Yesterday

Another birthday has come up. In July we celebrated PlM's 41st birthday. This time it's OUR birthday, YESTERDAY'S 20th birthday. PIM, in December, 1951, started this column under the heading "Do You Remember?", and turned back the pages of PIM, December, 1931. So now we've come full circle and qualify for mention in YESTERDAY which concentrates on the stuff that short memories are made of and not the dog-eared pages of history.

Twenty years is long enough for anybody's cranial pigeonhole, but just this once we'll quote from "Do You Remember" which is a sort of Day before YESTERDAY.

"European planters in Western Samoa," the 40-year-old item runs, "are bitter regarding the high wages they must pay their Chinese labourers (3/6 a day). In no other country where Chinese labour is employed is the rate so high. Some planters suggest a more acceptable source of labour would be found in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands."

Or, "With the low prices ruling for coconut products (£l4 a ton), efforts are being made to find new uses for the coconut. An important development is reported from the Philippines where scientists have demonstrated the practicability of using coconut oil for diesel engines.

Opinion has been expressed that this will revolutionise the coconut oil industry."

Well it didn't, and the groans of the copra planters still echo through the land.

Back to 20 years ago when life was beginning to quicken in the Islands and the winds of change were beginning to blow.

One gust which PIM recorded in December, 1951, was the opening of the new PNG Legislative Council, the first council of the combined Papua and New Guinea Administrations, the first to have elected members— though there were only three and those were Europeans— the first to be anything other than a sounding board, and, as PIM pointed out, "it was the first time that all classes in the territory had had an opportunity of really getting face to face with the Administrator and his departmental heads in a survey of territories affairs."

On the new council were: Ex-officios D. M. Cleland, Claude Champion, J. H. Jones, Dr. J. T. Gunther, Ivan Champion, H. H. Reeve, W. C. Groves, C. C. Marr, E. P. Holmes, J. B. McAdam, W. W. Watkins, T. P. M Byrne, H. L. R.

Niall, J. K. McCarthy, J. R. Foldi, S. Elliott-Smith.

Elected members, D. Barrett (New Guinea Islands), C. M.

Jacobsen (New Guinea Mainland), E. A. James (Papua).

Nominated, non-officials: Missions, Revs. D. E. Ure, J. Dwyer, F. G. Lewis. Native members, Merari Dickson, Aisoli Salin, Simogen. Non-official members, B. E. Fairfax-Ross, Mrs.

D. R. Booth, J. B. Sedgers. The Administrator, Colonel Murray, was the president. There are still a lot of those old hands around today, although a number are now dead.

One of the first measures the new council gave its approval to, and shocked the planters in the process, was a new export tax on rubber of a penny on every sixpence of the price in excess of 2/6 a lb.

We've said this before, but it's stil! a surprise when we turn up examples every month—how history, incidents

and things repeat themselves. This time, it's Rapa, that little-known island in French Polynesia. Last month PIM had two pictures of Rapa and a review of a book on the island, probably the first time it's been mentioned for years. But 20 years ago PIM had a story about Rapa.

An Englishman named Fillylove was on a visit there.

PIM recalled that Rapa was once described to the world as a Mecca for Men, and that, "it was supposed to have a dozen willing females for every male and there was nothing for any man to do once he got there but sit about and be waited upon by gorgeous native Dorothy Lamours." We know now how things have altered in 20 years. Many would now ask, "Who's Dorothy Lamour?"

But all that was just light reading. There were plenty of serious incidents to record —Mounts Benbow and Marram devastating Ambrym in the New Hebrides with volcanic eruptions, tax dodging in Fiji —about 3,000 people were dodging the £2 a year residential tax —deaths of two Norfolk Island women, Mrs. Phoebe Christian (45) and Mrs. Olivia H. Quintal (31) killed when a stove exploded at the Ball Bay whaling station (now gone) and the gaoling of a "Messiah" in New Guinea, Paliau of the Admiralties, an ex-police-sergeant who had started a cargo cult.

He was said to have five wives, which wasn't illegal, but they gaoled him for six months for adultery, which was illegal. Today he's a respected member of the PNG House of Assembly.

There was also a lot of deaths of Island people that month, among them Lady Barker, wife of Sir Alport Barker, then proprietor of "The Fiji Times" and, until a few days before his wife's death. Mayor of Suva; Sir Peter Buck, famous Pacific ethnologist and Director of the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Mr. Dan Costello, one of Fiji's well-known six Costello brothers, Mr. R. McWilliams, of Santo, Mr. A. J, Tattersall, formerly of Samoa, who photographed almost every historical event in the territory for more than half a century, including the 1889 hurricane, the Samoan wars, the coming of the Germans and the Mau rebellion, Mr. Stanley Ralph Foy, of Rabaul, and Captain Victor Brisson, of Noumea.

A PIM contributor was doing some pants kicking 20 years ago and the butt of his anger was the BSIP Government. Under a heading "The Isles of Unwisdom", he belaboured the Administration, complained of the decline of the copra industry, the price of rations and the cost of transport and, at the end, asked, "Who here is the latest fool? Is it the white man who invests his money, gambles with his health in an effort to develop the Islands; or the Administrator who frustrates him and does nothing practical for the native and ignores the coming collapse? After me the deluge!" There was no deluge, and on page 41 of this month's issue, PIM sets its sights on the Solomons of today, and tomorrow.

Well, that was PlM's Pacific 20 years ago this month, sunshine, rain, laughter and tears, and, to end it, here's a few figures on liquor consumption among the 200 Europeans and 6,000 part-Europeans in Western Samoa. PIM reported that in the nine months to the end of 1950, the Western Samoa Government sold, for "medicinal purposes", 2,024 gallons of whisky, 544 gallons of brandy, 1,007 gallons of gin, 338 gallons of rum, 72 gallons of liqueurs, 272 gallons of port and sherry, 65 gallons of vermouth and 21,907 gallons of beer and stout. Western Samoa was technically a "dry" country with a permit system for "medical reasons". Because of the terms of the UN trusteeship, the indigenous Samoans weren't allowed "medicine".