people

Lasarusa (Laz) Vusoniwailala, from Fiji, recently joined the Regional Media Centre of the South Pacific Commission, in Suva, as educational broad casts officer.

As part of his duties, the educational broadcasts officer will direct a continuing survey of all facets of educational broadcasting in the region, be responsible for the interchange of ideas and materials between School Broadcasts and Adult Education Units (including assessment of their value in a South Pacific context), and will be required to maintain an efficient studio and broadcast materials library service.

He will also be available, on request, to organise in-country and sub-regional training courses for school broadcasts and adult education personnel, and to visit SPC member coun tries to assist as required and advise on school broadcasting and adult education broadcas ting.

South Pacific Trade Commis sioner, Bill McCabe, has just been promoted to be one of only five Class A Trade Com missioners in the Australian service. Tony Haas, chairman of the Asia-Pacific Economic News, Ltd., who has worked closely with Bill in promoting Pacific Islands trade, said that the promotion, along with some innovations of a similar nature by the New Zealand govern ment, illustrated the high prior ity both countries were giving to trade development among the smaller countries of the region.

Although a most senior mem ber of the Australian trade commissioner service, Mr McCabe has been seconded to represent island interests full time. This includes running trade shows, helping island pro ducers find markets, or joint venture partners, even to the extent of conducting market research for them.

Seventy-two-year-old Aucklan der Bill Belcher is the star of an award-winning documentary film Shipwrecked, screened by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in October.

In 1978 Bill was shipwrecked on Middleton Reef while com peting in a single-handed yacht race from New Zealand to Mooloolaba in Queensland.

With only his wife Aileen believing he was still alive, Belcher set out in a rubber dinghy to drift nearly 600 km to the Australian mainland.

“I sat on that reef for 13 days, and you just don’t wait that length of time before going to search for someone. So I de cided to help myself,” Bill says.

With meagre supplies of food and water, he set off in his dinghy, figuring that the tides and the winds would wash him ashore at Fraser Island, 600 km away.

Meanwhile, Aileen was pleading for a search to be launched. After 19 days, a plane was diverted to look for Bill. His boat was found within three hours but Bill was already hundreds of kilometres away in his dinghy. He was listed as missing, presumed dead, and the search was called off.

After 28 days of drifting, Bill was picked up by a passing freighter. He insists that, given three more days, he would have been ashore.

Shipwrecked was written and directed by Bill Bennet for Dick Smith Adventure Pty. Ltd. It’s not only a story of adventure

and survival, but of the strong bond between Bill and Aileen.

Its quality was recognised when it won this year’s Greater Union Award for the best document ary at the Sydney Film Festival.

Papua New Guinea’s new Ambassador to Greece, Ili nome Tarua has presented his credentials to President Kara manlis in Athens and discussed with him the possibility of trade between the two countries. Mr Tarua is concurrently PNG high commissioner to Britain.

Bishop Paul Mea, head of the Catholic Church in Kiribati, has been appointed by Pope John Paul to an international church committee dealing with justice and human development.

Bishop Mea, who will repre sent the Pacific region on the committee, is also head of the church in Nauru and Tuvalu.

Mrs Linda Eric, 27, of Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea, gave birth to quintu plets in October.

Mrs Eric was flown to Alotau from Normanby Island during labor.

The Alotau Hospital medical superintendent Dr Peter Brass, said: “She was so big we thought she might have triplets.

“We were quite surprised to

find that there were five babies.

“It is the first time we’ve delivered quintuplets here.”

Prominent pediatrician Dr John Biddolp said having quin tuplets naturally was a “very rare event.”

“Natural quintuplets occur once in a billion births,” he said.

“But there are more in the case where women take fertility drugs to have children.

“To my knowledge, this is the first quintuplets birth re ported in PNG.”

The quintuplets, all girls, weighed 820 grams, 970 gms, 1 kg, 1.1 kg and 1.3 kg, at birth.

At press time, two of the quins had died. The remaining three were being fed through intra-gastric tubes, according to the hospital.

Mrs Eric has four older chil dren three boys and a girl.

The oldest woman in Vavau, Tonga, Mrs Latu Vakatapu of Okoa, is 113 years old. The oldest of her 15 children is 89.

She has more than 100 grandchildren and great grandchildren ... the oldest great-grandchild is 16 years ago.

Mrs Vakatapu said that she only eats Tongan food, which, she added, is good and full of nutrients. She can read without glasses and can still walk to church.

Bill Belcher ... stars in a film on his own shipwreck. ABC TV photo.