People

• Mr Jean Colonna, Directeur de Cabinet and Political Aide to the Governor in New Caledonia, has left Noumea after five years service. It was during Mr Colonna’s term of office that the former PIM correspon dent was temporarily expelled from New Caledonia and that the Austra lian Consul was recalled after French charges of political interference. The Noumea press reports that Mr Colonna now embarks on a well deserved one year’s holiday. q Mr Jean Emond, Second Com missioner for France at the South Pacific Commission, has left Noumea after six years in office. In a glowing farewell speech, SPC Secretary General, Fred Betham of Western Samoa, praised the French Commis sioner for his heartfelt interest in the welfare of Pacific islanders and also thanked him for his continued as-

This is Mr Joe Campbell, newly-elected president of the Defence Club in Suva.

Had his name been proposed in the 1950s as president, or even as a member he wouldn't have had an earthly chance. Joe is part-European and 20 years ago he would have been blackballed if proposed as a member as one part-European was.

Now things are different and all races are represented. Joe, who served as an officer with the First Fiji Infantry Regiment in the Solomons campaign during the last war, is general manager and director of Crest Mills (Fiji) Ltd.

sistance to Mr Betham in running the SPC. France is the only country to maintain a Commissioner employed full-time attending to SPC affairs at Noumea headquarters. • Mr M. R. Casson has taken up his post as new Australian Consul in Noumea. Mr. Casson speaks French and has held previous appointments in Ceylon, Pakistan and Yugoslavia.

The new consul is accompanied in Noumea by his wife, a daughter and baby son. • Pastor Alan White, president of the Seventh-day Adventist mission in the GEIC for the past three years, has just left for a new job as bible teacher at Carmel College in Perth, Western Australia. He’s wondering if he can combine the spiritual with the temporal as he did in his six years on Aoba in the New Hebrides, where he operated the SDA’s mission ship Pacifique, He did more than that.

He’s something of an engineer and managed to buy a bulldozer at a bargain price in Victoria. He and the bulldozer, with assistance from the locals, started the Aoba airstrip, which has just been finished, and built five miles of road and four concrete fords across rivers.

O Western Samoa’s new chief justice, Mr Gaven Donne, arrived in Apia recently with his wife. He was sworn in the day after his arrival by the Head of State, His Highness Malietoa Tanumafili 11, in a ceremony held at Vailima and which was attended by the Prime Minister and members of the judiciary and bar of Western Samoa. • Rush Clark, for 13 years known to all in the travel industry simply as Pan Am’s man in Australia has had his official title changed. Rush re mains based in Sydney under a new PanAm managerial re-organisation, but instead of being Director Execu tive Australia, and/or Director Sales, NSW, Queensland and ACT, he is now Managing Director for Australia, Fiji and New Caledonia. So much for a new tab! • A new PanAm appointment is Mr Donald R. Olson who is Director of Sales and Airport Services Mana ger, Nadi. Mr Olson is a Yale graduate with three children who has worked with PanAm since 1955, serv ing in Burma previous to Fiji. • John Huon de Navrancourt, a resident of Papua New Guinea for 20 years, has retired with his wife and three daughters to near Cairns, northern Queensland. A former lay missionary with the French Catholics on Yule Island, he joined the Depart ment of Public Health in 1956,

serving in many primitive areas of Papua. Mrs Huon was born in New Britain - • Mr Norman Loweth, formerly deputy Conservator of Forests in Fiji, has been appointed Conservator of Forests to replace Mr Gywn Watkins. Conservator since 1964, Mr Watkins has retired. Mr Loweth has been 22 years with the Department of Forests and is one of Fiji’s longest serving overseas officers. ... • Dr and Mrs David Williams are home in Auckland after 18 months travelling the Pacific for the World Council of Churches studying the results of Pacific seminars held over the past nine years on “home and family life’’. Dr Williams, formerly Principal of the Auckland Theological College, and Mrs Williams, a social worker, are now compiling a report on their findings. • Swiss artist Kurt Pfund, now living in Papua New Guinea, held an exhibition in Sydney last November, showing 38 paintings. Most of them were sold. He recently exhibited in PNG 100 paintings in oil and acrylic from the Trobriand Islands, where he spent 4 months.

Mr Pfund was a sign-writer, before he became a full-time artist. Two books of his artwork are in production; “The Legends Of Papua New Guinea” and “Islands Of Love” visually record native life and culture, with the artist’s research and thoughts on the customs and philosophies of his subjects.

a First ambition in the life of Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, Fiji’s Prime Minister, was to be a doctor and it with re B ret that he left the University of Otago in New Zealand’s South I§ land, where he was studying for a medical degree, and went to Oxford to begin a career which has landed him in the dominion’s top P°litical position. But part of hb ambition will be achieved. He’s going back to Otago shortly for a degree, an honorary doctorate in law with which his old alma mater has decided to honour him w 0 0 Welshman Mr Gwynfor Bowen- Jones ’ cha,rman and chief executive ? f Bookers Sugar Estates in Guyana, bas ., been cho . s en for the top job in F, h s su § ar r '" du^y , that of chief executive of the Fiji Sugar Corpora blcb carra f s a salary of 525,000 a year and probably a few headaches. But his appointment was on a firm political basis. He was picked by Mr Doug Brown, Fiji’s Minister for Agriculture, and Mr K. C. Ramrakha, of the National Federation Party, who interviewed Mr Bowen-Jones in London along with a consultant who, presumably, would have had the casting vote in any deadlock between the two Fiji politicians. As it was, the choice was unanimous. The new sugar boss, who takes over next year when the sugar industry passes into Fiji’s ownership, was with the Colonial (now Common wealth) Development Corporation for 12 years before joining Bookers in 1962.

The Sepik goldfield of New Guinea, which officially came into being in the 19305, is now little more than a memory although some of its pioneers soldier on, in odd parts of the globe. Three of them, Judy Tudor, Ted Fulton and Jack Thurston and their respective families, recently came together unexpectedly at a small village called Bevere, near Worcester, UK. Their hostess was Mrs Stewart Anton, nee Mary Fulton, who now lives in Bevere with her husband and baby daughter. The photograph, taken on that occasion, shows Ted Fulton, Judy Tudor and Jack Thurston. Mr Thurston is the only one of the group who now has interests in New Guinea.