People
pp. 38-39 · Read in the full issue
• Mr. Cecil Bradnam, Suva’s city engineer for the last four years and council employee for 20 years, was enjoying his leave in the Mosman suburb of Sydney when, on April 7, he opened a letter from Suva—and his holiday was ruined. The letter was a terse, cold demand for his resignation from the city council because, the letter alleged, he had spent $13,000 on renovating a council house for his own use, when only $4,000 had been authorised. He will refuse to resign and expects to be back at his desk on June 14.
Heading the call for his resignation is the Mayor, Cr. Macu Salato, but several councillors are opposing the council’s decision to call for his resignation—agreed at a meeting behind closed doors—on the grounds that it is “grossly unjust and not in keeping with the alleged mis-
demeanour”. After all, says Cr. Peter Allen, one of the city engineer’s defenders, Mr. Bradnam has 20 years service with the council and has saved the council and the ratepayers thousands of dollars by his work in the past.
“They are being vindictive,” Cr.
Allen accuses. Mr. Bradnam told PIM factors which resulted in the cost of renovation being more than trebled, and over which he had no control, included the archaic costing system which provided no real check on spending; big rises in prices of materials; wage rises; the fact that the job took five months to do instead of the scheduled two months; bad work which needed re-doing; the low productivity of the council workers and extra jobs which were found necessary when parts of the house— in upper class Muanikau suburb— were stripped. At the time of writing, the council was split into two camps and Mr. Bradnam was still the city engineer on leave in Sydney. • Mr. L. J. Davis, New Zealand High Commissioner in the Cook Islands, was taken ill at Rarotonga in April and is now in hospital in Auck land. He was flown to New Zealand in a Royal New Zealand Air Force Hercules plane which was sent speci ally for him. A medical team of four, three doctors and a nursing sister, were in the plane. Mr. Davis, who is believed to have a liver com plaint, was accompanied by his wife.
The High Commissioner was taken to the Rarotonga Hospital on April 10 and flown to Auckland the fol lowing day. • The Prime Minister of Western Samoa, Tupua Tamasese Leolofi IV, got a telephone call on April 5 which cost him at least a pint of his blood.
The call was for a blood donor and the Prime Minister, himself a doctor, was soon at the hospital giving some of his urgently-needed blood. Although he has taken on the strenuous duties of running a country Tamasese has insisted on his name being retained on the blood donors’ list. • Patolo Taafuli, statistical officer of the Western Samoa Bureau of Statistics returned on April 8 from Tokyo after a 10 months absence.
He attended a course on statistics at the Asian Statistical Institute and was awarded a certificate. Government
Statistician F. E. Betham is at the same institute on a six weeks advanced course. • Unlike most anglers, Steve Colwell, of Pago Pago, doesn’t ex aggerate when he stretches his arms wide to tell how big was the one that didn’t get away. Steve, son of Ameri can Samoa Tax Office manager Bill Colwell, did a man-size job at the beginning of April, boating a 150 lb marlin. Using regulation 130 lb tackle he landed his prize after a 90-minute battle off the south coast of Tutuila.
He’s only 14! • Mr. David Lincoln-Gordon has been appointed Pacific Islands mana ger of the Fiji Development Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of the giant Common wealth Development Corporation, and will work for the company’s head office in Suva. Mr. Lincoln- Gordon becomes chairman of the FDC’s Home Finance Co., in which the Fiji government has a half-share.
He is also chairman of Pacific Lumber Co. Ltd. and a director of the FDC, Solomon Islands Planta tions Ltd. and the Kadavu Timber Co. Ltd.
With the retirement of Mr. John Henry Sand and the promotion of Mr. Parbhu Dayal to manager of the Fiji Development Co. Ltd., the com pany is now managed entirely by Fiji nationals. Mr. Dayal is also a director of Home Finance Co. Ltd., Fiji Development Co. Ltd., and an alternate director of The Pacific Lumber Co. Ltd.
Although this winsome lass, Miss Tabotai, is seen by few people in the far-flung islands of the GEIC thousands know her voice. A dweller in Northern Tarawa, she's a popular singer on Radio Tarawa.
Mr. L. J. Davis.
• The Rev. Father Laurent Fuahea, parish priest of Sigave on the island )f Futuna, has been named by the s ope as auxiliary bishop to the Bishop >f Wallis and Futuna, Bishop Michael Darmancier, S.M. This is the latest ippointment of an indigenous priest 0 the Roman Catholic hierarchy in tccordance with* the Church’s ‘Tocal sation” programme. Father Patrick 7 inau, SM, Vicar General of the >iocese of Tonga was appointed in February as coadjutor bishop to lishop Rodgers, Bishop of Tonga. • The Rev. V. H. Mo’ungaloa, of onga, former director of the Methodist Youth Department in onga, has gained his Doctorate in hilosophy at the University of Ohio 1 the United States. He now adds a h.D. to his M.D. (Master of Divinity) r hich he obtained last year. An ex udent of Leigh College, the Metho ist theological college in Sydney r here he spent three years from 1950, e was ordained into the Methodist linistry in Sydney. • Western Samoa’s Minister of istice Amoa Tausilia and the Deputy •irector of Economic Development ailele Malielegaoi returned to Apia i the middle of April after represent ig Western Samoa at the 25th con ;rence of the Economic Commission )r Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) i Bangkok, Thailand.
• Twenty-one-year-old Saimone Raikuna, of Suva, a fifth-year ship building apprentice in the Fiji Marine Department, has won the first New Zealand shipbuilding work study scholarship to be awarded in Fiji, The award entitles him to enter the design class at Auckland Technical Institute, which is associated with the Derrick Technical Institute in Suva.
Under the award he gets a $lOO clothing allowance, paid accommoda tion in Auckland, return air fares and pocket money. He will study at the Devonport naval base in Auckland and also work for three weeks in an Auckland boatbuilder’s yard. • The Rev. Barry John May, who has been at St. Martin’s Anglican Church at Boroko, Papua, for about a year, was farewelled by parishioners on April 14. He and his wife Katherine were guests at a barbecue during which they were presented with a carved bowl from the Trobriands. Mr. Barry’s first contact with PNG was in 1962 but not as a clergyman. He was a police officer but after three years he decided to study for the Anglican priesthood and returned to Australia in 1965. He returned as a priest last year. He has taken another post in South Australia. • Himalea Ikimotu Douglas is the first Niuean to obtain a full univer sity degree. He has been awarded a Bachelor of Commerce and Admini stration degree after studying at Vic toria University in Wellington (NZ).
He first went to New Zealand in 1959 under the NZ Government’s scholarship scheme. He was also the first Niuean to obtain a fellowship to attend the Cobham Outward Bound School in New Zealand. • Prince Tuipelehake, Prime Minister of Tonga, underwent a suc cessful operation for gallstones in hospital in Auckland in April and his condition was reported to be satis factory. At the month-end he was convalescing in New Zealand. • Samoan External Affairs Officer, Latu Lome, and Apia businessmen Joe Annandale and Bob Rankin, stopped off in Sydney in April on their way back to Western Samoa after a three-month world study trip sponsored by UNCTAD/GATT.
Their study course, on export pro motion and international marketing, took them to Bangkok, Geneva, Western Germany, the United King dom and Australia. Bob Rankin is proprietor of Island Styles, a textile printing and garment factory, and Joe Annandale is employed by O. F.
Nelson and Co. Other Islanders in the study group included six Fijians and a man from Papua New Guinea.
In Sydney Bob Rankin said that when the Islands group found that their return tickets were via UTA, they exchanged them for tickets with BOAC “as a protest against the French decision to resume nuclear tests in the Pacific, which is endanger ing Islanders”.
This attractive young miss is 17-year-old [?]vana Seeto, of Rabaul, whose ambition [?]n life, at present anyway, is to be a tourist guide. And she's got more qualifi cations for the job than most teenagers.
She speaks English, French and Chinese.
Her home town is Santo in the New Hebrides.
This is 20-year-old Miss Johanna Taira, a Rarotongan typist, who has won a crown which has been without a wearer for 10 years. It's the crown of Miss Rarotonga, last competed for in 1962. She won it, and $80, at a public judging before 1,400 people at a gathering organised by the Democratic Party which, somehow or other, had managed to include the contest in its election campaign. Twenty-six girls from villages on Rarotonga competed and were judged, first in mini-pareu and bra tops and then in evening frocks. What the judges looked for was appearance, figure, deportment, personality, dress, grooming, entrance and confidence.
Johanna obviously had the winning figure and appearance. We can take the rest for granted. Runners-up were 18-year-old Miss Margaret Neri, a Tereora College student from Tauvae (second) and Miss Christine Buckley, 21, a hairdresser from Avatiu, third.—Photo: Johnson's Studio.