A Suva

Tropicalities

A Suva concert to remember

Over the centuries Pacific Islan ders have known many traumatic events but perhaps there is no more dreaded happening than the overwhelming impact of destruc tive hurricanes, which leave be hind a swathe of smashed homes and destroyed crops, accom panied by a toll in human lives.

Hurricane Oscar recently struck much of Fiji, and the people have responded in the resilient manner so characteristic of the peoples of the Pacific Islands. They are working co operatively to assist those who have suffered and to make good the damage left behind by the force of the brutal winds.

The University of the South Pacific set out to raise funds for the victims of Hurricane Oscar, staging a concert for the purpose at the Suva Civic Centre.

This community happening il lustrated the buoyancy and multi faceted nature of the Fiji popula tion. The concert was led off by that most excellent of military musical combinations, the band of the Royal Fiji Military Forces.

They presented a selection of military tunes, of ragtime, of sentimental melodies, of Cliff Richard numbers, and then the rather portly leader of the band wowed the audience with a selec tion of hits from Elvis Presley.

And then it was on for one and all, there were marching girls, the splendor of the skills of the Fiji Theatre Group, youths rol ler-skating all over the stage, jazz dancing, reggae, improvised plays put on by youth groups, and a polished performance of traditional items presented by the Tongan Students’ Association at the USP.

The night was not without excitement of an unwelcome and unexpected kind as well.

A Samoan performer, in tradi tional garb, with face daubed in fearsome patterns, sprang on to the stage to present that spectacu lar and highly-skilled act, the knife dance.

Although he had been an nounced as a dancer who had

toured overseas, on this occasion he didn’t seem to be in full control of his vicious-looking knives. His movements also seemed to lack the finesse usual ly associated with the act.

Came the moment when the act required that he hook the two knives together and whirl them around with gay abandon.

As it happened a group of little girls had congregated at the side of the stage waiting for the mo ment when the spotlight would fall on their act. The spotlight fell on them all right, but not in the way they were waiting for.

The knives flashed around, the performer didn’t seem to be in

full control of his footing, the knives flew from his grasp and across the stage to thud into the wall only inches from where two of the young performers were standing.

After the first stunned silence was broken, and we turned back to look at centre-stage, the knife wielding performer was simply nowhere to be seen. He evidently felt he’d had enough of the limelight for the time being.

He came back later with the Samoan fire dance. But some how his heart didn’t seem to be in it, and the audience betrayed signs of apprehension.

Still, all in all it was a night to remember, and we all came away feeling better for having made some contribution to the Hur ricane Oscar Relief Fund. W.

G. Coppell.

Oz-PNG Trust

wound up

The Australia Papua New Guinea Friendship Trust, which was in augurated in Sydney in April 1981 to supply books to schools in Papua New Guinea, will wind up its activities this year after supplying about 4000 books to PNG schools. The project was originated by the now retired Dr Tom Selby, of Sydney, who was a regimental medical officer with the Australian army in PNG in World War 11.

Most of the books were select ed by lan Crossland, chief school librarian, PNG Department of Education, in Port Moresby, and were bought in PNG.

In addition to the books sup plied to government schools, the trust received requests for books for school libraries from church organisations running schools in Wewak, Goroka, Mount Hagen, Madang, Popondetta and Lae.

All books distributed to schools carried the special trust logo symbolising the friendship between the two countries. Total cost of books donated by the trust was about $A 18,000.

Donations towards the project came from the Australian Coun cil of Churches, the Archer Trust administered by Burns Philp Trustee Company Ltd, Sydney, ex-servicemen’s clubs and Syd ney business houses.

The honorary secretary of the trust, John Burrell, who also served with the Australian milit ary forces in PNG, said the mem bers considered the trust had achieved its objective to help young people in PNG.

Torres artists

on tour

Twenty musicians and dancers from the Torres Strait ended a three-month tour in May which introduced their culture to audi ences across the Pacific.

The islanders are a mixture of

Melanesian, Filipino, Malaysian

and Papua New Guinea peoples who moved to the islands about 2000 years ago.

The group began its tour in New Zealand where the islanders appeared as guests of Maori communities at the annual Poly nesian Festival in Hastings.

Their visit to Fiji, from March 5-20, was sponsored by the chairman of the Fiji Arts Coun cil, Sir Josua Rabukawaqa, who met them at Festival ’B2 in Bris bane during the Commonwealth Games. The program in Fiji in cluded performances for school children and in villages to pro vide cultural contact with Fijians living in their traditional lifestyle.

In Hawaii the main emphasis was on performances at schools.

A five-week tour of California, including schools and colleges in Los Angeles and San Francisco, brought the group’s tour to an end in May.

Sword dancer, a Samoan sym bol — perhaps knives are more difficult.

At all performances the Torres Strait islanders wore their ancient and traditional dress which in cludes spectacular handmade dhurries (feathered headdress).

They played traditional instru

ments which date back 2000 years.

The 20 performers have been

working together since June

1980 when they appeared at the World Wilderness Conference in Caims, Queensland. They have since visited Australian States and held programs in Australian schools.

Their Pacific tour was support ed by the Australian Government

through the Aboriginal Arts

Board.

Aggie ‘turns on’

another scribe ...

Latest in the seemingly endless line of scribes who go down on their knees in print to pay tribute to the South Pacific’s most fam ous hoteliere, Aggie Grey, is Kevin Voltz, travel editor of

Sydney’s Sunday newspaper,

The Sun-Herald. Voltz wrote in an April issue of the paper:

“I visited Aggie Grey’s’’

claims a flamboyant new sticker on my suitcase.

It doesn’t really need the address, “Western Samoa’’.

Any one who has sailed or flown through Polynesia in the past 40 years has heard of Aggie.

She’s probably the only living

hotel keeper in the world who has been honoured by a postage stamp ... the only woman in

her 80s who can win a standing ovation when she does a solo turn in the spectacular Polyne sian dance show at her hotel.

I met her in Apia a week after her 85th birthday. I wish I’d been there for the party. From what I heard it was a memorable bash.

Aggie, the daughter of an English chemist and his beautiful Samoan wife, is a living legend in the South Pacific although she still gets upset at suggestions she inspired the character “Bloody Mary’’ in James Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific.

She was undoubtedly a wheel er-dealer when Samoa was filled with U.S. servicemen during World War 11. She parlayed a hamburger shop and club up to the nucleus of her present 120room hotel.

Michener knew Aggie when he was stationed at nearby Pago Pago late in the war.

He told her biographer: “She was ebullient, effervescent, out rageous, illegal, and terribly bright.’’

He fell under her spell as have most of the guests who have found their way to her hotel ever since. They’ve included such celebrities as Gary Cooper (who made a film in Samoa), Marlon Brando and Raymond Burr.

Girl wounded by

‘cooked’ bullet

A 20-year-old Kiribati girl has been wounded by a bullet which exploded in her cooking fire. The girl, Nei Rakera Koria, was

cooking fish at her home in Bon riki village, Tarawa, when the bullet went off. She had just stood up from a crouching posi tion when the slug hit her in the upper thigh. She said it would have hit her in the head if she had not got up. She was taken to hospital and allowed to go home after the wound was dressed.

It was not until the following day that the slug was revealed by X-ray embedded about seven centimetres away from the wound. It was quickly removed by doctors. Local experts say the bullet was an American one from World War 11.

In 1978, a similar incident occurred in Betio, site of the battle of Tarawa, when a woman used an old rifle barrel as a pot stand over an open fire. The bullet in the barrel went off, killing an elderly woman 15 metres away. Billy Schutz in Tarawa.

Spelling wrong,

spirit right

If there’s one Pacific Island country that gets its name spelled wrongly by outsiders more often than others, it’s got to be Niue.

Charles Sriber, travel editor of the Australian daily The Aust ralian was there recently, and his report on the visit twice contains the spelling “Nieu” and they are the only two mentions of the country’s name in it.

But we think all will agree that even if he didn’t get the spelling right, he got the spirit right. Mr

Sriber’s report, spelling of coun try’s name corrected, said: If you’ve always wanted to find a real island hideaway you might consider Niue, a strange Polynesian island claiming to be the largest coral speck in the world.

It lies between Tonga and the Cook Islands and I visited the

elevated rocky plateau briefly a

little while ago.

Dramatically beautiful, it sits like an adorned cake in the South Pacific, its craggy cliffs rising 30 metres above a rock shelf. It has no beaches, but some good swimming holes and some great underwater scenery scuba di vers go crazy about it and every one raves about the people the women guileless and smiling, the

men easy-going and friendly.

With a population of less than 3000, everyone knows everyone else and all appear to work to gether. Niue uses New Zealand currency.

The islanders are cricket fanat-

The “2 + 2 = 4” school is a feature of Tahiti’s round-the-is land road just outside Papeete.

It seems that a 19th-century French planter decided to be queath some land to the com munity for a school. Sceptical of the value of introducing the Tahitians to the French educa tional system, he specified in his will that the school must be named “2 + 2 = 4”, so that whatever else they didn’t learn, its pupils would at least acquire the bit of useful knowledge con tained in their school’s name.

Pictures show the school and the signpost outside.

ics, rather keen on golf and of course, the fishing is fantastic.

They have one very good hotel and a motel and prices are ridiculously low.

Not that there’s much to do besides swim, scuba dive or snorkel, eat and relax. Sounds fine to me. Polynesian Airlines and Air Naum fly you there on 737 jets.

Salute to Beach

House Bella

Boarding house landladies are not generally remembered affec tionately, except perhaps in the Pacific where they were few and far between and they blossomed like Aggie Grey of Apia, and Bella Riechelmann of Nukualofa in the Friendly Islands. They made a name for themselves as hostesses.

Nukualofa and Bella weren’t as well known as Apia and Aggie Grey, but Bella ran Beach House, the government hotel or boarding house, before the Dateline Hotel was built higher than the coconut palms. It was on the waterfront close to the World War II American-built Yellow Pier where inter-island boats would anchor off and ferry pas sengers and freight back and forth by dinghy.

Beach House was shaded by flamboyants and coconut palms, an old rambling bungalow of clapboard, corrugated iron, wooden trellis, tongue and groove timber, with a red painted corrugated iron roof and a World War II corrugated iron quonset hut to one side to accom modate an overflow.

Bella knew everybody who had visited Tonga including fam ous authors such as James Michener, Robert Gibbings, Hal kon Mielche.

She was. a big kind-hearted woman who reminded me of Lovaina of Tahiti. Frederick O’Brien wrote in his Mystic Isles of the South Seas of the time around World War I of the Tiare Hotel in Papeete, five minutes walk from the quay, and run by Lovaina: “She was very large.

She was huge in every sense, weighing much more than three hundred pounds, and yet there

was a singular grace in her form and her movements. Her limbs were of the girth of breadfruit trees, and her bosom was as broad and deep as that of the great Juno of Rome, but her hands were beautiful, like a plump baby’s with fascinating creases at the wrist, and long, tapering fingers. Her large eyes were hazel, and they were very brilliant when she was merry or excited. Her expansive face had no lines in it, and her mouth was a perfection of curves, the teeth white and even. Her hair was red-brown, curling in rich profu sion, scented with the hinano flower adorning her charmingly poised head in careless grace.”

I slept in the government bachelor quarters which was merely a dormitory block 100 yards away up Tupoulahi Road, but for 15 months I ate breakfast, lunch and dinner in Beach House, and ate well on shellfish from the reefs often gathered by Bella and her housegirls, fish from the sea often caught by David her husband, and pawpaw and bananas from the Riechel mann plantation.

The permanents sat around a large round table the Bums Philp merchandise manager, the BP accountant, the Union Steam Ship Company manager, the Copra Board manager, a few white public servants the ex patriates of a now vanished cola nial era.

The transient guests were few

and far between. In those days the only way in and out of Tonga was the monthly Tasman Empire Airways Solent flying boat and the monthly vessel Tofua, with passages very difficult to obtain.

Beach House had a large cent ral dining room with a camber like the deck of a ship, with bedrooms opening off it. Bella and her husband sat off to one side commanding the totally en closed atrium without a skylight, dim and cool.

Air-conditioning in the South Seas was non-existent in those days, but Beach House was air conditioned in the old-fashioned way, raised on wooden piles so that the trade winds could blow underneath. The front of Beach House had wooden shutters on the veranda hinged from the top

Isolated from the real Tonga

and held open with wooden props so that in stormy weather they could be closed.

Beach House was a white per son’s world, expatriates tempor

ary or semi-permanent, maybe

somewhat isolated from the real Tongan world, but we could ob serve the life on the lagoon and on the tar-sealed road separated from Beach House by a fence of

Marsden matting long strips

of metal with holes used for World War II airstrips.

Thousands of yards of it were

used all over Nukualofa for fences.

The main veranda along the front of the house was dotted with tables and chairs, ferns in pots, planters’ chairs, canvas di rectors’ chairs, a sofa.

At a big wooden old table in one comer of the veranda we sat after meals and talked while watching the activity on the har

bor, cutters in from Haapai and the islands in between. Away to the west was the main wharf where the copra ships would tie up, and the monthly banana boat bringing its cargo of frozen meat and beer and butter, and once a month the Solent moored briefly to the buoy.

On the veranda we ate enorm ous morning and afternoon teas which were presided over by Bella sagging heavily in her chair, her fly switch, a stick with horse hair tied to it, always to

Beach House, Nukualofa, as it looked in 1960. It had just re opened for business after a period of closure, and another six years were to pass before the opening of the Dateline Hotel. When this picture was taken the Marsden matting de scribed here had gone, but the Islands-style "air-conditioning” - window shutters held open by poles - was still very much in evidence.

hand and flicked and used as a baton to punctuate the conversa tion. There was a mixed collec tion of magazines and world

newspapers acquired from ships.

The copra ships all seemed to have been to Mobile, Alabama, or Houston, Texas, most of the reading matter acquired from them was stamped “Seaman’s Mission Mobile” or “Seaman’s Mission Houston”.

The hotel was a meeting place for the Europeans of Nukualofa and at morning and afternoon tea there were always big stacks of cups and saucers brought out for the unexpected visitors who dropped in to hear and contribute the latest gossip.

On New Year’s Eve I attended an enormous party there, nearly every European on the beach was present. This was the place for the commencement of fishing parties, picnics. It was more than a place to stay, it was a home away from home.

Bella stood no nonsense from anybody, she ruled the boarding house autocratically, but she act ed like a mother towards her permanent boarders and worried if we didn’t eat. One night we were drinking at the Yacht Club, we hadn’t been to Beach House for dinner, and at 10 o’clock David arrived with steak, to matoes and bread. One Sunday we were drinking at the Nukualo fa Club and we had no transport to get back for lunch about a mile away. At 1.30 Bella rang and asked if we were coming for lunch. We said yes but we’d be walking. She sent David in their car to pick us up.

Before important boxing matches she was usually feeding one of the Tongan contestants, building him up for the big day.

She fed such well known Tongan boxers as Kitione Lave and Johnny Halafihi who were suc cessful in the boxing world of

Europe.

I often thought that some of the Beach House guests must have exasperated Bella, but like a good inn-keeper she never showed it, in public. There was a female journalist who spent some

time in Tonga, mostly trying to

arrange an interview with Queen Salote, unsuccessfully. But she would stay in bed until 10 or 11 a.m. every hot steamy morning.

We concluded that her father owned the paper.

There was the dietitian reading the traveller’s companion, Tol stoy’s War And Peace. She said she was going to finish it in Tonga, but she never did.

Then there was the General, recently retired from India, stay ing away from England on an income tax fiddle. From the mo ment he marched along the veranda in Bombay Bloomers he commenced talking in a loud slightly hectoring voice, “I was down in the bazaar this morning . . .” At meals he always re tailed the world news, he listened avidly, tuning into news bulletins on the shortwave bands of his portable wireless. He had a few pet sayings with which he started his monologues, “Of course I know all about that sort of thing. . .’’“Well, I don’t know anything about it, but . . .’’

And off he’d go into a long tirade against Nasser, the Americans.

During the Egyptian crisis of 1956 he grew more vocal than ever. The United Nations were a complete waste of time. The Egyptians were not worth much for they were the worst soldiers in the world. Dulles was no good. Of General Bums the com mander of the UN forces in the Middle East he said: “Know him well, very well. Brilliant man,

but entirely impractical.”

When the Egyptians blocked the Suez Canal he said that the thing to do, if we had any money, and what he was going to do, was buy shares in an ice company and a coaling company at Capetown, as all ships would be calling there for ice and coal on the long alternative route around the Cape of Good Hope.

He didn’t have to add: “Of course I don’t know anything about shares, only dabble in them.”

Local Europeans might be

complaining that they couldn’t

buy eggs, but there were always eggs at Beach House. If a Ton gan had four dozen eggs for sale, instead of hawking them around the houses of Europeans and sel ling a dozen here, half a dozen there, he took them to Bella and she bought the lot.

I was reading a book, Noel Coward And His Friends in which the biographer writes

“. . . continued our journey to Arequipa and drew up before the Quinta Bates unlikely that it still exists a guest house fam ous in its time for its haphazard comfort and even more famous for its proprietress, a redoubtable lady known to one and all as ‘Tia’ Bates. She was waiting up for Jeff and Noel in a red merino dressing-gown, with tea and hot water bottles at the ready, grey hair run wild, twinkling eyes and an air of distinction, cosy land lady and Grand Duchess in one.

Dead long since, she and her guest house had aficionados the world over, judging from the people Noel ran into many years after. Mention of the Quinta Bates made strangers at once become reunited members of some curious club.”

Though the Quinta Bates was in South America, the paragraph is fully appropriate to Beach House and Bella.

South Seas landladies are pro bably almost non-existent now, most of the centres of population in the Pacific have tourist hotels and the managers of those places tend to be faceless, never sight

ed, or known.

Brown.

J. Edward

Chamorros look

to their roots

A major activity of the Universi ty of Guam is undertaken by the Micronesian Area Research Center (MARC) of which Dr Dirk Ballendorf is director. He sees one of the major interests of the Center as being the study of early migrations of the Chamarro people to the Marianas islands.

Two archaeologists associated with the Centre are working on three “digs” on Guam.

He also stresses the interest of MARC in contemporary Mic ronesian issues, and emphasises that the concern is not only with “musty pot sherds and bones.

We investigate some of the cur rent social problems experienced here in Micronesia with a view to

achieving a better understanding

of our environment and all the people who live here.”

The earliest dates now estab lished for an aboriginal presence on Guam is about 3000 years ago, and now the archaeologists

are searching for sites which could be even more ancient.

The younger Chamorro people are quite passionate in their de sire to see greater attention paid to a Chamorro view of the his tory of Guam. As Dr Ballendorf

says; “Currently some Chamorro people don’t like the idea that their ancestors may have been Filipino. This is largely due to the fact that in the early Spanish period many Filipino soldiers were brought here as garrisons to

protect missionaries, and they committed some deeds that the Chamorros didn’t appreciate.”

The fact that many Filipinos are now migrating to Guam and competing for jobs with Chamor ros is no doubt another reason for denying an origin from the Philippines or Indonesia.

Another theory is of an early

Japanese migration to Guam.

Some Japanese academics like this theory and are spending time and money to investigate it furth er. “There has been a mixture of

exchanges, so fortunately the

Chamorros might be able to choose which theories they enjoy most.”

Although much research atten tion has also been given to the Spanish period on Guam, the Japanese influence is certainly showing itself, with about 300,000 Japanese tourists visit ing Guam each year. Japanese tourists are now quite active par

ticipants in Liberation Day,

which commemorates the Japan-

W. G. Coppell, who wrote the article on this page about mig ration in Micronesia, visited Ponape on his way to Guam, and his picture above shows a Ponape sakau (kava) bar in rustic setting. But does it RE ALLY cost 25 cents to visit the

architectually interesting little

house at the back? Commer cialism indeed seems to have arrived in Micronesia, Coppell suggests.

ese defeat on Guam in World War 11. However, the people are wary when Japanese military vessels call at Guam.

The contemporary Guamanian environment has areas of concern which MARC is studying, in cluding the presence of large and

growing expatriate ethnic com

munities, changing local cus toms, and a quickening pace of life. Says Dr Ballendorf: ”The local people are tending to be come more task-oriented, yet people still all get together at fiesta time. The basis of our life on Guam is food, the various

varieties of food.”

W. C.

Coppell on Guam.

Seattle Samoans

are organising

If Samoans were a united ethnic group Western and American Samoa they would never have allowed the division to happen.

As of September 1982, West ern Samoans in Seattle local communities gathered and or ganised their own group, name ly, Tusitala. Tusitala means story-teller, and is applied by Samoans to Robert Louis Steven son, the prominent Scottish au thor who lived and died in West ern Samoa.

The main idea of the club was to raise funds to establish a Sa moan Hall for the Samoan com munity as a whole. The Western Samoan move to organise the group came about due to the fact that many Samoan organisations and community efforts have been formed in the past but only to see the organisations become de funct, with no lasting results.

Initially, some agreed that

Western Samoans’ intention to organise the group was for a good cause. However there was no notion of excluding some Sa moans. One observer expressed concern about the exclusion of American Samoans and has re quested that the club accept them as club members.

Past Samoan organisations have been led mostly by Ameri can Samoan descendants, but the public reprimanded the Samoan community as a whole whenever such organisations became cor rupt. Nevertheless, the lack of

unity in the Seattle Samoan com munity is not limited to Ameri can and Western Samoans, but exists within people from diffe rent families, villages or churches. This is perhaps also true of Samoan communities in Hawaii, California, or elsewhere in the US. They compare them selves with one another and vie for status.

It seems clear to me that the problem afflicting Samoans to day reflects the old power strug gle among stronger nations to gain control over the Samoan Islands. In Samoa, these world powers were England, Germany

and the United States. They selected and signed a treaty with one Samoan faction, cham pioned, armed, advised and en couraged them in battle to fight against other factions, then proc laimed them, as a unit, to be a legitimate Samoan Government.

Each of the Western powers de nounced the faction championed by another power as illegitimate rebels. Thus, the factions have argued and fought among them selves ever since in order to resolve their differences.

Great Britain, Germany and the United States were reluctant to confront each other directly; they shot at one another through the Samoans or shelled by naval artillery Samoan villages allied against their favored factions.

The Americans and the British, for the first time, became allied against Germany; then the hostil ity grew.

To settle this enmity, in 1899, at a conference without Samoan representatives, our islands were divided. The Germans gained

control over Western Samoa un til 1914, whereas Eastern Samoa (American Samoa) became a US protectorate. England refrained from further confrontation; how ever, the New Zealand Govern ment assumed protection of Western Samoa through the Lea gue of Nations from World War I until 1962. Since then Westem- Samoa has become independent.

However, ambiguities remain.

For example, Western Samoans, unlike American Samoans in re lation to the US, are not allowed free access to New Zealand.

Finally, in view of these past injustices perpetrated by colonial powers, I feel it greatly and

presently impacts Samoan rela

tions not only in Samoa but the US as well. We cannot effective ly work together to solve the problems common to our people.

We cannot effectively convince elected officials, agency staff, or employers to be more responsive to our needs.

Some Samoans in New Zea land report other Samoans to the

Remains of Japanese wartime tunnel in Micronesia, once part of an extensive structure of underground equipment stores and shelters. Japanese tourists now come to Micronesia in thousands every year, 300,000 to Guam alone. On Guam they have even attended ceremonies which marked the defeat of their forces there, writes W. G.

Coppell.

immigration and naturalisation services, welfare offices and other authorities about visa expi ration and/or immigration status.

As a result, people have been abruptly ordered to leave the country or have had their public assistance terminated. The Sa moans who report other Samoans to these services, though, need to be told to put their tails between their legs and keep their mouths shut, or else seek psychiatric attention. Even people in this country don’t do these things.

Notwithstanding all this, I wish to appeal to our government leaders, in American Samoa, the United States, and Western Samoa, to, once again, seriously reconsider the importance of combining our own people. Are we to go from separation to separation, or from separation to unity? Falani A. Peters in Seattle.

Any PNG music

in your attic?

A major new project aims at tracking down and cataloguing all the tribal music of Papua New Guinea recorded since early this century.

Writing in The Sydney Morn ing Herald in April, the paper’s music critic Fred Blanks reported: It is believed that thousands of such recordings made by an thropologists, missionaries, visitors and settlers are now scat tered through museums, libraries and private collections around the world.

The project is being underta ken by Dr Gordon Spearritt, head of the music department in the University of Queensland, and Don Niles, an American eth nomusicologist working at the Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies in Port Moresby.

Work is expected to continue for at least two years, and in volves use of a computer. A further stage of the project could involve acquisition of all record ings for the Port Moresby Institute.

The importance of this work is seen to lie in the preservation of tribal history and traditions which are being eroded by changes in society.

Tahiti calling

Australia ...

Tahitian radio hams are planning a campaign to strengthen connec tions with their counterparts in Australia.

In a first effort early this year they made contact with 39 Aust ralian hams in Melbourne, Syd ney, Brisbane, Perth and Canberra.

The Tahitian hams’ organisa tion plans to follow up by send ing brochures on French Poly nesia to their Australian contacts in order to promote “better

mutual understanding’ ’.

Union: Fiji

beats Oz teams

Fiji sent 20,000 fans wild with delight when they completed an amazing Rugby Union double by

beating Sydney 33-19 in an April encounter in Suva.

Fiji had bounced back from the disappointing overseas tour last year to trounce Queensland 48-24 the week before.

The Queenslanders had no answer to the Fiji flair and quick ness to the loose ball, and Syd ney fared only marginally better.

Sydney did manage to contain the flying Fijians to only four tries, compared with the nine scored against Queensland.

But their difficulties were compounded by a flawless kick ing performance by the Fiji full back Severo Koroduadua who converted all the tries and landed three penalties.

Barry Want, a Sydney selector who had accompanied the team to Fiji, said Sydney had no ans wer to Fiji’s pace.

“Their speed was astonish

ing,” he said. “Their men were yards faster than ours and their

technique has improved

dramatically.

“Our forwards were generally good in winning the lineouts and better in the set play, but were outpaced in the backs.

“Apart from their try scorers, their five-eighth Esala Labiaba

was outstanding.”

Tuvalu, which relies on world interest in its stamps to support its economy, has issued a new set of definitives. Top picture shows the lower denomination

stamps depicting fishing gear,

decorative shell work, basket ware, a model canoe and climb

ing equipment. Eight other

stamps in the series also show handcrafts. Picture above shows the little Tuvalu Philatel- Ic Bureau which processes or ders from all parts of the world.