Editor’S Mailbag

What's An Atoll?

Several times in the past two or three years I’ve seen writers in various Islands’ papers, including The Fiji Times, use the word ‘atoll’ as if it were just a synonym for ‘island’. I didn’t think I’d ever live to see it in PIM. But it’s happened. On p 48 of the June issue, Denrs Fisk refers to the ‘coral limestone atolls’ of Rennell and Bellona, and ‘Bellona, Rennell’s much smaller sister atoll’, etc.

The Oxford Dictionary definition of atoll is ‘ring-shaped coral reef enclosing a lagoon’. This certainly rules out both Rennell and Bellona, although they were probably atolls once. Fisk describes Rennell (p 49) as being ‘almost completely girded by limestone cliffs’. And further on he says the cliffs are 120 metres high.

Bellona is said to have cliffs chiefly ver tical up to 30 metres high.

By no stretch of the imagination can a cliff be said to be a reef. Ergo, Rennell and Bellona are not atolls for that reason. But they don’t have lagoons either.

Otherwise, the new PIM is beginning to look pretty good.

‘A Much-Pained Reader'

Canberra.

Png Dress

1 was interested to read of the attempts that have been made to settle on a national mode of dress for Papua New Guinea and as commented upon in the current issue (PIM, June, p 11).

The result of efforts on the part of various groups of men from PNG visiting or working in Sydney to conform to strict European-style male clothing is to be deplored when they are seen in mid summer hobbling along in tight shoes, hot suits and choking neckwear.

As a pre-war and long-time resident of the goldfields areas of Morobe in New Guinea I am probably prejudiced in favour of the simple village clothing or lack of same then prevailing in its various forms from the coast to the uplands.

However, this naturally had to give way to more formal dressing when indigenes moved up from the fields of mining and plantation labourers into business and government circles and there is little doubt that the Fijian style of shirt, lava-lava and sandals, will evolve as the accepted dress for settled areas.

I lived in New Guinea in the era of no cover above the waist for either sex and it was both titillating and a hazard

when dining to have one’s ear grazed by the mammary appendage of a topless nubile damsel as she leaned over shoulders in course of serving at table.

It was also a period when, on medical advice, the Administration banned the wearing of shorts beneath lap-laps. This was because of the high incidence of skin disease and ring-worm due to the wearing of dirty and seldom-washed underwear.

The native police were exempted as they could be ordered to wash or swim daily.

To many a newly-arrived housewife from “South” the vision of one of the houseboys, wearing only a gossamer thin lap-lap and silhouetted against an open door, provided an early preview of what was to become years later known as the “New Look and See Through” fashion.

Bert E. Weston

Wollstonecraft,

Nsw

Anyone Know?

Before 1918, New Guinea, New Britain, New Ireland and some other Pacific islands were German colonies. 1 have always been interested to find out if any of the inhabitants of these colonies of Ger man origin still live in any of these islands.

Perhaps some of your readers remember what life was like under Imperial German rule and could correspond with me. They may know, too, what became of the other Germans. Presumably, they returned to

Germany?

I am interested in obtaining some old postcards or stamps of this era, and perhaps your readers would like to swap these for English postcards. Alternately, they may know if shops in these areas have any.

James F. K. Mcnabb

20 Castellain Road, Maida Vale, W. 9.

London. 1 have a problem 1 am trying to con tact two old island identities and am told they are now in Australia, though my in formants had no idea where. If you have any information may I beg your assistance. They are: • Mr Rolf Cambridge, late Robinson River, Papua. • Mr Len Stephens of the New Hebrides, who did a great job on the “RUANA” during the last war.

A. H. Voyce (Rev.)

PO Box 1605, Auckland I, NZ