People

Peter Kenilorea, the man who led Solomon Islands to indepen dence in 1978, and Virgil Copas, an Australian who be came the first Roman Catholic Archibishop of Port Moresby, received knighthoods in this year’s New Year honours an nounced from Buckingham Pal ace, London, by Queen Elizabeth. Both men were made Knight Commanders of the Order of the British Empire

(Kbe).

The new Sir Peter Kenilorea, who comes from Malaita Island, spent a brief period as a teacher and then joined the public administration service of his country. He held a number of senior positions in finance and province administration.

He was president of the Civil Servants Association from which grew his political party, the United Party. Within a year of his election to parliament he became chief minister in the transitional independence gov ernment, and he became the country’s first prime minister in 1978. He is now opposition leader following a parliamen tary vote which changed the government last year.

The Most Reverend Dr Virgil Copas went to Papua New Guinea from Australia in 1945, initially to the Vunapope Mission near Rabaul. Except

for six years when he was based in the northern Australian city of Darwin, he has continued to hold a series of prominent positions in the church in PNG.

He created wide interest about the time of PNG independence when he stood down from his position as first Archibishop of Port Moresby to allow the appointment of the first Papua New Guinean to the position.

Since then he has worked as a missionary and churchman in the PNG Gulf Province, and is based in Kerema.

John C. Lanham has been ap pointed chief justice of the High Court of the Marshall Islands.

Mr Lanham, 57, served as a judge in Hawaii’s First Circuit Court from 1970 to 1980. He was in private practice on Oahu from 1955 to 1970.

From 1958 to 1966 he was a member of the Hawaii House of Representatives, and a member of the Hawaii Senate from 1966-70.

Before he went into private practice, he served as a legal officer with the US Air Force.

Robert Puissant, new ambassa dor of the French Republic to the Kingdom of Tonga, has presented his credentials to King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV in Nukualofa.

Fred Zeder has been nominated by President Ronald Reagan to conduct the Micronesian politi cal status talks, according to the Guam newspaper. Pacific Daily News.

Like his predecessor, Peter Rosenblatt, President Jimmy Carter’s special representative to the Micronesia talks, Mr Zeder will have the rank of ambassador.

Fred Zeder was director of the US Office of Territories from 1975 to 1977.

The PDN reported that Mr Zeder owns Paradise Cruise Corporation in Hawaii, and Marcom, a radio broadcasting company in Saipan. In his post in the Office of Territories, Mr Zeder won wide praise for bringing a ‘business viewpoint’ to his job.

Aged 60, Mr Zeder is a native of South Orange, New Jersey, USA, and served in the Pacific as a fighter pilot in World War 11.

After the war, he formed a marketing and advertising firm which eventually merged with McCann-Erickson Advertising of New York. Later, he organ ised the Chrysler Zeder Co, an investment and manufacturing firm which operates in New York and Puerto Rico.

Mr Zeder lived for some time in Dallas, Texas, and is a good

friend of US Vice-President George Bush.

Leon Olivier, Belgian ambassa dor to New Zealand, has been accredited to Vanuatu, and presented his credentials to President Ati George Sokomanu at Porl-Vila’s State House in December.

Mr Olivier spent a week in Vanuatu, meeting Prime Minis ter Father Walter Lini, other government ministers and officials, and members of the diplomatic corps.

The Marshall Islands Govern ment has opened negotiations with Yacht Club owner Tom Getty on his taking over the Majuro airport restaurant and bar concession.

Chief Secretary Oscar deßrum said the International Development Corporation had failed to gel its plans in even after an extension to the orig inal 60 days.

The Yacht Club was the second highest bidder, and Getty said he was having talks with the attorney-general’s office with an eye to working out a deal quickly.

A man who as civil servant in

Peter Kenilorea, KBE

Virgil Copas, KBE

At a ceremony in Nukualofa, Carlos M. Fernandez-Shaw (left) presents his letters of credence to King Taufa‘ahau Tupou of Tonga following the establishment of formal diplo matic relationships between the two countries. Ambassador Fernandez-Shaw lives in Canberra where he is Spanish ambassador to Australia. He recently visited a number of Island countries in the South Pacific including Tonga and Solomon Islands both of which have now established formal diplomatic links with Spain.

Western Samoa travelled with the famed Maori anthropologist Sir Peter Buck, saw the motor car and the rhinoceros beetle arrive on Samoa’s shores, and translated the first-ever speech given in Samoan to the United Nations, retired recently in Auckland.

He is Magele M. Edmund Stehlin, who, until December 1981, was Samoa’s commercial representative in the Western Samoan Consulate in Auck land. His retirement came after 56 years of service.

During his colourful career as both a New Zealand civil ser vant in Samoa, and, since inde pendence, a servant of Samoa itself, Magele’s experience has covered much of modern Samoa’s history. During the troubles in the 1920 s between the New Zealand representa tives and the Mau, Magele was based first in Savaii and then Apia. He worked on the first shipment of bananas from Samoa to New Zealand aboard the Maui Pomare, and travelled to India to meet Mahatma Gandhi.

Speaking at an official fare well in Auckland, Samoa’s High Commissioner to New Zealand, Feesago George Fepuleai, described Magele as a ‘devoted, loyal and dedicated public servant’. ‘When laurels have come his way, including the honour of an MBE from Her Majesty the Queen some 20 years ago, he has not rested on them,’ the high commissioner said. ‘For he has discovered that inner satis faction that surpasses any pro motion or award. ‘Though he has not received much in the form of public acclamation, the honours re main stacked in his favour, secret but not forgotten in the many hearts whose lives he had undoubtedly touched and served over such a long time.’

Michael Field in Wellington.

Allan Lind, a principal of the Australian company Solar Edwards, was in Tahiti in December looking over his com pany’s ‘success story’ operation in French Polynesia.

Commenting on his visit, the Papeete daily Les Nouvelles wrote in its Issue of December

28: ‘Mr Lind’s company now leads in the field of solar water heaters. With its advanced technology, it uses only stainless steel in the manufacture of its tanks. ‘lts heaters are particularly well adapted to Islands climates because stainless steel is not affected by sea air. This great advantage has meant that in less than a year this brand of heater has captured top place on the Tahitian market.’

The paper said that before joining Solar Edwards, Mr Lind was for seven years managing director of another Australian manufacturer of solar water heaters, but these were of the more traditional type, with water containers of enamel coated steel.

Mr Lind told the paper that over the past three years, not a single client has called for application of the anti-corrosion guarantee clause written into Solar Edwards’ purchase con tracts.

The type of stainless steel used in manufacture of the

heaters is known as Marine 316.

Mr Lind is particularly proud of the fact that his company is exporting heaters to Western Germany, ‘one of the world’s most advanced countries in stainless steel technology’.

Other countries importing the Solar Edwards heaters in clude the USA, Spain. Holland, Greece, Mauritius, Singapore, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea.

A former Fiji weight-lifting champion is his country’s new honorary consul in Vancouver, Canada.

He is Raj Pillai, formerly of Suva, who has been officially named as Fiji’s honorary consul to the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Alberta.

As such he will be doing his best to minister to the needs of a community of about 20 000 former Fiji citizens now living in Western Canada. He suc ceeds John Kamali in the post.

Mr Pillai is no stranger to the job of working for the interests of Fiji Canadians: for six years he was president of the Fiji- Canada Association. He has also been the driving force in organising financial and cloth ing relief at times of natural disasters at home.

Brought up in the Flagstaff area of Suva, Mr Pillai look to weight-lifting at an early age, eventually winning the Fiji championship. In 1966 he

served as manager and coach of the Fiji weight-lifting team at the second South Pacific Games in Noumea. Under his direc tion, the team accumulated an impressive tally of medals four gold, one silver, and one bronze.

Mr Pillai emigrated to Canada with his wife Ambika and six children in 1968. (A seventh, Sheila, has been born since).

After a few years in various jobs, Mr Pillai in 1972 opened a service station. He now owns two motor body repair shops in the greater Vancouver area.

Jim Thomson has joined the staff of South Pacific Yacht Charters in Neiafu, Vavau, Tonga. He has a background in electrical engineering, manage ment consultancy, and boating on the west coasts of Canada and the USA.

Jim built his own 12-metre ferro-ccment ketch Tukulik on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. He cruised the US west coast and Mexico, and visited the Marquesas, Tuamolus, and Tahiti. While in

A popular visitor to Fiji late last year was Sir Tore Lokoloko, Governor-General of Papua New Guinea, who found time after his official engagements for a game of snooker at the Union Club in Suva. Sir Tore and Parliamen tary Speaker Mosese Qionbaravi (background) de feated Ratu William Toganivalu and Aminiasi Katonivauliku by two frames to one. - Asaeli Lave picture.

Roger Rousseau, shown above, a long-experienced member of the Canadian foreign service, has been accredited as Canadian High Commissioner to six countries in the South Pacific. He is based in Wellington as High Com missioner to New Zealand, but his accreditation extends be yond New Zealand to Fiji, West ern Samoa, Tuvalu, Tonga and Kiribati. One of his most widely

known previous appointments

was 10 years ago when he became president of the organ ising committee for the Montreal Olympics.

Raiatea he met Da\id Bagelow. who is managing SPYC’s oper ation in French Polynesia, and was recruited by him to co manage SPYC in Vavau.

He has joined Don Coleman in running this growing busi ness. Patty Kaliher in Neiafu, Vavau . Tonga.

Mahendra Motibhai Patel, executive director of Motibhai and Co Ltd, and also current chairman of the Fiji Visitors Bureau Board, has been elected president of the Fiji National Duty Free Merchants Associ ation.

Papua New Guinea’s Madang Province has moved a step ahead of the country’s other provinces by producing PNG’s first audiologist an expert in identifying hearing problems in young children.

She is Madang Hospital com munity district nurse Miss Ilalon Daing, 24, who has com pleted a two-month basic audiology course at the Prince of Wales Hospital, Sydney.

Australia’s Sir Ivan Dougherty Scholarship, which provides opportunities for special training in the medical treatment of children, enabled Miss Daing to undertake the course.

The scholarship was launched by the Seventh Div ision of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) Association in memory of comrades who fought in PNG in World War IF Alphy Rumber in Hiri. fortnightly magazine of the PNG Government Office of In formation.

Niko Kalou has been appointed the new manager of Fiji’s Treasure Island Resort, the first Fijian to hold the job.

Suzanne Murrell has been ap pointed public information con sultant to the South Pacific Regional Environment Pro gramme (SPREP) for seven months. She will organise pub lic education and information activities on major environ mental problems in the region.

The Conference on the Hu man Environment to be held in Rarotonga, Cook Islands, in March, is a highlight of the programme.

Based at the South Pacific Commission in Noumea, Miss Murrell was formerly publicity officer for the maritime parks of New Zealand.

Robert Dean Nesen, US

ambassador-designate to

Nauru, visited the island late last year. Mr Nesen is resident in Canberra, where he serves as US ambassador to Australia.

Benijamini Ravulolo Lomaloma, 24, of Fiji, won the 1981 Best Overseas Cadet award at Britain’s Royal Military Acad emy, Sandhurst.

He was presented with the Baton of Honour a leather

encased cane with a silver knob by Britain’s Admiral of the Fleet, Sir Terence Lewin, who reviewed the traditional passing out Sandhurst parade in December.

In his new commissioned rank of Second Lieutenant, Benijamini Lomaloma will con tinue his Sandhurst studies un til July, concentrating on war history and military communi cations.

A New Zealand priest of the Roman Catholic Rcdemplorisl order. Father Patrick Vincent Hurley, has been appointed auxiliary bishop of Samoa and Tokelau. He will be assistant to Cardinal Pio Taofin'u Fiji's first woman accountant in a major bank branch has been appointed by the National Bank of Fiji. She is Mrs Arieta Khan. 37, who has been posted to the bank’s Lautoka branch.

A bright future in rugby union is predicted for Mark Sapias, son of Papua New Guinea’s High Commissioner to Austra lia, Austin Sapias.

Coach of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) under -16 squad. John Weatherstone, says: ‘He’s a very alert try scorer and has to be one of the quickest and best rugby backs around for his age. In the past year he’s scored about 70 tries.

If he continues to develop at his present standard, he has a fantastic future ahead in rugby.’

Mark was chosen recently in the Australian under-17 rugby union team to tour New Zea land in May.

Dr Geoff Glasby, of New Zea land’s Department of Scientific and Industrial Research Oceanographic Institute, has been awarded a doctorate of science by Victoria University, Wellington, for his outstanding research in marine geochemis try.

Dr Glasby has served as scientific leader of three major cruises of the research vessel Tangaroa Southwest Pacific (1974), the Samoan Basin (1976), and the Lau Basin ( 1981 ).

From 1978 until early 1981 he was Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Technische Hochschule, Aachen, West Germany, studying manganese nodule distribution and the geo chemistry of the equatorial Pacific.

A reunion in Sydney in December provided a rare link with the early years of Austra lian involvement in the Man dated Territory of New Guinea, now part of Papua New Guinea.

Photographed at the reunion were, from left, Jim Leahy, 73, who went to New Guinea in 1929 and was a major figure in establishing the coffee industry there; Wendell Bill, 72, a former New South Wales state crick eter, and long associated with others in the group; Eric (Abe) Abraham, 85, of Brisbane, who was postmaster at Rabaul from 1923 to 1934; Dr W. H. Calov, 86, who was a medical officer at Namanula Hospital, Rabaul, from 1920 to 1928, and who is still in practice in Sydney; Jack Thurston, 84, who went to New Guinea in 1924, established shipping, plantation and busi ness interests, and who still shares his time between busi ness interests in Rabaul and Sydney; Ted Porter, of Sydney, formerly of Makurapau Plan tation near Rabaul, who went to New Guinea in 1926. Sadly, Jim Leahy died only a few weeks after the reunion was held (see p65).

In Australia at present is Tongan navigator and seaman Pita Filitonga, who has one major achievement behind him and is setting his sights on another. He was one of the key men in an epic voyage from Vanuatu to Papua New Guinea in 1980 when a traditional Vanuatu canoe was sailed to the South Pacific Fes tival of Arts. Everything went wrong on the way, but the canoe survived storms, crew problems and other setbacks. Pita now wants to build a Tongan-style canoe as a contribution to the growing interest in Pacific exchanges, and he hopes to sail the canoe between Island countries. While in Australia he has been seeking support for the project from people and groups interested in Polynesian sailing history, but he concedes he has a long way to go yet before he has the chance to put his dream into action. The pic ture above was taken while he was preparing a fish for cooking during the canoe voyage to Port Moresby. A storm washed away fuel and food, and one of the steering oars had to be broken up for firewood to cook the fish.