People
pp. 84-85 · Read in the full issue
• A plantation and cattle project on Goodenough Island in the Milne Bay District of Papua-New Guinea, owned by MHA, Mr. T. J. Ward, was visited by Australian Minister for Ex ternal Territories, Mr. C. E. Barnes, in early December. Mr. Barnes, on a tour of the territory, was visiting the Goodenough area for the first time as Minister. He told the Vivigani people on Goodenough Island that he had helped to build the airstrip there in 1943. Tim Ward, formerly owner of the hotel in the Trobriands, won a recent by-election to the House of Assembly. • After 35 years with the Morris Hedstrom and W. R. Carpenter groups, New Zealander Alan Lam bourne will retire late in 1971. Born in Dunedin, he joined Hedstroms in Suva in 1936, became a relieving manager and travelled widely through out the Fiji group and Tonga. He served in the Fiji Defence Force during World War 11, and then was manager for Hedstroms in Apia, From 1959 to 1965 he was general manager for the Carpenter-owned New Guinea Company, and in 1965 was assistant to Carpenter’s London manager, the position from which he’ll retire to New Plymouth, NZ. • Mr. B. J. Holloway has been confirmed as Deputy Police Com missioner in Papua-New Guinea. Mr.
Holloway, who went to the territory in 1948 as an Assistant Sub-Inspector with the Royal Papua Constabulary and New Guinea Police Force, has seen service in almost all districts. • Mr. J. W. Sykes, a son-in-law of the late Sir Hugh Ragg, will return to Fiji early this year as chairman of the Public and Police Service Com mission. Mr. Sykes was in the Fiji Public Service for 17 years before transferring to Bermuda, where he be came Chief Secretary, in 1955. Mr.
Sykes succeeds Mr. P. D. Macdonald, who held the post for four years, and who was Colonial Secretary in Fiji from 1957 to 1966. Mr. Macdonald spent more than 25 years in the Paci fic as a colonial official. • Mr. John Pilbeam, E.D., 8.A., has been appointed Government Representative in Australia and New Zealand for the Republic of Nauru.
He was formerly managing director of Prestige (NZ) Ltd. Mr. Pilbeam
will be responsible to President Hammer Deßoburt, for diplomatic, consular, civil aviation and commercial representation of the republic in both countries, and management of all services at the republic’s Melbourne offices relating to procurement, personnel, publicity and information, together with the education, health and welfare of Nauruan citizens abroad. Overall management of the affairs of the Nauru Local Government Council in Melbourne— including shipping—and of the Nauru Co-operative Society and its commercial transactions are also included in Mr. Pilbeam’s appointment.
Before assuming control in 1968 of Prestige (NZ), Mr. Pilbeam had extensive industrial experience in the petrochemical and chemical industries
in Australia. He is a graduate of the University of Melbourne and of the Australian Army Staff College and was advisor to the Republic of the Philippines at SEATO. He holds the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the Australian Citizen Military Forces.
He is married and has one son, who is serving in Vietnam with the Australian Task Force. • Head of the Department of Transport in Papua-New Guinea, Mr.
Gavan McDonell, 38, was to leave the territory in December after four years with the Administration.
He joins the board of Urban Systems Corporation, a Sydney firm of urban and regional planning consultants.
• It seemed a bit unusual when the cosmopolitan Hebenstreits came to rest in Dunedin, the coldest and staidest of New Zealand’s four biggest cities. But with this sort of attractive, happy family, location doesn’t matter much. Johnny Frisbie, author, Poly nesian dancer and daughter of the later Robert Dean Frisbie, married Carl Hebenstreit, TV producer, in Honolulu in 1956. When their children began to arrive, they decided to swop their Honolulu life for something more natural and spent a yea r in the Cook Islands. When Carl became an executive of a NZ based company they moved to Dunedin, The picture on this page is from their 1970 Christmas card. With
Mr. John Pilbeam, Nauru's new man in Australia.
The Hebenstreits at home.
Carl and Johnny are Haumea, 8; Carla, 11; Stirling 3, and Ropati, 13. • Mr. Robert L. Clifford, is one of the latest UN officials to arrive in Apia. He is senior economic plan ning adviser to the Western Samoan Government. He has worked for the US in Yugoslavia, Burma, Lebanon and Pakistan, and for the UN in Niger, Sierra Leone, Malaysia and Central Africa. • Former West Samoan medical practitioner, Dr. Taula Anesi, has been appointed a Faamasino Fesoa soani and a Samoan Judge of the Land and Titles Court for a term of two years. He recently retired after 40 years’ service in the govern ment. • Mr. Alan Whitsed, NSW manager of Penfolds Wines, Australia Ltd., has plans to bring leading Fiji wine retailers to Australia to see just how wine is made. Just back from a 10-day trip to Fiji, he says; “They have realised that wine is business, yet many Fijians have never seen a grape, far less a vineyard”. Since Mr. Whitsed’s prediction of a wine boom on a 1969 trip, three more Australian wine companies have ap pointed agents in the area. • Memories of the Islands in cold West Germany. All the group in the photo right worked at one time for Breckwoldt & Co. in various parts of the South Pacific. The Reschke family lived in Suva until 1966 and Mr.
Guenther Wulf and Mr. and Mrs.
Dieter Haible were residents of Apia.
Just to bring back the nostalagia, the table-lamp is made of tapa. Photo was taken recently in Ludwigshafen.
From left, Mrs. Heide Reschke, Mr.
Guenther Wulf, Mr. Klaus Reschke, Mr. and Mrs. Dieter Haible.
• In late November the Holy See accepted the resignation of Mon seigneur Pierre Martin as Archbishop of Noumea. The 60-year-old arch bishop, who was in Sydney at the time of the announcement, was tem porarily replaced by Mgr. Dar mancier, Bishop of Wallis and Futuna Islands. Mgr. Martin’s resignation apparently came as no surprise to those around him who knew of his intentions, due to difficulties en countered in his diocese. He had spent 14 years in Noumea and re taining his bishop’s status was expec ted to take up a new post in the Pacific. • Research scholar in the Depart ment of Human Geography at the Australian National University, Mr.
John R. Baker, left for Fiji in late December to carry out a study into the level of freight rates, handling charges and customs duties in the South West Pacific area. It’s hoped this will lead to greater understanding of the variations in the costs of imports and the price received for exports in the area; and the way in which variations in freight rates, both
between different countries, and within one country, can affect potential for economic development, Mr. Baker and his wife, Elizabeth, are in Fiji for about five months and will then be in Tonga for two months and in the BSIP for three months.
Prior to his arrival at the ANU, Mr.
Baker worked on the preparation of Tonga’s current five-year development plan. He also lived in parts of the BSIP during 1964 and 1965, while working with the British Voluntary Service Overseas organisation. • Mr. James Edgar Ritchie, Papua-New Guinea’s popular Port Moresby-born Treasurer, has been appointed Deputy Vice-Chancellor, University of Queensland. Jim Ritchie, 40, joined the NG Provisional Administration in 1946 as a clerk.
Working his way up through the service, in March, 1970, he became Treasurer. He is the son of B. M.
Ritchie, who was a pre-war Papuan Administration Official, High tributes to Jim Ritchie’s work were paid by the P-NG Administrator, Mr. L. W.
Johnson, in December. • Mr. J. D. Whitcombe, well known in Tonga, and for many years Pacific Publications representative in Auckland, is at present very ill in Auckland. • Planning to visit the Islands again in the new year after an absence longer than usual is Mr.
Eric Fordham, formerly for many years Sydney manager of Rice growers’ Co-operative Mills Ltd., whose job made him a familiar figure in many parts of the South Pacific. A few months ago he was appointed general manager in Aus tralia for the Guam-based trading and development company, Jones and Guerrero Co. Inc., and he has been temporarily looking after the com pany’s ranch interests in Beaudesert, Queensland.
Now doing a job in agriculture with the US government at Majuro, in the Mar shall Islands of Micronesia, is well known New Guinea identity (he is a former member of the House of Assembly) Eric Pine, here photographed by a roving PIM photographer with wife Joan and son Stephen.
Memories of the islands. See para graph at left.