People

A Papua New Guinean, whose appoint ment 28 years ago caused an Australian administrator to be called contemp tuously ‘Kanaka Jack’ has retired from the Justice Department in Port Moresby. Mr Osineru Dickson, 64, was the first native-born member of his coun try’s Public Service when he was appointed as a clerk in 1948 by Colonel J. K.

Murray. Previously Papua New Guineans, including even the uniformed police, were not members of the Public Service but were attached to the Australian PNG ad ministration as “servants of the ad ministration”. Long before the full-scale drive for localising the Public Service began, the then Administrator, Colonel Murray, appointed Mr Dickson. Colonel Murray, now aged 87 and living in Brisbane, overcame considerable public criticism in his appointment of Mr Dickson and in several subsequent ap pointments.

Mr Dickson was educated and learnt English at the Kwato Mission established in eastern PNG by the London Missionary Society. During military control in World War Two an Australian Army officer hit him in the face for “presumption in using English to a white man”. But Mr Dickson sees this now as an isolated incident and says that relationships between Australians and Papua New Guineans have generally been good. “And this coun try’s independence and success today owes much to Australia and Australians,” he said at a farewell party in his honour at the Department of Justice.

Fiji-born Mrs Mary Buckeridge, celebrated her 100th birthday on May 15 in New Zealand, where she now lives with a married sister. She was born at Levuka, the first capital of Fiji, and moved with her parents, Mr and Mrs J.C. Hansen, to Suva, when Suva was proclaimed capital.

In Suva she married J.F. Hulek and, with him, went back to Levuka. After she was widowed she married Dr E.B. Buckeridge, of Nelson, NZ. Dr Buckeridge set up prac tice, first at Levuka, and then in Suva. He died during World War 11. Brs Buckeridge went to New Zealand in 1965. Her five children, a son and four daughters, are all in NZ.

Mr E. B. W. Morris, regional manager, Orient, for Air New Zealand, has been ap pointed regional manager, Pacific Islands, based in Suva. He is not altogether un known in his new area for he was once a

flight clerk for TEAL, as the airline was then known, when it operated the Coral Route flying-boat service from Laucala Bay, near Suva, to Papeete, via Apia and Aitutaki, and he served a brief term as relieving district manager, Nadi. Mr Morris succeeds Mr R.E. Birch, who has been appointed the airline’s marketing manager. The Pacific Islands regional manager is responsible for Air NZ and connecting services covering Fiji, New Caledonia, Western and American Samoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands, French Polynesia and South America.

Mr Phillip Bennet, of the NZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has replaced Mr Graeme Ammundsen as First Secretary and second in charge of the office of the NZ Representative in the Cook Islands.

Mr Ammundsen was in the Cook Islands for m years, and for a substantial period was Acting Representative. Mr Bennet spent some time in New York as a member of the permanent NZ delegation at United Nations.

Mr Asi Eikeni, Western Samoa Minister of Economic Affairs, at a recent meeting in Honolulu, was appointed first chairman of the board of the Pacific

Islands Tourism Development Corpora

tion, which has been incorporated in Hawaii. Mr Andrew Gerakas, formerly Director of Economic Development in Western Samoa, who now lives in Honolulu, is executive director of PITDC.

Mr Eikeni will preside at a meeting of PITDC in Tonga in August.

Mr Narayan Sewat Singh, 41, of Suva, has given up school teaching for a maritime career. Mr Singh, who is a BA and the holder of a Tasmanian Teachers’

Certificate from the University of Tasmania, has been appointed to help in the day-to-day working of the Ports Authority of Fiji. He was seconded from the government to help in the formation and administration of the authority in its early stages. Mr Singh was secretary of the Ports Commission of Inquiry which recommended the formation of the authority.

Mr Gordon Upton, 55, has been named as Australian High Commissioner to Fiji and Tonga, succeeding Mr Harold Bullock. Mr Upton is a career diplomat in the Foreign Affairs Department. Before this latest posting, Mr Upton was at the

Australian Embassy, Washington.

Mr Eusebio Termeteet recently retired as Palau District Chief of Police after 30

years service with the Trust Territory Government. Mr Mariano Sablan, of Saipan, will act as Chief of Police till a successor to Mr Termeteet is named. The new police chief will be a Palauan.

The Chief Justice of Papua New Guinea, Sir Sydney Frost, will continue to wear wig and gown. And Sir Sydney, an Australian, won’t change until a native born Papua New Guinean judge comes along and rules otherwise.

Sir Sydney says that his brother judges, none of whom is a PNG national, feel the same way.

Sir Sydney was replying to criticism that judges’ wigs should have been thrown out when PNG gained its independence last year.

“They are a foreign concept and they are dirty” wrote John Adoe of Boroko in a letter to the editor of the Papua New Guinea Post-Courier.

Sir Sydney’s reply recognised the move for change in some parts of the world, but he said; “It remains to be seen whether in Papua New Guinea there will emerge a desire to depart from the long-standing custom.

“The trend may prove to be towards in formality or some distinctive court dress.

“In the meantime the judges are in clined to the view that any change should be left to be decided by Papua New Guinean judges when I trust in the not too-distant future national lawyers are ready for appointments to judicial office”.

Father Raymond Quirk, Franciscan friar and senior chaplain in the PNG Defence Force with the rank of a major, who has left PNG after 30 years in the country, 13 years as a missionary at Vanimo Be ach, and the last 17 years as army chap lain.