People

• Governor Louis Verger of New Caledonia, who is also High Com missioner for France in the Pacific, visited the New Hebrides for four days in mid-October to inaugurate facilities at two new French Primary schools at Burumba and Matarara.

The French High Commissioner was accompanied by Mrs Verger, the French Resident Commissioner and Mrs Langlois as well as the regional delegate and the Director of Edu cation, Mr Surcoux. They travelled in the new French Residence vessel Armagnac and by Air Melanesiae. At the same time, eight young Hebrideans were being received in France for three weeks, invited by the Minister for Overseas Territories. The eight islanders, all aged below 25 years, are involved in co-operatives and rural work, including oyster farming. • Mr J. Hastie, the new Senior Information Officer for the British Information Department in the New Hebrides, his wife and two sons, have arrived in Vila. Mr Hastie has been seconded from the Ministry of Defence Information Office, London, for two years. He previously worked for major newspapers in Britain, including the Scotsman, the Scots Daily Mail and the Express. • Mr Sadaraka M. Sadaraka, Nauru’s Secretary for External Affairs, has been appointed Chief Secretary as well. He succeeded Mr Barry Connell, who resigned in July after a long illness. Mr Sadaraka, before secondment to Nauru, was Secretary of the Premier’s Depart ment in the Cook Islands. • Mr Reuben K. Uatioa, GEIC’s Leader of Government Business, is recovering from a successful opera tion on his heart at the University College Hospital in London. A valve in his heart has been replaced. • Americana Hotels, a branch of American Airlines, has appointed Miss Jeri Bostwick, who has been around hotels since 1955 when she served as public relations director for Matson Hotels, as regional director of public relations at Honolulu’s Ala Moana Hotel. From there she will co-ordinate public relations activities for the Beachcomber in Fiji, the Pago Pago Americana and the Chosun in Korea. • Mr G. K. Ansell, until recently minister in New Zealand’s Tokyo Em

bassy, has taken up his new post as NZ High Commissioner in Fiji. He succeeds Sir John Grace, who retired in October after a three-year term at Suva. e Fiji-born Mrs Louisa Jane How ell and husband Lewis Howell, who live in the Sydney suburb of Sea forth, recently celebrated their golden wedding. They were married at Holy Trinity Church, Suva. Mrs Howell was born on Laucala Island, which was then owned by her father, the late William Beddows, and brought up on Vuni Vasa plantation, on Taveuni, which her father bought after selling Laucala. • Cr Isireli Vuibau, elected in November as the Mayor of Suva, is the third Fijian to hold that office.

The first was Ratu Livai Volavola, who acted as mayor for three months in the 1960 s while the mayor was on holiday, and the second was Cr Macu Salato. • Father Harry Tevi is the first Melanesian to be appointed warden of the Bishop Patteson Theological Centre at Kohimarama, Guadalcanal.

He was an Anglican priest at Santo till early in 1973 and succeeds Father Eric Jones, who retires at the end of 1973. • The Rev C. F. Gribble, for the past 24 years General Secretary of Methodist Overseas Missions, has re tired from this position and is suc ceeded by the Rev Harvey L. Per kins. Mr Gribble came from Tonga where he served the Free Wesleyan Church (Methodist) in Tonga as Principal of Tupou College and then was appointed by the Government as Director of Education. As General Secretary Mr Gribble travelled widely in the Pacific and was also President of the NSW Methodist Conference, and later Secretary-General of the Methodist Church of Australasia and then President-General of that church.

The Rev H. L. Perkins has a long experience of ecumenical service. He was a minister of the Methodist Church in Victoria. During the war he served in the Royal Australian Navy and later studied at Cambridge University. For 12 years he was General Secretary of the Australian Council of Churches and later Secre tary of the East Asia Christian Con ference. He has come to the Federal Office of Methodist Overseas Mis sions from the World Council of Churches in Geneva where he was one of the Secretaries for Develop ment responsible for Christian aid in developing countries. At a fare well dinner in Sydney to honour Mr Cribble’s long service, letters of tribute were received from all over :he Pacific.

• Superintendent Barrie Baxter, officer in charge of the Port Moresby Police District, has retired after 12 years service. • Nauru’s President Hammer De- Roburt, the Cooks Premier Mr Albert Henry and Fiji’s Labour Minister Mr Jonati Mavoa, had a busy couple of weeks in late October and early November. They led their countries’ delegations to two con ferences, the maritime conference at Waitangi in New Zealand’s North Island, and the Labour Ministers’ get together in Sydney. Both conferences lasted three very busy, work-filled days. But Premier Henry found time to make a close study of Sydney’s night-life at Kings Cross as part of the social studies any premier is ex pected to make. There was a strike of strippers while he was there but enough of them turned up to enable Mr Henry to investigate the suitability or otherwise of the spectacle as an attraction in the Cooks. After viewing many square yards of epidermis, the Premier gave his verdict —not a suitable import for the Cooks. • New York author Walter Lord, writer of nine books including a number of best-sellers, Incredible Vic tory (about Midway), Day of Infamy (Pearl Harbour), and A Night to Remember (sinking of the Titanic), is currently visiting Australia, PNG and the Solomons to collect material on the activities of the wartime coast watchers in the Solomons campaign.

He has been interviewing former coast watchers all along the route, and will begin writing in June. Among those he saw in Sydney was Walter Brooksbank, former civil assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence, Melbourne, who did much of the de tailed work in building up the coast watcher organisation.

Rev H. L. Perkins