People

Two very well known and popular identities. Stan and Olive Breusch, left the New Hebrides in December to retire in Sydney. Australia.

Stan had been in the group for over 40 years and originally came up as a mission carpenter.

When his contract had finished he married Olive Newman and settled at Whitesands. Tanna. on a trading post. From there he eventually went to Santo where for some time he was condominium public works manager in charge of the vast array of equipment left behind by the American forces.

Olive, his wife, was born at Tongoa in the New Hebrides, being the daughter of a Scan dinavian trader who had settled there. Olive was reared on Tongoa and has many stories to tell of early days there and the struggle for existence during the depression. She is the elder sister of the very well known Oscar Newman who died recently in Vila. Stan and Olive eventually set up a trading post at Nugugu. Aoba. where they were lavish hosts to all comers and their house a favourite stopping-off place for visiting government officials

and passing ships.

Stan was one of the original members of the New Hebrides * Advisory Council and remained a member for many years. His understanding and interest in the New Hebridean people made his contribution invaluable. The Breuschs’ knowledge of the pre-World War II period in the New Hebrides is vast and their stories well worth hearing.

Their many friends in the New' Hebrides wish them well in their new' life. Katherine Paul.

Knighthoods were conferred on Fiji’s former Cabinet Sec retary Robert Sanders and the Fiji Ombudsman Justice Moti Tikaram in the Queen’s 1980 New Year Honours List. Sir Robert, a Scot, left Fiji last year

after 28 years service with the

Fiji and Tongan governments,

and now lives in Britain. Sir Moti Tikaram becomes the sec ond Fiji Indian to receive a knighthood and is the eight liv ing local citizen to hold the dis tinction.

Among those who were appointed Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) were PlM’s new editor, Gus Smales, of Papua New Guinea, and Greg Quintal of Norfolk Island.

Gus Smales comes to Sydney in February to edit PIM after 23 years in PNG as a journalist, mostly with the Herald and Weekly Times, and his honour was awarded by the PNG Government in recognition of his journalistic services to

Png.

Greg Quintal, a descendant of a Bounty mutineer, was a longtime member of the Nor folk Island Council, which last year was replaced by the Nor folk Island Legislative As sembly. His award acknowl edges at last some of the work he has put into the Island’s

community affairs, particularly

in his efforts to win recognition from the Australian Govern ment that Norfolk is not an ap pendage of the Australian mainland, but an island com munity in its own right.

Senior New Hebrides broad casting official Godwin Ligo re turned to Vila in late December from a UNESCO sponsored meeting in Paris at which he reported on South Pacific cultural problems. Mr Ligo is generally credited with being the main driving force in December’s highly successful National Festival of Arts held in Vila.

Once upon a time (not long ago at all, actually) there was a young girl called Vai’ufia who taught in a little primary school in a little, isolated island com munity called Ha’apai, in the

Kingdom of Tonga.

One day this young girl said to herself ‘What am I doing here for goodness sake when what I like best in all the world

is meeting people?’

So she applied for a recep tionist job in a big hotel in the

big (comparatively speaking)

city of Nuku’alofa, and asked her Good Fairy to give her ap plication a bit of a helpful push

along.

And she got the job and was quite convinced that she simply couldn’t be happier.

Then, only one short week later, the manager of the hotel said to her ‘Next week is Ton ga’s first Tourist Promotion Week and we want you to be ‘Miss International Dateline

Hotel’ in the ‘Miss Tonga Tourism contest.’

So Vai’ufia came out from behind the reception desk again, and was quite convinced that she simply couldn’t be happier. She put on her pret tiest clothes, practised her solo dancing, went to interviews and dinners and promotions and a Grand Tourism Ball, made a little speech about ‘What Tonga can offer to Tour ists’, met lots and lots of people and kept pinching herself to make sure she wasn’t dream

ing.

At the end of the week the judges went into a huddle and added up the marks for poise and grooming, general knowl

edge and English ability which

they’d awarded during the

week to the baker’s dozen of pretty Polynesian ‘misses’

representing the kingdom’s

various tourist enterprises.

And guess who came out with the gold-lettered sash and the trip to Australia in February, to take part in tourist promotions in Sydney and rep resent her tiny kingdom at the Moomba Festival in Mel bourne?

Yes, the newest comer to the field of tourism, the one who

only made the starting line by

the skin of her superlative teeth Vai’ufia Afeaki from Ha’apai. She knows that in 1980 there are Good Fairies.

Penny Hodgkinson

Gus Smales, MBE

Only a few days before his arrival,Crown Prince Tupouto’a In January cancelled his ar rangements to spend several months on a course at the Aus tralian Joint Services Staff College. The Crown Prince explained that his recent appointment as Tonga’s Minis ter for Foreign Affairs and De fence was making new demands on his time, and he would have been unable to devote his full attention to the course.

Vai'ufia Afeaki

Jack Keith Murray was a scholar, a fact which taught him to discipline himself. But then he had been the principal of an agricultural college, a professor, and a colonel in the Australian Army (he served in the two world wars), and these positions gave him a certain authoritarianism, and a con sciousness of status. He had also learned to make a case by putting down each factor he thought germane, and he expected anyone who refuted his argument to answer each

point.

I don’t think he ever under stood the public servant who made his decisions only on those facts he thought relevant, and the fewer facts the better.

He never understood why the head of each colonial service in the South Pacific be it American, British, Dutch, French or New Zealand was “His Excellency”, whilst the head of the Australian service, which embraced nearly as large a land mass and a greater population than all the other services put together, should simply be “His Honour” the lowest in the pecking order.

Murray was appointed by

the then Minister for External Territories Eddie Ward, who had announced that Australia’s policy was to develop the native people. But then Ward gave Murray little support. He didn’t visit the territories be tween the resumption of civil administration in October 1945, and the defeat of Chifley’s Labor Government in December 1949.

The other group which could have given Murray the strength he needed to deal with the

hotch-potch, disparate public

service he inherited was the Australian Army’s Directorate of Research, but this group

disintegrated, so Murray was

virtually on his own with old New Guinea public servants almost despising their Papuan opposites and the new-comers

being liked by nobody. He

travelled constantly and widely, he showed no fear of fabric and wire aeroplanes.

Each trip was full of incident: the sight of 5000 naked and un armed men at Maprik; the genital ‘hand-shake’ that caused Murray to jump back and slam the door of the air craft with the crutch of his

Scholar And Gentleman

white duck trousers covered in pig grease and soot; the three trips to Lae to present Simogun Pita with his BEM (Civil Div ision) the first time the medal wasn’t there, the second time the citation was not, and on the third occasion Malcolm Wright wrote out what he remembered of his original recommenda tion (one should read Wright’s If I Should Die to see how Simogum earned his BEM. an action that would have earned a Victoria Cross had he been an Australian).

The aggressiveness of planters and some ex servicemen was fairly constant on these trips.

Then there was that walk in 1947 across southern Bougain ville, because some one said

the people were starving.

Charges of neglect and star vation had been given great coverage in the Australian press. Murray was always the one who wanted to see for him self! Not only did he take doc tors, but agriculturalists and native affairs officers, and there were special visitors such as Hal Wootten, today Chief Justice-designate of Papua New Guinea and James McAuley, a splendid poet and later a professor of English.

Murray had two ‘dickey’ knees and ankles; when we got to Buin each one was blown up with fluid, he must have been in great pain. Bob Cole was ADO, Buin, when with our car riers, scores of us descended on his station and his young bride was asked to care for us. On

Christmas Day, 1979, Bob and Kay, his wife, and I were able to laugh about it, at dinner in Queensland. Murray’s great thoughtfulness and charm won the day with the Coles back on

Bougainville.

In 1947 Manus Island was a political issue. The U.S. naval base and the China contract

were causing social problems.

Murray again went to see for himself. He was met by a Nationalist Chinese guard when he went to inspect the

surplus war supply dump

which he considered was on Australian territory. He was challenged and then had a bay

onet pressed against his

stomach.

Later, by appointment, he

visited the naval base com

mander, accompanied by Ivan

Champion, Stan Pearsall, in RAAF uniform, and he had ‘borrowed’ the First Lieutenant from the RAN ship on which we had travelled, who was also in uniform. The U.S. base com mander was silly enough to say

they reoccupied Manus ‘by

right of conquest’. He was a very worried and contrite com mander by the time we left.

Murray could in his quiet voice, be devastating. It would be interesting to know what the archives say about this epi sode.

In 1951 the long extinct vol cano, Mount Lamington erupted in Papua. It killed more than 3500 people, smothered in the impossible heat of a cloud of incandescent ash. It was without doubt Aus tralia’s greatest civil disaster.

Murray was deeply affected by

it. He had to make decisions; that must have been anathemai to him. To have collected alii the dead for burial was imposs ible. His Christian beliefs said they should be buried, but he accepted the inevitable. But, should you bury the 30 or more whites? He quietly said this would be discrimination.

The care of the refugees was carried out quickly and surely, and, I was going to write almost with elan, because of the inspi ration of Murray. I don’t think the Australian Government ever thanked him for an

extremely magnificent effort

on its behalf.

In his time, Murray suffered many insults. They hurt him.

On the few occasions he was in vited back to Papua New Guinea he mostly stayed with my wife and me. We talked about his dismissal, but he had no ill-feeling against any who might have been involved, except one senior Australian public servant, and he hatea him. He greatly admired the policy of Paul Hasluck, Minis ter for Territories.

The day after his cremation.

I talked with the very charming Papua New Guinean consul in Brisbane. She was parti) educated in Australia, and she well remembers with great affection a benign old mar visiting her at school, in faci

visiting all Papua New

Guineans wherever they were being educated in Australia, Murray was a kind of father figure to them. The idea that he should visit the schools was Hasluck’s, who offered Murra) an honorarium and expenses, Murray would not take the honorarium.

Finally who will forget thai Independence Day in 197 f when a frail man was ac companied by a young Papua New Guinea Defence Force officer to get him to his seat in the stand at the Sir Huber Murray oval. He had come through a side gate as being the shortest way in, but he was im mediately recognised and the very large crowd quite spon taneously and enthusiastically

applauded him.

Murray was deeply toucheo he knew his work for Papua New Guinea had not been for gotten, nor will it. John Gunther.

Sir Jack Murray, better known perhaps as Colonel J. K. Murray, first postwar Administrator of Papua New Guinea, died in Brisbane in December, aged 90. He was a man of interesting facets, as this personal reminiscence of him by Sir John Gunther clearly reveals.

In the photo above Sir Jack (left) is shown in Port Moresby with two other men who had great influence on the development of PNG, Sir Paul Hasluck and the late Sir Donald Cleland.