People
pp. 28-29 · Read in the full issue
• Mr. Peter Bellwood, lecturer in Prehistory at Auckland University, is back in the Cook Islands with a small archaeological team comprising his wife. Teremoana, and Miss Debbie Cluff. They intend to carry out field work on Penrhyn. This will be the first time archaelogical work has been carried out in the northern Cook Islands. While waiting at Rarotonga for transport north, Mr. Bellwood and his team carried out excavation work on a site at Tutakimoa. Previous work was done on this site by Peter Bellwood and the Auckland Univer sity expedition in 1968-69, when ancient house sites were uncovered.
The earliest carbon date obtained from this site was about AD 1290, and adzes of a Samoan type were dis covered. The carbon date and the type of adzes seem to confirm the authenticity of the Karika-Tangiia legend, Mr. Bellwood said. • Mr. J. R. Williams, British High Commissioner left Fiji on May 22 for leave in the UK and is expected to return in mid-September. Mr. L. S.
Price is acting high commissioner. • Mr. L. J. Davis, New Zealand’s High Commissioner to the Cook Islands, who was taken seriously ill in April and flown to New Zealand for treatment, returned to Rarotonga on May 30 looking very healthy. He was met at the airport by his wife June, Premier Albert Henry and members of his cabinet. • Mr. Peter Hodgkinson, an Aus tralian Government statistical expert, has been appointed statistician with the South Pacific Commission. Pos sessor of a bachelor’s degree in eco nomics, Mr. Hodgkinson has had extensive experience in statistical work with the Bureau of Census and Statistics in Adelaide. He has more than a nodding acquaintance with Papua New Guinea as he was closely associated with an exhaustive study of problems arising from population pressures and food shortages in PNG. • Miss Moia Ituaso, acting pro ducer, of Gilbertese and Ellice pro grammes on the colony’s Radio Tarawa, has left Tarawa by air for
London. She is on a three-month radio production course which is being held in the BBC’s London studios.
She is the first woman member of Radio Tarawa’s staff to go on such a course. • Mr. M. R. Stanton, formerly Air New Zealand’s assistant commer mercial planning manager, has been appointed general manager of Poly nesian Airlines. The appointment was made at the request of the Western Samoa Government through the air line’s board of directors. Initially ap pointed to the Western Samoa-based airline for two years, Mr. Stanton replaces Mr. E. Hughan, previously seconded by Air Pacific who has now returned to a position with the airline in Fiji. Mr. Stanton joined Air New Zealand 21 years ago and was appointed head of tariffs in 1960. In 1965 he became scheduling superin tendent and the following year com mercial planning controller. e The Rev. William McKenzie, who lives in retirement in Melbourne, was at Erakor in the New Hebrides in May. He attended a ceremony marking the centenary of the arrival of his father, Dr. John McKenzie, the first European missionary. A new building named McKenzie Hall was dedicated. At Erakor are the graves of Dr. McKenzie’s first wife and three of their children. A child of the second marriage, William McKenzie was himself a missionary, spending 40 years in charge of Arakun mission in North Queensland. 9 Dr. Alan Growcott has been ap pointed Secretary for Island Develop ment in Nauru, succeeding Mr. Athol Carter, who is now Shipping Manager in Melbourne for the Nauru Pacific Line. Dr. Growcott, 33, is a PhD. in mathematics and B.Eng. of the University of NSW, and was formerly with management consultants W. D.
Scott and Co. as a senior consultant in management science working in the Philippines and Australia. He is accompanied to Nauru by his wife.
They have no children. • Mr. Raymond Patrick McAleer, a magistrate in Western Samoa, resigned his post in June, because of family illness, and returned with his family to New Zealand. • Mr. Wulf Weilinger, catering instructor and chief steward at the GEIC’s marine training school, has left Tarawa on completion of his service. Seconded to the colony in 1967 from the Columbus Line, Mr.
Weilinger established the catering section of the school and also wrote a manual on shipboard catering
Mr. Boitabu Smith, ex-training school student who has been serving with the Columbus Line and has been in the UK on a study fellowship in catering instruction, takes over from Mr.
Weilinger, 9> One of the third generation of his family to follow the sea. Frank Gorohu, of Elevala village, Port Moresby, is studying for his second mate’s certificate at the Sydney Tech nical College’s School of Navigation.
He will sit for the certificate at the year end. Frank, who is the first man from PNG to attend the school, is on a four-year apprenticeship with the Karlander New Guinea Line.
His father was skipper of the MV Laumbada, a Papuan coastal trading vessel, and his grandfather was also master of coastal vessels owned by Steamships Trading Co. • In Sydney and Suva in June was Mr. Brian Riordan, director of training and technical assistance for the Foundation for the Peoples of the South Pacific, which has its headquarters in New York. Mr.
Riordan, London-born, who migrated to the USA from the UK in 1965 and who now lives with his Welsh born wife and three children in Honolulu, had talks with the Banaban people of Rabi Island, Fiji, about technical help the foundation might be able to provide to assist them achieve economic independence. Mr.
Judge William J. McKnight (above), of Brookvale, Pennsylvania, legal officer in the State's Department of Justice, who has been appointed Chief Justice of American Samoa in succession to Judge Donald H.
Crothers. Aged 51, he is a member of the Bar of the US Supreme Court and of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.
Married, with three children, Judge McKnight has been active in Boy Scout leadership.
Riordan between 1968 and 1969 was in charge of a Trust Territory training and technical aid scheme in Micronesia and has close interests in Micronesia. The foundation cur rently has six separate community action agencies in the TT, and also helps in pre - school programmes there. • Mr. Richard Young, Canberra based and 37, has a desk in the Australian Department of Trade and a job to do in Papua New Guinea, making periodic visits there in the interests of Australian exporters. He has just been appointed to this job after working in Santiago, Chile, as Assistant Trade Commissioner. In PNG he will do the work normally done by a trade commissioner but without the title. “Something in the Department of Trade” is the nearest you can get to it. His appointment foreshadows the day when PNG will be a foreign country to Australian exporters. • Russ Gribble, popular boss of the Fiji Visitors Bureau in Sydney and devilishly clever exponent of the soft sell on Fiji tourism’s behalf, was forced to ease up in June when he was taken to Sydney Hospital for an operation. He’s currently recuperat ing, but wearing his usual wide smile.
Pastor Andrew G. Stewart, a Seventh-day Adventist missionary in the Islands for more than 60 years who celebrated his 90th birthday towards the end of last year. An Australian now living at Wahroonga in New South Wales, Pastor Stewart served in Fiji for nine years and then in the New Hebrides. He was re sponsible for much of the success of the Seventh-day Adventist mission in New Guinea and the first plane bought in 1964 by the church for mission work in New Guinea, a Cessna 180, was named the Andrew Stewart.