Editor’S Mailbag

Relatives Wanted

I have been trying to locate my relatives in Lifu, Samoa, New Caledonia and Niue.

My father’s father was William Wakado. He came from Lifu Island.

He had a younger brother named Kalimo, who returned to Lifu at their father’s bidding. Wakado stayed on Darnley Island in the Torres Strait, where he married my grandmother, Mourah. Her father was from Niue and was known as Harry Niue.

On my mother’s side, her father was part-Samoan, part-Scottish. His name was Christopher Scanlan, and came from Apia, Western Samoa. He had a son by his first wife, a Samoan, but she died. When the father and son came to Torres Strait, he married my mother’s mother Tina. They had two children, Michael and my mother Caroline.

The son by his first wife was named Morris. After mum’s father died, Morris had to go back to Samoa, Since then I think he has probably died. He was brokenhearted at having to Jeave his stepmother and his sister and brother.

If there are any relatives of Scanlan in Samoa, would they please get in touch with me. Any of my father’s relations in Lifu, New Caledonia, Niue or Samoa could make me very happy if they would kindly contact me.

(Miss) Katherine L.

Wacando

10 Maryvale St, West End, 4810, Townsville, Qld, Australia.

Over-Stayers

Having followed with much in terest, generated through personal involvement, the problem of New Zealand’s “over-stayers”, I have yet to see any discussion either in PIM or the national dailies on what I see as a “bedfellow” of the major vexed question.

That is that there appears to be no provision made to advise or compel holders of a legal work-permit to remit a portion of money received to their immediate families at home.

I would be glad to think that the spirit of the arrangement is to ena

ble those permit-holders to augment or provide the whole family income.

Yet from experience I have found that very little of the money earned finishes where it is most needed, in the family purse.

Perhaps the fault lies with an all too-ready change from a struggle to “affluence”. Or is it that the lucky few adopt a policy of “out of sight out of mind”, or “blow you, Jack”?

Or perhaps it is simply that family ties are weakening among the Pacific Islanders concerned.

James F. Willson

214 High St, Belmont, Vic.

PIM believes that Mr Willson is burdening all Islanders with the guilt earned by a few. Our ex perience is that the majority of Islanders working in NZ discharge their responsibilities to their depen dants back home admirably.

Statistics published in the past by various Island governments have shown that Islanders working in NZ have sent large sums of money to their dependants and, in some cases, to the churches to which they belong. Editor.

Justice And Mercy

PIM has received the following copy of a letter sent to the Prime Minister of Australia, Mr Malcolm Fraser: While Australia may have a problem with illegal immigrants, the laws and regulations governing this problem should be administered with justice and mercy. It would appear that the magistrate who sat on the re cent case of two young Fijian women accused of being illegal immigrants has forgotten both justice and mercy.

These two fine young women, who have been helping our country’s aged, have been treated in a shocking manner. You should know that Australian firms such as Carpenters, Burns Philp, CSR, Steamships, Morris Hedstrom’s, etc, have been “ripping off’ the economies of coun tries in the South Pacific, including Fiji, for generations. All the Islands and Island people have got in return is racist and harsh interpretation of

Australia’s immigration laws, already particularly biased.

Belatedly, Australia is now giving some aid to the area but a kinder in terpretation of the immigration laws towards Pacific Island peoples would do a great deal to improve Australia’s tarnished image in the area.

While my letter probably arrives too late to have any effect, I have to tell you, Sir, I hope to interest my local church group and others in this and similar matters. May I ask you, Sir, • How long were these young Fi jian nurses working in homes and hospitals for the aged in Sydney? • How long were they im prisoned? • Were they deported?

B.H. Turner

Winnellie, NT, Australia.

The Australian Minister for Im migration, Mr MacKellar, on February 21, signed orders for the deportation of the two girls, Akanasi (Aggie) Ratu, and Matu Apa Doko, both 24. They were released on February 16, after eight days in custody. They had been working at the Sacred Heart Hospice for the Dy ing, at Darlinghurst, Sydney.

Editor.

Another Hokule'a

I read with interest the magazine article on the Hokule’a by Keith Haugen in PIM of December, 1976.

In October, 1975, I was sailing in the Marquesas Islands, and met Dr Bob Griffith and his wife, Nancy.

They were at Tiaohae, Nukuhiva.

Nancy was skipper of their famous ferro-cement yacht Awanhee 11, and Bob at the helm of the 70ft proa, The Spirit of Nukuhiva.

Excluding the nationalism involv ed in Hokule’a’s voyage, Griffith’s proa was a credit to the skills and ingenuity for the peoples of the Pacific. She was constructed of wood, both hulls carved from tree trunks and, where other woods join ed, sewn together and then caulked with pitch.

The cross-planking lash and much of the railing were of bamboo. The small “cabin” was nothing more than a tiny thatched hut.

The trip from San Francisco to Nukuhiva was successful, but in December 1975, on the leg to Hawaii, almost midway, the hulls came apart and she became a derelict.

The crew were rescued by the Awanhee. The trip was conceived and made in the mould of the an cients. Truly a feat.

Ted Burgon

Redding, Cal.,

Usa, 96001.

The Deluge!

On page 57 of your February, 1977, issue you credit Papua New Guinea around Nadzab airport with 1,188 in ches of annual rainfall, and Nadzab with 350. Apologies to India. The highest recorded rainfall in the world is at Cherrapunji, a long way from Morobe. And it is only 536 inches a year. A closer look shows you have your conversion from the metric system wrong. At 25.4 mm to the inch Nadzab gets only 59.1 inches of rain and the surrounding mountains 187.1.

That’s only a little over a third as much as as in Assam.

John Pasagogo

Box 4779 University PO, PNG

More letters over page

Jonas Coe's Children

I am writing in reference to the photograph belonging to Mrs M. G.

Rosser of Newport Beach, which was in your January issue of PI M (p 25).

In the picture caption Mrs Rosser describes the children of Jonas Coe with his Tongan wife Litia. The second child Nellie Lydia is said to have died in 1960. I have been in Samoa about a year now and I believe that Nellie Lydia is still alive, but living in New Zealand. Her name is Nellie Davidson, however, and as I recall she visited Samoa last year, and there was a small news item over the radio about her. If perhaps she could be located in New Zealand she may be able to identify the people in the photo, if they are members of her

famil y- Apia ’ W - Samoa

Judie Teall

|M Poor Tartp?

lIN rUUh 1 Ab 1 t f 1 take shar P exception to your cover on the February 1977 PIM. I have travelled extensively throughout the Pacific, including the Kapinga village on Ponape.

Bare-breasted women were nowhere in sight in fact, they are rare throughout most parts of the Pacific nowadays, especially when foreig ners are about.

John H. Harding’s photograph is in poor taste not because of the bare bosoms, but because these peo pie are very obviously ill-at-ease.

Their bra lines are quite apparent. I doubt very much that this is an

“everyday” scene, or that Mr Hard mg“sfughT ? C l C lovelies - He probably had to both coerce and pay them -

June S. Lewis

Pepeekeo, Hawaii, 96783.

With Regrets

I regret that I will not be renewing further subscriptions to PIM as age has beaten me. But I would only like to add that over the years I have read this magazine, it has been al ways a pleasure and source of enter tainment and news, and something to look forward to each month.

My thanks and appreciation.

Arthur H. Mills

Cairn®, Qld.