Yesterday

“Dick America is Dead” said PIM and in a couple of columns the adventures of an 83-year-old Negro who died at San Cristoval, Solomon Islands, were recounted. Born George Washington Ezekiel Richardson, at Philadelphia, USA, “America” had spent his youth on square-rigged sailing ships around the pearl shell bases of the Torres Straits.

He moved to the Solomons in 1905, beginning as a beche-de mer fisherman off Malaita, and for the next 44 years traded, super vised plantations and grew his own coconuts in various backwaters of the Solomons. Nicknamed Dick America by Islanders, he married a girl from Malaita and left four children.

Other items from PIM, October, 1949, included: Noumea Council, New Caledonia, agreed to sell the US Government an area of 40 acres, on Semaphore Hill, for about £Stg.4,ooo. A new US Consulate was to be built on this site (the previous consulate was damaged in a cyclone).

From Canada came the report that Fiji’s bananas didn’t compare in ap pearance with bananas from South America. Buyers in Vancouver said many Fijji bananas had arrived in wrong stages of maturity; they urged that only the best fruit be exported, lest bad fruit give Fiji a bad name.

Two Islands trading firms, W, R.

Carpenter and Co. Ltd. and Steam ships Trading Co. Ltd., reported respective profits for 1948-49 of £80,194 and £50,907. Last year, Carpenters made over $5 million profit, and Steamies. over $1 million.

Mr. Bill Murnan, an American yachtsman collecting sealife and taking films for the Bishop Museum, Hawaii, arrived at Honiara, Solomon Islands, in his 30 ft stainless-steel yawl, South Seas 11.

The French national airlines, Air France, began a fortnightly service between Paris and Noumea, New Caledonia, with Skymaster aircraft.

Fare on the Brisbane-Noumea leg was £A2B/19/-.

Seven Japanese soldiers were located in a remote village in the Finnisterre Ranges of the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea. They had been hiding with the Highlanders for five years and when found, were suffering from malnutrition.

A Chinese, Ta i She k , was sentenced in a Fiji court to death for the murder of Mr. William Thomas Allen, an engineer of the British Phosphate Commission, at Ocean Island, on April 26. In a tragedy which upset the small Ocean Island community, Mr. Allen was found stabbed in his bedroom, and his wife, stabbed to death also in the lounge room of their home.

A party of three men from Bulolo Gold Dredging Company, had left the small government outpost of Angoram, on New Guinea’s Sepik River, to explore the upper reaches of the muddy Sepik for gold and timber. It was BCD’s second at tempt to locate gold in the Sepik area.

The national status of the people of Western Samoa was altered.

Previously they were classified as British protected persons, in future they were to be NZ protected persons.

Mr. J, K. McCarthy, formerly District Officer, Mada n g , New Guinea, arrived at Rabaul, New Britain, to become DO, Rabaul. He replaced DO Mr. C. D. Bates.

Arrangements were being made for a three-monthly air service by Royal New Zealand Air Force Catalina flying-boats to the Tokelaus, a small group of islands near Apia. Western Samoa. The Tokelaus’ population was increasing rapidly, particularly on Fakaofo Island, and PIM said many people would have to be re settled eventually.

Mr James Michener, the American author of Tales of the South Pacific (from which the play and film South Pacific originated), was in Sydney with his wife en route to several Islands calls. Mr. Michener served with the US Navy in the New Hebrides, New Caledonia and Norfolk Island during World War 11.

On a trip between the Society Islands of Maiao and Moorea, the 107-ton Mervin Brothers schooner Vaiete was lost when big seas in a storm threw her onto a jagged coral reef off Moorea. The nine adults and five children aboard managed to reach Haapiti Village, where the district chief gave them food and shelter.

The 68-year-old memorial to Captain Cook's obser vation of the transit of Venus, at Point Venus, Tahiti, pictured in PIM in 1949. Mr. and Mrs.

Tony Bambridge, one of the island's oldest families stand nearby.

Mr. Bambridge is today a Papeete businessman.