P. Fingleton, Sm.

Tobago Mission, Bougainville.

More letters on p. 56.