People

• “Doctor Tom” has been back home to the Cook Islands, One of the best-known research physicians in America and a most distinguished son of Rarotonga, Dr. Thomas R. A.

Harries-Davis arrived at the end of July for a holiday—his first visit for 19 years. He hopes to return some day to study the anthropology of the Cooks—if he can find a financial backer. A graduate of the Otago Medical School, Dunedin, NZ, Dr.

Tom became Chief Medical Officer in the Cooks. After getting a post doctoral degree at the University of Sydney, he received a fellowship to the Harvard (USA) School of Public Health where he gained his Master of Public Health degree. After a spell at Harvard’s Department of Nutri tion, he went to Alaska as Chief of the Department of Environmental Medicine and from there in 1956, he became research physician and dire tor of the Army’s Division of Environmental Medicine at Fort Knox. Dr. Tom has played a part in the job of putting a man on the moon. Between 1957 and 1963 he became involved in the biomedical aspects of the US space programme and took part as medical monitor in the first efforts of Man in Space.

At present he is research physician

with Arthur D. Little Inc. He is co author with his wife Lydia of two books, Doctor to the Islands (1954) and Makutu (1960), and has pub lished more than 60 scientific treatises which range over almost the whole gamut of medicine. His spare time is spent in a 43 ft cutter in which he cruises down the New England coast. • Delegates at the Methodist Church conference in Suva, have elected the Rev. Paula Niukula the next principal of Davuilevu Theo logical College at Nausori. He is the first Fiji Islander to the post, replac ing Mr. Bill Gorfine, an Australian, who has been principal of the college for the past two years. Since 1969, Mr. Niukula has worked on revision of the New Testament in Fijian with the British and Foreign Bible Society.

He was seconded by the Methodist Church. The conference delegates agreed that the Rev. Tomasi Kanailagi, a theology teacher at Davuilevu, should be seconded to the Bible Society from January to work on revision of the Old Testa ment in Fijian. • Fiji’s Prime Minister, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, is to be made an honorary fellow of Wadham College, Oxford, where he obtained his Master of Arts degree in modern history and a half-blue for athletics. • Mr. Harold R. Cooper, of Sydney, for 58 years on the staff of Island merchants Nelson and Robertson Pty. Ltd., of Sydney, has retired. When he joined the com pany there was only a staff of four, plus the two partners, Messrs. Nel son and Robertson. Later, when the partnership was formed into a com pany he became secretary and then a director. In his long career as an Island agent, he made many trips to the Pacific Islands and formed friendships which have been carried on from father to son. He played a major part in helping to develop the business, first in the shipping de partment and then in the Islands department. • Recently announced in Port Moresby was the engagement of Miss Merran McCann, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. W. Neill McCann, to Dr.

Godfrey Waidabu, eldest son of Mr. and Mrs. J. A. Waidabu, of Nauru, Miss McCann is a former St. Ives, Sydney, girl, and Dr. Waidabu is Nauru’s first graduate of the Medical School at the University of Papua and New Guinea.

• Mr. B. C. Ballard, Australian born lawyer and ex-Australian Am bassador and High Commissioner of many countries, has arrived in Vila to begin the job of revising British national laws in the New Hebrides.

He’ll be on familiar territory, land wise and law-wise. He was in Vila from 1934 to 1940 in private practice, concerned mainly with the conduct of British applications for title to land before the Joint Court and he was also legal adviser to the British Resi dent Commissioner. His diplomatic postings included Sweden, Israel, Thailand, Ceylon and Ghana. • First person to be granted citi zenship under Fiji’s new immigration laws was 23-year-old Mr. Michael Chan, who has lived in the dominion since 1951. The second application granted was for outspoken Member of the House of Representatives, Dr.

Lindsay Verrier, who has lived in Fiji since 1938 and who leads the dominion’s Liberal Party. Third suc cessful applicant was Mr. David Rod ney Fong, a Fiji resident since 1954, and the fourth Mr. Balway Lai Chau han, a resident since 1953. e A radio man who has worked in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, in Australia, the UK, Germany and Korea, Mr. Desmond Telfer has been

Dr. Tom.

Miss Amelia Rokotuivuna, Fiji's representa tive at the YWCA World Council Meeting at Accra, Ghana, from August 14-22. The general secretary of the YWCA, Suva, she has been awarded a travel scholarship by CP Air to attend in-service and adminis trative training courses at various Canadian YWCA centres during the next nine months. On her return she'll take over the job of national secretary of the YWCA in Fiji.

appointed manager of broadcasting services in Nauru.

Aged 48, Mr. Telfer began his radio career with 3AW in Melbourne, transferred to the Australian Broad casting Commission and later was accredited by the United Nations as a war correspondent in Korea. After two years in London as a radio free lance, he went to Ethiopia as English programme director of the Radio Voice of the Gospel and set up an English language broadcasting system.

From there he joined the Voice of Germany as senior editor in charge of current affairs and trained young people in broadcast presentation. He was in Germany for five years before returning to Australia and taking up his new role. • Fiji’s Director of Marine, popular Captain Peter Hough, who retires next January after 15 years in Fiji, is going back home to New Zealand “to take up another position and be active for many more years”. He hasn’t said what the “other position” will be. Another piloting job? Farming perhaps?

Talking about his family a couple of years ago, Captain Hough said he was planning to help his son establish himself on an NZ farm.

Many sea captains retire—usually to Devon in England and grow roses, so what’s wrong with being a farmer?

One of the best-known personalities in Pacific shipping circles, Captain

Hough first went to Suva from New Zealand as temporary assistant harbourmaster in 1956 to relieve the harbourmaster, Captain Harkness.

At that time, the harbourmaster’s office was a poor relation of the Customs Department.

Captain Hough became assistant harbourmaster in 1958 and was promoted to harbourmaster in 1966.

He held that post until being pro moted to Assistant Director of Marine when the Marine Department was established in 1967. He became Director of Marine in 1969, when Captain A. J. Newport returned to Britain. The Marine Department has grown until it now has 520 employees and operates 33 government vessels.

Captain Hough estimates that during 13 years as an active pilot in Fiji, he guided 5,000 ships in and out of harbour.

“The one pilot job that gave me the biggest thrill was my last one— early this year,” he told PIM. “I piloted the Royal barge from the Royal Yacht Britannia to Lakemba when the Duke of Edinburgh and Lord Mountbatten visited.”

There’s a real exodus of pilots from Fiji’s Marine Department. Three other senior pilots are leaving or have already left the service. Cap tain John Figgess has resigned to become a private pilot and Captain J. I. Dalby is now port operations superintendent for the copper-mining project on Bougainville.

The senior harbourmaster, Cap tain V. Rowe, has resigned and plans to leave the dominion. • At a recent UN Seminar on race relations held at Yaounde, Cameroon

Republic, New Zealand’s long-time Secretary of Maori and Island Affairs, Mr. J. R. McEwen, found himself the only representative of Oceania.

So he was pleased when he came across a familiar face, that of Michael Challons, formerly of the Solomons, Tonga and the South Pacific Commission in Noumea, and now with the UNDP in the Came roon Republic. Although the Pacific was outnumbered at the seminar, “Jock” McEwen reminded his fellow delegates of the old Maori proverb, “Although it is tiny, it is made of the finest jade”. Jock was appointed Secretary of what was then the Department of Island Territories in 1958, and the department became Maori and Island Affairs in 1968. He has another four years before he retires from the post, but already he has established a record for holding such a key Islands position. • Jim Beard, who severs his con nection with the Australian Broad casting Commission in September after 22 years with them in PNG, first worked as a clerk at station 9PA Port Moresby when army blankets were used to soundproof the walls of the studios. He is cur rently in Sydney, at 65 looking for another job. “If a man gave up work now, what would he do with him self?” asked Jim. e Mr. John Pilbeam has ceased to be Nauru’s Representative in Australia and has left the Melbourne post. His successor is Mr. Anthony E. Holmes, who has been acting senior legal officer in the republic’s Department of Justice.

Capt. Hough.

Referee Stan Brown watches intently as Dharam Nair (YMCA/Suva Youth Club) anticipates a left from Subhas Chand, of Labasa, who emerged as amateur flyweight champion in July. Chand looks like a certainty for the Tahiti Games.