People

Bereina. He is only the third Papua New Guinean to be con secrated as a Roman Catholic

bishop under a leadership

localisation scheme introduced by the church eight years ago.

The Bereina Diocese extends from the foothills of the Owen Stanley Ranges to the PNG south coast.

Andree Millar, an Australian who has lived more than 40 years in Papua New Guinea and has become widely known as a tropical plant naturalist and expert on orchids, has been

approached by the PNG

Government to lead a research project on cold-climate flowers in the PNG Highlands. Mrs Millar recently retired as Cu rator of National Botanic Gar dens. The PNG Government wants to promote flower-grow ing in the Highlands as a com mercial venture, and Mrs Millar has already established a pilot flower farm at Minj in the Western Highlands.

After two elections and four months of waiting. Kun Sigrah was finally declared lieutenant-governor of Kosrae, Federated States of Micronesia, in April.

Kosrae voters went to the polls on November 21 last year to elect a new It-gov following the resignation of Yosiwo George, who became director of social services for the FSM Government.

Seven candidates stood for the post. Moses Mackwelung, who was a ‘write-in’ candidate, won the largest number of votes, but was disqualified be cause of age. (Kosrae’s charter requires that the governor and lieutenant governor be at least 35 years of age.) On December 27 a run-off election was held between Kun Sigrah and Kasuo Isisaki.

Again Mackwelung won as a write-in candidate, and again he was disqualified.

After a lapse of almost four months State Governor Jacob Nena announced that Kun Sigrah had won the December election.

Claude Charbonniaud, French High Commissioner in New Caledonia, visited Australia as a guest of the Australian Government from April 26 to

Jean-Baptiste Conri of Hienghene, New Caledonia, has become the first non- Australian to receive the Aus tralian Bravery Medal for an action outside Australia.

In May 1978 Mr Conri was travelling in a bus with a party of 23 Australian schoolchildren and adults from a concert to their hotel when the bus ran off the road in darkness and heavy rain, then plunged into a river (PIM Jul 1978 p 52). Two of the schoolchildren and the wife of the manager of the Hienghene hotel were drowned.

The citation to the medal said that despite his own

injuries Mr Conri repeatedly

dived back to the sinking bus and brought several passengers to the surface. He supported others in the water and gave first aid to the injured who had reached the shore.

The citation said that Mr Conri had displayed consider able courage in entering the bus to save injured passen gers.

Carl Riechelmann has been appointed by the Republic of Nauru as its honorary consul in Tonga. Mr Riechelmann, resi dent manager of the oil company Webb Tonga Inc, who is an agent for Air Nauru, said that President Hammer Deßoburt and his government hold Tonga in high esteem and

look upon Tonga’s King

Taufa’ahau Tupou IV as a close friend.

Mr Riechelmann’s appoint ment brings to three the num ber of honorary consuls serving in Tonga. The other two are Father Georges Callet, honor ary consul of the French Re public, and Ralph Sanft, for the Federal German Republic.

A crowd of 5000 at Bereina in the south of Papua New Guinea attended the recent in stallation of Bishop Benedict ToVarpin as Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of

May 10. He visited Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne

and Rockhampton.

Denyse Gubbay is Represen tative in Australia of New Caledonia’s Office du Tourisme.

Due to a touch of gremlinology in our filing sys tem. PIM announced in its April issue (p3l) that the post had newly gone to Mr Sandy McDonald. In fact, Mr McDonald was in the job, but left it late last year. Our apolo gies to all concerned.

Ms Gubbay operates out of the Banque Rationale de Paris

building, 12 Castlereagh St,

Sydney, 2000.

David Lange, deputy leader of New Zealand’s Opposition Labour Party, visited Western Samoa in April. He toured

Savaii accompanied by Prime

Minister Tupuoia Efi, and visi ted WSTEC plantations.

The Rev Tafatolu Filemoni has

been appointed by the Presby

terian Church in New Zealand as Pacific Islands consultant in an effort to foster greater

understanding between

Europeans and Polynesians in

the Church. He was born in Western Samoa.

Of his new job he says; This is a two-way process Pakeha and Pacific Islanders both need a greater understanding of the attitudes and cultures of others.’

Akuila Savu has been named deputy general manager, and Kit Naidu assistant general manager of Air Pacific, Fiji’s national airline.

Mr Savu leaves the post of director of the government’s central planning office, and Mr Naidu that of Air Pacific’s commercial services manager.

The chairman of the board of Air Pacific, Don Aidney, said

Denyse Gubbay

Eighty teachers and education officials from Tonga and Western Samoa have been attending a teacher training course at Macquarie University in Sydney. Robin Thornley, a mathematics consultant, demonstrates a mathematics teaching aid to Epenesa Esera (right) and Vatoa Mapusua, teachers from Western Samoa. -AIS photo graph.

that as deputy general manager Mr Savu will understudy gen eral manager Captain Alan Bodger in all aspects of the air line’s operation, but with par ticular attention to the financial side of the company, with the aim of assuming the top position in the future.

Mr Naidu will be respon sible for the day-to-day oper ation of the airline with commercial. traffic, oper ations. and sales among his areas of responsibility.

Andrew Stuart, since November 1978 the occupant of the frequently hot seat of British resident commissioner in the New Hebrides, has been appointed Britain’s ambassa dor to Finland. He will take up the post immediately after the New Hebrides’ independence celebrations, scheduled for the end of July. lan Mclntyre reports from Port-Vila: ‘Andrew Stuart em phasises that he is not deserting the New Hebrides, but will re main until his job reverts to high commissioner status on independence, and then, as a career diplomat, he will accept promotion to the Helsinki post. ‘Advice and arrangements for his new post were made well in advance of announce ment of the New Hebrides indepence date and he is per

sonally sacrificing eight

months leave by remaining

here until July 3jo. ‘Andrew Stuart has pre viously served in Helsinki from 1968-72 as head of the political section of the British Embassy, and is delighted to be returning as head of mission. ‘He was awarded the CMG in 1979.’

Interviewed by the French/

Bislama weekly Nahanga on

his new appointment. Mr Stuart said: ‘While leaving a part of my heart in New Hebrides, which 1 love very much. I’m delighted to be

going back to Finland . .

‘The Finns are very interest ing people because in a wav they are two peoples. There’s a winter Finn, who’s rather aus tere and reserved. But when the good weather arrives, he be comes full of good cheer, not to say exuberance.”

Maria Kunjib is a not-so

ordinary village mother from

Mount Hagen. Papua New Guinea. She cannot read or write, but that troubles her not at all. She is a very successful businesswoman, owning and operating a fleet of six very large trucks. She also has a new petrol station and trade store.

And .. . she’s paid for every thing she owns. She owes not a toea to anyone.

Maria is about 40 and has three daughters. Husband Ammenny used to work in a large Hagen store. Now he helps Maria with her book

keeping.

One of the most important days in Maria’s life was July 27, 1972. ‘She can remember

everything that happened on

that day,’ reports the monthly magazine New Nation. ‘Be cause that was when she bought her first truck. It was a small Toyota Stout and she paid for it with money she had earned from growing coffee.’

From that time on her fleet

kept growing not only in

numbers but in the size of the

units employed.

New Nation concludes: ‘Maria’s business success story shows that you do not need a lot of schooling to get on in life.’

Les Johnson, the one-time Western Australian school teacher who was Australia’s man on the spot in bringing

self-government to Papua New

Guinea, has retired after a dis

tinguished public service ca

reer. His retirement as Australian ambassador to Greece and high commissioner to Cyprus has been announced

by Australian Foreign Affairs

Minister Andrew Peacock.

However, it was as adminis trator and later high com missioner in PNG that Mr

Johnson was best known. After holding an administrative pos ition with the education department in Western Aus tralia Mr Johnson went to PNG in 1962 and became director of education for the then Australian-administered territory. He turned down a university post in Tasmania in 1970 to become administrator of PNG at the request of the Australian Government when the move for independence was gathering speed. His terms of reference were simple in essence but complex in practice to prepare a country for self government in a few short years which left no time for

long-range planning.

He established an extraordi narily strong rapport with Michael Somare, the man who emerged as PNG’s first national leader, and knew how to step into the back ground as the political changes were accomplished. Mr John son had already left PNG to head the Australian Develop ment Assistance Agency when independence came in 1975, but he had seen the country into self-government under ar rangements which contributed much to the firm relationship now existing between Australia and PNG.

Maria Kunjib - ‘hard work, good book-keeping and honesty’ is her claim.

L. W. Johnson-retiring after a distinguished public service career.

A cheerful soul with an abiding interest in the Pacific Islands is Peter Kratzmann, a resident of West Germany who values PIM so much that he has each year’s 12 issues bound in leather.

Perhaps it was not entirely necessary that he should do so, but in a note about his visits he explains in pungent words that he ‘is not a Pacific beauty,

but only a bloody shipwrecked

Kraut stranded in Solomon Islands’.

Peter who comes to the Pa cific whenever he can, has long been looking for a ‘chiefs daughter’ to take as a bride.

The search appears to be taking a new direction following Peter’s perusal of PlM’s 1980 calendar, featuring some beautiful young women of

Polynesia.

Peter’s only objection to the tropics is ‘the bloody mos

quitoes’. But they evidently

won’t stop him from keeping

on coming.

Four-year-old Virgilio De Asa, who attends kindergarten at Suva’s YWCA, looks like being something of a chess prodigy.

Virgilio only started playing

in February, but by April had

already won two games while

attending the weekly chess

clinic where primary and secondary students attend to better their game.

Dr Virgilio De Asa, father of Virgilio Jr, has won the Suva chess championship for the past two years. He was a founder member of the Fiji Chess Federation.

He told the Fiji Times : ‘World champions like Bobby Fischer started learning the fundamentals at the age of five, while Junior has started at four.’

Chess runs in the family, which hails from the Philip pines. As well as Dad and Virgilio. brothers Ariel, who is six, and Alvin. 11, are also keen la s Buri Kidu, a 34-year-old Papua New Guinean lawyer, is to become his country’s new chief

justice. The appointment has

been announced by the PNG Prime Minister, Sir Julius Chan. Mr Kidu is a former Secretary for Justice, and more recently secretary of the prime minister’s department. He is the first PNG national to hold this position, following a suecession of Australian judges, and only the second PNG

national to become a judge, The present and former governments in PNG ap proached him on a number of occasions to accept an appoint ment to the bench, but he in itially refused. ‘I suppose I was not ready before,’ he said after the appointment was an nounced. The retiring chief jus tice is Sir William Prentice. A New South Wales judge, Mr Justice Hal Wootten, had earlier been engaged to be come chief justice this month, but he told the incoming Chan government that he was no

longer available.

A w T T ,n F ‘J‘’ M J Jus,,ce u TIm ° cl Ju-vaga lhe « rst Fijian to hold the post of his

country’s chief justice. Judge

Tuivaga, who was also the first Fijian to be made a judge, was sworn in recently as chief jus tice and installed at a colourful ceremony in the Supreme

Court, Suva. Judge Tuivaga,

48, was born in Suva and ser ved as a magistrate early in his career. He qualified in law in

England and gained experi

ence in Australia as a member of the New South Wales Bar.

Later he held senior legal pos itions in the public service, and was appointed a judge in 1972.

Virgilio de Asa, chess player from the kindergarten.

This year’s Moomba Festival In Melbourne brought visitors to Australia from all parts of the Pa cific Islands and south-east Asia. At Melbourne Zoo Kathy Delanty of Australia shows a koala to (from left) Vai’ufia

Afeaki, Tonga; Deborah Gurgiel,

New Zealand; Christine Van Der Ven , Singapore and Sinu Delailomaloma, Fiji.