People

• Another top job in the Fiji Gov ernment service has been localised— the post of Comptroller of Customs with the departure from Fiji on pre retirement leave on September 8 of Mr. E. T. J. Mabbs, who has held it for nine years. He is succeeded by Mr. C. F. Wooley, his Fiji-born deputy. Before coming to Fiji, Mr.

Mabbs served five years in Nyasaland and seven years in Mauritius. During the nine years of Mr. Mabbs’ stay, customs and excise revenue has more than doubled, from less than $8 mil lion in 1962 to an estimated $2O mil lion-plus this year. He was a tough comptroller, sudden death on customs evaders, and played a leading role in organising the replacement of the old tariff system by the new one based on the Brussels nomenclature. Mr.

Wooley has risen from the ranks in 25 years. He started as a clerical probationer and has served at Levuka, Lautoka and Nadi Airport. • Mr. F. E. Daveson, who has been in Papua New Guinea since 1948, has been appointed associate commissioner of the territory’s teach ing service. He has served as a teacher and relief headmaster, a district in spector in the Southern and Eastern Highlands and before his new job was principal district superintendent of the Education Department. One of his jobs, for four years in the 19505, was teaching the people in the Purari delta to read and write Koriki, which he learned through studying a London Missionary Society’s translation of the Bible in Koriki and a Koriki primer. • Governor John M. Haydon, Governor of American Samoa, and Mrs. Haydon left Pago Pago early in September for Puerto Rico to at tend a national governors’ conference at the end of which they will go to the United States for the governor’s leave. They are expected back in November. • Mr. James Anthony, former Fiji trade union leader and graduate of the University of Hawaii’s East-West Center, who had been studying in Canberra, is taking up a teaching ap pointment at the University af Hawaii.

He spoke to students of the Univers ity of the South Pacific in Suva to wards the end of August and in his

speech called for the resignation of Mr. S. M. Koya, Leader of the Fede ration Party Opposition in the Fiji House of Representatives; advised Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara to “emerge from isolation”; told Australian High Commissioner R. F.

Osborne —present in the audience— “ The White Australia policy does no credit to your country”, and asked: “We can barely run the PWD on an efficient basis. How are we going to run the sugar industry?”

O An important wedding in Suva’s Holy Trinity Cathedral at the end of August was that of Ratu Lieutenant Etuate Kikau Tuivanuavou and Adi Sainimili Rokolewasau Uluilakeba, half-sister of Fiji’s Prime Minister, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara. Lieutenant Etuate is a former ADC of the Gov ernor-General, Sir Robert Foster, who was one of the 700 guests at the re ception in the officers’ mess at Queen Elizabeth Barracks. • Mr. Don McLoughlin, Fiji’s Solicitor-General, retired in Septem ber after 15 years with the govern ment, first as a magistrate, serving at Lautoka, Ba and Labasa, and then as acting senior magistrate at Suva before being appointed Solicitor- General in 1963. He was one of two commissioners responsible for the big job of revising Fiji’s laws in 1967 and has also served as a Commissioner of Customs, Pitcairn’s Judicial Commis sioner and, since 1964, legal adviser to the Pitcairn Island Government. He left Fiji on September 7 for Perth in Western Australia, where he will go into private practice as a mineral and petroleum development consultant.

Fiji isn’t losing him for good, how ever. The government has retained him as consultant on international law and mineral, petroleum and in dustrial development. During his 15 years in Fiji he was able to follow his main, and very absorbing hobby —collecting and classifying orchids.

He was able to classify 60 species of indigenous orchids, including eight that no one knew existed. • Daughters of well-known Fiji businessman Mr. Shree Dhar Maha raj, of Suva, 22-year-old Vijay Maha raj, and her 21-year-old sister Shiro mani, have returned home after three years at Delhi University in India.

They both came home armed with Bachelor of Arts degrees with honours in English. Vijay became president of her college and won three awards for acting, while Shiromani made the college hockey team. • August Tamdodo, 21, from Vunalir, near Rabaul, has gone to England for a year to take an educa tional guidance course at Reading

University. He is an Education Ad visory Officer in the PNG Education Department. • Mr. F. L. E. Genet, better known to his many friends as Bell Watson, has retired from the Posts and Telegraphs Department in Fiji after 43 years’ service. He rose from an ordinary hand to become a super vising technician, higher grade. Mr.

Genet was associated with several sports, and in 1954 was assistant manager of the Fiji Rugby team which toured Australia. • Mr. P. Best has been appointed general manager of Burns Philp (SS) Co. Ltd. He succeeds Mr. J. A. Baker, who has been transferred to Sydney to take up an executive post with Burns Philp Ltd. • Mr. Justice W. M. Goudie has been appointed a puisne judge in Fiji, succeeding Mr. Justice Knox-Mawer.

Mr. Justice Goudie was earlier a resi dent magistrate in Kenya and then served as a judge in Aden and Uganda.

Continued on p. 96

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown?

Not this one glamorous 22-year-old Verna Thomas, of Suva, proclaimed Miss Hibiscus at Suva's Hibiscus Festival in September, has worn several crowns. She won the titles of Miss Bula and Miss Fiji in 1968 and represented Fiji in the Miss Pacific Quest in Australia in 1969. But she's not blase about her new crown.

"It's a beautiful feeling," she said. She works in a bank in Suva. —Photo by Bal Ram.

• Mrs. Naguvo, widow of Vice- Admiral Chuichi Naguvo, wartime Commander of the Japanese Imperial Central Pacific Fleet, will take part in the dedication next January of a SUS3O,OOO World War II memorial and park at “Suicide Cliff” in Saigon.

The memorial tops the 850 ft “Suicide Cliff’ over which hundreds of Japan ese soldiers leapt to their deaths rather than face capture in the closing stages of the battle for Saipan in 1944. • Mr. K. L. Malik has been ap pointed Air-India assistant manager.

Australasia, based in Sydney. He was assistant manager for the airline in Fiji for two years before receiving his promotion. Mr. Malik has had 25 years service with Air-India. His pre decessor in Sydney, Mr. Madan Tail, now becomes manager in Fiji. • A career officer of the New Zea land Ministry of Foreign Affairs with long experience in Pacific affairs, Mr.

William Gray Thorp took up his new appointment as NZ High Commis sioner to Western Samoa and Tonga at Apia in September. He succeeds Mr. Richard Taylor, who has returned to New Zealand for reassignment. Mr.

Thorp was formerly NZ Commis sioner in Hong Kong and Minister to the Philippines. During his early years with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Thorp served in the Paci fic and Trusteeship Affairs Division.

He later represented New Zealand at the United Nations on the Trustee ship Council and the Assembly Com mittee concerned with trust and non self-governing territories. He also rep resented NZ at Ottawa and Geneva and at many international conferences, including the South Pacific Commis sion, before his appointment to Hong

Kong in 1968. He is 48, married and has four children. • District missionary for the Presbyterian Church in Vila and Erromango for the last four years the Rev.

John Cooper, has left the New Hebrides for Victoria, where he will be parish minister for the towns of Corio and Lara. Mr. Cooper first arrived in the Condominium in 1954 and worked as a missionary for nine years before returning to Australia. . . • A Tongan soldier serving m the Umted States Army, 28-year-old Sione Tulua, whose home is at Nukunuku, was to have been posted to Vietnam after his training at Fort Ord in California, but he impressed his officers so much that they recommended him for promotion and more training. He was one of five soldiers to be chosen from Fort Ord for special training before promotion to non-commissioned officer rank. He became an acting sergeant in the first eight weeks of a 12-week course. • Samnan Hieh Chief Le’iato T has beeTnresented with a'new title “f s . hQ f e j Presented with a new title,

nn fhl kllnH nf’ Sava?/ S

members of his mother's famil/'attended the royal, ava ceremony at Fagaitua in American Samoa. It is be-

Sy W'-SSIT 1 Anierictui

Samoa. • Mrs. Theresa Scanlan, wife of Mr. Herbert Scanlan, a member of the American Samoa House of Representatives, has been awarded a medal by Pope Paul for outstanding service to the Roman Catholic Community

of American Samoa over the past 20 years. She was to receive the medal from Bishop Pio Taofinuu, Bishop of Apia. w , • Mr. Thomas E. Warren, a high sc hool principal and administrator in th e Rockville, Maryland (USA) pub jjc sc hool system, has been appointed deputy director of the American Peace Corps in Micronesia. He has a doc torate in education from the George Peabody College in Nashville, Tennes see He is based on Saipan, • The United States localisation policy in Micronesia has hoisted 40year-old Kozo Yamada, of Saipan, into a top post in the Trust Territory —as Chief of the Division of Lands and Surve y s in the Department of Re s°urces and Development, in succes . Paul D. Dennis, who has gone 'o Denver, Colorado. Mr. Yamada,

bairns” AdmSstmtor was pointed

He was educated at Lahain a.ur-High School and the University • Mr. Joe Bomal Carlo, of the New Hebrides Broadcasting Service, has written and produced his own play as part of a three-month course with the BBC in London. Mr. Carlo returned to Vila in September.

Mr. W. G. Thorp

These Tongan girls, members of Suva's large Tongan community, performed several national dances as their con tribution to the fun and frolics at Suva's Hibiscus Festival in September.

Photo by Bal Ram.