Pacific Islands Monthly

Vol. 50, No. 4 ( Apr. 1, 1979)
1979-04-01 · uncorrected OCR from NLA scans

Pacific Islands Monthly Pim

APRIL 1979 Amarican Smni USJ1.25 Australia AS1.00' nji fji.oo HiwiiL US J 1.50 New Cel. A Fr. Psi.CFP 140 New Hebrides AS100 N2. Cook Is. A NiueNZS 1 00 Norfolk IsJsad AS 1.00 Pipes New Bailee KI.OO Solomons SSI.00 To*i* P1.00 USH A Gum US$1.25 Western Sums II 00 • RKommondod rata4 pnca only.

Raginarad for posting as a publication -Catatpory B. | r§j j Fal *i ■ I ■ mj rfl ■Tyipsni : iMro^rrl 1 ] HbeSi

How to find a REAL economy car.

When you look at a car billed as an economy model, ask yourself a few questions.

What sort of fuel consumption can be expected?

Low? Good.

What about other operating costs? Oil, lubrication, that kind of thing. Low again? Great.

How about maintenance? The car has a low-breakdown record? You are definitely on the right track.

What is the average life of the car? Is it better than the average in your area? Super. That’s important in an economy car.

Now. How is the after service? Buying a car is not all in the price you know. Plenty of service outlets?

One economy car coming up. All you have to do is check the price. Then you can tell if you are really getting an economy car.

You will probably find, after asking these questions about town, that REAL economy cars come down to Toyota, the world’s economy car builder.

See Toyota first. Then you won’t have to shop around.

1He Happy Economizer

Toyota Starlet

The car that says economy in every way.

And you will be happy for it. Big inside.

Small outside. Miserly with petrol.

Without sacrificing comfort. A good buy in an economy car — even for Toyota. fi u PAPUA NEW GUINEA: ELA MOTORS LIMITED, Scratchley Rd., Badili, P.O. Box 75, Port Moresby.

U.S. TRUST

Territory; Microl

CORPORATION, P.O. Box 267, Saipan.

FIJI ISLANDS: AUTOMOTIVE SUPPLIES CO., LTD., G.P.O. Box 355, Suva.

AMERICAN SAMOA:

Burns Philp

(SOUTHSEA) CO., LTD., P.O. 1057, Pago Pago.

WESTERN SAMOA:

Burns Philp

(SOUTHSEA) LTD., P.O. Box 188, Apia.

Guam: Atkins, Kroll

(GUAM) LTD., P.O. Box 6248, Tamuning.

NEW HEBRIDES;

New Hebrides

MOTORS LTD., P.O. Box 18, Vila.

SOLOMON ISLANDS: MENDANA TOYOTA SERVICE TOYOTA ENTERPRISES (S.l.) LTD., P.O. Box 174, Honiara.

Tahiti: Nippon

AUTOMOTO, B.P. 342, Papeete.

COOK ISLANDS:

Cook Islands

TRADING CORPORATION LTD., P.O. Box 92, Rarotonga.

NAURU ISLAND:

Nauru Cooperative

SOCIETY.

GILBERT ISLANDS: TARAWA MOTORS, Box 36, Bairiki Tarawa.

NORFOLK ISLAND:

Mount Pitt

(ENTERPRISES) LTD., P.O. Box 169 NEW CALEDONIA: SOCIETE IMPORTATION

Automobile De

PACIFIQUE, Rond-Point du Pacific (Station Total) B.P. 438, Noumea.

The Toyota range includes; Toyota 1000, Toyota Starlet, Toyota Corolla, Toyota Celica, Toyota Corona, Toyota Cressida, Toyota Crown

SUBSCRIPTIONS PIM is airfreighted to most subscribers and agents in the Pacific Islands and the United States.

Aust.

Other American Samoa $13 $US16 Australia $12 Canada $14 $US18 Cook Islands $13 Fiji $12 $F12 French Polynesia $14 CFP 1700 Guam $13 $US16 Gilbert Islands $13 Hawaii $13 $US16 Japan $16 Y4500 Micronesia $13 $US16 Nauru $13 New Caledonia $14 CFP 1700 New Hebrides $13 New Zealand $12 $NZ13.50 Niue $13 Norfolk Island $12 Northern Marianas $13 $US16 Papua New Guinea $13 K12 Solomon Islands $13 Tonga $13 Tuvalu $13 United Kingdom $15 £10 US Mainland $14 $US18 Western Samoa $13 Cover: From a Bengt Danielsson photograph of French Polynesia's political prisoner Charlie Ching.

EPOKO

Pacific Islands Monthly

Voi. 50 No. 4 April 1979 (USPS 952480) Elsewhere: SAI6 Payment by personal cheque is accepted in Australian, US, New Zealand, UK and Fiji currency. For other remittances please obtain a bank draft in Australian dollars made payable to the ANZ Banking Group, 88 Wentworth Avenue, Sydney, Australia.

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Published monthly by Pacific Publications (Aust.) Pty Ltd and printed in Australia by Paramac, Alexandria, NSW Australian cover price is recommended retail only. Registered at the GPO Sydney for transmission by post as a publication category B. Second class postage paid at Honolulu, Hawaii. Copyright © 1978 Pacific Publications (Aust.) Pty Ltd.

Postmaster Honolulu: Send address changes to PIM Hawaii, 2812 Kahawai St Honolulu, Hawaii 96822.

This Month

• Political trial in Tahiti Six men gaoled, but defence lawyers from Paris turn the case into something the like of which Papeete has never seen before . 9 • Art Artist Bobby Holcomb tells what he tries to do in his paintings, and why he chooses to live in French Polynesia rather than his native Hawaii .. 12 • Cook Islands More excerpts from a new book telling the colourful tale of the reign of the now fallen House of Henry 14 • US and the Pacific A US Senate committee hearing shows that Uncle Sam hasn’t yet got his act together on future relations with Pacific Island countries 17 • Banaba —Banabans ‘invade’ their homeland, Ocean Island, and argue their case for ownership with petrol bombs 22 • New Hebrides Despite deep misgivings on the ‘moderate’ side of politics, the new government of national unity holds together and the painful progress to independence goes on 27 • New Caledonia A thesis by an Australian history student on an episode in New Caledonian history sparks controversy in Noumea 35 • Fiji Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara is characteristically outspoken on the high salaries paid to United Nations experts in his country, and puts a possible solution to visiting UN tall poppy Bradford Morse 39 • Aviation A close look at the dilemma facing Pacific regional airlines in the wake of the low fare revolution 49 • PNG investment Foreign investors are welcome in Papua New Guinea, but not if they’re only after ‘a fast buck or kina’ 55 Afterthoughts 29 American Samoa 42, 57 Art 12 Australia 24, 25 Aviation 49 Books 45 Banaba 22 Colonialism 9 Cook Islands 14, 25 Deaths 67 Fill 39 Hawaii 48 Indonesia 25 Islands Press 21 Letters 4 New Caledonia 35 New Hebrides 27 New Zealand 24, 25, 39 Pacific Report 7 Papua New Guinea 25, 29, 41, 45, 46, 55 People 32 Philately 63 Shipping 69 Solomon Islands 22 Tahiti 9, 12, 39 The Region 17, 24, 49 Tourism 49 Tradewlnds 49 United States 17, 24, 25 Western Samoa 25, 41, 42 Yachts 65 Yesterday 35 Bobby Holcomb... Neo- Polynesian art in Tahiti John Kaputin... guidelines for investors in PNG.

PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY - APRIL, 1979 Founded 1930 by R. W. Robson Publisher Stuart Inder Editor Bob Hawkins Editorial Adviser John Carter Manager John Berry Advertising Steve Gray, Peter Bedwell A Pacific Publications production 76 Clarence Street, Sydney 2000 GPO Box 3408 Sydney 2001 Cables: PACPUB Sydney Telex: Pacpub 21242 Telephone: Sydney 29 6693

LETTERS Simple questions for US My questions may be very simplistic and naive but nevertheless have bothered me for some time. As a member of the Micronesian community for four years and also a US citizen, I feel the right to ask them of the US and particularly the Department of Interior.

Was the ‘trust’ of Micronesia in the hands of the US under the United Nations to guide and assist them from the end of World War II to economic and political self-determination?

If so, why is it that the US has been continually increasing economic aid, social welfare programmes particularly, with no apparent concern for the lack of tangible economic development until the beginning of the issue of transition and termination of that ‘trust’?

Why has the US built up a bureaucratic monster that employs 61% of the employed in Micronesia and then undertaken a fiscal restraint and budget cut programme two years prior to the opening rounds of status talks with these peoples?

Why does the ‘free feeding’ programme, so generously volunteered by the US, suddenly have a price tag of SUSI 7 million?

Why was it initiated in the first place without explanation that it was a welfare programme only as long as the people stayed politically dependent upon the US, or they would have to pay for it out of their own funds?

Does the US feel any responsibility for the divisive repercussions of the withdrawal of the programme, or the ‘strings’ now attached, among the Micronesian people toward their leaders who have opposed it?

How well have we handled our ‘trust’ if the peoples of Micronesia are economically crippled and must seek foreign investment after termination of the trusteeship to begin economic self-sufficiency?

How politically developed are these people if the leaders’ credibility and wisdom are being challenged by their own who have no idea of the state of their economy and blame their leaders for the withdrawal of the US ‘generosity’?

I feel the people of America do believe in human rights and are moral and people of conscience. The actions of our Department of Interior and the US Congress are another matter. A person responds from the heart. A politician or bureaucrat is sensitive to votes and public opinion.

Ask the average American where Micronesia is and he’ll say: ‘Mike who?’ I pray for Micronesia and her people. I pray for America.

Saipan Northern Marianas

Jon D. Kawika

A man before his time Re the article on Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna which I submitted last year and which was published in PIM January.

Recently I have been working in the Fiji National Archives in Suva. While working through the Methodist collection I came across a file containing the same speech given by Ratu Sukuna to the Defence Club but the date was 1934.

Mention is made to 60 years of British rule. As Fiji ceded to Britain in 1874, this would mean the paper was delivered in 1934 which makes it an even more interesting statement.

Camberwell Victoria Australia KEN JAMES A good point, Percy Percy Chatterton is to be congratulated for his criticism of the condom-pushing campaign in Papua New Guinea (PIM February). He has said what many other people are thinking.

There is one other aspect which has not been discussed publicly. The condoms being sold by Family Planning Association pedlars in PNG are, I assure you, uncomfortable and very difficult to use. There must by now have been many pregnancies directly attributable to this FPA campaign. I wonder whether members of the FPA executive have tried using the wretched things themselves?

This misguided FPA campaign has surely set back the cause of birth control by many years in PNG. The public has now come to associate birth control with the selling of third rate condoms by self-interested pedlars.

UPNG Papua New Guinea T.E.S.

No ‘lapse of taste’

My attention has been drawn to your comments on the report in Nabanga of my farewell interview with Jean Massias and Mr Laffont (PIM January).

In fairness to them and Nabanga they should be acquitted of any ‘lapse of taste’ on their part. The quotation in their report of what, to a Frenchman reading my French, might have been taken as a rather colourful and amusing Anglicism, was certainly with affectionate rather than any malicious intent.

Equally certainly, I took no offence, where none was intended very much the reverse in fact. Nor should you.

Callow J. S. CHAMPION Hereford ( latel y British England Resident Commissioner in the New Hebrides) PIM is relieved that Mr Champion was not offended and that he took the matter in the spirit in which Mr Massias says it was intended.

PNG the lucky country?

I read your Tropicalities item about the three Mekeo men back from the United States (PIM January). I met all the nationals who were in the PNG dance group while they were here in New York City. It was good to talk with them, some in Pidgin, others in Motu. I was a missionary in New Guinea in the 1950 s and early 19605. I love New Guinea, both the people and the land.

Andy Supeke says; ‘As usual these people ... discovered, as do so many Papua New Guineans, that foreigners know so little about their country not even where it is.’

I am a school teacher here in John Champion... no offence taken 4 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY - APRIL, 1979

I New York City and would like * to say that many of the children I have taught from year to year [ have parents who fought in [ World War II and were in New r Guinea. These parents have [ told their children of their experiences in New Guinea so the younger generation do know where it is.

During the 14 years I have been teaching since my return from Papua New Guinea I have taught class sizes on the average of 35 children. So, 35 multiplied by 14 equals 490.

Those 490 children have seen my slides and heard all my experiences.

There are so few Papua New Guineans who have visited the States (I can think of only seven to date outside of the Raun Raun dance team) that they have not confronted enough people to come to the conclusion that foreigners know so little.

Most Christian church congregations know where New Guinea is if they are at all missionary-minded. Most wellestablished Christian schools and colleges inform their students as to where New Guinea is so that they may consider it as a place to go to preach the gospel where Christ has never been named. That’s where I heard about the second largest island in the world .. .

The Mekeo people said ‘America is not good .. . our place good ...’ I think this shows a lack of education on their part as to interdependence of nations on one another. New Guinea is ‘good’ and free today because Americans helped defend it from a dominion which would not have been good for them.

Perhaps New Guineans today would be working in their gardens to produce food for the government instead of their awn individual families. They night not be free today to ravel to the USA to see the \mericans ‘hustling to make a iving’. But they should be educated to the fact that if it veren’t for the earnings (delations of hustling American Christians), there would be no nissionaries there in Papua 'Jew Guinea offering the bread )f life, eternal life, for easy taking. Because of our Good American Way of Life, the gospel has been free to be preached, sinners converted, and lives changed to serve the Lord . . .

America is good. We are free here to worship God as we see fit. The word of God is not bound as it is in some countries. I am glad I was born here for it was here that I heard and received the good news of salvation in Christ and through him shall ‘never hunger nor thirst’.

Because of the entrance of foreign missionaries into New Guinea, the nationals there need ‘never hunger or never thirst’. The word of life is there for the taking. They don’t even have to dirty their hands. Just reach out .. .

Every evening that there was a showing of the PNG dancing at the Museum of Natural History there were hundreds of people who could not get inside due to lack of seats. If New Guinea was not well known I’m sure the Americans wouldn’t have been interested enough to show up ... I have pictures of Aisaga Opu in a new blue suit I bought him in Macy’s. He had a good time shopping for himself and his son.

Queens Village New York USA

Lois F. James

Perhaps a Papua New Guinean would like to agree or disagree with Ms James. Editor.

Misplaced ‘no confidence 7 In your January issue I read with interest your Port Moresby correspondent Angus Smales’ articles on the topic ‘Somare, the Great Survivor’.

On page 17 Mr Smales reported that I introduced a motion of no confidence in the Somare administration in the November-December sitting of the Papua New Guinea Parliament.

I wish to correct that. It was the Honorable Member for New Ireland Province Mr Noel Levi who moved a motion of no confidence in the Somare Government under the sponsorship of the ‘Loyal Opposition’.

May I be allowed to suggest, Sir, that in future your correspondents spare no effort to ensure that what is reported is as accurate as possible.

J. C. NOEL Member for Kiriwina- Goodenough and Minister Boroko for Housing and Urban Papua New Guinea Management PIM apologises for its error, to both Mr John Noel and Mr Noel Levi.

Style even depth Congratulations on PIM for December and January. For a while I thought it was going to be all tits and bums but now PIM has suddenly become a paper of style and even depth which makes it worth buying again.

UPNG Papua New Guinea

Ross Stevens

Is all forgiven?

Apparently the governments of New Zealand and France are working toward closer ties. A New Zealand Herald news item on February 2 stated that a ‘high-powered French naval visit in two weeks’ time may herald a new era of entente cordiale between New Zealand and France . .. Since differences over nuclear testing at Mururoa have been resolved there has been greater contact 9 So, apparently, all is forgiven, and underground nuclear tests are a worry of the past. However, according to the NZ Department of Scientific and Industrial Research geophysics division, in a letter dated December 15, 1978, two underground tests were conducted in November 1978 at Mururoa, a small one on November 3 and the other, quite large, ‘possibly 100 kilotons or more’, on November 30.

And, according to many scientists, underground nuclear tests are equally as dangerous as atmospheric ones, so the silencing by such dubious means, of anyone who opposes them, must be viewed with alarm.

Elaine Shaw

Auckland New Zealand They know who they are Thank you and congratulations for your coverage of Norfolk Island in February. It was fair on the whole and in some parts it was generous.

Your headline stating we have an ‘identity crisis’ is very misleading. We do not have an identity crisis. We know exactly who we are and what we believe.

There is a crisis, but it is in Australia, not on Norfolk. Australia wants to lay hands on Norfolk as its own property but it suddenly has doubts and wonders whether Norfolk might be entitled to its own ideas.

So the crisis is whether Australia should live up to its commitments to let Norfolk people decide their own future or whether it should go on making all the important decisions and, incidentally, grab off 350 000 square kilometres of ocean for itself while the Norfolk Islanders aren’t looking.

No matter which way the crisis is settled, Norfolk Islanders will go on knowing we are very different people from Australians, and that we are entitled to this island and the sea around. Australia can take its usual attitude of ‘the islands don’t count’ and take our sea, and suffer the consequences. Or it can decide to go along at last with England and the US and NZ and let a small island have its own fair g°- That is the crisis. Will Australia honour its commitments or will it take what it thinks it might get away with?

John Pearson

Society of Descendants Secretary of the Pitcairn Settlers Norfolk Island John Noel... no ‘no confidence’ motion 5 LETTERS 'ACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY APRIL, 1979

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Pacific Report

Chinese Vice-Premier Gives Png A Miss

‘Pressure of business’ arising from the invasion of Vietnam was probably behind the cancellation of the planned March Pacific tour by Chinese Vice-premier Geng Biao. Vicepremier Geng has a reputation as an international troubleshooter. But Zhen Muhua, a more junior vice-premier, stood in for him so the various hosts would not be too disappointed.

She was to visit Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Western Samoa. A curious feature of the itinerary was the absence - from it of Papua New Guinea, largest of the Pacific nations.

The official PNG Newsletter had announced on January 19 that Vice-premier Geng would be spending seven days in PNG in the course of his March tour. The idea of exchange visits between PNG and Chinese leaders went into operation in late 1976 with a visit to China by PNG Prime Minister Michael Somare himself. Mrs Zhen has not the seniority of a prime minister, or of Vice-premier Geng, and in view of the fact that PNG is currently reviewing its whole foreign policy with particular reference to China and Russia (neither of which is at present represented diplomatically in PNG), Mrs Zhen’s omission of PNG from her swing through the Pacific is seen by PNG foreign affairs officials as having all the hallmarks of that inscrutable oriental tact which might be expected of her.

New Caledonia’S ‘Contract’ With France

After a bumpy passage, New Caledonia’s council of government in February approved the French Government’s plan for a 10-year contract between France and the territory. It provides for an economic reorganisation of the territory, with emphasis on the economic, social and cultural promotion of its Melanesian and Polynesian inhabitants.

Banabans Say No Again - Loudly

More than 1000 Banabans at a March meeting on Fiji’s Rabi Island angrily rejected new British proposals to meet their demand for separation from the Gilbert Islands (to be known as Kiribati after independence in July). British Undersecretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Evan Luard was shouted down as he put the proposals, which fell short of Banaban claims for complete separation Meanwhile, the Banaban cause has won expressions of support from the World Federation of Trade Unions, headquartered in Prague, Czechoslovakia.

Top Brass Beat Path To New Hebrides

After many decades of ‘benign neglect’ by the condominial powers, the New Hebrides is now a Mecca for a succession of s ©n' or British and French officials. February saw visits by | Sir Michael Palliser, permanent Under-secretary of State in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and head of the diplomatic service of that office, and of French Secretary of State m ° verseas De P ar tments and Territories Paul Dijoud It was Mr Dijoud’s second visit in six months. He is expected back yet again in May. With Lord Goronwy-Roberts, British minis- ♦ r i )f A ? tate for forei 9 n and commonwealth affairs, he will study the proposed New Hebrides constitution which, if approved at a referendum, will form the basis for election’s. The elected government will then decide on a date for independence in 1980. H

Tuvalu Signs With Uncle Sam

Under a recent treaty of friendship between the United States and Tuvalu, the US has dropped its claims to four of the country s nine islands - Funafuti, Nukufetau, Nukulaelae and Niualakita. The treaty provides for consultations between the two parties on security and marine resource matters, waters near Tuvalu are an important fishing ground for US and other foreign fishermen.

Polynesia’S Problem As Seen By Paris

France’s High Commissioner in French Polynesia, Paul Cousseran, said in an interview with the newspaper Depeche de Tahiti: ‘One can be intellectually for the CEP (Centre d'Experimentations du Pacifique, the French nuclear test agency), or one can be intellectually against it. But the fact is that this country lives off it. Three thousand two hundred families do so quite directly, not counting Polynesian military personnel. Above all, thousands of families live off it indirectly,’ Mr Cousseran added: ‘I have said before and I repeat: independence is not the problem faced by this country. On the contrary, its problem is its dependence . . . Polynesia’s problem is that it does not produce what it consumes, it does not produce the money necessary to pay for what it consumes, so someone must always be found to pay in its stead.’

Mick Leahy Dies In Papua New Guinea

Explorer, farmer, grazier, Michael James Leahy died at his Zenag, Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea, home in March, aged 78. Mick Leahy won world fame for his explorations in the PNG Highlands in the early thirties. His search was for gold but he will be remembered for his trail-blazing.

Tupuola Efi Under Threat

Early March saw strong suggestions that Prime Minister Tupuola Efi of Western Samoa could be toppled when the new parliament met late in the month or early in April. A majority of new members, with three former Tupuola supporters, had pledged to vote for Vaai Kolone, a veteran member from Savaii. Should they all stand firm, Vaai Kolone could win as many as 30 of the 47 votes (See election report, Political Currents.)

Irian Java Rebels Fly To Sweden

Jacob Prai, self-proclaimed president of the provisional government of West Papua (Irian Jaya), and his three most senior aides flew out of Port Moresby in February for Sweden.

With Mr Prai were his former deputy, Otto Ondawame, Darius Maury and Amos Indey. The group also included Nicholas Meset, a Papua New Guinea citizen, who was arrested with Messrs Prai and Ondawame last September in the township of Vanimo near the Irian Jaya border. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees spent more than three months seeking a sanctuary for the men after PNG refused them political asylum. Announcing Sweden’s decision, a UN regional representative said he was continuing talks with the PNG Government on the future of another 103 Irianese refugees seeking asylum.

Pacific’S Big Slice Of Undp Funds

This year’s United Nations Development Programme budget lifts aid for South Pacific countries from $2 million to $12.3 million, giving a regional per capita aid figure of about $3, the highest amount provided by the UNDP to any part of the world. UNDP administrator, Brad Morse, said the money would be used for fisheries development, off-shore prospecting, research into root crops, telecommunications and the bulk purchase of drugs.

Fiji Casts Out The Noose

Fiji has abolished capital punishment for murder. The crime in future will be punishable only by life imprisonment Fiji’s fast hanging was in 1964. When the question was debated in parliament in March, seven members said they opposed abolition, but only one opposing voice was heard when the vote was taken.

Joint Exercises For France. Nz?

The French navy has invited two New Zealand warships and two Royal New Zealand Air Force Orion aircraft to take part in training exercises off Tahiti in May. The invitation was issued by Rear-Admiral Y.L.L. Leenhardt, commander-inchief of French military forces in the Pacific, during a February visit to New Zealand.

Coalition Talk Again In Fiji

The prospect of a coalition government between the mainly Fijian Alliance Party and the mainly Indian National Federation Party is a hardy annual of Fiji politics. It was flowering again in March with Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara once again expressing support for the idea. In a long inter- 7 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY APRIL, 1979

view with Fiji Times editor Vijendra Kumar, Ratu Mara said his main reason was to ensure a balanced multi-racial representation in cabinet, adding that he was not naive enough to believe that all potential cabinet material was in his own Alliance Party.

Lini Huddles With Jimmy Carter

Father Walter Lini, deputy chief minister of the New Hebrides, was among representatives of churches from 130 countries at the 1979 annual prayer breakfast hosted by US President Jimmy Carter in Washington. After a talk with President Carter Fr Lini predicted closer relations between the New Hebrides and the US after independence.

Outcry On Australian Academic

The Papua New Guinea government’s decision to retain an Australian academic to conduct a review of PNG foreign policy (PIM March) has aroused a storm of protest. Opposition leader lambakey Okuk described it as ‘a kick in the teeth’ for officers of the Foreign Affairs Department, and said it made a joke of the government’s claim that it was free from Australian influence in its decision-making.

Un Man With The Two Limousines

The controversy over highly paid United Nations Development Programme experts touched off by Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, Fiji’s Prime Minister (Tropicalities), has spilled over into Western Samoa. Apia newspaper Savali, published by the Prime Minister’s department, noted in February: ‘Prime Minister Tupuola Efi’s salary is SWS7B3O per annum.

The lowest paid UN expert, known as L 1 can expect to earn around $25 000. At L 3 he is at $34 000 and can afford, if he so desires, to own two Mercedes-Benz limousines. The dutyfree privileges which go with the post have made such a proposition attractive to at least one expert in Samoa.’

$2 Million To Keep Forum Flag Afloat

Australia, New Zealand and Island nations with shares in the Pacific Forum Line will make more than $2 million available in bank overdrafts to keep the line going. President Hammer deßoburt of Nauru, chairman of the regional transport ministers’ meeting in Auckland in February, said the line could now meet existing debts of $1 million and operating costs until 1981.

Somare Stirs Up The Unions

A statement by Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Michael Somare that he would be ‘only too glad’ to go along with any parliamentary decision to outlaw trade unions in the country has stirred up a united opposition front of trade unions and associations with about 200 000 members. The front plans a concerted campaign against any move to ban or restrict trade unions in PNG. Mr Somare spoke after strikes had hit a number of industries, including the economically vital Bougainville copper mine.

Evergreen Gets Pago Plum

A new air service between American Samoa and the US Trust Territory of the Pacific (Micronesia) has been approved by the US Civil Aeronautics Board. The Arizona-based airline Evergreen International will operate the service. Evergreen was granted a temporary licence to operate charters between American Samoa and the USA last year, but no decision on a permanent licence will be made until completion of hearings on an objection by Zantop International Airlines.

Mara Welcomes Tora And Friends

Apisai Tora and other former members of the Taukei (Fijian) committee of the predominantly Indian National Federation Party were ceremonially welcomed into the Alliance Party in March. The ruling Alliance Party is mainly Fijian in membership. Present at the ceremony were Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara and a number of government ministers.

Sandalwood Oil Plant For New Caledonia

Plans have been announced for a sandalwood oil distillery in New Caledonia which on completion will produce 12 tonnes of sandalwood oil, or 10% of world production, a year.

The factory, to cost $2 million, will use raw materials from New Caledonia’s Lifou and Mare Islands, and the Isle of Pines. The oil will be used in the French perfume industry.

Who’S Idea On Diarrhoeal Diseases

Diarrhoeal diseases, still among the top killers in Pacific Island communities, expecially of children, could face a formidable foe in the newly developed oral rehydration method being promoted by the World Health Organisation in this International Year of the Child. The oral therapy has many advantages over the usual intravenous method. The prescribed liquid is simple to prepare and, above all, it can be administered at home.

Nadi College Thinks Of Needy

Nadi College, Fiji, is introducing a seventh form for students who cannot afford the SF3OOO annual fee charged at the University of the South Pacific. Seventh-form students, who will sit for the New Zealand bursaries examination, will pay S3OO for the year.

More Local Equity For Post-Courier

South Pacific Post Pty Ltd, publishers of the Papua New Guinea Post-Courier, plan a capital restructuring designed to widen local ownership and bring the company’s holding down to about 60%. South Pacific Post is a subsidiary of the Melbourne-based Herald & Weekly Times Ltd.

Apia Warning On American Firm

The Western Samoa Government has issued a warning that people should not become involved with the San Diegobased finance firm of Stanley M. Sabihon and Associates.

The government warning said: The firm claims to offer large amounts of money at cheap interest rates. However, they "disappear” after applicants have paid a fee for their applications to be processed.’ The statement added that the government was ‘co-operating with the FBI in an investigation of the firm.’

Huge Bid For Guam Franchise

A resounding vote of confidence in the future of Guam’s tourist industry was a bid of SUSI4O million by Duty Free Shoppers Ltd for the 15-year shopping and restaurant franchise at the proposed new Guam international air terminal. The bid was believed to be based on the ever-increasing affluence and increasing numbers of Japanese visitors, the opening of new air services to Guam, and anticipated interest in Guam as a tropical resort for South Koreans.

Cooks’ Davis Looking Elsewhere

The Cook Islands Government has told New Zealand that it will look elsewhere for supplies if it is not allowed to send its own vessels to New Zealand to collect cargo. The NZ Seamen’s Union threatened to impose a ban on all NZ-registered vessels serving Rarotonga if the Cooks persisted in trying to send its locally-manned vessels to New Zealand. The union was refusing to allow vessels not manned by New Zealanders to be in the service. Cooks Premier Tom Davis was quoted in the New Zealand Herald as saying: ‘What am I going to do? Sit and put up with it? No sir.’ The only solution, he said, was to buy elsewhere.

APOLOGY TO MESSRS KHASHOGGI,

Munk And Gilmour

In the January issue of PIM an item was published in Pacific Report which reported a statement made by Senator Kuar Battan Singh last November in the Fiji Senate. In the statement Senator Singh made certain allegations against Mr Adnan Khashoggi, Mr Peter Munk and Mr David Gilmour. PIM in reporting that the allegations had been made was not intending to convey the impression that the allegations were true. On the contrary, PIM is satisfied that the allegations were not true. PIM apologises unconditionally to Messrs Khashoggi, Munk and Gilmour for any embarrassment which this article, including its headline, may have caused them. 8 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY - APRIL, 1979

Pacific Report

Tahiti: Political

Trial With

New Politics

When the long delayed, twice postponed, trial of young Tahitians accused of having bombed the Papeete telephone exchange and murdered a French businessman (PIM November 1977, August 1978) ended on February 2, the roles of accusers and accused had been completely reversed, write Marie-Therese and Bengt Danielsson from Papeete.

One after the other, the defendants had risen and solemnly accused France of an even more serious crime that of slowly murdering the population of French Polynesia with its nuclear explosions. Even before the final declarations of these main protagonists in the drama, the eight spirited law- -1 yers for the defence had condemned the whole rotten i colonial system within which the trial was taking place a I system maintained, as they pointed out, with the help of I thousands of gendarmes, foreign legionnaires and paratroops.

Such a sudden transform- -1 ation of the court, officially f convened to judge a few common criminals, into a political forum made a strong impression on the jury they took three and a half hours to reach their verdict. When, at 7pm, it was finally read to a hushed audience made up mainly of government officials, French gendarmes and plainclothes police flown in from Paris for the occasion, it jwas considerably more lenient than the death penalties and life sentences for which the government-inspired mass media had long been clamouring.

Self-confessed killer Marcel Tahutini, and his brother Jonas, who was captain of the so-called Toto tupuna (Blood of our Ancestors) guerrilla group, were sentenced to 20 years apiece, while the three other members got off with 18, 10 and five years.

It can however be argued that the sentence of 10 years meted out to Charlie Ching, president of the legally constituted Tahitian People’s Independence Party, was less warranted. He had been found innocent of the main charges of having personally organised and directed the bomb attack and the murder.

In view of the fact that the trial had repeatedly shown glaring denials of basic human and legal rights, the defence immediately lodged an appeal.

For those of us who had witnessed in 1959 how Charlie Ching’s uncle, the old freedom fighter Pouvanaa a Oopa had been shamelessly framed with the help of police snoopers and false evidence, and then sent off to linger for eight long years in French gaols, the 1979 trial was nevertheless a milestone.

All credit for this must however go to the relatives and friends of the accused who took the unprecedented step of hiring first-rate French metropolitan lawyers, willing and able to speak up and denounce all the denials of justice and irregularities which in the past have been simply overlooked or condoned. The presence of these lawyers had the salutary effect of obliging the French Government to despatch to Tahiti, at the last moment, a new presiding judge who was presented as being extremely liberal’. What this meant, in the event, was that he did his best, as all judges should, to give everybody a fair hearing.

To most people in French Polynesia it came as a new and rather shocking experience to hear, or to read, throughout the five-day trial, the constant selfdescriptions of the accused as ‘soldiers in a liberation army, whose duty it was to kill the enemy’.

Actually none of the boys, all in their early twenties, looked exactly like a bloodthirsty killer. People who know them well describe them as kind and mild-mannered.

But apart from such personal qualities they had another thing in common: they were school drop-outs who had been rejected by the harsh new European-type society which has come into being in Tahiti since the nuclear era began.

They had ended up believing that their failure was not of their own doing but inherent in the system imposed by their French colonial masters. A few meetings with Charlie Ching had confirmed them in this belief and helped them to articulate their feelings better, the feeling of hatred in particular.

The Toto tupuna commando members, ever since their arrest more than a year ago, had not only admitted but almost boasted of their deeds.

The only really suspenseful aspect of the trial, therefore, was provided by the public prosecutor’s attempts to implicate Charlie Ching in the bomb attack and murder.

Mr Ching admitted freely Part of the overflow crowd outside the court. Photo B. Danielsson PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY APRIL, 1979 COLONIALISM

that he had, indeed, organised the Toto tupuna commando group. But he had done so only in order to attack military targets, such as the aircraft and warships maintaining the shuttle run between Tahiti and Mururoa, site of France’s nuclear testing.

The only human .target he had selected was the principal upholder and defender of the colonial system, the then minister for overseas territories Olivier Stirn. However, when Mr Ching found out, at the time of the planned attack, that the military airfield and navy harbour to be visited by Stirn were closely guarded by armed soldiers accompanied by dogs he put off all action for the time being.

Jonas Tahutini, captain of the Toto tupuna commando, bitterly frustrated by this hesitation on the part of Charlie Ching, then took over. He decided to mount his own attacks against less protected civilian targets in order to sow terror and panic in the enemy ranks.

His men swore to follow him wherever he led them.

One evening in August 1977, during a visit by Olivier Stirn to Tahiti, they placed charges of stolen dynamite against the walls of the Papeete telephone exchange. Only one went off and damage was quite limited.

But the message left on the spot aroused strong psychological shockwaves: ‘Take your flag, your people and your statute, Stirn, and go home!’

Two weeks later Jonas Tahutini drove his men to an exclusive residential section on the west coast, where most homes belong to Europeans.

After failing to trap two Frenchwomen, they came upon an isolated villa where they found a French businessman sound asleep. Marcel Tahutini shot him in cold blood. The message left behind said; ‘We do not want any more Frenchmen in our country.’

Throughout the trial Charlie Ching stuck to his guns, so to speak. He swore that he had no advance notice of this shift in tactics to civilian and nonofficial targets, of which he strongly disapproved. From the beginning the public prosecutor pooh-poohed this statement as a patent lie. He was evidently bent of securing a life sentence for the ‘obnoxious’

Mr Ching. He was however unable to muster a single witness to support the charge that Mr Ching organised the bomb attack and murder. All the Toto tupuna boys emphatically exonerated him. Marcel Tahutini went a step further and accused the French police of trying to persuade him to bear false witness against Ching.

The betrayal was to be rewarded by an extremely lenient sentence. In his final speech the public prosecutor dropped this charge altogether and maintained only the very vague one of ‘consorting with proven criminals’.

When their turn came, the defence lawyers devoted their final addresses wholly to the wider issue of who was ultimately responsible for the mounting tide of violence and crime in Tahiti. To a man they pointed the finger at the French Government which has consistently refused to let French Polynesia follow the road of all other Pacific peoples, except the Kanaks of the other French colony of New Caledonia, towards selfrule and independence. Even worse, they claimed, there was a deliberate policy of flooding the Islands with French settlers from the ‘mother country’ and from former African colonies.

There are now 20 000 of them, and they are still coming in at the rate of 1000 a year. The purpose of this belated colonis- Marcel Tahutini is led from the courtroom. Photo B. Danielsson 10 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY - APRIL, 1979 COLONIALISM

ation, in the worst nineteenthcentury tradition, is to make the Islands ‘safe’ for the continued nuclear tests which by now have poisoned the whole population.

Another more insidious French policy denounced by the defence lawyers is the systematic destruction of the Polynesian culture and personality, with the help of French-language schools, powerful. governmentcontrolled mass media, and compulsory military training programmes. For every Polynesian on a decent income, 10 live in slums. It is not surprising, therefore, argued the lawyers, if many young Polynesians do not see any alternative to armed revolt.

One of the black-robed accusers, who happened to be born in Algeria, drew a telling parallel between the Tahitian situation and the total blindness shown in Algeria by the French authorities and settlers who, almost to the bitter end, >aw the Arab freedom fighters is nothing but criminals and bandits.

Quite revealing of the general turn taken by the debate it this stage was the appearmce in the witness box of the dumber One local politician.

Vice-President Francis Sanford a man who at each election musters at least a two-thirds majority. Sanford had no inhibitions whatsoever about repeating what he had so often said in the past - that although he is opposed to violent methods, he does not blame those who wish to obtain independence for the Polynesian people, adding that their activities do not constitute criminal conspiracy but represent an undisputed right, guaranteed by the French consititution and the United Nations charter. As to the bomb, Sanford declared that he was as opposed as ever to continued nuclear testing in the Islands.

The defence lawyers also pointed to unjust aspects of the colonial system as demonstrated by court proceedings.

For example, the jury was composed of four persons only, instead of nine as in France.

The four would obviously have much less chance of imposing their views on the three presiding judges than would the larger number. The defence counsel also pointed to the injustice of French-language skills being required of jurors, a requirement which unavoidably made it very difficult for accused persons, who are mostly Polynesians, to get a fair hearing.

In their final salvoes, the defence lawyers enumerated a long series of irregularities committed during the preparations for the trial. They especially singled out for criticism the disappearance of potentially embarrassing documents, and brutal interrogations carried out not, as the law prescribes, by examining magistrates, but by various police officers. One of the latter, who had made the mistake of being present in the courtroom at the time, was promptly pointed out by his victim. On other occasions, the interrogators had made the accused sign depositions in French that did not correspond to their statements in Tahitian. In a surprise move, the lawyers also brought to the witness box a convicted criminal, Manuel Tauhiro, who started the prison riots in January 1978 (PIM April 1978). Mr Tauhiro had an even more gruesome tale to tell. Two officers from the French ‘thought police’, Renseignements Generaux, had promised him parole if he killed Charlie Ching, who conveniently happened to be in the cell next to his own. Mr Tauhiro cheerfully gave the names of the officers concerned Lecam and Noel.

Last but not least there had been a serious denial of justice in that during the first six months of their detention the accused were not assisted by defence counsel at all. It appeared that the local justice department had actually appointed several local lawyers to perform this task, as the law prescribes in the case of ‘paupers’. But the lawyers concerned had never found time to visit their ‘clients’. This was the main reason why the relatives and friends of Charlie Ching and the Toto tupuna boys eventually set about raising the necessary funds to call in metropolitan lawyers.

In view of all this, there seemed to be abundant grounds for quashing the verdicts and ordering a retrial. At least, everybody expected the sentenced men to remain in custody in Tahiti until the decision of the appeals court had been made. However, four days later, in a surprise move, the prisoners were taken out of their cells, bundled into a military plane at Faaa airport, flown to the atoll of Hao, the army base in the Tuamotu group where nuclear bombs are assembled, and transferred to another plane which immediately took off for France, via the French West Indies.

Their final destination may well be Baumettes prison in Marseilles where Charlie Ching has already served two years.

The only possible explanation for such a hasty removal of the prisoners is the fear felt in Paris that their continued presence in Tahiti will remind the population too forcefully of the issues raised by their trial.

The defence lawyers discuss the case during a break... they made It hot. Photo B, Danielsson COLONIALISM ACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY - APRIL, 1979

Neo-Polynesian art through Bobby Holcomb’s eyes Born in Hawaii where ‘Polynesian culture has all but died ’

Bobby Holcomb is developing what he calls his ‘ neo - Polynesian ’ art form on the French Polynesian Island of Huahine. Robert F. Kay, a contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle, who spent six months recently in French Polynesia, reports.

Bobby Holcomb stared defiantly at the young Tahitian man and repeated: T will not paint racing stripes on your pirogue (canoe).’ the Tahitian tried to convince him otherwise but with no success.

The man finally left and Bobby shook his head in despair.

Bobby is usually glad to do a favour for a villager but as far as he was concerned, the Tahitian was asking him to desecrate a genuine Hawaiianstyle outrigger canoe. ‘lf he had asked me to ornament the boat in a Polynesian fashion I would have been happy to do it but to decorate it like a sports car is out of the question.’

Bobby Holcomb is a young artist determined to keep traditional Polynesian art forms alive as well as creating new ones. Bom in Hawaii in 1947, the son of a black American serviceman and a Hawaiian- Portuguese mother, he was raised in the ramshackle housing projects of Honolulu.

Through a scholarship he attended the University of Redlands in Southern California and later travelled through the United States, Europe and Asia.

In his travels he was again fortunate. Sympathetic patrons of the arts and famous artists such as Salvador Dali saw promise in him. Bored with life in Europe, Bobby decided it was time to return to his roots in Hawaii. He boarded an ocean liner but never made it to Honolulu. On the ship he met a French artist living in Tahiti who urged him to see the island of Huahine in French Polynesia. Bobby boarded a flight for Huahine the same day. He has been there ever since.

On that island he and his Swiss-American companion, Kim Dios, live in a square brown clapboard house. Their home is at the foot of a holy mountain, Moua Tapu, near the ruins of several marde (temples). Huahine has over 500 temples and according to tradition it is one of the centres of mana (power) in Polynesia.

Huahine is also legendary for its proud and obstinate inhabitants. They are a combination of proud obstinacy and the spirituality of the ancient past. The environment for Holcomb is perfect. It is within these holy ruins that he finds inspiration for his paintings.

Bobby does not consider his artistic style unique but sees it rather as a new motif for Polynesian art. He explains: Traditionally Tahitian and other Polynesian artists used geometric patterns in their tapa and tattooing to create a harmonious design much like the Moorish style. My work combines the traditional geometric patterns with human and animal figures. It’s a new school of art. I call it ‘neo- Polynesian’.

He emphasises that Polynesian art is a sophisticated art form and by his definition cannot be pigeon-holed as ‘primitive’. He adds: ‘When Tahitians decorated their tapas and tattooed their bodies they did so for the pure aesthetic: pleasure of it rather than for utilitarian (religious or symbolic) purposes. It is the utilitarian aspect which for me: characterises primitive art.’

His works are richly coloured, finely detailed* sometimes erotic, and often have a mythical or ‘phantasmagorical’ touch. His paintings evoke an emotional response and express the all-pervading sensuousness that is part of the essence of Polynesia.

In Tahiti Bobby has startec a trend in women’s gowm. modified from Tahitian styles: Artist Bobby Holcomb in his tiputa (poncho)... competing with Paris?

'Tattooed Man’ ... Holcomb plans to bring back the art from Samoa 12 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY - APRIL, 1979 ART

which he calls chic maohi (chic Polynesian) and, according to their designer, they are as fashionable as anything in Paris. Manufactured out of materials such as tapa, cloth, and feathers, the neotraditional clothing uses the same natural colours that were employed before artificial dyes were available. Chic maohi designs include the tiputa{poncho) and the pareu (sarong).

He hopes the clothing will be as readily accepted by Tahitians as Western fashions such as nylon windbreakers and platform shoes which they seem to gobble up.

Although his creations sell, Bobby is equally concerned with the influence of his art on the Tahitian people. He was especially pleased by an exhibition in Papeete in June last year where many Tahitians who normally would not go to an art exhibit were drawn to the event. Besides paintings on display were costumes, outriggers, tapa, and photographs of children being taught by him in the schools.

For the children of Huahine, Bobby is nothing short of a pied piper. His rapport with youngsters enables him to work effectively as an art instructor, which he has now done for two years in Huahine. He feels his task is to educate the children and re-instil in them a pride in their artistic legacy. He feels the chief danger is that the Tahitian culture will be inundated by the West and lost forever. As an Hawaiian he is acutely aware of the past destruction of the Hawaiian culture and it seems to have left an indelible scar on his psyche.

Bobby feels strongly that Tahitian children must be first taught about their own culture and leam to appreciate that before they can integrate Western culture properly. ‘For Jxample,’ he says, ‘l’ll try to cultivate a child’s interest in Irawing Tahitian themes such is outriggers and dancers ather than airplanes and peedboats. The children know nstinctively that this is better )ecause it is something really fahitian.’ Although the symbols of the white culture sometimes seem more attractive to a young Polynesian, the children must be taught that their own legacy is just as important (Oceanic art, PIM, May 1978).

One question which arises is why he, an American with only part-Hawaiian ancestry, is teaching and painting in French Polynesia instead of Hawaii. He answers by saying: ‘l’m not in Hawaii because the Polynesian culture has all but died there. Nobody speaks Hawaiian save a few old people and some college professors. There is still a basic Polynesian essence in French Polynesia that has not been de-. stroyed. Gertrude Stein once said; “It’s not what the French give you, it’s what they don’t take away.” In other words here I can still walk down the street, speak a living Polynesian language and live in a Polynesian society.’

Bobby Holcomb late last year was in Samoa studying the ancient art of tattooing which he feels is an art form as important to the Polynesians as frescos were to the Italians or architecture to the Greeks.

According to Bobby; ‘Some of the most beautiful creations ever made were tattooed on people’s bodies and disappeared when they went to their graves.’ He hopes to bring the traditional form of tattooing back to Tahiti where it has become a lost art.

'Tamure’... sometimes erotic, always traditional Reclining Vahme'... combining traditional geometrical patterns with human figures ART ACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY - APRIL. 1979

Cook Islands

Davis Returns

To ‘Fear’ And

‘SUBJECTION’

Fear he had seen among the people of Haiti and the Dominican Republic was to be seen in the people of the Cook Islands on his return in 1971, writes Dr Tom Davis, now the Cooks premier, in Cook Islands Politics: The Inside Story published by Polynesian Press, Auckland, in association with the South Pacific Social Sciences Association of Suva, from a study co-ordinated by Professor Ron Crocombe of the Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific. PI M’s editorial adviser, John Carter, presents a second selection of extracts. The first appeared in PIM last month.

Dr Tom Davis, born in the Cooks in 1917, graduate of the University of Otago (NZ), exfellow of Sydney University, exsurgeon specialist to the Cook Islands Medical Service, exmedical monitor of the US Project Mercury moon shots and renowned in America as a physician and now Premier of the Cook Islands, devotes five pages to the ‘Rise of the Democratic Party'. Considering his battles with the CIP after answering an appeal from Cook Islanders ‘to come home\ Dr Davis' story is told with great restraint. But it pulls few punches when he tells of what he found during a short stay on Rarotonga in July 1971: i came back in 1971 to have a look and see for myself. I spent two weeks in Rarotonga, but it took only a few days to see that the complaints about the Henry Government were justified. The sense of an allpervasive fear in the people was overpowering and highly disturbing. The people as I remembered them of yore were self-assured, stood up for their rights, laughed a great deal and were always full of joy in meeting an old friend. This was no longer the case. I was avoided by people with whom I had grown up. Former patients and people whose health if not their lives I had given back to them, were cold toward me. People whose homes were as homes to me were no longer friends. I no longer could distinguish friend from foe. There were few who openly showed their pleasure at seeing me again. ‘lt was obviously no secret that I had returned with the possibility that I might oppose the existing government.

Indeed I had been away for 19 years, but I had been previously away for 16 years and had been welcomed home as a conquering hero. My achievements in the USA were not unknown to them and these were more notable than my achievements during the 16 years absence at school and medical school. The fear was real and existed in all but a few. It was what 1 had seen in Haiti and the Dominican Republic and elsewhere where people’s survival depended on subjection to those in political power. It was sad to see this in my once happy homeland. If there was one single factor which made me resolve to return, it was this. ‘There were other factors, of course. The two weeks’ stay showed clearly the nepotism, the deliberate distortion of democracy to gain politically ‘True to expectations Albert Henry... offered me head of state or deputy premier. self-serving ends, the political subjection of the public service, the deliberate use of people’s ignorance to gain credence with half truths as well as blatant misrepresentations, the purposeful destruction of both traditional and national leadership, the “happy the body and to hell with the mind” approach to the young, the undermining of the natural industriousness of our people with “no work” jobs, the removal of people from productive efforts to unproductive and unnecessary government jobs, the attack and deliberate downgrading of qualified and trained individuals, the victimisation of those foolish enough to voice criticisms of government, the rewarding of those whose only qualification was that they supported the Henry regime. The list goes on. All these helped me to make up my mind ...’

After returning to the United States to wind up his affairs. Dr Davis ‘arrived back in Rarotonga on October 1, 1971 to start what proved to be a long relentless road of political battles and personal abuse against a backdrop of corruption, dishonesty, deceit, discrimination, intimidation, economic ignorance and administrative ineptness. All of this I had expected, having known Albert of the silvery tongue long ago. True to expectations Albert Henry, both on my first visit and soon after my return, approached me and offered me head of state or deputy premier. Both were firmly refused. ‘The opposition party in the Cook Islands at that time was the United Cook Islanders Party (UCI) which was not really a party but a loosely organised group of sincere and honest citizenry dedicated to the downfall of Albert Henry, Their politics were emotionally charged, well-intentioned, but unsophisticated. They had little chance against the ruling Cook Islands Party under the leadership of Albert Henry who had received the purposive training of the New Zealand Communist Party, This basic training was obvious in the political practices that he put into effect which, as has happened elsewhere, eventually resulted in a grossly over-controlling government with partyoriented benefits of political office, and economic chaos . . .’

Dr Joe Williams, once regarded as Sir Albert’s most likely successor and a firm supporter for years, ‘ defected ’ in January, 1978, when he was minister of health and education. Dr Williams spills the beans in the eight pages he writes: Arise Sir Henry... Queen Elizabeth went to the Cooks in January 1974 to dub Albert Henry knight. Johnsons Photographic 14 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY - APRIL, 1979

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‘ln January 1978 two Cabinet ministers resigned. William Estall (agriculture) and myself (health and education). It was said that we were “power hungry academics” who resigned from our posts as ministers of the crown and from the Cook Islands Party because we were “greedy for position and money”. Does a minister resign from a prestigious position because of greed for power? Does a minister resign from the second highest paid position in the Cook Islands Government because of greed for money? I resigned to uphold the principles that I believe in; to uphold justice, to fight injustice and an ineffective system of government. I have come through the very heart of the Cook Islands Party government. I am intelligent enough to know what is wrong and what is right.

To continue to be part of a government that is riddled with discrimination, nepotism, exploitation, favouritism, authoritarianism and inefficiency at the expense of the well-being of the community would be the greatest injustice that I would commit in my political career . . .

T joined the Cook Islands Cabinet in January 1975. My first reaction was one of disillusionment. I thought I was joining the highest executive authority, “the mana” of the country to take part in highlevel discussions for the benefit of our people. But instead, we wasted time in Cabinet meet- ‘... even relatives of relatives have been included on the bandwagon ings on trivial matters such as overseas travel of public servants, appointments to the public service, scholarships, etc. One of the fundamental criteria for approval was political loyalty; “Yes” to CIPs and generally “No” to Demos. This procedure of Cabinet continued with systematic application of discriminatory principles until my resignation.

Important matters such as the economy, dependency, employment, cost of living, business opportunities for Cook Islanders etc, received very little attention. Hence the retarded state of development in almost every facet of the Cook Islands society ...

T have always found nepotism a little hard to swallow. But being part of CPI political machinery and having had a very high regard and admiration for the premier, I partly ignored nepotism in the Cook Islands government hierarchy. But the expansion of the Henry dynasty over recent years with appointments made on family ties became too overbearing for me to accept. ‘What was once a joke became blatant full-blown nepotism. It would be foolish for anyone to deny the expansion of nepotistic practices or to justify it in terms of the Henrys being a “clever” family as they feel. It has reached the stage where almost every close relative or associate of the premier is in a high ranking or comfortable position. Even the media is dominated by the fruits of nepotism. ‘ln 1968 when I joined the Cook Islands Party, there were few Henrys in Government.

Since then, the number has increased so much that even relatives of relatives have been included on the band wagon. ‘ln this 1978 general election, four new CIP candidates within the family circle were nominated, Hugh Henry (premier’s son), Tepou Boaza (speaker’s son-in-law), Eric Ponia (Geoffrey Henry’s brother-in-law) and Charlie Carlson (husband of Lady Henry’s niece). ‘The first thunderbolt jolt for me to have a hard look at nepotism was in the 1974 general election when all standing CIP candidates were surnamed Henry by the Henrys to “justify” the family government image, and thus neutralise Opposition criticism of it. I resented being called Joe Henry . . . ‘lt was decided after we lost the Atiu seats by a narrow margin in 1974 that Atiu would be developed to “buy Atiu”. Mangaia was neglected because it would not accept the premier and the CIP and the gap was too big to close. Again after CIP lost the 1977 by-election in Mangaia, it was decided to “punish Mangaia” by minimising government expenditure there. Mauke received top priority because of the “special privileges and favour” of its CIP member, Hon Tupui Ariki Henry ... ‘The large-scale persecution was of civil servants. Promotions of government officers were much influenced by ministers. Loyalty and service to the Cook Islands Party was a major criterion in promotion, appointment and the provision of training and travel opporas soon as was realised that Cyclone Charles had political potential, the meteorologists were asked to dismount...’ tunities. For example Mr Tutu Ina was chief health inspector, but a strong supporter of the Democratic Party. We ensured that he was denied normal and justified salary increases and opportunities so that he would resign once he realised that he would suffer if he remained.

The strategy succeeded and he resigned and migrated to New Zealand. We replaced him by a strong supporter of the Cook Islands Party ...’

All political parties were supposed to have access to radio which was controlled by the Henry family and friends. Mrs Marjorie Crocombe describes how the CIP sabotaged Democratic Party time on the air: ‘The Democratic Party alleged a number of other minor media harassments. These inelude “technical problems” leading to the radio stopping broadcasting during key Democratic Party speeches, but not during Cook Islands Party speeches, the postponing of materials booked and paid for at peak listening time until the peak was over, giving poor quality transmission to the Democratic Party’s Englishspeaking meeting but not to any Cook Islands Party meeting, and turning up the volume for the clapping at meetings of the Cook Islands Party which were broadcast. Ironically, ex-CIP Cabinet minister Dr Williams also complained about unfair actions by the CIBNC to his Unity Movement, but no complaints were heard from the CTP..

Sir Albert even managed to make political capital out of a cyclone. Mrs Crocombe illustrates: ‘ln the last week of February, Cyclone Charles developed north of Palmerston atoll. It was election time, and as soon as it was realised that Cyclone Charles had political potential, the meteorologists were asked to dismount. The premier swung into the saddle, with his closest henchmen clinging firmly behind, and they rode the storm across the radio waves like cowboys in a rodeo. But it was handled like a TV rodeo rather than a live one, so the media men could use the zoom lens and the sound effects to make the bronco appear more dangerous and the riders more courageous than was true in real life. Sir Albert used to the full his superb talent for making his supporting audience feel that they were riding with him, vicariously sharing every prance.’

Pro-Davis demonstrators after last March’s election... a momentary victory for Sir Albert. 16 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY - APRIL. 1979

Cook Islands

Uncle Sam Dips

Into The ‘Sea

Of The Future’

The inquiry into Australia and the South Pacific conducted by the Australian Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence (PIM March) is not the only such effort made recently by an off dal body of a ‘metropolitan' power. In July 1978 the Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations devoted a morning to the subject of the ‘Emerging Pacific Island Community'. Staff writer Malcolm Salmon examines the report.

Opening the hearing the chairman, former astronaut Senator John Glenn, recalled that Queen Victoria had once described the Pacific as the ‘Sea of the Future’. He suggested her idea was proving correct. He noted also that Pacific Island countries were ‘often overshadowed by their more powerful neighbours’ in the deliberations of his committee, but that the region ‘has too much economic and political significance to be overlooked any longer’.

It is fair to say that past relative neglect of Pacific Island countries by the committee showed through in Senator Glenn’s own remarks. His claim that they ‘form a community of equal and sovereign nations’, for example, completely ignored the very real problem of the continuing political dependence of a good number of them, notably on France and on his own country, the United States. Similarly, his reference to the ‘lO- - South Pacific Forum’ would have been more impressive if he had got the number of Forum members right. It was 11 at the time of the hearing.

First witness was Richard Holbrooke, assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the US State Department, and the man generally credited with the initiatives of establishing the new ‘Office of Pacific Affairs’ within the department, and the appointment of a new deputy assistant secretary with special responsibilities for the South Pacific not, as Mr Holbrooke himself Jiad the modesty to tell the committee, that ‘within the context of the vast Washington bureaucracy’, these are ‘earthshaking moves’.

Sketching in the background to the new US concerns, Mr Holbrooke noted: ‘There are, to be sure, signs of growing Soviet and Chinese interest in the area. However, at this time the Soviet side seems to be concerned largely with advancing their fishing interests in the region and promoting their diplomatic standing vis-a-vis our own and that of the People’s Republic of China.

Peking is also interested in expanding its diplomatic presence in competition not only with Moscow but also with Taipei.’

As for the line of future US action, he said: ‘We do not need to develop massive programmes for the South Pacific; this would be contrary to the interests of the islands and our own. Nor should we seek a dominant role as initiator, helper, and guide. We do not wish in any way to impinge upon the sovereignty of these free peoples or to usurp the leadership role that belongs to them and to their near neighbours, Australia and New Zealand.’

The theme of smallness, of the modesty of scale of any future US aid projects in the Pacific, recurred again and again during the hearing. The main reason for this can be summed up in one word: Micronesia.

Senator Glenn introduced the Micronesian theme, saying: ‘We saw an article in The Washington Post last week, a rather devasting critique, which was critical of how we have handled our programmes in Micronesia .. . The article spelled out how because of our influence there and our moving in with large amounts of money and programmes from the outside, we have pretty much devastated their economy. We have made people largely dependent on what will be, at least in part, government

Us In The Pacific

dole. It seemed to me that perhaps for certain islands which were used for nuclear testing it was inevitable that all the requirements for support would mean that local people would become partially dependent on us. I can understand a few situations like that. But if that article is even halfway correct - and I presume it is - we have pretty much devastated the normal, the better, patterns of development that might have been followed in those areas’.

The late Dr Frank Mahony, formerly of the South Pacific Commission, took up the theme, saying; ‘Micronesia got along during the 1950 s and until mid-1969 on a budget of about SUSS million a year.

Then there was a massive influx of aid, and the budget went up tenfold and twentyfold. It was far more than Micronesia could digest very easily.

To cite one example, funds were budgeted to build schools, but there was so much money available that outside contractors from places like Korea and Hong Kong were brought in and they built the schools. It would have been much better to train local people and get local contractors established and have them build the schools so that the schools would be built by the people themselves ... What you find today is that the schools that were built by these outside contractors are being defaced now.

People scratch them up, write on the walls, throw rocks at them, and so on. But there have been a few projects, done when the programme ran out of money and outside funds were brought in to help people construct their own schools where they really wanted them, which are being much better cared for. These were much more successful kinds of projects.’

Consensus at the committee hearing was that the best hope for the future lay in what were described as ‘accelerated impact programmes’ jointly mounted by the Peace Corps and the US Agency for International Development. They were described to the committee by AID representative John Sullivan as ‘small-scale, self-help projects, primarily John Glenn In Solomon Islands... a blind eye to colonialism?

Children on Moen Island in the Truk group in the late Sixties... victims of a 'de vastated economy?

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aimed at community and rural development’. Each individual project would have a $lO 000 limit and would be carried out in close co-operation with the Peace Corps.

Mr Sullivan’s attempt to give a ‘concrete example’ of an ‘accelerated impact programme’ in a Pacific country led to a polite wrangle with Senator Glenn one of the many indications provided by the committee hearing that the US is still a long way from having got its thinking straight on just where it is going with its new policies.

Mr Sullivan’s example: ‘Let us say that the Peace Corps identifies a need for water, fresh water. In the past, they would have the idividuals available who could give the technical assistance to provide that water. But the Peace Corps does not bring material resources. So, if they needed a well digger, it would have to be provided by the host country or not provided at all. Under accelerated impact, AID would provide that well digger to the Peace Corps and then volunteers would carry out the programme. In effect, we are bringing material resources to bear on Peace Corps programmes.’

Senator Glenn’s response: ‘lt will be interesting to see how that develops ... The strength of the Peace Corps was that people went out, they gave of themselves, of their own expertise, of their own knowledge and their own ingenuity, in using what was there, on hand, to help people better their own 10t5... This is a different approach ... Now we are coming in and instead of the people getting out their local equipment, whatever that is, and digging the hole for their well, we are now bringing in a well digger. That is your example of this. We now bring in a mechanised tool. Then, one of these days, when it breaks, and we don’t have a new well digger, no wells will get dug.

Under the earlier system they might have dug wells by local indigenous methods.’

The senator concluded by stressing the importance of follow-up’ in such schemes, something he had found sadly lacking in AID practice in the past. Said he: i think unless we can show what is working and what isn’t, we don’t want to pour money down a rathole.’

The retreat from ‘giantism’ in US concepts of aid is certainly timely and necessary.

But the confusion as to what is to be put in its place was painfully clear and clearly disappointing - to Australian journalist Denis Warner who covered the Solomon Islands independence celebrations in July 1978. Warner wrote in Pacific Defence Reporter (August 1978); ‘The Americans sent Senator Glenn, the first astronaut, and Mr Richard Holbrooke, Assistant Secretary of State for Asian and Pacific Affairs, to the independence celebrations, along with a couple of destroyers, and a stack of Guadalcanal veterans, who re-fought the old battles over the plentifully available Scotch (30c a nip) with some of the Japanese veterans who had miraculously survived the carnage and had come to feel their old wounds ache ... ‘Of nostalgia there was plenty. But the Solomons flag had scarcely gone to the masthead when Senator Glenn and Richard Holbrooke called a press conference at which they made it clear that there was to be no American aid for the new country other than that which it receives indirectly through the World Bank and other multi-national organisations.

The US will not even establish an embassy in Honiara.’

A feature of the Senate committee hearing was what appears to be a curious American failure to appreciate the regional role of Papua New Guinea, and even a tendency to denigrate that role.

This exchange between Senator Glenn and Mr Holbrooke is a good example of the tone. ‘Senator Glenn; Papua New Guinea straddles both Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. Do you see any particular role for them, or do you see their own internal problems as being sufficient to keep them busy without worrying much about the rest of the region? ‘Mr Holbrooke; I think that Papua New Guinea has long wondered whether it was a Southeast Asian country or a Pacific Island state. Having visited it now twice, my impression is that it is a little of both, and mostly neither.’

In another remark. Senator Glenn, forgetting the age-old saw that ‘comparisons are odious’, said: ‘. . . there is a tendency in much of the rest of the South Pacific for the other smaller states to regard Fiji with some suspicion and concern, based on the fact that small as it is in absolute terms, in relative terms Fiji is the strongest, most viable, and largest of the South Pacific nations, with the exception of Papua New Guinea, whose population is so dispersed as not to really make much of an impact.’

Such remarks show scant understanding of the firm and frequent statements by PNG Prime Minister Michael Somare that his country is a Pacific nation, or of the active, even leading, role played in recent Pacific regional meetings by figures such as PNG Foreign Minister Ebia Olewale.

The record of the Senate committee discussion abounds in references to the tuna resources of the Pacific Island countries, especially since the establishment of their own fishing zones. The potential of the mining of their seabed minerals in the future is also given due attention.

The refusal of a majority at the South Pacific Forum meeting on Niue in September 1978 to accept the US as a member of the proposed South Pacific fisheries agency showed that all is not going to be smooth sailing as the US sets its new Pacific course.

As The Wall Street Journal put it in a December article; ‘Some of the sardines sensed a shark in their midst.. .’

The paper adds: ‘The Americans still are hoping to produce a compromise, but the blow-up makes it plain that the Western orientation of the islands is diminished, and that they aren’t about to tolerate any dilution of their newly asserted rights in the Pacific.’

It quotes an Island diplomat as saying: ‘These countries see that for once they do have something that’s valuable to others. . . Never in this stage of their history are they going to give away anything that has to do with fish.’

Perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea if Senator Glenn’s committee got together again soon to chew over that one.

US marines at Solomons independence... but no embassy. 19

Us In The Pacific

PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY - APRIL. 1979

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From the ISLANDS PRESS Savali, Western Samoa At the offices of Pacific Islands Monthly in Sydney the colonial days live on ... flying boats, never ending stories of what a great time all had during the war and problems with the native servants These residents of the glorious British Empire are only now awakening to the reality of a new independent Pacific. It may well be sometime yet before PIM stops running lengthy raves on the good old days, but at least the old school appears to be dying out in another section of their office. This is the section which has produced the latest issue ... of the Pacific Islands Yearbook ...

Arawa Bulletin, PNG The Prime Minister. Mr Michael Somare, has stated he will not allow Papua New Guineans to become Australian citizens regardless of the fact that they have lived in the Torres Strait for more than 15 years. Mr Somare was commenting on an order from the Queensland Government to deport about 100 Papua New Guineans living in that area. The Prime Minister added that Papua New Guineans who are in the area for traditional purposes cannot be ordered out of the area.

Fiji Times At last. . . palusami. kai and rourou, lovo pork for lunch. Suva may as well be Peking when it comes to finding ready-made Fijian food in restaurants. Tourists who try to have a Fijian meal as part of their island experience are doomed to settle for chow mein or beef in black-bean sauce, unless they’ve got enough time to go inland. But now a tidy little take-away with fantastic Fijian fare in the heart of Suva. The dalo does come out of the lovo each day, the ota is green and fresh, the rourou thick and creamy, and all at reasonable prices. We won’t say where it is because we don’t like standing in line. But it’s worth looking for . . .

Cook Islands News The Minister of Police Hon. V. Ingram is not amused with the latest prison breakout... He is being criticised for being too lenient with the prisoners of Arorangi. During Christmas all but two prisoners were given a week off to visit their homes and relations. Yesterday 13 warders took all 21 prisoners fora picnic to Wigmore’s at Titikaveka ... The taste of all this free life must have been too much for the prisoners. An hour later they broke out.. .

From the Fiji Times Capital punishment will be one of the first issues considered by a five-man law review committee named yesterday by the Fiji Law Society. At its next sitting Parliament will consider a Bill to amend the Penal Code to impose the death sentence on every person convicted of murder.

Savali, Western Samoa • • J? r Tom Davis (Cook Islands Premier) was recently in Samoa He flew up on the Auckland-Apia service. In Tonga nobody recognised him. although Tonga’s Prime Minister was sitting in the VIP lounge at the airport. Dr Davis had to join the rest of the transit passengers in the tiny airport building. Eventually Tonga’s PM got on the flight to Apia and both he and Dr Davis were accorded the facilities usually given to Prime Ministers. Has Tonga got something against the Cooks, or did Polynesian (Airlines) forget to tell Tonga of its passenger?

Cook Islands News (By I. Fogelberg - Tourist Authority General Manager) The book Cook Islands Politics, The Inside Story’... is a fascinating tale . . . Having lived through all the tumult and the shouting that was the 1978 election and its aftermath, I enjoyed reading the book immensely. It is largely a political document of course, not an unbiased inside story, and having detected such serious errors in just a few paragraphs, one is left with a fascinating question how much is fact and how much fiction?

Island, newsletter of the Institute for Island Research and Assistance, Seattle, USA In some islands a protein-based bread spread called Vegemite is imported from Australia. Because their systems are malnourished, some Island children developed a craving for this product and ate it directly from the jar. In the eyes of expatriates, this ‘indiscriminate’ use indicated that the children lacked discipline and control and that their ‘savage’ heritage was coming to the fore ...

Fiji Times A bill was gazetted yesterday exempting Fiji’s soldiers serving in Lebanon from income tax on the extra pay they get for serving with the United Nations peacekeeping force.

Advertisement in Lae Nius, Papua New Guinea Lost, believed stolen: One only white Mercedes left-hand (passenger side) door. The suspected thieves were seen driving in convoy round the comer of Aircorps and Milfordhaven Roads, in the following vehicles .. .

From a letter in Tohi Tala Niue To those ex-visitors to Niue and your article describing Niue as a ‘Paradise of Flies’ may I direct you to pay a visit to Australia’s capital city and even Adelaide where I once was. There you would be able to qualify your article on flies. In Canberra ... I could not stop fanning away the flies from my face, but not here in Niue. In Adelaide too, where we had our picnic lunch, the flies were everywhere. These flies even chased my hand to my dish held high over my head. I had to gulp my food down before the flies devoured it. . .

From a letter in PNG Post-Courier Unemployment in many PNG towns is causing men to ‘sell’ their wives. This is shameful to our traditional way of thinking. If we considered wisely how to run smallscale businesses in our own province or in the village, I am sure that we would make more money than by working for wages ...

Pitcairn Miscellany (Re the replica HMS Bounty built to make a third film of the mutiny story.) ‘.. . The only small complaint we have here on Pitcairn ... is that the company is not so concerned about authenticity of the film in its final scenes, as it is using an island in the Tahiti group rather than Pitcairn itself.’

The Norfolk Islander Investigations carried out on Philip Island by the Conservation Officer Mr Peter Coyne have revealed that at least 80% of the whalebird chicks had died of exposure during the recent hot spell.

Indiscriminate shooting on Philip causes the parent bird to fly off in alarm leaving the little ones quite unprotected. As you can well imagine, the sun and hot wind cause the death of the young ones. 21 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY - APRIL, 1979

POLITICAL CURRENTS

Petrol Bombs

ON BANABA Eight Banabans were gaoled in February following a wave of petrol bomb attacks on the phosphate mining operations on Ocean Island, their isolated Pacific homeland, writes a correspondent who travelled from Fiji to Ocean Island with the Banaban ‘invasion’ party (PIM March). They were acting in protest at the British Government’s decision to incorporate Banaba in the Gilbert Islands on their independence in July (PIM March), and against continued mining operations by the British Phosphate Commission on the island.

Among those detained were the deputy chairman of the Banaban council of leaders, the Rev Kaitangare Kaburoro, a council member, Tekaie Tabuariki, and the council’s assistant secretary. Teem Takoto.

Working to a detailed plan, groups of Banabans moved under cover of darkness to six target areas. Within half an hour flames lit the sky as petrol bombs were hurled at mining machinery and installations.

Surveying a still smouldering excavator, maintenance superintendent Don Begbie said: ‘l’ve never seen anything like this in the 18 years I’ve been on Ocean Island. The Banabans seem to have gone mad. There even seemed to be kids in the raiding parties. I was shaking like a leaf when I saw what had happened.’

Two Banabans were hurt.

The leader of one group injured a leg when he fell into a ravine while following the escape route from an attack site. Another member of his party also sustained leg injuries. Five Banabans were reportedly arrested after their car ran over a precipice. They scrambled from the vehicle as it went out of control and were apprehended soon after.

A council member told how the car he was driving was ambushed by police, who threw tear gas at it. The Banabans slipped away into the night.

Anticipating trouble when Banaban council members arrived, local authorities called in 30 special constables to reinforce the island’s 10-man police force. As many as 300 additional men were hurriedly recruited after the Banaban attacks.

There were fears that the Gilbertese population, who work for the BPC, would launch a reprisal raid against the Banabans, but by morning tempers had calmed.

Earlier, councillors and about 200 Banabans living on the island marched to the British Phosphate Commission offices carrying placards saying ‘British justice stinks’, ‘Hands off Banaba’ and ‘Return stolen property’. Marchers wore black arm bands to represent the ‘death’ of British justice.

Mr Kaburoro delivered a statement to BPC’s local manager, Ron Elliott, outlining Banaban demands and setting a T2-hour grace period’ after which, if mining was not stopped, plans for obstruction of mining operations would be implemented.

The BPC reply said the mining organisation, in which the British Australian and New Zealand Governments are partners, had a responsibility to continue mining. The attacks came soon after.

The Banabans also staged an emotional demonstration at a memorial stone commemorating A. F. Ellis, who discovered the island’s phosphate.

Fiji parliamentarian Fred Caine, who had travelled to the island as political adviser to the Banabans, said that Mr Ellis was ‘the biggest thief who ever lived in the South Pacific’. Exploitation of the Banabans had started on the day he found the phosphate, Mr Caine said.

Most of the 3000 Banabans today live on Rabi Island in Fiji. They were moved there after the Japanese occupation of Ocean Island in the last war.

Fiji’s Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara has urged the British Government to hold further talks with and between the Gilbertese and the Banabans in order to find a peaceful and mutually acceptable solution to the constitutional future of Ocean Island. ‘Fiji firmly believes that the best solution to this difficult and sensitive issue is one reached in direct dialogue between the Gilbertese and the Banabans, and which is acceptable to both groups,’ Ratu Sir Kamisese said. ‘Neither the resort to violence nor an imposed solution which was not acceptable to all the parties directly concerned could contribute to a permanent settlement of the Ocean Island issue,’ he said.

Toward the end of February it was reported that 100 more Banabans were being picked up by the Nauruan ship Cenpac Rounder to be taken to Ocean Island to strengthen the Banaban presence there.

Honiara: Even

Keel For Now?

When the Solomon Islands parliament last December threw out the government’s 1979 ‘rural growth budget’ (PIM February), some people wondered whether Prime Minister Peter Kenilorea might not have to follow it into oblivion, writes a Honiara correspondent. But on February 7 an only slightly revised version of it sailed through the house in less than a week and was approved without a division.

While Opposition Leader Bart Ulufa’alu stood firm in his rejection of the $8145.3 million budget, the leader of Above: Protest march on Banaba; left: Messrs Kaburoro and Takoto with ‘white paper’ before ritual burning 22 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY - APRIL, 1979

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the larger Independent Group, Willie Betu, urged parliament to pass the budget to prevent further damage to the country.

All Solomon Islands secondary schools had been closed since the defeat of the budget.

To the surprise of many, the changes suggested by the public expenditure committee, set up to probe into departmental estimates, were rather minor.

They do not go much beyond an estimated saving of about $2OO 000 by keeping 130-odd government posts vacant. In any case, this sum will be passed on in higher service grants to the provincial governments to enable them to spend more in the rural areas.

A major reason for the first budget’s defeat had been a strong feeling among members that, despite its title, the budget did not do enough for rural areas, where nine out of 10 Solomon Islanders live. There was also a feeling that the budget had been foisted on ministers by civil servants without adequate consultation.

More than anything else, however, the December defeat reflected a growing disenchantment among members with the government and the Prime Minister Kenilorea’s style and handling of various issues, in particular the Western Province ‘breakaway’ question.

But for all their misgivings about Mr Kenilorea, most members cannot see Opposition Leader Ulufa’alu handling the job successfully.

Among other members outside the present government, the former minister of home affairs, Francis Hilly, who resigned last year over the PM’s handling of the Western Province issue, looks a likely contender but not quite yet.

With renewed backing from most of the house, the government can face this year’s tasks with greater confidence than seemed possible a few weeks ago.

The economy is still going strong with exports and imports more or less in balance at just over $3O million each, and foreign reserves amounting to almost $25 million at the end of last year.

The government recently negotiated a major coconut/ cocoa development project with the local Unilever subsidiary. Now it must try to allay the fears of the rural areas by pushing ahead much more effectively with rural development in its 1980-84 development plan.

Three Faces

Of Migration

Two recent developments in New Zealand and on the west coast of the United States were designed to ease the lot of Pacific Island immigrants in those countries. At the same time, the Australian Government announced new immigration regulations which appeared to be designed in part at least to keep the number of Pacific Islanders resident in Australia as low as possible.

Auckland in December saw the official opening of the SNZI.2 million Samoa House, which is designed to serve as a focal point for the business and cultural life of the city’s 20 000strong Samoan community, and also to serve as a bridge between Pacific Island peoples in general and the European population.

The building houses the consulates of Western Samoa and the Republic of Nauru, Polynesian Airlines and the Western Samoa Trust Estates Corporation. Two shops at street level of the five-level building specialise in Samoan produce, processed foods and handicrafts.

About 300 guests, including Prime Minister Robert Muldoon, were welcomed at the opening by Western Samoa’s Deputy Head of State Tupua Tamasese Lealofi IV. He said the generous financial help of the New Zealand Government toward the cost of the building was an acknowledgment of the role the Samoan community would play in the life of the city and New Zealand as a whole.

The same month saw the publication by the University of California, Santa Cruz, of New Neighbors Islanders in Adaptation. The 295-page book focuses on the special problems of the ‘invisible minority’ of Pacific Islander migrants living on the US west coast. It covers the proceedings and papers of two UCSC conferences on Pacific Islander migration the first in May 1977, the second in the (northern) spring of 1978.

Commenting on the meetings, Bryan H. Farrell, director of UCSC’s Center for South Pacific Studies, said that ever since the explorations of Captain Cook in the eighteenth century, the South Sea islands have been synonymous with ‘paradise’ in the West. They have been a magnet for tourists, as well as expatriates from America and Europe in search of a simpler way of life. ‘But the end of World War II brought a turnabout in that pattern of migration,’ Farrell said.

Pacific Islanders, seeking to share the advantages of democratic, technological societies access to material goods, jobs in the industrial sector, better education for their young, and social mobility in cultures free of the traditional barriers of rank and family status began to move outward.

The first groups migrated to New Zealand, then others in the 1950 s to Hawaii and to metropolitan areas on the west coast of the American mainland. Now many thousands of them primarily Hawaiians, Samoans, Tongans and Micronesians live scattered in pocket communities, until recently largely independent of one another, from Seattle to San Diego.

As a result of the UCSCsponsored conferences the Islanders formed the Pacific Islander Coalition, an organisation run by themselves for themselves. The UCSC offered staff support, when needed, for the coalition, but remained without membership in the group.

Across the Pacific in Australia, a new system for the selection of migrants came into effect on January 1. Known as the Numerical Multi-factor Assessment System (NUMAS) the scheme was described by Immigration Minister MacKellar as ‘in line with the Australian Government’s established policy of nondiscrimination which is applied to all applicants regardless of Deputy Head of State Tupua Tamasese Lealofl IV of Western Samoa (right) with New Zealand Prime Minister Robert Muldoon at the opening of Auckland’s new Samoa House... recognition of the Samoan community’s role. 24 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY - APRIL, 1979

Political Currents

their race, colour, nationality, descent, national or ethnic origin or sex’.

But such claims cannot disguise the fact that NUMAS represents a net of restrictions on entry into Australia so dense that only tiny numbers of Pacific Islanders could ever hope to penetrate it.

Some of the factors considered under NUMAS are: the standard of work skills possessed by an applicant and the demand for those skills in Australia; whether an applicant has a job waiting in Australia or has adequate resources to establish a business; and the degree of fluency in English and ability to communicate in the type of employment followed.

‘Secret Plan’

A HOAX?

Nation Review, an Australian weekly, in February published the full text of what it claimed was a ‘Very Secret’ Indonesian intelligence document outlining plans for an Indonesian take-over of Papua New Guinea by 1984. The document was first referred to in the Australian press in a December 1978 report in the Melbourne daily, The Age. Photocopies had been posted anonymously from Singapore to Australian political figures who had spoken against the policies of Suharto government.

The document outlines ‘Operation Bird of Paradise’ which began in 1975. In the first phase, from 1975 to 1979, Indonesian intelligence agents were to be placed in eight groups throughout PNG, coordinated from Jayapura, capital of West Irian. They were to make monthly reports to Jakarta on progress. Aim of this stage was to win support, through political propaganda, for integration with Indonesia and, most importantly, to ‘create cadres among the people so that leaders... will emerge who ... will form groups and a political power oriented towards Indonesia’.

One Australian political commentator, appearing to accept the authenticity of the document, has claimed that Indonesian agents are active in the West Irianese exile community in PNG. He linked them with the arson at the PNG ministry of finance (PIM March). Responsibility for the fire has already been claimed by ‘sympathisers’ of Irian Jaya freedom fighters.

A spokesman for the Indonesian embassy in Port Moresby has described the document as ‘a very cheap joke’. He denied that Jakarta had any such plans as those described in the document, and appealed to Papua New Guineans to ignore it.

The spokesman accused the Australian Communist Party of supporting moves to create ‘another Indochina’ in the Asia-Pacific region. He called for support for present efforts by the Indonesian and PNG Governments to establish ‘cordial and harmonious’ relations.

One Australian source suggested that the document could have been prepared by pro- Fretilin forces in Australia in an effort to widen the campaign of opposition to the Indonesian Government for its take-over of East Timor. 26 NEW FACES

In Apia’S Fono

There will be 26 new faces in the 47-member Legislative Assembly which emerged from the February 24 elections in Western Samoa. Among defeated candidates was Lilomaiava Niko, minister of education in the last government.

Prime Minister Tupuola Efi held his seat of Aana Alofi No 2 against Tanuvasa Livigisitone by 94 votes to 26.

The minister of economic development, Asi Eikeni, retained his Faasaleleaga No 2 seat with 125 votes. His closest challenger, Papalii Laupepa, son of Western Samoa’s head of state, received 122 votes.

Closely watched was the contest for the Lotofaga seat where the widow of the late prime minister Mataafa, Laulu Fetauimalemau, was standing.

In 1976 she missed out on election by only 10 votes. This time she won the seat with 85 votes over her closest opponent on 72. Laulu was being widely tipped as a contender for the prime ministership.

A row broke out in the week leading up to the election when the prime minister’s department issued a statement saying that three unnamed MPs had met with representatives of an American company which the government believed to be dishonest. The three - Sala Suivai, Tofialu Eti and Faasootauloa Semu Pualagi then identified themselves in a pamphlet, which also claimed that the prime minister was using the issue to have them defeated in the election. The three were all returned, and have formed themselves into a loose opposition group. The row could be a factor in the election of a government, expected in March.

About 7500 votes were cast in the elections. There are about 10 000 registered matai, the only people who are entitled to vote under the constitution.

The first session of the new Fono (parliament) was expected to be held about a month after the poll.

In a commentary on the elections, the editor of the newspaper Savali, Mike Field, wrote; ‘With no party structure, election campaigns in Western Samoa’s villages tend to avoid “issues”, and concentrate on •the personality of those running. So great attempts were apparently made by candidates to paint themselves as the warm, generous, free-spending individuals they believe themselves to be anyway, ‘The result was stories which tell of candidates selling up their houses so that they could pay for the feasting necessary in any campaign. Another district’s pigs lost their freedom because one candidate was alleged to have purchased pig wire for each district family.

And some candidates spent way beyond their means.’

SOMARE: ‘I’D

Ban Unions’

Papua New Guinea’s prime minister, Michael Somare, has said that if parliament decided there would be no trade unions in the country, ‘I will be only too glad to support that move’.

Mr Somare was speaking after a series of strikes by PNG unionists including air traffic controllers, bus drivers, waterside workers and copper miners.

Mr Somare said: ‘We are a developing country and we will get our people to work. We will not allow unions to run the country. Unionism must have responsibility... So many countries have been paralysed by their activities.’

Commenting on the series of strikes, Kipling Uiari, secretary for labour and industry, said that although the men involved are all paid above the minimum wage, the fact that this rate was set two years ago has had an inevitable ‘ripple effect’, as inflation, even at the low PNG rate of 5%, made itself felt.

Leaders of unions representing about 200 000 members have formed an alliance against any government moves to curb union power. They have the backing of the parliamentary opposition.

From Anzus

To Canzus?

The latest candidate for membership in the ANZUS defence pact, which links Australia, New Zealand and the United States, is the Cook Islands, writes William Gasson from Wellington. ‘Will ANZUS be- Laulu Fetauimalemau... prime ministerial contender? 25

Political Currents

PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY - APRIL, 1979

Vre You Good Enough For

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YAMAHA

come CANZUS?’ asked the New Zealand Herald in Auckland in an editorial welcoming the attempt by the newly elected Premier Dr Tom Davis to make the islands stand on their own feet.

What Dr Davis suggested during a recent visit to New Zealand was that the 18 000 Cook Islanders commit themselves to the ANZUS treaty and relieve New Zealand of the task of defending the islands.

Officially, the Cook Islands is a self-governing nation in free association with New Zealand which looks after its defence and foreign affairs.

Dr Davis, whose affinity for the US developed while he worked there on space medicine, apparently raised the issue with Prime Minister Robert Muldoon. He did not suggest the Cook Islands run to the economically debilitating extent of raising a standing military force, but said it could produce an army if required. ‘ln times of an emergency in the Pacific, we would supply forces as we did in the First World War,’ he said. (In the Second World War Cook Islanders travelled to New Zealand to enlist in the armed forces there.) While at first glance the idea of the tiny Cook Islands throwing its weight into the ANZUS pact might seem to have little going for it, Dr Davis has pointed out to the strategically minded that the northern island of Penrhyn in the Cooks has a deepwater harbour ‘big enough for a whole fleet’.

Heavy aircraft could use the Cooks airfields on Rarotonga, Aitutaki and Penrhyn. ‘By doing this we feel we would be no less effective in defending ourselves than New Zealand would be without Australia,’ he said. ‘We don’t want to be bystanders in an emergency situation.’ The parallel is to the point, since New Zealand’s defence policy is bound up with Australia’s fate.

The attitude is that any attack on Australia would automatically involve New Zealand.

A probable factor in Dr Davis’ scientifically calculating mind is the situation that would face the US if it were pushed out of its base at Subic Bay in the Philippines. Should the US lose this toehold in the Southeast Asian region then logically, according to some American political scientists, it must fall back to defensive positions in the Pacific. Any sizeable piece of Pacific real estate with deepwater harbours and airfields thus becomes strategically important.

Reaction from New Zealand’s foreign affairs officials was one of welcome, tempered by uncertainty as to how other ANZUS members might greet the idea.

New Moves In

N.H. DRAMA Formation of yet another political movement, a conciliatory gesture by the Vanuaaku Party in handing over to the government a cheque for $A6852 representing the taxes levied by its now disbanded People’s Provisional Government, and continued doubt and hesitation among the moderate parties about the new government of national unity these were the main features of the lively New Hebrides political scene in February.

The new movement is known as ‘Nakamal’, or ‘Meeting house’. Its leading figures are Vincent Boulekone of Pentecost who recently resigned as secretary-general of the UCNH (Union des Communautes des Nouvelles Hebrides) (PIM December 1978), and who was minister of internal affairs in the Kalsakau government; and Maxime Carlot (Natatok Efate Alliance Party) of Efate, minister of internal affairs in the present government, and former speaker of the Representative Assembly.

The two leaders have explicitly denied that Nakamal is a new ‘political party’. They said on Radio New Hebrides that their aim is to bring people together, whether they speak English or French, and regardless of religious persuasion.

They said the movement fully supports the work of the present government of national unity, and believes that its ministers should be given time to work at their jobs before attempts are made to judge . . e aim to bring people r ’r. not t 0 themsaid Mr Boulekone, according to a report in the french/ islama fortnightly Nabanga. e spoke of Nakamal as a p ace of reflection, a think tank open to people of all pohtical tendencies.

He went on: ‘Away from partisan quarrels, we hope to reflect calmly on the questions that affect all Melanesians. The New Hebrides will soon be independent. But it’s only three years since we first discovered po itics. Now, we have to achieve awareness of our responsibilities. That s what we aim tp do within our movemtl?t, 1 , . i akama(rejects traditional political labels, saying that in the view of the movement they should be re-examined. ‘We are neither moderates nor radicals,’ said Mr Boulekone. ‘We want to be ourselves. We will be drawing up our programme out of contacts with the masses of Melanesians,’ Mr Boulekone said. This programme would not be designed to countereither the VP or the moderates. ‘lf we can reach agreement with them, we would ask for nothing more,’ said Mr Boulekone.

The repayment to the government by the VP of taxes raised by the People’s Provisional Government removes one of the sorest spots in that party s relations with other political groupings in the country, The VP established the alterna- !| ve following its bo y cott of the November 1977 elections. It was disbanded before talks began between the *wo sides in April 1978.

Following their demonstrations and petitions at the end of January (PIM March), fo e moderate parties continued to show unrest at the course foliowed by the new government.

An all-in meeting of the moderate parties was held in mid- February in Santo to plan strategies for the coming meetjng Q f tbe Representative Assembly At t he same time two leaders of the moderate parties _ j ea n-Marie Leye of Tan Union , and Jack Kalotiti of Natatok Efate _ voiced their strong disa p prova i of the ‘breakaway’ Nakamal movement. Mr Leye predicted new divisions among the moderate parties as a result of Nakamal’s appearance, and Mr Kalotiti could see no reason why another political movement should be formed on Efate> An attempt by moderate forces in mid-January to remove the sensitive broadcastfog, district and local administration portfolios from the VP was defeated. Localisation of positions within the bureaucracy by VP ministers aroused criticism. But the process went ahead , wit h Joe B omal Carlo being appointed director of the now unified Radio New Hebrides, and Alfok Noel and Godwin Ligo respectively deputy director and chief news reporter. Former director of the unified service, Jean Massias, is back in his previous job as director of the French residency information service.

New Hebrides’ Deputy Chief Minister Father Walter Lini (right) shakes hands with French Minister for Overseas Departments and Territories Paul Dijoud during the minister’s February visit to Vila... a new confidence.

Political Currents

PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY - APRIL, 1979

THE EXCITING NEW MERLIN IMS.

Aviation In The South Pacific

IS ABOUT TO CHANGE. m if Merlin 1118 is an aircraft that is very much in touch with the 1980 s It presents an impressive array of features that will upgrade standards of aviation comfort and operation in the South Pacific area.

Merlin 1118 from Swearingen Aviation Corporation has speed, around 355 mph cruise, thanks to powerful twin turboprops.

Merlin 1118 has quiet comfort Slow turning props plus noise barrier acoustic walls to dampen sound add to passenger comfort.

Then there’s pressurisation and a roomy cabin for up to 10 people.

Merlin HIB has endurance, with an operational range of 2,425 nautical miles plus IFR reserves.

Merlin 1118 is distributed by Stillwell Aviation in the South Pacific. Inaugural demonstration test flights will be conducted in the region soon.

If youd like to inspect and discuss the exciting new Merlin 1118 when it visits your area, contact Stillwell Aviation now. Join us on our program of demo flights by completing the coupon below. m m WE'RE FLYING YOUR WAY.

JOIN US FOR A DEMO FLIGHT. \ r* Captain Neil Morris.

B.S. Stillwell Aviation»(A/Asia) Pty. Ltd.

P.O. Box 161. Kew. Victoria. 3101. Australia Please register my name for your demonstration flights of Swearingen Merlin 1118.

Name Address B.S. Stillwell Aviation (A/Asia) Pty. Ltd.

P.O. Box 161. Kew, Victoria. 3101. Australia. Phone (03) 804485. 28 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY - APRIL, 1979

Tall Story From

An Old Airy

Verandah Lover

AFTERTHOUGHTS with Percy Chatterton in Port Moresby.

The fire which recently gutted the top floor of the main Papua New Guinea Government office block at Waigani, a Port Moresby suburb, set a lot of people thinking and talking about , the inadequacy of fire fighting services in Port Moresby and other urban centres in Papua New Guinea, particularly in respect of the increasing number of multi-storey buildings.

The problem is not so much one of manpower as of equipment, and the PNG Post-Courier cartoon depicting a couple of firemen commandeering a kid’s toy motor car pointed it up crisply. There are also, I understand, particularly in the case of high-rise buildings, problems of inadequate water pressure.

Of the firemen themselves, my impression is that they do as good a job as their equipment allows, and sometimes show considerable devotion to duty and willingness to take risks, as was evidenced when a government store building in Port Moresby was burnt down a few years ago.

Some of us who have been around for a long time found our minds going back to earlier fires in Port Moresby, especially to the one which destroyed old Hanuabada village in 1942, a catastrophe which, by the way, was not the result of enemy action.

In my case my memory took a trip back into the past to contemplate the changes in building styles which have taken place over a century. Expatriate homes in Port Moresby 50 years ago were still copied from a tropical Queensland design, with high ceilings and spacious verandahs surrounding a central block of rooms, frequently with a central open living space running through the middle of the house from front to back verandahs.

As time went by and building costs went up, the verandahs shrank and eventually disappeared, and the lofty ceilings came down nearer and nearer to the heads of the occupants. The result was a house which, in spite of the increasing use of louvres for ventilation, called for electric fans or air-conditioning to keep it cool.

I had the good luck to live in one of those old style houses for many years. Its outer dimensions, including its three metre verandahs, were 32 metres by 11 metres. Its frame was of Queensland hardwood, and after 40 years (it had been built at the turn of the century at a cost of £ 600) the studs were so hard that one couldn’t drive a nail into them without boring a hole for it first.

Most government offices of my early years in Port Moresby were built in the same style, and the quiet and coolness of the inner rooms, protected by broad verandahs, could be conducive either to work or slumber.

Building costs rose, and designs became more and more ‘functional . Fibrolite, concrete and brick began to replace timber; and the electrically induced coolness of fans, and later of airconditioning, together with fluorescent lighting, replaced natural ventilation and lighting, till a point was reached at which some buildings became unusable during a power cut.

Then came high rise. ANG House and the recently opened Travelodge hotel now dominate the scene in the old city centre and port. There, with limited space and a hilly terrain, high rise makes good sense.

It may be questioned whether high rise makes such good sense in the new city centre at Waigani. Here there is no shortage of space. Three impressive high-rise buildings - the main government office complex, a privately owned office block and the Australian High Commission building together with a number of smaller though very impressive structures such as the National Library, National Museum and Law Courts, are scattered, apparently at random, over a wide area of flat grass country. Multilaned, impressively-named streets, at night brilliantly flood-lit though practically deserted, intersect the area and connect it to the main road.

The whole set-up gives an impression of theatricality. It must have cost the heck of a lot of money, and one cannot but wonder whether, in a city in which such a large proportion of the population is housed in shanties and mini-houses, it was money wisely spent.

True, as time goes by this area may fill up and high rise buildings may become essential. But that’s a long way off, and in the meantime something less ostentatious, less expensive and less vulnerable to fire and other risks might have served this young nation better. However, I suppose it’s the way of the young to be a bit flamboyant.

At the other end of the scale, in providing housing for the less affluent, the much criticised housing commission has, in my opinion, done a good job in the face of many difficulties and plenty of obstruction from land-owners and others.

Sure, their low-cost houses are very small, but there are only two ways in which they could be made bigger. One is by charging rents which only a minority of the people clamouring for houses could afford. The other is large scale government subsidisation, and so far the government has set its face against this solution.

Recently I was very courteously invited by an officer of the commission to have a look at some new designs in low-cost houses which were being tried out in one of Port Moresby’s older suburbs. I was impressed by what seemed to me to be a very successful attempt to break away from the rectangular box type structure.

I wish I could be equally complimentary about Air Niugini’s ‘Disneyland’ a rash of terrace type staff housing currently spreading across the hillside opposite to my perch on the Sabama ridge. The adjective, other than rude ones, which most readily comes to the mind to describe this architectural novelty is ‘quaint’.

For all I know, these houses may be very comfortable to live in, and some of them certainly have a wonderful view. But I find myself wondering what will happen when some late reveller tries to negotiate the narrow spiral iron staircase which leads from the ground to his front door, and what the reaction of his neighbours will be when he starts to play punk rock with his hi-fi at full blast at two o’clock in the morning.

But to end on a pleassanter note: I have heard no criticism and nothing but well-deserved praise for the PNG Banking Corporation’s new building in the old city centre. It’s really terrific.

I don’t know who designed it, but he, she or they deserve a nation’s gratitude.

Let’s hope that that one doesn’t catch fire, whatever happens to Waigani’s pretentious sky-scrapers. 29 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY APRIL, 1979

■i

WHY THE

, Republic Of Nauru

(POPULATION 62001 HAS AN INTERNATIONAL AIRLINE.

You will discover the Republic of Nauru on a map of the Pacific if you run your finger along the Equator until it arrives at the point marked 166°55' East. We are 26 miles south of that point.

Having now put your finger on us, and taken a long look around, you will be able to make the same observation that we made long ago, which is that, in the general geographic scheme of things, we are not only one of the smallest nations of the world (about nine square miles, including a chunk of our coral reef), but also one of the most isolated.

Frankly, a location 2,500 miles from Sydney, 2,600 miles from Honolulu and 3,000 or so miles from Tokyo-let alone 190 miles from our nearest neighbor, Ocean Island-seems reason enough for having an international airline. And we do admit, when pressed, that having a jet fleet in the HONG KONG Pacific helps immeasurably to expedite our affairs of state.

And so, ladies and gentlemen, you will discover, when you fly with us, that Air Nauru is, on the one hand, an airline that helps link us with our Micronesian, Melanesian and Polynesian neighbors. And that, on the other, it is an opportunity for you to share memorable, even profound, travel adventures.

Today, Air Nauru—the airline of the Central Pacific-flies Boeing 727 s and 737 s to 16 ports of call and our own home island. We’re the first airline to link Asia with the three great ethnic regions of the Pacific. You can board us in Hong Kong and fly with us through Nauru all the way to Melbourne. You can fly a truly significant airline route that links distant, distinctive places that, in many cases, have never before been linked by jet.

No matter how you like to travel, you’ll have to admit, when you glance at our route map, that Air Nauru can provide you with some tantalizing travel alternatives.

And that’s why the Republic of Nauru has an interjuro national airline.

KAGOSHIMA

Taipei Okinawa

MANILA PONAPE GUAM NAURU TARAWA HONIARA MELBOURNE NAURU

V Airline Of The Central Pacific

or ticketing, reservations and flight information, telephone, 740 in Apia, Western Samoa; 477-7106 in Guam; 595 or 727 in Honiara Solomon Islands; 229 in M a) uro, Marshall Islands; 312-377 in Suva, Fiji, 27-33-22 in Noumea, New Caledonia; 458 in Ponape, arolme Islands, 27-39 in Vila, New Hebrides; 72795 in Nadi. Fiji; 448 in Tarawa, Gilbert Islands; and 653-5709 in Melbourne, Australia.

PEOPLE In a surprise move in February, Port Moresby City Council voted Kipling Uiari, in his absence, out of the job of lord mayor and elected politician and former radio announcer Sevese Morea in his place. Cr Morea, member for South Central in the national parliament, got the job by a 14-11 vote after Cr Uiari, his deputy, Sogo Sebea, and the council’s finance and executive committee had succumbed to a vote of no confidence moved by John Torrisheba. At the time of his sacking, Cr Uiari was representing the council at an International Union of Local Authorities conference in Manila. On his return to Port Moresby Cr Uiari described the action of his opponents as ‘rather low’ in waiting until he was out of town to make their move, and indicated he would be questioning the validity of the no confidence motion.

National Opposition Leader lambakey Okuk and Papua Besena parliamentary leader Gavera Kwarara welcomed Cr Morea’s elevation. Cr Torrisheba, in justifying his motion, claimed it had taken the death of a council worker to bring to light the ineffectiveness of the council and its disregard for safety.

About 70 years ago Maria Rovoseko was kidnapped from her home during the Choiseul tribal wars in Solomon Islands.

Attackers killed her son and carried her off. The story of her escape when the war party stopped at Qalovoke is now legend in Sirovanga. Recently her descendants and other Sirovangans honoured Maria, now in her nineties, while visiting her at Vaseqo'where they prayed for their clan mother and then settled to feastifig.

Dr Tom Davis, 61, premier of the Cook Islands since the overturning of Sir Albert Henry’s government last August by Justice Gaven Donne (now Sir Gaven). hasn’t had much time to himself since getting to grips with the task of government. But early in February, with little or no fanfare, he snuck away to his home at Muri Ngatangiia to marry To Pa Teito Ariki of Takitumu village. For both it was a second marriage. First to officiate was a Ba’Hai minister, representing the faith of the bride; second was a minister of the Christian Church of Rarotonga. Dr Davis was divorced from his first wife, a New Zealander, last June.

Pitcairn Miscellany notes that the island’s roadman has been going ‘beyond the call of duty in his work’, having planted marigolds and begonias on the verge of the roadside to give the people something to smile at’. The roadman is Christy Warren, aged 79. A later issue of Pitcairn Miscellany looks at the island’s oldtimers in general and puts their longevity and active ways down to ‘exercise’ (‘one cannot go anywhere on Pitcairn without walking either up or down’) and ‘other important factors’ such as the ‘non-smoking, non-drinking nature of the community’ and the ‘abundance of good fresh food and fruit plus the bountiful supply of fresh air and sunshine’. Among the ‘young’ people of Pitcairn mentioned was fisherman Andrew Young, 79, who still rows his own canoe and pushes a wheelbarrow around the island ‘for fun’; Mimic Warren, the island’s oldest inhabitant at 89, who still does for herself around the house; John (83) and Bernice (79) Christian who are usually found working their garden ‘near the top of the island’; Albert Young, 79, who still ‘grubs’ bush ‘up at the radio station’; Virginia Warren who ‘can often be seen busily sweeping the island tracks and roads clear of leaves’; and Roy Clark, ‘one of the most alert 85 year olds one could wish to meet’ who is ‘still turning out first class writings’.

The University of the South Pacific centre director in Honiara, Mostyn Hahu, has resigned to become headmaster of the Kamausi secondary school in Santa Ysabel Province. Mr Habu, 35, who comes from Kia on Santa Ysabel, explained to the News Drum: T want to take a part in community education and help local people. This is more important than considerations of pay in any case I shall enjoy living in the rural area.’ The post of USP centre director is one of the highest education appointments in the country.

Two senior officials of Papua New Guinea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade are doing an advanced course in international relations at Oxford University, England.

They are Ralf Karepa, first assistant secretary (political), and Mary Tabogan, head of the Asia section in the political division. The course will list for nine months.

Fiji has appointed two former residents, now living in North America, honorary consuls to promote trade and commercial interests on the West Coast.

They are Joel Kamali who lives in Canada’s largest West Coast city, Vancouver, in British Columbia, and Elias Hannif of San Francisco.

John K. Lee has taken over from David Tuncap as elected chairman of the Guam Visitors Bureau. Mr Lee, vicepresident, branch manager and supervisor of branches of the First Hawaiian Bank on Guam, has been a director of the bureau since last June. A native of Hawaii, he moved to Guam in 1971. Among other positions, Mr Lee is president of the Chinese-American Association of Guam.

Lani Tupu, a Samoan community leader in New Zealand, has been given the matai title of Tuioto, Falelima, Savaii.

When he finishes his daily work as manager of the post office savings bank in Wellington, he becomes secretary of the Pacific Islands Advisory Council and of the Samoan Advisory Council in Wellington. His active interest in community work won him a trip to China in 1978 with a group of New Zealand community workers. He visited Western Samoa for bestowal of the title.

George Atkin, editor of Solomon Toktok, has been acquitted of a charge under the sedition act. It was alleged that Mr Atkin had published a letter entitled ‘Local War’ in Toktok last September with the intention of promoting ill will Sevese Morea at the lord mayor’s desk... Kipling Uiari questions events. PNG Post-Courier photo 32 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY - APRIL, 1979

between the people of Malaita living in Honiara and the people of Guadalcanal. Principal Magistrate L. M. Holt said that while Mr Atkin had been negligent he was not guilty of a criminal offence.

Paul O’Regan, for Mr Atkin, submitted that the sedition act was a colonial law, not relevant to an independent country, and that Mr Atkin’s alleged offence was outside the act because of a lack of intent. Mr Holt, in acquitting Mr Atkin, observed that while there should be no interference in the freedom of the press, everyone involved in the production of publications should take care to avoid including anything which might bring harm to the country.

Irene Johnson, since last September Canada’s Wellingtonbased envoy to New Zealand and four South Pacific nations, has made her first sortie to the Islands, presenting her credentials to King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV of Tonga. She also gave the king a gift of Eskimo (Inuit) sculpture. Mrs Johnson, as high commissioner to New Zealand.

Tonga, Fiji, Western Samoa and the Cook Islands, visits each of these Island nations twice a year.

William Farmer has taken over from Hugh Craft as Australia’s deputy high commissioner to Fiji. Mr Farmer has served with the Australian foreign service in Cairo, London and Lisbon. His most recent assignment was as executive officer in the diplomatic staffing section of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Canberra. Mr Farmer is also accredited to Tonga and Tuvalu, The US ambassador to New Zealand, Tonga and Western Samoa, Armistead I. Selden Jr will complete his term late this month after making a final visit to Nukualofa on April 23. Mr Selden on his return to the US in mid-May intends to work in private employment, This year’s Fulbright-Pacific island News Association (PINA) fellows are Ngauea Uatioa, editor of the Atoll Pioneer in the Gilbert Islands and Kuar Singh, chief reporter G f the Fiji Sun. They are enrolled in the University of Hawaii’s school of journalism for one semester and will then spend six weeks working on the Honolulu Advertiser Kumalau Tawali, one of Papua New Guinea’s best-known poets, has been appointed associate editor of Wantok, the national Melanesian pidgin weekly. Since graduating at the University of Papua New Guinea in 1971 he has worked as a freelance writer and guest lecturer at Gualim Teachers College in East New Britain Province and at UPNG where he was a teaching fellow in the literature department.

Frank S. Rosario, 28, former Saipan bureau chief of Micronesian News Service, is now working as managing editor of a new Saipan weekly, The Weekly Star, Mr Rosario had been with MNS, a valued and copious source of information on that part of the Pacific, since June 1973. Derson Ramon, assistant editor of the High Commissioner’s newsletter Highlights has now the additional responsibility of writing for MNS.

Consecrated a bishop 20 years ago. Daniel Stuyvenberg, 70, now Roman Catholic bishop of Honiara, will become an archbishop in March with the elevation of the diocese of Honiara to an archdiocese, a natural sequel to the attainment of independence by Solomon Islands last July. The pope also seems to have given a clear hint of the identity of the archbishop’s successor by appointing as his auxiliary bishop.

Father Peter Kurongku, 49, vicar-general of the Bougainville diocese since 1971. Auxiliary bishops normally succeed when the see becomes vacant.

Taina Dai, one of the first to train under the Papua New Guinea Education Department’s executive training programme in the early sixties, has been appointed assistant secretary for teacher education.

Mr Dai, of Tubusereia village just outside Port Moresby, has served around the country as a teacher, headmaster, inspector and superintendent of schools and last year completed three years as teaching service commissioner.

Dr Bill Razzell has been appointed director of the South Pacific Forum Fisheries Agency. The appointment is for two years. Dr Razzell was previously engaged in fisheries research with the Canadian Department of Environment, Vancouver.

Tovale Nimarota, the first woman in Western Samoa, to train as an air traffic controller, is now in New Zealand on a three-year course at the Civil Aviation Aeronautical College in Christchurch. Sponsored by the New Zealand Government, Miss Nimarota left Western Samoa in January with three male air traffic controller cadets.

Father Peter Kurongku, from Tonu village in the North Solomons Province of Papua New Guinea has been named next bishop of Honiara. He will succeed Bishop Daniel Stuyvernberg who becomes archbishop of Solomon Islands. Father Kurongku, who is to be consecrated this month, has spent the past five-and-ahalf years at Tubiana, North Solomons.

Dr Ram Narayan, medical superintendent of St Giles Hospital, Suva, since 1973, has retired after 14 years in the Fiji civil service. The only qualified psychiatrist in government service, Dr Narayan is understood to be planning to settle in Australia. Dr Issac Karim has taken over as acting medical superintendent at St Giles.

Papua New Guinea’s constitution is being combed through by a General Constitutional Review Commission announced at the turn of the year by Prime Minister Michael Somare. Chairman of the commission is the national member for Wewak, Tony Bais, and the national member for Abau, Gerega Pepena, is deputy chairman. The other seven members are Ibne Kor, Barunke Kaman, Buri Kidu, Pedi Anis, Louise Aitsi, Anthony Deklin and the Reverend Dick Avi. The commission has two years to complete its report which is due to be tabled in parliament by early 1981.

Harold Picton-Smith, Fiji’s solicitor-general, will be succeeded, on his retirement in June, by Qoriniasi Bale, at present crown solicitor. Mr Bale, 38, acted as solicitor-general in 1976 and 1977.

Mrs Johnson, at the entrance to the Royal Palace, Nukualofa, listens to the Canadian national anthem by the Royal Band of Tonga. With her from left is Soisaia Maulopeko Tofa Tuit, assistant secretary in the prime minister’s office and a son-in-law of the king, Howard Campbell, Canadian commercial counsellor in Wellington, and Lieutenant Maafa, ADC to the king.

PEOPLE

Pacific Islands Monthly - April 197 Q

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YESTERDAY Echoes of the 1878 New Caledonia revolt It is a rare event for an Australian history student’s thesis, written for a BA Honours degree and unpublished in her own country, to become a focus of public controversy in Noumea, New Caledonia.

But this has been the fate of the 1974 thesis, The 1878 Revolt on New Caledonia, written by Linda Latham, then a student at the Australian National University, Canberra. Noted French ethnologist Professor Jean Guiart of the Musee de I’Homme. Paris, who has made a study of New Caledonia, offers his appraisal of Ms Latham’s work, discusses the possible political implications of its publication in Noumea, and ponders the impact of Ms Latham s research on an emerging generation of educated Melanesians.

The paper by the Australian researcher Linda Latham on the causes of the 1878 rebellion in New Caledonia should have been left in decent obscurity.

Its translation into French and its subsequent publication by the Societe d’Etudes Historiques de la Nouvelle Caledonie, a pseudohistorically-minded association in Noumea, raises an acute problem - that of the possible political impact of research of this type.

My main argument with the Latham paper, however, is not with its pro-settler approach, but with its lack of scientific content. She writes as if she were wielding a critical tool visd-vis the colonial archives she has studied. In fact, she follows closely the path traced in these archives - and what documents there are on the subject in Sydney’s Mitchell Library are also part of the colonial archives.

What I mean is that any written document of the colonial period (New Caledonia, like New Zealand, is still in the colonial period) must be checked thoroughly, not in regard to its trustworthiness, since such documents are always untrustworthy in a way, but for whatever useful information may be elicited from it. Such an effort requires a whole battery of checks and counter-checks, and involves much time and effort.

The very first problem is to know what exactly happened, in the field, at that time. As to 1878, this has yet to be shown.

Events, as related by colonial history, are doubtful. The archives were compiled to fit contemporary local prejudices and conceal the more disgraceful aspects of European actions. Nevertheless, even as much as is established appears not to worry Miss Latham, who conveniently disregards the wholesale murder of the inhabitants of the so-called ‘thieves’ village’ high up on the Dumbea river, and the shooting, as spies, of Melanesians wanting to cross the lower reaches of the Dumbea in the first hours of the panic that gripped Noumea after it was known what had happened further north.

What is needed is not value judgments on the situation, nor on such and such an author, but inventories of weapons, of ammunition spent, of soldiers' pay, of special combat allocations. The need to augment the soldier’s basic pay appears to explain a number of otherwise inexplicable and useless military expeditions. A cut-tothe-bone budget was the reason for the care with which officers looked after ammunition and tried in every way to wage a ‘silent war’.

The delays in securing replacements and reinforcements explain why commanding officers such as Major Riviere were so wary about losing their men, and so keen to organise auxiliary troops from among natives, convicts and even mounted Australian gentlemen, using them to bear the brunt of the fighting. An unbalanced diet too much meat of dubious freshness, and too much inferior alcohol explains the relative lack of success of the regular troops. The highly racist general outlook of the settler community - ‘a good Kanaka is a dead Kanaka’ accounts for the clamour for revenge from the European population, which drew its economic and in part its cultural patterns from nearby Queensland.

One of the problems of colonial government in New Caledonia has always been white-organised provocations, designed to secure a reaction on the part of the natives which would justify further military action and confiscation of l an d.

Curiously for a person writing in our day. Miss Latham seems to think that European land-grabbing on the scale on which it was conducted before 1878 around La Foa had some justification, Pushing Melanesians away from their house sites, sacred groves, cemeteries, and good and rare agricultural lands, is condoned by her. (If somebody did it to her own kin, we can imagine her shrill cries!) She has not taken a hard look at what this ‘treasure island’ of New Caledonia is really like. Good, cultivable land is in fact the rarest of its assets. This fact she would not have found mentioned in the colonial archives, but a study of soil science publications dealing with New Caledonia would no doubt have enlightened her.

Good farmland in New Caledonia is most often made up of irregular strips, often no more than a meter wide, at the bottom of otherwise sterile slopes.

Most of New Caledonia is of niaouli trees thriving on acid soils. Whites and blacks have fought over about 10% to 20% of the whole land mass, the rest being infertile or mineral-rich only. In most valleys it was perfectly silly to have believed that a European agricultural community could be settled close to a Melanesian group. There simply was not enough useful soil to go round. One group had to be reduced to slavery to Statue of Governor d’Olry... the man credited with ‘quelling’ the 1878 revolt. From Pacific Treasure by Wilfred G. Burchett.

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allow the bare economic survival of the other. The very low pre-war standard of living of white settlers on the west coast arose from these simple facts.

The day Melanesians regained their freedom, rural European settlement was bound to wither away as far as agriculture was concerned. The average age of settlers living off the land outside Noumea is now over 60.

Although I have done some of the work work of a kind that perhaps a green history student would not understand - putting the events on the map remains a task waiting to be done. The distances between points involved in the story must be checked in terms of hours and days of walking, not in terms of the metric system. if specific examples of the behaviour of actors in the drama are to be understood.

In the military reports of the time, because of the desire to justify requests for reinforcements. ammunition, and applications for special bonuses, grassy hills became mountains, a grove became a forest, and a clump of bamboo an impassable barrier. The real difficultylay in walking the dense maze of low hills on the west coast.

Working from the crest of the mountain range Lieutenant Servan (whose correspondence I managed to save from being burnt) had a better view, and better results, with fewer European soldiers and auxiliary native troops who knew their way around. But even his careful reports need reassessment in the field, by travelling the same routes on foot This remains an urgent task.

We do not have a precise map of what native establishments were dispersed in the area covered by the 1878 uprising.

The available information on the northern half (Poya-Kone- Poindimie- Ponerihouen- Houailou) is being put together and will be published as a map. The southern part remains to be done thoroughly, especially the Bouloupari-Thio-Canala triangle. Miss Latham could have done the job if she had understood the need for it. Roselene Dousset too, who likewise went no further than repeating what we already knew, and adding a few romantic touches.

Colonial happenings can be inventions, pretexts for acts of repression. The so-called siege of the Wagap Marist mission, on the east coast, some 10 years earlier, has recently been shown by research to be a fabrication. There never was a siege. Enough material was available to establish this, but Miss Latham carefully leaves the matter aside because it would have gone against her contention that it was the unorganised savage playing at a tribal war, whereas the white man saw it as a general rebellion.

If she sheds tears over the European dead, the number of Melanesians who lost their lives seems to annoy Miss Latham, who tries to give the impression that there were fewer blacks killed than is generally accepted. This is curious.

The colonial authorities kept a tally of the so-called rebels killed: there was a price, at first for each pair of ears brought back, then later for each head, when it was found that ears could be those of women and children. There was every reason to accept the correctness of the official figure.

Miss Latham criticises me for doing this too readily. In fact I did nothing of the kind.

I thought at first that the figure was too low, having seen the vast expanses of unpeopled lands in the southwest of New Caledonia as a result of the 1878 repression. To obtain an honest estimate I had nevertheless to take account of every surviving group. There were those who had been exiled to Belep Island and the Isle of Pines, and who had only been allowed to return on condition that they accepted a written contract imposing on them a semi-feudal link with a grazier.

But then there were all those who had gone hither and thither, to the far north, to the east coast, and to the far south near Noumea, so they would not be sent into exile except where they chose to go. Having quite enough on its hands, the colonial government turned a blind eye to this as long as no vocal settler group chose to make an issue of it.

Administratively speaking these people were ‘lost’, and were not accounted for in the archives. It was my task to rediscover them through their descendants, village by village, quietly, and this took me some years. Only then could I attempt the necessary calculations. using what I thought was a reasonable estimate of the population at the time. The result was a confirmation of the official figure. So I could not say that the loss of Melanesian lives was greater than the figure given at the time.

All this being said, what is the impact of Miss Latham’s paper? Another brick in the dead-end wall built by all those colonial thinkers who still believe we brought civilisation wherever we went (at the cost of coloured people’s lives), and who still judge any non- Western culture (with the exception of those of India.

Japan, China, Vietnam and maybe Mexico) as being devoid of intelligence, of analytical capacities, of organisational capabilities. White settlers in New Caledonia can still sleep their lives through with a Melanesian common law wife and neither know nor care about what is happening in the village next door. They are ‘superior’ beings and are unconcerned with the exotic games of the ‘savage’ mind even if they themselves are barely literate, and the children of the ‘savages’ university-trained.

Miss Latham has done no better. Her paper is being hailed as a partial moral justification of the colonial repression of the time. This is neither science nor history. Nor is it good for the image of Australian research among the new, young and knowledgeable sections of local Melanesian society. ‘Colonists and native workers’ is the title of this 19th century engraving of a New Caledonian scene... One group had to be reduced to slavery to allow the bare economic survival of the other' From Nouvelle-Caledonie, by Patrick O’Reilly and Jean Poirier.

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TROPICALITIES costs’ for the films which are estimated to be budgeted at around SNZSO million. From London a few days later came the report that Lean had cancelled plans to film parts of the films in New Zealand.

Trouble with New Zealand’s taxmen is not the only problem that has bedevilled preparations for the films. The de Laurentiis production company initiated the scheme for the two films but then backed down. It was at this point that United Artists expressed interest.

Just where the Bounty goes from here is not clear. But on the whole New Zealanders are a little saddened to miss out on the publicity, fame and job opportunities that would have come with the filming of many of the sequences in their country.

Meanwhile the $1.3 million replica of the Bounty rides serenely at anchor at a Whangarei, a small settlement in the north of the North Island where it was built to exact specifications by a local firm.

Mara upsets ‘iat cats’

Fji’s Prime Minister, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, upset Suvabased staff of the United Nations Development Programme when he said the inclusion in aid programmes of highly paid consultants upset local salary structures and raised the cost of living in Fiji.

He suggested it might be possible for UNDP to fund aid projects, leaving Fiji itself to find the experts. Ratu Mara was speaking at a luncheon for visiting UNDP administrator, Bradford Morse.

Mr Morse, 58, a US lawyer and former congressman, said UNDP was ready to go along with Ratu Mara’s idea. It was already in effect elsewhere in the world. But he was guarded about criticism of Ratu Mara by UNDP staff. ‘l’m not divine,’ he said. ‘I can’t say what their subjective attitudes are.’

Taxmen scuttle the ‘Bounty’

Plans to base in New Zealand production operations for two films on the Bounty mutiny (PIM March) are all at sea, writes William Gasson from Wellington. Oscar-winning director David Lean’s plans to film much of the two-film epic in New Zealand ran aground on tax matters. He failed to convince. New Zealand’s beady-eyed taxmen to allow tax concessions for incoming technicians and actors.

The plans came unstuck when Lean and United Artists senior executive Lee Katz met government financial representatives. Said Mr Katz after the morning-long session; ‘Our visit here had gone very well until today. But I had hoped the government would make tax concessions available within our assessment of the added costs involved in basing the project here.’ He declined to give any figures on ‘added French Polynesia, wrote an open letter to French President Giscard d’Estaing.

The text of the letter, which has appeared in the Paris daily Le Monde and the Swedish press, reads; ‘Mr President, We the undersigned, the first of whom is a French citizen and the second a citizen of Sweden, and who are by profession anthropologists, historians and writers, have for the past 30 years been permanent residents of French Polynesia. Our researches and publications on local culture and history, both ancient and modern, have always attracted keen interest and have frequently been praised by both individuals and institutions. In addition to our literary and scientific pursuits, the first signatory has actively participated in local politics and is at present a councillor in the municipality where we have our home. The second signatory was appointed honorary consul for Sweden in 1961. ‘Seventeen years later, at the Danielssons tell Giscard After the withdrawal of Bengt Danielsson’s exequatur official recognition as honorary consul for Sweden (PIM February), Mr Danielsson and his wife Marie-Therese, PlM’s accredited correspondents in beginning of 1978, the French minister for foreign affairs suddenly discovered his note is dated January 18, 1978 that a person exercising the abovementioned professions cannot at the same time act as honorary consul. In consequence of this he took the decision on November 8, 1978, to withdraw the consular exequatur granted the second signatory to this letter by President de Gaulle on January 20, 1961. ‘With great frankness and small logic, the minister then goes on to reveal the true reason for his displeasure: we have written a book entitled Moruroa, mon amour, whose subject matter of course is the installation of nuclear test bases in these islands and the disastrous consequences these have had, especially for the Polynesians, and the publication of this book is branded “a hostile act towards France”. ‘Again, what surprises us most is the length of time it has taken the minister to make these accusations, considering that the original French edition of the book, with a preface by Jean-Jacques Servan- Schreiber. was published back in 1974 without provoking anyrebukefromthehonourable minister for foreign affairs.

The reason for this surprising delay can be found in the abovementioned note of January 18, for it blames us above all for having authorised Penguin Books to publish an English translation of our book in September 1977, thus giving it a much wider audience than the original French edition. We are therefore forced to conclude that what counts most for the minister is the choice of publisher and the size of the printing. It is moreover highly regrettable that he has not deemed it useful to issue at an earlier stage any precise instructions for the guidance of honorary consuls with literary ambitions. ‘For the minister for foreign affairs, the most reprehensible aspect of our book is our constant concern with the unavoidable health hazards due to the radio-active fallout which has long-lasting effects, such as Strontium-90 and Caesium-137, resulting from 41 atmospheric nuclear tests made here during the periods in office of President de Gaulle and President Pompidou. That these radio-active substances are harmful is a well-known fact, and if any additional proof were needed it has recently been furnished by its fatal effects among the The Danielssons in earlier, less stressful Tahiti days 39 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY APRIL, 1979

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* islanders in Micronesia, ref cently discovered, as long as 25 years after the first nuclear tests although the most reputable experts had always sworn that there were no health hazards whatsoever. The quite precise questions asked by us in our I book about the radio-active I fallout and the contamination I of the islanders here in French I Polynesia call, in our opinion, I for a more adequate reply than the sanctions taken by the minister for foreign affairs. It will, furthermore, undoubtedly be taken by all the peoples of the Pacific as a confirmation of the fears that they have always held. ‘Let us only add here that our concern about the health hazards due to the tests in our islands is fully shared by such local political leaders as the late senator Pouvanaa a Oopa, ■ the present senator Daniel Millaud, the president of the territorial assembly John Teariki and the former deputy and present vice-president of the government council Francis Sanford. As a matter of fact we have simply echoed in our book statements and questions from these well-known leaders. ‘Their names also figure prominently in the chapters of our book dealing with the political events in French Polynesia, all closely linked with the nuclear test issue, whereas others deal with the long struggle for internal selfgovernment which has dominated local politics since the last World War. Although most of the political leaders mentioned above have publicly testified to the truthfulness of our account, the French minister for foreign affairs now accuses us without furnishing any proofs whatsoever of having “misrepresented the significance of the recent administrative reforms in the territory”, and of having “painted a black picture of French policies in this part of the world”. ‘lf the only strictures decided by the minister had been the withdrawal of a consular exequatur, we could or would hardly have done more than express our surprise at such an unusual sanction. But it so happens that it was accompanied by a thinly veiled threat to expel us from our adoptive country, where we have our home, where our son was born and where our daughter is buried - if we don’t shut up!

Coming from a country which honours free speech and which has traditionally given asylum to foreign writers persecuted in their home countries because of their dissident opinions, this threat seems particularly strange to us. ‘As a result of our writings, we have in the past often been shadowed by various agents of the French Thought Police ( Renseignements Generaux ), our office and home have been visited during our absence by specialists in electronic gadgetry, and several attempts have been made to blackmail friends into supplying information tending to incriminate us. Such antics are of course unworthy of a democratic country such as France, but we have nevertheless occasionally found them quite amusing because of the clumsiness of these French agents, so easily spotted in the local, tropical environment. Charitably, we have also been inclined to ascribe these spying activities, occurring long after your welcome civil liberties programme was implemented in France, to the usual delays which occur in the French overseas territories after new reforms are promulgated in France. ‘The recent sanction and threat, however, emanated from one of your ministers.

This is the reason why we are attempting by the present letter to draw your attention to this distressing affair which, we are sure, you know nothing about, considering its insignificance in the French national context.

We consider moreover that there is an additional justification for writing directly to the holder of the highest office in the country, and that is the simple fact that the consular exequatur which has just been withdrawn was originally granted and signed by a previous president of the republic. ‘We remain. Respectfully yours, Marie-Therese Danielsson, Benet Danielsson.’

The Tami tr2d& . , canoe revived Just over two years ago the then Australian high commissioner to Papua New Guinea, Tom Cntchley, now ambassador to Jakarta, travelled by government vessel to Tami Island, just off the south-eastern tip of the Huon Peninsular in PNG’s Morobe Province. He had heard that the Tami tradition of building large ocean-going trading canoes was in danger of dying out: a canoe had not been made for years and only a few of the old men of the village knew both the method of building and the ceremonial routine vital to the wellbeing of the vessel. Mr Critchley told villagers he would put up the money, on behalf of the Australian government, to cover the cost of materials and of their transport to the building site if the villagers would do the work. He would also purchase an outboard motor which would make the new canoe independent of the ‘vagaries of the sea’. Slowly the project got underway and by February this yea r the canoe was ready. It set sai i from Wanem Island in the Tami group following a traditional trading route to Lae where Prime Minister Michael Somare was waiting to congratulate the Tami people and the people of the Morobe Province for their awareness of the nee d to preserve, and attempt t o revive, worthwhile customs Apia-Hamburg rpnfpnprv * January 24, 1979, was just another day for most people in Western Samoa. But a few were aware that the day marked the centenary of the signing of a treaty of friendship between Western Samoa and Germany, A research scholar in Western Germany recently discovered the text of the treaty.

Tami’s ocean trader... a tradition revived. PNG Post-Courier photo 41 TROPICALITIES PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY APRIL, 1979

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According to the Western Samoa prime minister’s department, the treaty is not valid in today’s circumstances, but ‘represented a stage in Western Samoa’s development’. The long-standing German influence in Western Samoa is still reflected in special agreements between the two countries on ‘economic co-operation’ the West Ger* man expression for aid to under-developed countries.

Hayo Breckwoldt, who is Western Samoa’s honorary consul in Hamburg and whose family name has been well known m Pacific trading circles for many decades, sent a special message to Prime Minister Tupuola Efi on the anniversary. The national flag of Western Samoa was flown from the flagpole of Brewo House. Hamburg, for the first time since the consulate was established there.

W. Samoa goes . ' . 11l Dig OH games The Western Samoa Sports Federation is planning a kingsize effort in the August South Pacific Games in Fiji, writes Judie Teall from Apia. By sending a team of more than 200 at a cost of SWS9O 000 the federation hopes to expose as many people as possible to the organisation and regulation of the games in preparation for the 1981 games, to be hosted by Western Samoa at Apia Park.

The 200 include hockey, rugby, soccer and cricket teams. New grandstands are already under construction at the park. Plans also include a swimming pool.

Gov. Coleman’s ‘come home’ call The Governor of American Samoa, Peter Tali Coleman, hopes to encourage some of the territory’s 32 000 Samoans now living in Hawaii to come back to Samoa to work. For this purpose American Samoa is setting up a liaison office in Hawaii to serve as a recruitment and information centre.

The figures show that more than 20 per cent of the Samoans in Hawaii between 20-25 years of age are unemployed. The Governor says a similar office in California may be established if the American Samoa legislature is satisfied with the accomplishments of the office in Honolulu.

Some of the 2500 children who attended the 1979 school-holiday project at the Australian Museum, Sydney, where, on the basis of models supplied by the Papua New Guinea National Cultural Council in Port Moresby, they took part in making their own versions of traditional PNG masks, belts, grass skirts, nose-pieces and other artifacts. Australian Information Service photo. 42 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY - APRIL. 1979 TROPICALITIES

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Blarney and his fellow petty officers at war In early August 1942 the Australian militia battalions in the mountains north or Port Moresby, the area now known as the Kokoda Trail, were close to being overrun and 21 Brigade, Australian Imperial Forces (AIF), commanded by Brigadier A.W. Potts, arriving in the middle of that month, was to change the situation.

Unlike the militia men, those of 21 Brigade had seen action in the Middle East and it was expected that they would turn back the Japanese. It was not to be. On September 2, Potts gave orders to fall back, and eight days later Brigadier S.H.W.C. Porter relieved him.

In addition to 21 Brigade there were now two companies each of 3 Battalion and 2/1 Pioneer Battalion and a troop of 2/6 Independent Company, and Porter had been told that 25 Brigade AIF would soon arrive. By September 14, 25 Brigade was in the loribaiwa- Überi area and Porter was relieved by Brigadier K.A.

Father. The arrival of additional troops enabled the Australians to turn back the Japanese and Father was able to report by the beginning of October that the enemy was withdrawing.

Dudley McCarthy, in Southwest Pacific Area - First Year, one of the volumes in the series Official History of Australia in the War 1939-43, observes that neither Father nor any other leader could have done better than Potts: the units which bore the brunt on the Kokoda Trail, 39 and 57 Militia Battalions and 2/14 and 2/16 Battalions AIF, had sustained horrendous losses many killed or wounded, some missing, and hardly a man who was not suffering from malaria or dysentery.

General Douglas Mac- Arthur, allied supreme commander in the Southwest Pacific Area, very worried about the situation, obtained the approval of Australian Prime Minister John Curtin to have General Sir Thomas Blarney, the Australian commander-in-chief of allied land forces, to move to Port Moresby and take over command of the New Guinea Area from Lieutenant General S.

Rowell.

Arriving on September 23, Blarney asked Rowell to be his deputy but Rowell demurred because he regarded being staff officer as bereft of all command authority. Two days later, Blarney having ordered troops to Wanigela without consulting Rowell, there was a blazing row between the two and, with approval from Curtin and MacArthur, Blarney sent Rowell back to Australia.

Three generals Potts, Porter and Rowell had now been relieved, but more was to come. On October 1, Lieutenant General E.F. Herring took over command of New Guinea Force from Major General A.S. Allen who was then put in charge of forward operations, and on October 27 Allen was relieved by Major General G.A. Vasey.

These changes in top command are, of course, mentioned in Australia’s official war history and, in greater detail, in John Hetherington’s Blarney: Controversial Soldier (1973), and Rowell’s autobiography Full Circle (1974), but the Australian, Papua New Guinea and American survivors of the Kokoda and Buna-Gona campaigns can now read the whole story in Crisis of Command: Australian Generalship and the Japanese Threat, 1941-1943.

Using hundreds of official Australian and American documents, official war histories, relevant books and private correspondence, and having interviewed some of the ‘top brass’, D M. Horner, an officer in the Royal Australian Infantry, believes that a great deal of incompetence in the leadership was due to personal ambitions and animosities outweighing the responsibility of office, in particular the responsibility for the welfare of subordinates down to the most lowly private, among some of the generals.

The replacement of Allen by Vasey, says Horner, was ordered by Blarney although Blarney was in no situation to assess how well Allen had performed. Horner writes: ‘Few division commanders in history have been replaced by their army commander without having been visited by either army or corps commander.’

There had not been progress sufficiently rapid for Blarney’s liking but, as Allen had reported, the slowness was due to the terrain, insufficient Somewhere in Papua, October 1942... from left, Australian Minister tor the Army F. M. Forde, General MacArthur, Field Marshal Blarney and Major-General George Kenney 45 ACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY - APRIL, 1979

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By the end of October, writes the author, the Australians had learnt two major lessons: that jungle warfare requires endurance and courage of the highest order and that adequate supply is important. ‘Through Blarney’s reluctance to believe Allen’s account .. .

Blarney and MacArthurfailedto take heed of another lesson they did not understand the determination of the Japanese in defence his fanatical resistance and willingness to die for his emperor.’ This lack of understanding explains why lightly armed troops were sent against the Japanese defences. Neither Blarney nor MacArthur had given thought in peacetime to the problems of tropical warfare in a mountainous area.

Blarney, as commander-inchief Australian Military Forces and commander Allied Land Forces under MacArthur, had a dual role which became more difficult because of the attitude and temperament of MacArthur ‘who placed his subordinates in difficult positions through his inaccurate strategic assessments in July and August 1942, through his determination to edge Blarney out as commander of the land forces, through his interference in the technical conduct of the campaign, through his influence over the Australian Government and through his fears that an apparent military reverse might lead to his dismissal.’ ‘Blarney was unwilling to risk his own position by an affirmation of loyalty and trust in his subordinates,’ but even the unsatisfactory command arrangements in Australia may not have had such a bad effect if Prime Minister Curtin had been more experienced and Blarney more tactful.

To the Diggers on the Kokoda Trail, ‘Pottsy’ (Potts), ‘Tubby’ (Allen) and ‘Bloody George’ (Vasey) were good blokes, to be followed through thick and thin. Their nickname for Blarney was ‘Brothel Tom’.

This book proves if proof is still needed that the French politician Briand wasrightwhen he told Britain’s Prime Minister Lloyd George, in World War I, that war is much too serious a thing to be left to military men.

Harry Jackman Crisis of Command: Australian Generalship and the Japanese Threat, 1941-43.

D.M. Horner. Published by Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1978. 515.95.

Tripping with Wad Kui Sogeri National High School in the mountains behind Port Moresby has produced yet another superb collection of modern Papua New Guinea art. This time the featured artist is Powesiu Lawes who matriculated at Sogeri in 1975.

The book is entitled Wati Kui, an expression of the Loniu people of the Los Negros Islands in Manus Province, Lawes’ home. Art adviser to the publication, Marjorie Walker of the school’s expressive art department, in the preface, says: ‘This expression is used by young boys as they become more aware of their growing power as they pass through adolescence into adulthood.’

In the case of Powesiu Lawes, wati kui does not stop at the simple achievement of Papua New Guinean adulthood. Leafing through his work, one feels a sense of curiosity and searching which penetrates not just into earthly worlds beyond New Guinea’s shores but into the extraterrestrial and decidedly abstract.

Powesiu obviously does not have his feet on the ground.

And, if he keeps them that way, we can look forward to more pleasing flights of fancy. The overall impact of his work is refreshing and it is most certainly original but there can be no doubt that Powesiu ranks among those who have delighted in the works of Kauage, front-runner among PNG modern art pioneers.

R.H.

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Xotes on a wwk in Hawaii The Hawaiian Islands have been a tourist attraction since their discovery in 1778. As such, they have also been the subject of the observations of the transient visitor. Such is the rationale and the quality of the present re-publication of the articles of Theodore-Adolphe Barrot who saw the Islands in 1836.

A French diplomat on the consular level, he was travelling in the French warship La Bonite to a post in the Philippines when the ship stopped in Hawaii. He spent about a week on the island of Hawaii and about two weeks in Honolulu on the island of Oahu. From this experience he was able to write about the Islands for a periodical in Paris.

Of what value are the comments of the tourist-observer?

The most important value of this document is the perception of Hawaii and Hawaiians on the part of an intelligent Frenchman of the first half of the nineteenth century. Barrot presents a mixed view of persons and places which reflect the confusion in his own mind toward native peoples and their culture.

He romanticises the Hawaiian by expecting to study him in his ‘simple and guileless nature’. At the same time he describes natives in their most native aspect in images which are scathingly ugly.

He deprecates the influence of the American Protestant missionaries who were Calvinists and consequently strict in their values and moral judgments. At the same time he deplores the harsh treatment of French Catholic missionaries by the Hawaiian king and chiefs without explaining what belter interpretation of Christianity this mission might have to offer.

He wishes to see the natives preserved in their ‘natural’ state and isolated from the evils of ‘civilization’. At the same time he sees the great natural resources of Hawaii capable of supporting an excellent ‘colonial’ agricultural economy, and one which can ‘only’ be developed by the industry of Europeans and Americans.

This book needs careful reading to identify the point of view of the writer first before attempting to see some aspects of Hawaii in 1836.

The present edition is well done in paperback with copies of the charming drawings of Barthelme Lauvergne and Theodore Auguste Fisquet, two artists on La Bonite. - Pauline King Joerger, Assistant Professor of History, University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Th6odore-Adolphe Barrot, UNLESS HASTE IS MADE, Press Pacifica, Kailua, Hawaii, 1978, 128 pp.

Running aground in the ‘Sandwich Islands’... illustration by Barthelme Lavergne in Unless Haste is Made 48 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY - APRIL, 1979 BOOKS

TRADE WINDS

Low Fares Drop

Island Airlines In

At Deep End

The Pacific Islands are facing their biggest marketing challenge since they accepted the importance of tourism to their economies, writes Rob Gwyther in Sydney. The prospect of being cast once again into the backwaters of the tourist tide by lower fares on trunk through-Pacific routes has thrown panic into the hearts of many Island tourism planners. The reality of today's situation, fortunately, was forced home some time ago by the new equipment which enabled end-market carriers like Qantas and Pan Am to begin overflying island stops.

The message was reinforced last year when the Australian Government went so far as to warn in advance that its proposed new international aviation policy would cause disadvantages to Pacific islands. The policy report recommended against Australia attempting to ‘subsidise’ inter-island regional routes from its trunk operations to and from Australia.

It warned that Qantas should not operate direct flights to points which could not support ‘commercially viable’ traffic shared between the two countries’ airlines.

The report’s only concession was to allow Island carriers rights where there was a ‘genuine need’ for new services to aid regional development.

The kneejerk response generated by such moves, and the overflying trend, was recognised by Fiji’s new tourism chief, Fiji Visitors Bureau general manager Malakai Gucake, in his first address to the industry earlier this year.

He attempted to dispel the panic’ he found in Fiji’s tourist industry, over possible loss of stopover traffic, by arguing that Australia’s policy should work to Fiji’s advantage by strengthening its role as a tourist destination. ‘Since 81% of our Australian visitors make Fiji their main destination, the new policy should work in our favour,’ he said.

His statement at once identified both the problem and a part-solution to countering the attractions of competitive fares to destinations further away such as the US. He said Fiji should become both more competitive in terms of its price and tourist lure, and must also look to new markets. But the eventual answer for other Pacific countries could well be as varied as the visitors who presently visit their shores.

Main destinations such as Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and Tahiti have come to grips with the tourism issue long ago but each has the problem of facilities which must now be kept utilised. Others, such as Tonga, New Hebrides and Western Samoa, are only now deciding where and when they want tourism. They are all finding out about the ‘how’.

The marketing challenge, however, is common to all: to become more attractive destinations in their own right as well as find new ways of tapping the tourist dollar (or perhaps yen).

For instance, Fiji was handed a guiding beacon by its long-time supremo Paddy Doyle, whom Mr Gulacake replaced in January. Before leaving to run his own Fiji resort, Mr Doyle called for new unity in the industry to improve dealings with overseas travel packagers as well as overcome accommodation and image problems at home (the recent rise in Fiji hotel prices is just one aspect).

Mr Doyle said countries whose tourist traffic was mainly stopovers faced a ‘lean time’ unless they became ‘destination material’. He said Fiji’s visitor future under the new low fares lay more with the United States than with Australia or New Zealand. From the US, he said, there was a better chance of getting both a lower fare and more traffic.

The US, he said, could stand up to 20 terminator flights a week. ‘A united Fiji tourist industry will be in a better position to press for more terminating flights, plus a point-to-point air fare with Fiji as one of the points that is economically comparable with the long-haul fares now being touted.’

In saying so, he of course touched on the gulf between a country’s tourism aims and the ability of its airlines and industry to carry them out. Air Pacific has yet to prove itself an economic maverick, but it has shown signs lately of becoming much more aggressive in picking up the marketing gauntlet since Qantas and Air New Zealand loosened their hold.

Air Pacific has negotiated strongly for its proposed services to Hawaii, Sydney and Melbourne and has pinpointed ways of chartering larger aircraft to get out and chase its own markets. Its success hinged on finding suitable aircraft to lease as both its finances and the lead-time on ordering new machines would delay replacement of its BAC-llls until 1985, according to one source.

Because of the Australian Government’s preoccupation with other main routes, the vital question of a new bilateral air rights agreement with Fiji has still to be tied up. The Fiji carrier hopes to start Sydney and Melbourne flights sometime after mid-year, and flights to Hawaii by year’s end.

It acknowledges, however that it will probably have to change its opposition to advance purchase air fares which are the basis of Australia’s new lower rates. Fiji rejected Qantas proposals two years ago for an APEX fare to undercut the present SA3O6 return excursion fare because of its heavy dependence on package tour business and the fact that Fiji was still very much an ‘impulse market’ for Australians. They now concede there is ‘some room’ for a lower fare.

Mr Doyle estimated reopening of the Melbourne service alone would bring Fiji an extra 24000 visitors a year. (As a measure of the importance of visitor traffic, tourism last year earned Fiji SF9O million in revenue plus $l2 million in foreign exchange, about half of which revenue stayed in the country. However, the fight for this business, as Air Nuigini, PNG’s national airline, has shown, can be played by some very hard rules.

Qantas showed how it regarded bleating by disadvantaged Islanders when its chairman, Sir Lenox Hewitt, produced figures to answer criticism of its policies. They showed the airline’s Funjet traffic from Australia had risen steadily from 14000 in 1969 to 54543 last year, only dropping in 1977 because ‘Qantas pulled off the Brisbane—Nadi route in favour of Air Pacific’. It issued no forecasts for this year, however.

Air Niugini - in its fifth year one of the Pacific’s success PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY - APRIL, 1979

stories has fought hard to establish an extensive network which will soon include Port Moresby-Hawaii. Recognising that all its tourist eggs should never be in one basket, PNG has, like Fiji, established Japan. Australia and the US as key markets. The airline’s twin attack on these markets has been to promote PNG heavily as an exciting frontier destination, as well as develop a route system to allow markets further afield to include the country as part of a wider circle-tour.

Thus Europeans and Asians can enter PNG via Indonesia or Japan and Americans via Hawaii, as part of circle itineraries which include Australia and other destinations.

The same applies in theory to Australians visiting Hawaii or Asia, though again this requires slick marketing to overcome the temptation of cheaper direct fares. Because of its geographical position, such circle travel patterns are comparatively easy for PNG to establish. They also recognise, as many tour operators such as United Touring International and Paradise Tours have predicted, that lower fares to one destination can help in stimulating overall traffic to a region.

Americans, for instance, have long thought in terms of the ‘South Pacific’ as a destination rather than individual countries, and so are likely to travel accordingly.

The degree to which PNG succeeds will depend on its airline’s direction after present general manager Bryan Grey departs this month.

Tahiti, New Caledonia and New Hebrides on the other hand have relied on establishing themselves as end destinations. Tahiti has succeeded in attracting more Australians principally because of its Club Mediterranee, and regardless of the fact that it lies on the South America trunk route.

But its fears of possible dilution from the new trans-Pacific fares to Hawaii and the US from Australia were shown by a recent visit to the island by six top Australian tour operators to discuss the need for lower fares from Australia.

New Caledonia, too, is reassessing its tourism promotion under plans to concentrate on its main visitor-generating markets for future growth.

Noumea had a marketing bonanza with its casino and goodquality hotels, but the New Hebrides is now planning to pick up much of this business by capitalising on the closure of the Chateau Royal hotel (another lesson in tourism marketing!).

Pago Pago in American Samoa, meanwhile, has been thrust into the lucrative North American market more by luck than good management (thanks in particular to Continental Airlines). The ability of surrounding regions to capitalise on this depends largely on their own regional airline’s efforts to establish effective shuttle services to tap the Samoans’ stopover traffic.

Western Samoa-based Polynesian Airlines has a new Australian-built Nomad to operate 40-minute flights Apia- Pago Pago, and hopes to win some American stopover visitors, if only for short visits. The airline has also expanded its Auckland-Apia-via-Tonga service to twice-weekly, adjusted its services to connect with Pan American flights, and introduced 20% inter-island discount fares.

So far Tonga has failed to provide the accommodation and facilities to enable it to tap the package-tour market or mature beyond its ‘exotic’ image. Apart from cruise ships calling it would be a waystop on most South Pacific itineraries. Tonga’s visitors bureau. however, has become more active with increased promotion and, like Solomon Islands and Cook Islands, is starting to develop the entrepreneurial talent needed to build tourist attractions.

Air Nauru has inaugurated a weekly Boeing 737 service between Tonga and Noumea, then on to Melbourne, at a time when visitors by air to Tonga have risen 10% in the past year.

The problems of Norfolk Island, meanwhile, were identified in a recent letter to a local newspaper as lower air fares, a new image and abandonment of uneconomical aircraft. The island’s other problem is to upgrade its airport to take larger planes.

Those islands on the South Pacific cruise circuit can take heart that lower international air fares show little sign of damaging the Australian and New Zealand cruise market.

The cruise market’s .confidence - now it has got rid of the excess shipping capacity around is symbolised by P&O’s move to establish a prestigious up-market liner, the Sea Princess, as a permanent fixture alongside the Oriana, replacing the worn-out A rcadia.

At the time of writing Continental Airlines planned to begin its May 1 South Pacific services with low sector fares only from the US end. It was likely to apply the same low through fares as Qantas and Pan Am from Australia and haggle the sectors later. Thus it is heartening to see Air Pacific examining its charter costs to determine how it could compete with Continental on the Honolulu-Nadi route. The low fares announced by Continental have not dampened the Fiji Government’s enthusiasm for Air Pacific to fly the route.

Some in the airline business may harbour memories of American Airlines’ fate in the South Pacific and not be prepared to gamble again on their future lying in the hands of the ‘big boys’. Continental Airlines gave firm assurances that it was ‘an island hopper’ when its managing director (international) Frita Blayney, said tour packages would be compiled to utilise regional airlines like Polynesian and Air Pacific.

He said Pago Pago was a ‘moral commitment’ and unlikely to be dropped on any account, and both gateways would be heavily promoted in the US to bring real tourists.

The US carrier gave notice that the bulk of its tourist traffic would be Americans rather than Australians.

But at the same time. Continental is likely to be very aware of the experience of American Airlines and control both its low-fare volume and stopover traffic carefully. It is aiming for an average seatkilometre cost of around six US cents and that means a tight rein on who and where its business will be. It may also review its whole island strategy should it replace its older DC-10s with more efficient aircraft, not dependent on island stops.

Hawaiian Airlines, too, is taking a cautious approach.

The carrier has new rights between the US West Coast and Western Samoa also, but is likely to take at least a year of study before it takes them up.

The regional carriers will! thus need to think very carefully about plans to expandl 50 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY - APRIL, 1979'

Trade Winds

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their route networks. It appears i unrealistic to expect them to I compete with Continental Airlines on sectors as they have neither the equipment nor | expertise at present to make such services profitable. On the other hand Continental is by no means committed to loneterm operation through Fiji, and there is thus an inherent risk in reliance on outside policies.

There is no guarantee that Continental’s island-hopping will not see US tourists doing more hopping than staying, with little tangible benefit for the islands. Those who see Continental Airlines as a possible saviour in the present airline climate may well find them to be more of an unbalancing influence by merely taking inter-island traffic away from the regional carriers.

Regional carriers’ future long-haul operations also depend to some extent on Air New Zealand, which has its own problems with the Australian policy. Air New Zealand is well advanced in looking at ways to re-model its Pacific operations.

It is likely to see both an aggressive inbound operation from the US and Asia, and strong regional operations, as ways of compensating for lost Australia/US rights. A possible lucrative Pacific round-circle fare, such as US/New Zealand/Australia/New Zealand, with Fiji and Tahiti stopovers outward and return, is one alternative foreshadowed by airline officials.

But, like Continental, Air New Zealand would seek to control the traffic from go to whoa to make the operation viable. Thus the regional carriers may well have to be content to remain just that.

The ultimate decision for the Islands in assessing their position may well depend on which they rate highest: a healthy tourist industry, or an active long-haul (though lossmaking) national airline. It is becoming increasingly clear they cannot afford both.

COMMENT Which rates first - tourism or communications?

It has taken time but the low air fare revolution is about to encompass the South Pacific.

Already planeloads of Australians are flying north to Honolulu and the US West Coast at fares that rate among the lowest in the world, and back down the reverse track growing numbers of planeloads of Americans are enjoying a similar lowfare boom.

Beneath the wings of the 747 s and DClOs lie the Pacific Islands, where tourist interests would like to see the great travel boom in the sky come down to earth. Standing alongside the tourist interests are the small regional airlines which don’t see the low-fare explosion in the same rosy light as their colleagues.

The division faces many governments with the dilemma should they try to tap this new boom in tourism, or should they work to maintain the identity of their own national airlines?

The airlines are characterised by being small, flying between sparsely populated centres, and operating equipment that is not only small in modern terms but one or two jumps behind in the technology that made the low fares possible.

Aircraft like the 747 can be operated profitably at ridiculously low fares - down to about 1.8 cents a seat/kilometre, or about a fifth the cost of a bus ride in Sydney because of their size, their 400-plus passenger capacity, and their highly efficient engines. There is no way that the BACII Is or Boeing 737 s operated in the Pacific can achieve anything like the economies of the big jets. So if tourism is to be enticed to or diverted through the Pacific Islands, the local carriers will have to see some of their rights to have access to an equal share of traffic into their home territory eroded. They will also have to be prepared to carry tourists from one airport to another at fares much lower than at present, which, even with full aeroplanes, means they will be making book losses.

Airlines like Air Pacific, facing the dilemma of whether they will preserve their identity or act as ‘insurance’ for the tourism industry (as one opinion in the present debate in Suva defines the airline’s role), are talking about following Air Niugini’s example and buying used Boeing 707 s to participate in international routes.

But while this is a step up, it is by no means the answer. The older jets are less attractive to passengers and still have much higher operating costs than the newer airliners (which is why airlines like Qantas and Air New Zealand are disposing of the older jets).

Another solution is to charter capacity on somebody else’s aeroplane. Hypothetically, one cabin on a Qantas 747 operating to Sydney or Melbourne could be sold and staffed as Air Pacific.

But this does not go down well with the airlines and their staff.

They feel, at best, second rate.

Fortunately, a newer generation of aircraft is now taking shape on the drawing boards that may offer the ultimate solution to the Air Pacifies of this world. From Europe, the A3OO and A3lO offer passenger capacities of between 200 and 300, plus lots of freight space, and from the US the Boeing 767 is pitching for the same market. All these will offer competitive seat/km costs but will demand cripplingly high investments for small countries.

Beneath these is another categoy of 130-180 sealers, the first of which is the Boeing 757. These will also be expensive aeroplanes but may provide sizes more balanced to the requirements of the Pacific. At the bottom end of the size range, Fokker is briefing airlines on a 115-130 sealer development of its F2B that would be very attractive - but won’t be ready much before 1986.

There is no easy solution to the dilemma - which rates first, tourism or communications? There must be compromises. More importantly, there must be extremely skilled planning at a high level of technological understanding so that national priorities are met in the most efficient way in the difficult years to come.

Trade Winds

PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY APRII 1070

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Pioneer products are available through:— ~ Australia: Pioneer Marketing Service Pty. Ltd.. P.O. Box 317, Mordiafloc, Victoria, 3195 let. 90-9011 Fiji Islands: Brijlal & Company, G.P.O. Box No. 362, Suva, Fiji Islands Tel: 22258 New Zealand: Fountain Marketing Ltd., Maidstone Street, Auckland, New Zealand Tel: 763-064 Norfolk Island: Burns Philp (Norfolk Island) Ltd., Norfolk Island, South Pacific Nauru Island: Jacob Enterprises, P.O. Box No. 4, Republic of Nauru Tahiti: Ets, PERFECT B.P. 594, Papeete, Tahiti Tel: 20,407 M New Caledonia; Menard Freres Ville. B.P. H 2 Cedex, Noumea, New Caledonia Tel 27.52.22 American Samoa: Transpac Corporation. P.O, Box 1477, Pago Pago, American Samoa 9679 S Rarotonga; South Seas International Ltd., P.O. Boxjt9, Rarotonga, Cook >slands^Tel. 2327

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Hotel Imperial 221 Darlinghurst Road, Kings Cross, h.S.W. 2011 JACKA 1259 D KAPUTIN PLAYS IT COOL When Prime Minister Michael ; Somare brought John Kaputin | into his ministry, just before the Pangu-People’s Progress Party split in November, a tremor or two ran through the Papua New Guinea expatriate business community. Especially so as Mr Kaputin’s portfolio was ‘national planning and development’.

Although a businessman in his own right for several years, John Kaputin is better known for his radical utterances, particularly on the question of Papua New Guinean participation in the national economy, and as a bitter opponent of expatriates ready to take but reluctant to give.

When Mr Kaputin turned up in Sydney in February to talk about his government’s economic policies and its attitude toward foreign investment, just about everybody who was anybody in the Pacific marketplace went along to listen to him. PNG officials were obviously delighted at the turnout.

And what Mr Kaputin had to say was not frightening in the least although he gave clear warning that in no way has he changed his longheld view that there’s no room for fly-bynighters in PNG’s economic scheme of things.

From the outset he stressed that ‘there must be a continuing dialogue’ between PNG and Australia because ‘lack of proper communication between our two countries can only lead to misunderstanding and distrust which are unnecessary ingredients so far as economic development is con- :erned’.

Mr Kaputin, drawing attention to his own attitudes toward economic development expressed before independence, said; T am deeply committed to economic justice for Papua Slew Guineans ... but there is no reason why foreign investment and the kind of development I favour cannot go together.’

The break with its colonial past, he said, had allowed PNG to open up new opportunities for both Papua New Guineans and foreign investors but only for ‘investors who are prepared to respect our laws and people; investors who are prepared, in fact, to invest and are not just out for “a quick quid or kina”. .. We do want, indeed we need, overseas involvement in our economy, but it must be to our advantage . ..’

Mr Kaputin offered an economic record which had achieved an average annual real increase of 2.4% in gross domestic product since 1975; consumer price index ratings of 6% or less since 1976; and a 22% rise in domestic private investment in 1978 over the previous year.

The main points of his government’s economic policy, he said, were; • to stabilise important private sector incomes such as coffee and cocoa; • to pursue an exchange rate policy which would maintain the purchasing power of the kina; • to hold down urban wages but allow modest increases in rural wages; • to hold down taxation levels to keep them attractive and increase taxation revenue by broadening the productive base of the private sector; • to develop merchant banking in PNG to fit in with its development strategies.

PNG’s was not an ‘open door policy to foreign investment’ he said, quoting an example: ‘We would give every assistance to foreign investment coming into a fisheries venture, but would certainly not allow the same investment in setting up a gambling venture.’

Areas in which PNG was actively seeking investment, he said, were in minerals and petroleum exploration; in agriculture including oil palm, sugar, rice, rubber and cocoa; timber; and fishing. All of these come within the first category of the National Investment Priorities Schedule published by the National Investment and Development Authority (NIDA) in April last year. It is only in this category that foreign investors could expect active government support in getting their project off the ground.

Mr Kaputin said that in certain areas, where the private sector had not taken the initiative, ‘the government has formed the company, subscribed initial capital, identified foreign investors, appointed project managers, and then, most important, phased out of active management inputs, leaving the project under private sector management’.

PNG offers no tax holidays because that would only attract ‘short term investors’. Tax incentives for primary producers and the mining industry, he said, were ‘more or less’ the same as in Australia, and ‘the writing off of certain items of capital expenditures and the indefinite carry forward of losses is incentive enough to long term investors’.

Three incentives recently introduced included the possibility of government meeting costs of feasibility studies to set up an industry; a tax rebate of 50% on ‘profits related to any increases in exports in any year’; and government loan assistance for ‘infant industry’ in its ‘initial, teething stages’.

The minister guaranteed foreign investment a free flow John Kaputin... no room for flyby-nighters

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I of funds and no expropriation ‘except on the payment of full compensation’. ‘We have created a good track record in our relations with foreign investors,’ said Mr Kaputin, ‘and we will continue j to treat foreign investors in our 1 country in a fair and just manner.’

The words are reassuring.

The track record is good. It will be interesting to see investment statistics in PNG this time next year. Foreign capital investment since the beginning of 1975 is pushing Kl5O million with nearly 1000 foreign enterprises registered with NIDA.

Bob Hawkins Pago looks to big sister Hawaii New levels of economic cooperation between American Samoa and other Eastern Polynesian states and territories were highlighted by Governor Peter Tali Coleman in a recent speech to the State Senate of Hawaii.

The first elected governor of American Samoa was visiting Hawaii to meet representatives of the 20 000 American Samoans living in the state, and to discuss with state legislators stronger links between American Samoa and Hawaii.

He told the Hawaii senators: ‘A visible demonstration of American Samoa’s new role in the affairs of the region was the January 8-12 meeting in Pago Pago of the Pacific Islands Development Commission.

The PIDC is an organisation composed of the chief executives of Guam, the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, the Northern Marianas, Hawaii and American Samoa, as well as private interests, largely from the fishing industry. ‘At my invitation the prime ninisters of Tonga and Tuvalu, he premiers of Niue and the lslands, and prominent ninisters from Western Samoa md French Polynesia attended he meeting. ‘While our formal meetings n Pago might be characterised as “routine”, our “off the record” and personal discussions were barrier-breaking. ‘As Premier Tom Davis of the Cooks said in a speech .. . to Pago Pago Rotary, we can work together constructively by lowering our shortsighted barriers to inter-island trade and intercourse, by encouraging private enterprise not by talk alone, but by direct measures, by reducing overlapping duplicatory services of regional air carriers, processing plants, and so on. ‘American Samoa has two major fish canneries in addition to prime shipping and airport facilities it makes no sense to duplicate these facilities in Apia, Rarotonga or Funafuti.’

Governor Coleman added: ‘Joint Pacific Island efforts on controlling immigration, agricultural disease and other threats to the environment will be more productive than individual efforts. There is no sense, either, in duplicating large capital facilities with high overheads eg, educational facilities, airports and major harbours. This is the sort of thing we talked about with other leaders of the South Pacific at our Pago PIDC meeting.’

In a wide-ranging review of the economic problems of Island countries, Governor Coleman told the Hawaii Senate: ‘Most small islands depend on a few main commodities to earn overseas exchange usually coconut products, fruit, sugar and spices, and in a few cases minerals or fish. In fact, the average Pacific Island derives over half of its export earnings from one main commodity. We in American Samoa are dependent on our fish cannery exports about SUSIOO million in 1978. ‘For most Pacific countries primary exports are subject to extreme price fluctuations on the world market. The Pacific Islands’ share of production on the world market is too small to affect world prices in any of these commodities. ‘The only major operating scheme to help small islands with this problem is Stabex, signed under the ACP/EEC Lome Convention. It has provided its four Pacific members (Fiji, Tonga, Western Samoa and Papua New Guinea) with very valuable stabilisation funds. ‘There are also some minor bilateral marketing agreements. Unfortunately, American Samoa and other Island countries do not share in these benefits.’

On problems of trade and aid, the governor presented a picture of his country’s situation which is far from squaring with the common impression of it as the recipient of floods of US largesse. He said: ‘Because of existing transport services and old colonial links. Pacific trade has been very tightly tied to particular metropolitan powers: exports are concentrated on traditional markets although these may not be the closest or most profitable. ‘New Zealand and Australia, for example, are heavily connected to the South Pacific Islands, while both US exports and imports are underrepresented. ‘Only 3 per cent of Pacific trade is among the Islands themselves. Some attempts have been made through the South Pacific Bureau for Economic Co-operation (SPEC) to arrange regional marketing agreements. However, the dilemma of the Pacific Islands is that, unlike the Organisation of Petrol Exporting Countries (OPEC), they control only a tiny proportion of world production.’

Governor Coleman noted that foreign aid was increasingly becoming the most important source of funds for small island countries. ‘This aid is not without strings,’ he said. ‘Almost all aid in the Pacific in bilateral. In 1976, on average, each country or territory received about 85 per cent of its aid from one donor country.

This pattern is also based on colonial ties. ‘For other Pacific Island nations this is now changing, with Japan, Western Europe, Canada and regional development organisations becoming major donors. ‘American Samoa, however, has been totally dependent on the US for budgetary aid. For economic development purposes we have received about SUSI million, and are not eligible for development loans by international financing bodies.’

Governor Coleman said that another problem is ‘the exploiting activities of multinational private companies.

Foreign commercial firms can certainly affect Pacific economies, and there is evidence that some have done so,’ he said.

The governor quoted a recent study, Hawaii and the other Pacific Islands saying: ‘As a gateway to the immense US market, Hawaii offers the other Pacific Islands an ideal marketplace for their exports. In turn Hawaii has the potential of serving as a convenient supermarket or department store for a wide variety of goods at prices competitive with other sources - that the Islands need from the US’.

He added: ‘We in American Samoa are the gateway to the South Pacific for Hawaii and in turn the gateway for our other small island regional neighbours to trade with Hawaii and the Mainland US. We are already an integral geographical part of the South Pacific.

We are determined to become an integral economic part of the South Pacific.’

Governor Coleman closed with this appeal: ‘Little American Samoa needs a lot of help from its big sister state!

Fa’afatai tele lava, mahalo nuiloa and Aloha.'' Governor Coleman... totally dependent on US for aid 57

Trade Winds

ACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY - APRIL, 1979

..Tradewinds Intelligence...Tradewi

THE CARPENTER group, 100% shareholders in the Apia Morris Hedstrom’s operation, are to offer equity in the company to staff and public. Western Samoa’s Finance Minister Vapvasamanaia Filipo has said the government would not be taking a shareholding because such a move could lead to charges of‘unfair competition’ by other trading organisations.

THE PNG Public Service Commission this year plans to recruit about 500 officers from Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom and about 50 from the Philippines.

GERALD Lancaster has been appointed chairman of directors of Travel Holdings Fiji Limited, the operating company of the Travelodge chain in Fiji.

BIG French oil company ELF-Aquitaine. which has held practically half ownership of New Caledonia’s Societe le Nickel (SLN). is pulling out of the ailing company, according to Noumea press reports. There is speculation that COGEMA, a subsidiary of the French Government’s Atomic Energy Commission, will move in in its stead.

KEN POWER, former general manager of Niugini Hotels, has returned to Papua New Guinea as manager of the Davara Hotel, Port Moresby.

LAE airport will be closed from October to inter-provincial traffic, according to Papua New Guinea’s Transport and Civil Aviation Minister Paias Wingti, THE US Civil Aeronautics Board has granted Hawaiian Air permission to fly to Pago Pago.

POLYNESIAN Airlines and Qantas have signed a reciprocal general sales agreement, Qantas representing Polynesian in Australia and Polynesian representing Qantas in Western and American Samoa.

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Nds Intelligence...Tradewinds Intel

' A NOUMEA newspaper, Les Nouvelles, published a picture of the assembled 300 personnel of Noumea’s Chateau Royal Hotel with the caption ‘ln a fortnight they’ll be out of work Who cares about the closing of the Chateau?’ The paper commented: ‘Closing of the Chateau is a real blow to our development as a tourist destination. Even if it is only shut down for five months we will lose 10 000 to 20 000 tourists .. . There will also be the 300 employees out of a job and a large number of small auxiliary firms deprived of business.’ Closure of the Chateau Royal follows purchase of the hotel, and of the Isle of Pines resort, by Club Mediterranee. Both are to receive Club-Med type facelifts. But problems of the transfers appear far from having been ironed out.

THE AVERAGE retail price of a package of consumer goods in Western Samoa rose by 4% in the year to January. Food prices dropped marginally from December to January but prices were up on women’s footwear and underwear, children’s clothing, men’s shirts and umbrellas.

JOHN Witt has been appointed Air Niugini’s regional manager in Melbourne, his position as marketing development officer in Port Moresby being filled until the appointment of a permanent replacement by Robert Martin. Another Air Niugini appointment is Anthony B. Lavutul of Yawakaka village in East New Britain Province to the post of area manager for Morobe Province.

STATISTICS, published in the Noumea newspaper France Australe from the South Pacific Commission on the gross national product of various Pacific countries show New Caledonia, with a GNP of CFP3S9 000 ($A4126) a head in second place after American Samoa and ahead of French Polynesia. Fiji is sixth with CFP7B 780 (SA9OS), Tonga tenth with CFP29 406 ($338), and Niue thirteenth and last with CFP2I 528 ($247). France Australe’s comment: ‘Dependent countries are in a better economic situation.’

HEBRITEL, a new telecommunications company owned by the British and French, takes over the New Hebrides’ telecommunications this month. The company will operate its new earth station from the British Paddock in Vila. A giant antenna will transmit to and receive from a satellite 36 000 kilometres away. Subscribers from France, Germany, Australia and elsewhere will be able to dial direct to the New Hebrides without operator intervention at the Hebrides end. The company will provide jobs for about eight expatriates and 25 local people.

THE FRENCH airline UTA plans an in-depth survey of the potential market for Pacific travel represented by the estimated 10 million US veterans of the Pacific War.

DHANNU Prasad and Sons, which operates a fleet of five buses in Labasa, Fiji, has extended its operations to the main island of Viti Levu by taking over Shere Punjab Limited, which has 12 buses on the busy Nausori-Suva service. The purchase price was reported to be $F 140 000.

SINCE it was opened in 1978, the abattoir at Santo, New Hebrides, has slaughtered 4000 cattle and has made eight shipments of frozen meat totalling about 300 tonnes to France. The abattoir has also marketed about 5000 cans of meat since August 1978. Reporting these developments, the Noumea newspaper Les Nouvelles commented: ‘Santo is industrialising. After the abattoir, there will be an expansion of the oil mill.’ It is expected that about half of the New Hebrides’ copra production will be processed in the expanded mill, which will have a capacity of about 50 tonnes of copra a day.

THE ANGORAM Hotel in PNG’s East Sepik Province is increasing its accommodation to 33 beds. Angoram is base for the Sepik Explorer I and II houseboats.

LICENCE...TRADEWINDS INTELLIGENCE.. r m . ■.

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PITCAIRN’S ‘OPERATION PALLIUM’

Pitcairn Islands ‘Operation Pallium’ issue, depicting harbour development in Bounty Bay, are both pleasing (for their colouring) and irritating (for their lack of distinctness).

Operation Pallium was a team job between the British Army’s 62 (Construction) Company, Royal Engineers and the people of Pitcairn. The four stamps 15,20,30 and 35 cents were designed by Waddingtons Studio, England, and printed in multicolour lithography by Bruder Rosenbaum of Vienna.

Recent Cook Islands issues, marking the 250th anniversary of Captain James Cook’s birth and Cook Islands National Wildlife and Conservation Day, are attractive offerings as are a Solomon Islands issue marking 50 years of scouting and a Papua New Guinea release featuring, in a four-stamp issue, indigenous musical instruments.

New Hebrides’ Christmas issue wouldn’t help anyone to guess where the condominium is. It appears unlikely that New Hebrideans have any part in the selection of designs for their country’s stamps.

Solomon Islands and Gilbert Islands have gone hand in hand with their issues commemorating Cook’s voyages in the Pacific' but the big format and tasteful design have resulted in handsome stamps.

Western Samoa has followed up its cowry shell issue with a series depicting cone shells.

The shells are enhanced by pleasing background and a subtle colour selection.

RH. 63 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY - APRIL, 1979 PHILATELY

INTRODUCING FRIGID’S New Range of Assemble-Yourself Walk-In Aluminium Freezer & Cooler Storage Rooms Hundreds already installed. Now with attractive timber grain aluminium exterior finish, (rust-proof) with white vinyl interior finish.

Frigid Foam Polyurethane insulation. 2" in cooler storage rooms is equal to 5" polystyrene foam. 3" in freezer storage rooms is equal to 8” polystyrene foam. Lower running costs. Best insulation available. Thin wall construction. Save in freight costs. Room sizes from 90 cubic feet (2 1 /2 m 3) to 930 cubic feet (25 1 /2 m 3).

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64 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY - APRIL, 1979

CRUISING YACHTS PlM’s roving correspondent, Jimmy Cornell, has been ‘cycloning’ with wife Gwenda and children Doina and Ivan in New Zealand, their ketch AVENTURA resting up in Whangarei while they have been looking the country over.

He recently returned to Whangarei to check out the international mix which headed there to avoid the South Pacific cyclone season; • DUEN, a traditional Norwegian fishing vessel registered in the American Virgin Islands, on its second Pacific voyage which started in May last year. Duen (meaning ‘dove’), before reaching Whangarei, visited ports in French Polynesia, Suvorov in American Samoa, and Vavau and Tongatapu in Tonga.

Plans are to head either for Fiji or Micronesia, perhaps both.

On board are three generations: owners Albert and Dotty Fletcher, their son Toby, and daughter Vicky with husband Jim Camp and son James. Built of pitch pine in 1942, Duen is a topsail ketch measuring 15.5 m on deck with a 6 m bowsprit. • INCOGNITO, an 11.6 m sloop from Santa Barbara, California, built in Finland 31 years ago. Steve and Ruth Abney left home in 1974 for an open-ended cruise that first took them to Panama and Costa Rica, where they spent two years working. In 1976 they spent nine months in French Polynesia before pushing on to the Cooks, Niue, Tonga before spending the 1977-78 cyclone season in New Zealand. Now they are back in New Zealand after spending most of 1978 cruising to the Kermadecs, Tonga, Fiji, New Hebrides and New Caledonia. Their plans now are to sail to Papua New Guinea. Forwarding: Marsh, 5 Bellevue Rd., Mt Edten, Auckland, NZ. • GALATEA IV, a 14.5 m cutter from Vancouver, BC, Canada, which retired couple Bob and Marg Miller left in May last year bound for the Marquesas, Tuamotus, Society and Cook Islands, then Tonga, Fiji and New Zealand.

This year they intend to sail to Fiji, then on to the New Hebrides, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea.

Mostly Bob and Marg sail their large yacht all alone but for the first part of this year’s cruise daughters Nancy and Beth will be with them. • CHANTALAIN a 10.3 m French cutter registered in Noumea with Patrick and Kay Ifrah on board. A Moroccoborn Frenchman, Patrick worked for a while in New Caledonia as a teacher while New Zealand-born Kay worked as a nurse. Last year they cruised in the New Hebrides, Chesterfield and Loyalty Islands. Now they plan to sail to Fiji, back to New Caledonia, then north to the New Hebrides, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and eventually to Japan. • MARUFFA, a 20 m yawl from Boothbay, Maine, US, on a world cruise with owner Katherine Greene, skipper Stephen Sewall, Michael and Stephen McDonnel, Sheila Viele, David Batchelder, Alex Logan and Michael Gillming as crew. Built in 1935, it was rather neglected for a while until its present owner took over in 1977, bringing the Maruffa back to its original splendour. After transiting the Panama canal, Maruffa sailed to the Galapagos Islands, French Polynesia, Samoa, Fiji and New Zealand. Australia and Papua New Guinea are on this year’s programme. Forwarding: Mark Sewall, Boothbay, Maine, 04537, US • MACUSHLAH, a 9.3 m gaff ketch from Honolulu, in the Kittywake class, designed by Charley Davies. Owners Dave and Kay Malseed left California in 1970, cruising down the Central American coast to Panama, where they spent two years working in the Canal Zone. In 1977 they set off again, calling at the Galapagos Islands, Marquesas, Tuamotus, Society and Northern Cook Islands, American Samoa, Tonga and New Zealand. This year they plan to sail to Fiji, after which their plans are somewhat fluid. • TARRAWARRA, an 11,6 m sloop from Melbourne. It spent 1978 cruising from Australia to Fiji, New Hebrides, New Caledonia and finally New Zealand and plans a return to the tropics soon. Four enthusiasts built the steel boat over a period of 414 years but two of them were left behind because of family commitments. The other two, Kim Proud and Tony Robinson have promised to see the world on behalf of those left behind. Steve Dunn is crewing. • RISING SUN, a 10 7 m sloop from Sidona, Arizona, which left Los Angeles in July 1977 bound for Hawaii where Dan and Denny Bache-Wiig spent a year replenishing the kitty before carrying on to both Samoas, Tonga, Fiji and New Zealand. This year they intend to sail to New Caledonia, New Hebrides, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and possibly Japan. • ENDEAVOUR a 12.5metre fibreglass sloop from San Diego, owned by Doug and Sandy Thompson, arrived at Tubuai in the Austral Islands writes Don Travers. The Thompsons had brought a gravely ill baby, accompanied by a nurse and the infant’s mother, from Raivavae. From Tubuai the baby was flown to Tahiti where it recovered. An almost identical incident occurred about a year before with a Belgian yacht, KALAIS (RIM March 1978). After leaving San Diego in May last year the Thompsons visited the Marquesas, Tuamotu and Society Islands before reaching the Austral Islands. The Endeavour was the first yacht to call at Tubuai since June 1978. It returned to Tahiti in January.

Duen... on second Pacific cruise The Abneys and Porthole... PNG next Chantalain’s crew... working trip Maruffa... Australia bound Rising Sun crew... maybe Japan PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY - APRIL, 1979

Beehive Building 94 Elizabeth Street Melbourne, Victoria Australia 3000 G.P.O. Box 8 Melbourne, Victoria Australia 3001 Telex: AA34552 Phone: 63 5094 66 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY - APRIL, 1979

INTRODUCING

The Brownbuilt

Filing Cabinet

BROWNBUILT LTD., Cnr. Bath Rd. and Waratah St., Sutherland, N.S.W. Australia 2232.

Agents - SOLOMON ISLANDS: NCR Corporation, Honiara.

NEW HEBRIDES: NCR Corporation, Vila. NEW CALEDONIA: NCR Corporation, Noumea. PNG: Brownbuilt (PNG) Pty. Ltd., Port Moresby & Lae. FIJI: Lysaght Brownbuilt Ind. (Fiji) Ltd., Suva. HAWAII: Records Management Services Inc., Honolulu.

Look no handles Despite the streamlined design, recessed handles and your choice of colours-the Brownbuilt vertical file cabinet is more than just a pretty face Available with full width indexing for maximum filing efficiency and a comprehensive range of accessories, you won't find a more practical or attractive solution to your vertical filing problems Brownbuilt When you’re looking for that extra touch of class 'H 9n In Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide and Canberra, the Parkroyal Motor Inn group offer you that little extra touch of class that has always made them popular with the discerning traveller.

Backed by Travelodgc the number one name in accommodation throughout the South Pacific.

Book through Sydney (02) 31 0601 Melbourne (03) 387 1233 Brisbane (07) 221 8586 Darwin (089) 81 5388 Port Moresby 21 226€ Suva 2 4600 Adelaide (08) 223 6194 Perth (09) 325 3811 Canberra (062) 49 1424 Auckland 3 3749 Motor Inns'* DEATHS of Islands People

Paul Sa’Engeika

News of the death of Paul Sa’engeika of Bellona Island, south of Guadalcanal, evoked this tribute from Professor Torben Monberg. chief curator of the department of ethnography at the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen; ‘Paul Sa’engeika was born in the years immediately prior to the turn of the century.

Although Bellona ‘lsland, in spite of its Polynesian culture, does not recognise “chiefs” in the usual Polynesian sense.

Sa’engeika came as close to being one as the culture would permit. Truly, he was a “big man” in the proper sense of the word: an extremely impressive personality, firm in his Dpinions. yet immensely tolerant: witty, yet serious in his beliefs of right and wrong. ‘He was a famed gardener, fisherman, composer. and iancer. In spite of the turmoils ollowing the conversion to rhristianity on Bellona Island n 1938. he. having been one of he outstanding priests of the )re-Christian religion, vividly emembered the old rituals, eremonies and myths to the ninutest details until his leath. ‘I was fortunate enough to njoy a very close friendship /ith Sa’engeika for 20 years, ie has been my teacher and uardian during all these years, nd treated me like a true son. lis death is a great loss to us 11. and to the Solomon Islands in general. Paul Sa’engeika can never be replaced.’

Louisa Miller

Louisa ‘Lulu’ Miller at Vunapope Hospital, East New Britain Province. PNG. after a long illness aged 84. Lulu Miller, born Louisa Schoevres. was a grand-niece of Queen Emma, the Samoan-American woman who won fame for the commercial empire she built across the South Pacific. Mrs Miller accompanied Queen Emma in 1910 on one of her grand European tours, winning much admiration for her beauty.

Norman Dixon

A longtime president of the Boroko RSL in Papua New Guinea, Norman Dixon went to PNG in the fifties to work for the Department of Civil Aviation. At Greenslopes Military Hospital, Brisbane.

TAU BOGA Tau Boga, an executive member of the Central Province Assembly, Papua New Guinea, in Port Moresby, after a long illness. A bridge near his home, Kapa Kapa Village, now under construction is to be named after him in tribute to his service to the Central Province.

Mr Tau Boga was for many years associated with the scouting movement.

PENI TOVE Corporal Peni Tove, who joined the Fiji Police Force in 1940. after a long illness, aged 58. He served until his death.

Tuala Paulo

Tuala Paulo, formerly a member of parliament and cabinet minister in Western Samoa, aged 49. After a career in journalism. during which he became editor of the Samoa Bulletin, he entered parliament. He was justice minister in 1970 and education minister from 1971 to 1973 in the Tamasese Government. He lost his seat in parliament in 1973 and went back to journalism as editor of the South Seas Star, and later as editor of the Catholic newspaper. Tautai, a post he held until he died.

Paul Sa’engeika... truly a ‘big man’ 67 ACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY APRIL, 1979

Marama .

The South Seas Express.

The first regular roll-on service between N.the Islands, The introduction of Marama to the Islands trade will enable exporters to greatly increase their export potential by providing faster, more frequent sailings as well as the greater cargo handling flexibility which a roll-on, roll-off service can provide.

Co-ordinated transhipment facilities from other N.Z. centres Intermodal coastal roll-on roll-off services as well as rail and road services can be utilised by shippers in other New Zealand centres to take advantage of the new Marama schedule. Your nearest Union Company office can assist you in organising the most efficient transhipment method.

International Transhipment Facilities Flexibility in cargo modules catered by this new service can provide for shipping operators and exporters the advantage of reaching international markets using onforwarding services through Union Company contacts and expertise.

Additionally Union can also arrange for cargoes originating from overseas sources to be transhipped at ports covered by Marama’ to their final destination to the benefit of the importer in New Zealand or the Islands. m.v. Marama Your new export incentive 6350 deadweight tonnes.

Capacity 340 seafreighter units or their equivalent, plus space for wheeled vehicles, livestock, etc.

Greater Flexibility Means a more satisfactory and versatile way to ship your consignment.

The following equipment is provided free to shippers Standard dry general cargo ISO containers 20' x 8' x B'6" box container 20' x 8' x B'6" Opensided container.

Seafreighter Units For movement of general and bulk cargoes. (Internal) Length 13'9"(4.24M) width 7'6"(2.29M) height 5'(1.52M) N.B. Units are fully collapsible and open topped to facilitate loading cargoes in excess of 1,52 M height. A shower-proof cover is also provided free with every seafreighter.

Newsprint Flats These units are specifically designed for carriage of forest industry cargo but are also suitable for the carriage of other specified types of cargoes. (Internal) Length 15'6"(4.77M) Width 6'(1.830M) W. Containers These containers are totally enclosed suitable for the movement of smaller consignments or valuable ones. (Internal) Length 5'7"(1.75M) Width 4' (1.22 M) Height 5'6"(1.70M) Unit Loads This covers cargo that is unable to be containerised or is not covered by the term mobile equipment’.

These unit loadings must be of a secure nature to facilitate handling by a forklift with 5" gluts (loading forks).

Refrigerated Cargo The following containers will be available: Cold wrap containers 20' x 8' x 8' Integral containers 20' x 8' x B'6"

Livestock Livestock stalls are available for the carriage of all types of stock.

Wheeled Cargo The versatility of Marama means that all types of wheeled cargoes including cars, trucks, tractors, scrapers, machinery on mobile tracks, cranes, trailers etc can be catered for.

Hazardous Cargo The majority of hazardous cargoes will be accommodated on the vessels upper deck either in seafreighters, ISO containers or W. Containers. Full details are available on application. / company amoving 68 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY - APRIL. 1979

p6E/?> O <*. -o a C 2 6/ FOR

In Our 85Th Year Selling ‘Service’

TO THE PACIFIC ISLANDS . . .

Nelson & Robert son PTY.LTD. (Established 1895) Plantation House, 197 Clarence Street, Sydney.

Cables: ‘IVAN’, Sydney, Brisbane. Telex: AA22381, Sydney.

INDENTS - FROM AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND and OVERSEAS.

Foodstuffs • Hardware • Travel • Canned Fish

Machinery • Insurance • Softgoods • Jute Goods

• Real Estate •

BRANCH OFFICES: Nelson & Robertson Pty. Ltd., P.O. Box 575, Brisbane, Qld., Australia, P.O. Box 2092, Govt. Bldg., Suva, Fiji. P.O. Box 258, Lautoka, Fiji.

P-O. Box 2420, CPO Auckland 1, New Zealand.

Papua New Guinea

REPRESENTATIVES: Rabtrad Niugini Pty. Ltd., P.O. Box 219, Rabaul, P.N.G.

P.0.80x 1406, Lae, PN.G. P.O. Box 711, Madang, P.N.G.

P.O. Box 253, Kieta, P.N.G.

AX.. V SHIPPING SERVICES These listings do not necessarily cover all services to Island ports.

Should any shipping company wish to have its services cargo and passenger included in these listings they should contact PIM.

SYDNEY - LORD HOWE IS -

Norfolk Is

Compagnie des Chargeurs Caledoniens operates four-weekly cargo service Sydney - Lord Howe Island and Norfolk Island, Details Hetherington Kingsbury Pty Ltd, 37-49 Pitt Street, Sydney (27-1671).

SYDNEY - NZ - FIJI - HAWAII -

Canada • Us

P & O liners call at Auckland, Suva, Honolulu and Vancouver on eastbound and westbound voyages between Sydney and the US.

Details from P & O Booking Centre, World Travel Headquarters Pty Ltd, 33 Bligh Street, Sydney (231-6655).

Australia - Nz - Fiji - Tonga

N. Hebrides - Noumea - Png

Solomons-Samoas

Sitmar Cruises operates a year-round cruise programme to include most of the above countries.

Details from Sitmar Cruises, 47 Elizabeth Street, Sydney (232-7511).

P & O liners call at Auckland, Bay of Islands, Honiara, Lautoka, Noumea, Nukualofa, Pago Pago, Papeete, Port Moresby, Santo, Savusavu, Suva, Vavau and Vila on cruises from Australia.

Details from P & O Booking Centre World Travel Headquarters Pty Ltd, 33 Bligh Street, Sydney (231-6655).

AUSTRALIA - FIJI - SAMOAS - NEW HEBRIDES - TONGA -

Norfolk Island

Pacific Navigation of Tonga operates a five-weekly refrigerated general cargo/container service from Sydney and Brisbane, to Vila, Santo, Suva, Lautoka, Apia, Pago Pago, Nukualofa and Norfolk Island.

Details from Beaufort Shipping Agency Co, 2 Castlereagh Street, Sydney (239-1022).

Australia - New Caledonia

(And/Or) New Hebrides

Karlander operates a monthly service from Sydney to Noumea.

Details from Karlander (Aust) Pty Ltd, 19-31 Pitt Street, Sydney (27-6301), Sofrana-Unilines ships serve Noumea every three weeks from the main ports along the east Australian coast.

Details from Sofrana-Unilines, 37 Pitt Street, Sydney (27-2031), Trans- Austral Shipping Pty Ltd, 570 Bourke Street, Melbourne (67-9162), ACTA Pty Ltd, Brisbane (221-3116), Elders-ANL Pty Ltd. Port Adelaide (47-5688), ANL, Newcastle (049-24364), Clements & Marshall, Burnie, Tasmania (31-1833).

Compagnie des Chargeurs Caledoniens operates a three-weekly containerised cargo service from Sydney to Noumea.

Details Hetherington Kingsbury Pty Ltd, 37-49 Pitt Street, Sydney (27-1671).

Compagnie Generate Maritime operates a monthly service from Sydney to Noumea, Port Vila and Santo, usihg M/V 'Ymnos' a self-sustained fully containerised vessel.

Details Compagnie Generate Maritime, 12 Castlereagh Street, Sydney (231-3700).

Australia - Fiji

Karlander (Aust) Pty Ltd operates monthly cargo services from Sydney to Suva and Lautoka.

Details from Karlander (Aust) Pty Ltd, 19-31 Pitt Street, Sydney (27-6301), Dalgety Shipping, 461 Bourke Street.

Melbourne (60-0731), Burns Philp (SS) Co Ltd, Suva and Lautoka.

Sofrana-Unilines (Fiji Express Line) operates to Suva and Lautoka every three weeks from the main ports on the east coast of Australia and monthly to Lautoka from Melbourne and Sydney.

Details from Sofrana-Unilines, 37 Pitt Street, Sydney (27-2031), Trans- Austral Shipping Pty Ltd, 570 Bourke Street, Melbourne (67-9162), ACTA Pty Ltd, Brisbane (221-3116), Elder-ANL Pty Ltd, Port Adelaide (47-5688), ANL, Newcastle (049-24364), Clements & Marshall, Burnie, Tasmania (31-1833).

Australia - W Samoa

Compagnie Generate Maritime operates a monthly service from Sydney to Apia, using M/V 'Ymnos' a selfsustained fully containerised vessel.

Details Compagnie Generate Maritime, 12 Castlereagh Street, Sydney (231-3700).

Australia - Fiji - Tuvalu

Samoas - Tonga

Pacific Forum Line operates a container, unitised/palletised and reefer cargo service from Melbourne and Sydney to Lautoka, Suva, Funafuti, Pago Pago, Apia and Nukualofa. Other ports are included on inducement.

Details from ANL Melbourne and Brisbane, Union Bulkships, Sydney, Hobart, Port Adelaide and Fremantle, Burns Philp (SS) Company Ltd, GPO Box 355, Suva, Fiji (311-777); Polynesia Shipping Services, Pago Pago; Union Steam Ship Co of NZ Ltd, Nukualofa; PWD, Funafuti; or Pacific Forum Line, PO Box 655, Apia, W Samoa.

Australia - Northern

Marianas - Micronesia

Nauru Pacific Line operates a regular container service from Melbourne to Saipan, Truk, Ponape and Kosrai.

Details Nauru Pacific Line, Nauru House, 80 Collins Street, Melbourne (653-5709), Nedlloyd Swire, 8 Spring Street, Sydney (2-0522).

AUSTRALIA - TONGA -

Samoas - Tahiti

Karlander operates a monthly cargo service from Melbourne and Sydney to Nukualofa, Apia, Pago Pago, Papeete, US west coast.

Details: Karlander (Aust) Pty Ltd, 19-31 Pitt Street, Sydney (27-6301).

Australia - Tahiti

Daiwa Line offers a four-weekly service from Australia to Papeete.

Details Meridian Shipping & Transport Agencies Pty Ltd, Box 3410 GPO Sydney 2001 (29-4988), Tlx: AA25970 Compagnie Generate Maritime operates a monthly service from Sydney to Papeete using M/V ‘Ymnos' a selfsustained fully containerised vessel.

Details Compagnie Generate Maritime, 12 Castlereagh Street, Sydney (231-3700).

Australia - Png

Containers Pacific Express (Burns Philp and AWP Line) and NGAL/PNGL Operate chief Container Service from Australia to PNG-Solomon Islands ports on joint slot sharing basis. Three container vessels operate on 28-day turnaround from Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane to Port Moresby, Lae, Rabaul, Kavieng, Wewak, Madang, Kieta and Honiara.

Details from Burns Philp & Co Ltd, 51 Pitt Street, Sydney (2-0547) and Interocean Swire, 8 Spring Street, Sydney (2-0522).

New Guinea Express Lines operates 69 ACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY - APRIL. 1979

o

Global Service For Shippers

THE LINE Papua New Guinea & Solomon Islands USA- UK /Continent Service Regular direct monthly sailings

Papal) New Guinea And Solomon Islands

to;

North America • United Kingdom & Continent

For particulars apply: THE BANK LINE (AUSTRALASIA) PTY LTD. 18th Floor ■ 1 York Street Sydney IM.SW. 2000 Australia Telephone; 272041 Telex: 24063 70

Pacific Islands Monthly - April, 197'

M PACIFIC ffi FORUfn Regular Monthly Liner Services from Australia and New Zealand to the South and Central Pacific

Owned By The People

Of The Pacific Islands

FOR INFORMATION CONTACT AGENTS: AMERICAN SAMOA: Polynesian Shipping Services Inc. P.O. Box 1478, Pago Pago.

AUSTRALIA: The Australian National Line, 50 Queen Street, Melbourne.

Union Bulkships Pty.Ltd., 333-339 George Street, Sydney.

GILBERT ISLANDS: Gilbert Islands Shipping Corp. P.O. Box 495. Tarawa.

FIJI: Burns Philp South Sea Co. Ltd. GPO Box 355, Suva.

NEW CALEDONIA: ETS Ballande, BP. C 4, Noumea.

NEW HEBRIDES: Burns Philp New Hebrides Limited, Vila.

NEW ZEALAND: The Shipping Corp. of N.Z. Ltd. P.O. Box 3344, Wellington.

PAPUA NEW GUINEA: Steamships Trading Co. Ltd. P.O. Box 1, Port Moresby.

SOLOMON ISLANDS; Sullivans S.l. Ltd. GPO Box 3, Honiara.

TONGA: Union Steam Ship Co. P.O. Box 4, Nuku'alofa.

Henry Cumines

PTY.LTD.

Exporters O General Merchants

428 GEORGE ST., SYDNEY CABLES: HENCO SYDNEY. G.P.O. Box 3949. PHONE; 232-5377 • - * For specialised and personalised buying service throughout the Pacific Islands and the East.

LOCAL AGENTS AND REPRESENTATION: PAPUA NEW GUINEA: RABAUL: M. & C. Seeto, P.O. Box 131, Rabaul.

Telephone 92-2919.

MADANG: W. Double, P.O. Box 22, Madang.

Telephone 82-2696.

SOLOMON FIJI: K. Witherington Ltd., P.O. Box 293, Suva.

Telephone 22-356.

NEW HEBRIDES; John Lum & Associates, P.O. Box 65, Santo.

Telephone 329 ISLANDS: Mr. Tom Lo, P.O. Box 327, Honiara.

Telephone 399. -• Resident A(jents in other Pacific Territories. three-weekly conventional and con- * tainer services Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Port Moresby, Lae, Rabaul, Alotau.

Details from New Guinea Express Lines. PO Box R 73, Royal Exchange PO, Sydney (241-3991) MacArthur Shipping Agency Co, 82-92 Eagle Street, Brisbane (229-3777), New Guinea Express Lines, 327 Collins ; Street, Melbourne (61-3053), Niugini Express Lines in Port Moresby (212466), Lae (42-1536), Rabtrad Niugini Pty Ltd, Rabaul (92-2911), Alotau Stevedoring & T’sport (61-1318).

Karlander New Guinea Line’s cargo vessels call at Melbourne, Sydney, Port Moresby, Lae, Madang, Wewak, Manus, Kimbe, Rabaul, Popondetta.

Details from Karlander (Aust) Pty Ltd, 19-31 Pitt Street, Sydney (27-6301), Dalgety Shipping, 461 Bourke Street Melbourne (60-0731).

AUSTRALIA - SOLOMONS - NORTHERN MARIANAS - TAIWAN - JAPAN Daiwa Line offers a four-weekly service Sydney-Honiara-Guam-Taiwan- Japan with transhipment at Guam for Saipan.

Details Meridian Shipping & Transport Agencies Pty Ltd, Box 3410 GPO, Sydney 2001 (29-4988), Tlx: AA25970.

AUSTRALIA - SOLOMONS -

Gilbert Is - Micronesia

Daiwa Line operates a container service every 30 days from Sydney to Honiara, Kieta, Tarawa and Guam. Gizo cargoes transhipped at Honiara, Saipan, cargoes transhipped at Guam, Details Meridian Shipping & Transport Agencies Pty Ltd, Box 3410 GPO, Sydney 2001 (29-4988), Tlx: AA25970.

AUSTRALIA - NAURU - MAJURO Nauru Pacific Line operates regular cargo /passenger service from Melbourne to Nauru and Majuro.

Details Nauru Pacific Line, Nauru House, 80 Collins Street, Melbourne Nedlloyd Swire, 8 Spring Street, Sydney (2-0522)

Png - Uk/Continent

Bank Line operates regular cargo service from Kieta, Rabaul, Kimbe, Madang and Lae to Liverpool, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp and London.

Details from Bank Line (A'asia) Pty Ltd, 1 York Street, Sydney (27-2041), Burns Philp (PNG) Ltd, PNG ports, PNG - US Bank Line operates regular cargo service from Kieta, Rabaul, Kimbe, Madang and Lae direct to New Orleans; calls at other US Gulf and East Coast ports on inducement.

Details from Bank Line (A’asia) Pty Ltd, 1 York Street. Sydney (27-2041); Burns Philp (PNG) Ltd, PNG ports, SOLOMONS - USA -

Uk/Continent

Bank Line operates regular cargo service from Honiara, to New Orleans, Jverpool, Hamburg, Rotterdam and Antwerp.

Details from Bank Line (A’asia) Pty Jd, 1 York Street, Sydney (27-2041); rrading Co, Honiara (389).

Far East - Fiji - New

ZEALAND New Zealand Unit Express (CNC, 4NOL, Nedlloyd) operates a threeveekly cargo service from Hong Kong 0 Lautoka, Suva, NZ ports, Manila, (aoshiung, Keelung, Hong Kong.

Details from Nedlloyd, 8 Spring Street, Sydney (2-0522).

Nedlloyd operates monthly cargo lervice with three ships from Surabaya, Jakarta, Bangkok, Port Kelang and Singapore to Suva and NZ ports.

Details from Nedlloyd (Aust) Pty Ltd 1 Spring Street, Sydney (27-3801); Burns Philp (SS) Co Ltd, Suva and Lautoka, JAPAN - NZ - PNG China Navigation Co, with three ships operates a monthly cargo service from Japan to New Zealand calling at Lae on return journey.

Details Nedlloyd, 8 Spring Street, Sydney (2-0522).

Far East - Mid-S. Pacific

China Navigation Co's vessels operate a regular cargo service from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore to Rabaul, Wewak, Madang, Lae, Port Moresby, Honiara, New Hebrides, Noumea, Papeete and Samoa.

Details from Nedlloyd, 8 Spring Street, Sydney (2-0522).

Kyowa Shipping Co. Ltd, operates monthly services from Hong Kong, Taiwan, S. Korea and Japan, to Guam, Siapan, Solomons, New Caledonia, Fiji, Western and American Samoa, Tahiti, Cook Is., Tonga and New Hebrides.

Details: Hetherington Kingsbury Pty Ltd, 37-49 Pitt Street, Sydney (27-1671).

NYK Line, in conjunction with Daiwa Line, with container ships operates 30-day service from Moji, Kobe, Nagoya and Yokohama to Papeete, Pago Pago, Apia, Suva, Lautoka, Noumea, Sydney, Honiara, Kieta, Tarawa, Guam and Taiwan, Details: Union Bulkships Pty Ltd, 333-339 George Street, Sydney (2-0238).

NORTH EUROPE - TAHITI -

New Caledonia

Hamburg-Sued operates monthly cargo services from Hamburg, Dunkirk and Le Havre to Papeete, Noumea, via Panama.

Details from Columbus Overseas Services Pty Ltd, 333 George Street, Sydney (290-2966), Columbus Maritime Services, 17 Albert Street, Auckland (77-3460).

Europe - Pacific Islands

Compagnie Generale Maritime operates services from Europe and Mediterranean ports to Papeete and Noumea using three Ro-Ro and one multipurpose vessel thus ensuring a bimonthly sailing to and from.

Details Compagnie Generale Maritime, 12 Castlereagh Street, Sydney (231-3700).

EUROPE-TAHITI-W. SAMOA-

Fiji-N. Caledonia

Nedlloyd offers regular cargo services from Northern Europe and UK to Papeete, Apia, Fiji and New Caledonia.

Details Nedlloyd (Aust) Pty Ltd, 8 Spring Street, Sydney (27-3801).

JAPAN - GUAM - FIJI - TAHITI - SAMOA - N. CALEDONIA -

Solomons - Gilberts

Daiwa Lines runs a monthly cargo service from Japan via Guam to Lautoka, Suva, Papeete, Pago Pago, Apia, Sydney, Noumea, Honiara, Tarawa, Guam.

Details from Burns Philp (SS) Co Ltd, Suva.

Nz-New Caledonia-Fiji

Pacific Forum Line operates a unitised / palletised and reefer cargo service from Lyttelton and Auckland to Napier, Noumea, Lautoka and Suva.

Other ports are included on inducement.

Details from Shipping Corporation of NZ Ltd, Auckland, Christchurch, Wellington, Burns Philp (SS) Company Ltd, GPO Box 355, Suva, Fiji (311 -777); Polynesia Shipping Services, Pago Pago; Union Steam Ship Co of NZ Ltd, Nukualofa or Pacific Forum Line, PO Box 655, Apia, W. Samoa.

Nz - N. Caledonia - N. Hebrides

-Png-Solomons

Sofrana Unilines with three ships op- 71 SHIPPING iCIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY APRIL, 1979

PAOFK^^I ISLANDS TRANSPORT LINE

Ms Camellia Venture

Express Freight Service between Pacific Coast Ports of U.S.A. and...

Tahiti 6 Samoa

Papeete - Apia - Pago Pago

Full container service including reefers.

GENERAL STEAMSHIP CORPORATION LTD.

General Agents 400 California Street, San Francisco, California, U.S.A.

APIA: Bums Philp (South Sea) Company Ltd.

PAPEETE: Agence Maritime Internationale, Tahiti.

PAGO PAGO; Polynesia Shipping Services Inc.

Captain W.L. Kennedy Pty. Ltd

Brokers for the Sale & Charter of Fishing, Commercial and Pleasure Craft. (Established 1931) l I

Landing Craft

• Deadweight Carrying Capacity 654 tons • Dimensions 45.58 xl2 x 2.358 metres draft Built of steel in 1968, major rebuilding recently. Liquid cargo tanks forabout 360 tons cargo. Has been trading on the Australian Coast. Main engines are Caterpillar D 343 each 460 kw at 1800 r.p.m., driving through rudder propellers at 300 r.p.m. Water ballast 368 tons. Fresh water 114 tons. Bunkers 10 tons. Clear deck area 21.34 x 11.4 metres. Separate ballast and cargo pumps at 60 m 3 per hour. Has A.C. power, and can plug into shore power. SSB Radio, plus spare radio, plus life-boat radio.

Automatic pilot. Depth Recorder. Radar.

Classed Bureau Veritas with Special Survey due 1981.

Price: $695,000 For further information and inspection refer to: Telephone: captain w.l. Kennedy pty. ltd. Telegrams: (02) 27 3797 32 Bridge Street, Sydney. “Capken erates to Vila and Santo, to Honiara and Papua New Guinea and to Noumea.

Details from Sofrana Unilines, 18 Customs Street, Auckland (773-279), PC Box 3614, Telex NZ2313.

Nz - Australia - New Caledonia

- SOLOMONS - GILBERTS - MICRONESIA Union Co/Daiwa Line operate a container service from New Zealand through Sydney to Noumea, Honiara, Tarawa and Guam.

Details: Union Steam Ship Co of NZ Ltd, PC Box 12, Auckland, or Union Bulkships Pty Ltd, 333-339 George Street, Sydney, (2-0238).

Nz - Fiji - North America (Wc)

Blue Star Line Crusader service to West Coast North America. Only direct service to and from New Zealand. Blue Star vessels call at Suva and Honolulu on NZ-US-West Coast voyages.

Details from Blueport ACT (NZ) Ltd, PC Box 192, Wellington (739-029), Burns Philp (SS) Co Ltd, GPO Box 355, Suva, Fiji (311-777).

NZ - FIJI Reef operates a regular 18-day service from Auckland to Suva and Lautoka.

Details from Reef Shipping Agencies Ltd. PC Box 3382, Auckland, NZ (77-1221-3).

Pacific Line with one ship operates fortnightly roro cargo service New Zealand, Lautoka, Suva.

Details: Sofrana Unilines, 18 Customs Street, Auckland (773-279) PC Box 3614, Telex: NZ2313.

NZ - FIJI - GILBERTS-

Solomons - Png

Pacific Forum Line operates a container, unitised/palletised and reefer cargo service from Lyttelton and Auckland to Suva, Port Moresby, Lae, Honiara, Tarawa, Madang, Lae and Moresby. Other ports are included on inducement.

Details from Shipping Corporation of NZ Ltd, Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington. Burns Philp (SS) Company Ltd, GPO Box 355, Suva, Fiji (311 -777) Sullivans, Honiara; Gilbert Islands Shipping Corporation, Tarawa; Steamships Trading in Port Moresby, Lae and Madang or Pacific Forum Line, PC Box 655, Apia, W. Samoa Union Steam Ship Co of NZ operates a roll-on, roll-off, container/unitised service from Auckland to Lautoka- Suva-Pago Pago-Apia-Nuku’alofa on a 14 day frequency.

Details from Union Steam Ship Co of NZ Ltd, PC Box 12, Auckland or from Branch offices/agents in Fiji, Tonga and the Samoas.

Nz- Samoa - Tonga

Pacific Navigation of Tonga operates a four-weekly cargo service, Auckland - Nukualofa - Pago Pago - Apia - Auckland.

Details from McKay Shipping Ltd, Downtown House, Oueen Street, Auckland (33-656).

Warner Pacific Line services Onehunga (Auck) - Nukualofa/Vavau/ Apia fortnightly carrying general and freezer cargoes. Also Timaru - Nukualofa/Vavau/Apia every 21 days carrying freezer cargo.

Details from Air Marine Services (NZ) Ltd. PC Box 2505, Auckland (796-841), Telex NZ 21555.

NZ - COOK IS - NIUE - TAHITI Shipping Corporation of NZ Ltd operates cargo services based on pallets 72 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY - APRIL. 1979 SHIPPING

Contex Agencies Ltd 240 Orakei Road, Auckland, New Zealand.

P.O. Box 42003.

PACIFIC AGENTS FOR: “PERSONALITY”

Kit-Set Furniture

“Waitemata Cakes”

Choice Cakes, Biscuits, Pizzas “CONTEMPORARY”

Pre-Cut Homes

Send For Catalogue

Agencies Available

TELEX NZ 2176 EXINST CONTEX

Daiwa Line

Japan-South Pacific Regular Service

Australia South Pacific Container Service

Japan-Taiwan-Guam Saipan Regular Service

Daiwa Line Bridges South Pacific

With Ro/Ro Car &. Container Carrier

japan-guam-lautoka-suva-papeete-pagopago-apia-noumea-

Sydney—Honiara—Kieta—Tarawa—Guam—Taiwan—Japan

Japan—Majuro— Rarotonga—Vila—Santo—Nauru—Japan

Japan—Taiwan—Guam—Saipan—Japan

V m THE DAIWA MITIGATION CO.* LTD.

Osaka: Dailine

Head Office

DAIICHI KYOGVO BLDG.. 45,2-CHOME, AWAZAMINAMi-DORI,

Nishi-Ku, Osaka. Japan

TELEPHONE: (06) 531-0471-9 TELEX: 525-6324 & 525-6325

Tokyo: “Funedailine” *

Tokyo Office

SHIN-DAIICHI BLDG., 4-13, NIHONBASHI 3-CHOME, CHUO-KU,

Tokyo, Japan

TELEPHONE: (03) 274-3251-8 TELEX; 222-3343. J 23559 and similar units from Auckland to Niue, • Cook Islands and Tahiti.

Details from the Shipping Corp of NZ Ltd, PO Box 3420, Auckland (797-210); Waterfront Commission, PO Box 61, Rarotonga, Lighterage and Stevedoring Co, Aitutaki, Niue Govt Offices, Niue Island, Compagnie Maritime Polynesienne, B’P’ 368, Papeete, Tahiti.

UK - FIJI The Bank Line operates a direct, fast monthly service from Hull to Suva and Lautoka.

Details from The Bank Line (Australasia) Pty Ltd, 1 York St, Sydney (27-2041); Burns Philp (South Sea) Co Ltd, Suva and Lautoka.

UK/N. CONTINENT - TAHITI -

N. Caledonia - N. Hebrides

Bank Line operates regular cargo service from Hull, Hamburg, Bremen, Antwerp and Rotterdam to Papeete and Noumea.

Details from Bank Line (A’asia) Pty Ltd, 1 York Street, Sydney (27-2041); Ets A M Fare UTE, Papeete; Ets Ballande, Noumea.

UK/N. CONTINENT - PNG - SOLOMONS Bank Line operates regular cargo service from Hull, Hamburg, Bremen, Antwerp and Rotterdam to Port Moresby, Lae, Madang, Kimbe, Rabaul, Kieta and Honiara and on inducement to Yandina.

Details from Bank Line (A’asia) Pty Ltd. 1 York Street, Sydney (27-2041); Burns Philp (PNG) Ltd, PNG ports; Trading Co Honiara.

Honolulu - Samoas - Tonga

Warner Pacific Line operates a unitized/palletized and reefer cargo service Honolulu-Pago Pago-Apia- Nuku’alofa. Line Islands and Suva are included on inducement.

Details from Hawaii-Pacific Maritime, Inc, PO Box 3264 Honolulu, HI (531-4841) Tlx: 723330.

SAN FRANCISCO - HONOLULU -

Nauru - Micronesia

Nauru Pacific Line operates regular conventional/container service from San Francisco and Honolulu to Majuro, Nauru, Ponape, Truk and Saipan.

Details from Nauru Pacific Line, Nauru House, 80 Collins Street, Melbourne (653-5709); North American Maritime Agencies, 100 California Street, San Francisco, California 9411 (981-0343).

US - FIJI - TAHITI - NZ - AUSTRALIA Bank and Savill Line Ltd, operates regular cargo services from US Gulf ports to Australia and NZ. Calls at Suva, Lautoka and Papeete on demand.

Details from Bank Line (A’asia) Pty Ltd, 1 York Street. Sydney (27-2041) or Howard Smith Industries Pty Ltd, 1 York Street, Sydney (27-5611).

Us - Tahiti ■ Samoa

Pacific Islands Transport operates a 'five/six weekly cargo service from North America west coast ports to Papeete, Pago Pago, Apia.

Details from Trans-Austral Shipping Pty Ltd, 19 Pitt Street, Sydney (27-2441).

Polynesia Line operates container and general cargo service from US west coast ports to Papeete and Pago Pago, Details from Polynesia Shipping Services Inc,. PO Box 1478, Pago Pago (9-6799). 73 SHIPPING a.CIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY - APRIL, 1979

CLASSIFIED ADVERTISEMENTS Per Line $5.00 Aust.

Minimum 4 tines.

The Papua Hotel

Port Moresby

• Right in the business centre • A tradition for comfort and fine food • All rooms air conditioned • Restaurant • Bars • Banquet Hall Telephone 21 2622 Cables PARTE L A. C. NEUMANN Manager

Hawaiian Real Estate

Member of multiple listing handling: Commercial, Industrial. Vacant land, Condominiums, Residential. Phone or write: Mason Seibel R.A., Sewell Associates, Inc. 4747 Kilauea Avenue, Honolulu, Hawaii 96816. Bus. 735-1600, 395-7408.

FOR SALE FLEETS 59ft. Carvel passenger boat, profess, bit. 1971, licenced 150 passengers, some dry hold space, suit river run. $BO,OOO.

FLEETS: 221 Esplanade, Wynnum Central, Brisbane.

Cable: 'FLEETS BRISBANE' Stay at Aggie Grey's the South Pacific's legendary hotel.

Situated right in the heart of Western Samoa. Enjoy Polynesian-style friendliness and service, in cool surroundings, superb entertainment and food. Magnificent white sand beaches only a short drive away. Airconditioned rooms, swimming pool and full bar facilities.

Bookings through Union Steamship Company of NZ, Pan Am, Air New Zealand or direct to Aggie Grey's, Apia, Western Samoa.

Cables: AGGIES, APIA.

Frostpak f Xoolatron INDUSTRIES Portable Electronic Solid State Refrigerators For people on the move Ideal for Campers & Caravans Indispensable for Travellers and Holidaymakers A must for Truckdrivers Popular with Yachts.

Aircraft and Fishermen ■ Big cooling performance ■ No Gas - No Compresso ■ Large 33 Litre capacity ■ Unaffected by motion or level ■ No noise or vibration ■ Low Battery Dram ■ Low Weight - 7 KG ■ Virtually Indestructable ■ 2 Year Guarantee From $199.00 incl. Sales Tax For Medical & Technical purposes & Food Samples Connects to 12V Battery or Cigarette Lighter Operates on 240 V with Battery Charger 337 Queensberry Street, North Melbourne 3051 Phone 328 3583 Telex 32571

Penfriends, Stamp

COLLECTORS Thousands world wide seeking Pacific Islands penfriends. Your name, hobbies, photo, published next issue our magazine for $2O (sample copy $1).

Buried Treasure, Box 77, Enfield 77, NSW 2136.

Wanted To Buy

33’-40' used cruising yacht. Steel or fibreglass. Extras unnecessary. Best price for immediate cash sale. Baker, B.P. 627, Papeete, Tahiti, F.P, RINE PACIFIC LTD. m

Salvage - Towage

TUGS 500 - 2700 b.h.p.

Ramped - Barges

250 - 500 d.w.t.

For charter throughout the South Pacific cable: TUGBOAT, SUVA, telex: FJ2202

Trade Mark

CAUTIONARY NOTICE: Dynamit Nobel A ktiengesellschaft of Postbox 1209, 521 Troisdorf, West Germany, wish it to be known that they are the owners of the trade mark ROTTWEIL (as shown) and that the ROTTWEIL mark is used by Dynamit Nobel A ktiengesellschaft on or in connection with ammunition and projectiles, explosive substances, fire-works, firearms for hunting and sporting purposes.

Proceedings will be taken against any third party found to be using the ROTTWEIL mark or any closely simitar mark on or in connection with ammunition and projectiles, explosive substances, fire-works, firearms for hunting and sporting purposes.

Peter Fisher

TRADING Pty Ltd 321 PITT St., SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA 2000 Telephone: 26 1109 Cables: “FISHERION” SYDNEY

Exporters To The

Pacific Islands

Sandalwood revival The sandalwood trade, a major reason for a foreign presence in the South Pacific in the last century, is being revived in Tonga.

The Tonga Chronicle reports that ‘sandalwood, one of Tonga’s most priceless culture trees, is currently being shipped to overseas markets in large quantities at an alarming rate for a very low price’. ’Anau Vuna, manager of Vuna and Tam Company Limited of Nukualofa, a sandalwood trader, said his firm began exporting sandalwood about seven months ago and was operating profitably.

Forty workers were employed, he said, at a new factory at Halaleva. They were scraping the outer bark from the sandalwood leaving only the prized scented pith for export. Main supplies were being drawn from the small island of ’Eua.

The Tonga Forest Division has been doing its best in recent years to protect sandalwood and other culture trees.

CRF-330K s 5 n o r- * • ICF-6700W ' SO5f Y 'S67Q ICF-5800W r ' -■ _ v J &: .V s*” —— . % . * „ .i -» SONV rW ft * ■I -V- . : J* - * * * **. : > - Tne Globescanners.

Turn on one of these Sony multi-band receivers and prepare to do some traveling. They're made to take you out of the country, off the continent, clear to the other side of the earth.

There's enough heavyweight communications technology inside Sony's lightweight 31-band ICF-6800W and 5-band ICF-6700W receivers to scan radio broadcasts from around the globe.

For example, the ICF-6800W's dual conversion superheterodyne circuitry for clear and stable reception. And phase-locked-loop synthesized tuning so that whatever you tune will be guaranteed quartz-accurate. It pulls in FM/MW and SW I ~SW 29 (1.6~30MHz), including the single side band and continuous wave band.

The ICF-6700W breaks its shortwave coverage into three zones spanning the same frequency range and puts it on three bands.

Sony's way of cutting the world to size. It also picks up FM/MW broadcasts.

Both models have LED digital readouts that display MW/SW frequencies with unfailing precision. You always know exactly where you're tuned without waiting for station identification.

The advanced technology found in these multi-band models comes right out of the electronic wizardry that went into Sony's CRF-330K, the 33-band wonder complete with a built-in cassette deck.

Take your pick of the three and get everything you need to explore the world via radio. Via Sony.

Datsun’s open and shut case on doors Every trip you take by car involves opening and closing the doors.

Have you ever thought how often that happens in a day? Or a year?

Or how much wear and tear the pulling, pushing and slamming represents for the doors themselves?

The answer is—one heck of a lot. So we make sure that Datsun doors can take it. Our test machine is pretty simple; a rod to close the door and a compressed air device to open it again. But the test itself is far from simple. Because the cycle of opening and closing is repeated, with varying degrees of force, 8 to 13 times a minute for up to 15 days.

Non-stop. That’s roughly equivalent to ten years of normal car use. And, if necessary, we make changes in the design of hinges or catches. Until the V P rove that they can come through it » all without needing to be replaced.

So when we claim that buying a Datsun means buying real durability—plus the extra economy that implies—we feel very confident.

Because we’ve got an open and shut case.

Tough tests: the Datsun way to total economy. s 'I DATSUN

Nissan Motor Cq Ltd

Datsun Distributors: Boroko Motors Ltd. P.O. Box 1259, Boroko, Port Moresby, P.M.G. /Carpenters Motors, Sales Division 61-63 Foster St. Walu Bay, Suva, Fiji Islands Private Mail Bag/Morns Hedstrom Ltd. P.O. Box 189, Apia, Western Samoa/United Enterprises Ltd. P.O. Box 262, Honiara, Solomon Islands /Sirius Motors P.O. Box 34, Norfolk Island, South Pacific/ Jacob Enterprises P.O. Box 4, Republic of Nauru/Cook Islands Motor Center Ltd. P.O. Box 74, Rarotonga, Cook Islands, South Pacific/ Pentecost Pacific S.A. P.O. Box 119, Port Vila. New Hebndes/ Agence Alma S.A. B.P. A 3, Noumea Cedex, New Caledonia /Tahitibull S.A.R.L. B.P. 359, Papeete, Tahiti /Gilbert Islands Government, Supply Division P.O. Box 71, Bainki, Tarawa, Gilbert Islands