Pacific Islands Monthly

Vol. 55, No. 4 ( Apr. 1, 1984)
1984-04-01 · uncorrected OCR from NLA scans

PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY iSHIL, 1984 j k orm American Samoa US$l 75 Australia *A$l.5O Cook Islands NZ$l 50 SI-- Fslso Hawaii US$l.95 Kinbati a 51.75 Nauru 75 New Caledonia ” CFPI9O New Zealand NZ$2.OO Niue NZ$l.75 Norfolk Island A 51.50 Papua New Guinea K 51.50 Solomon Islands 551.50 Tahiti CFP22O Tonga PI .50 Tuvalu A 51.75 USA U 552.25 USTT and Guam US$l.95 Vanuatu VT1.50 Western Samoa T 2.10 •Recommended retail price only Registered by Australia Post Publication No. NBPI2IO

S ,v - . . , - * - ,4 4 v»-. ■a • ■ * A new legend begins.

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THE COVER A still from the film The Voyage of Bounty’s Child (see story, “Pacific Report”). Look Films photo.

PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY Vol. 55 No. 4 April 1984 Noumea ’s Roynette 9 Death of Cook 15 Honolulu ’s KEEP 21 Solomons Hydropower 26

In This Issue

• Tensions Flare In New Caledonia. Pim Q

Editor and Publisher Garry Barker writes on his recent visit to New Caledonia, where he found that voices of reason and moderation are increasingly being drowned out by the clamor from extremists on both sides of the vexed issue of independence.

• Cross-Purposes Communications.— -1-1

Telecommunications writer Liz Fell reports on a certain 1 1 lack of communication among various participants at the 1984 conference of the Pacific Telecommunications Council in Honolulu. • THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN COOK. —By arrange- 1 5 ment with The Library Society (of the State Library of ** New South Wales) PIM has secured exclusive publication rights to the text of a remarkable lecture given by Professor Greg Dening of the department of history, University of Melbourne, at the library on February 14.

• Hydro Power In A Solomons Village. Or

Denis Fisk tells the encouraging story of a successful co-operative effort between Sydney-based scientists and villagers in Solomon Islands which has brought a revolutionary new micro-hydroelectricity scheme to the village.

• Problematical Future Of The S.P.C. A 7

Donald Stewart looks at the future of the revamped South Pacific Commission and sees plenty of problems ahead.

Contents Australia 33 Books "37 Canada ~""‘53 Cook Islands "”^5l Death of Captain Cook "!is Deaths 65 Fiji 29,43,53 Hawaii 15 Islands Press ""54 Japan 11,33 Letters 53 Marshall Islands 37 Micro-hydroelectricity .....25 Nauru New Caledonia 5, 9 Northern Marianas 55 Pacific Report 5 Papua New Guinea 26, 31, 45, 49, 52, 53 PIM Opinion 5 Political Currents 47 Shipping schedules 61 Solomon Islands 25 South Pacific Commission 47 Tahiti Telecommunications !!.11 The Month 19 Tonga 60 Tradewinds 25 Tropicalities 51 United States 11 Vanuatu 31,33 Yachts 60 PIM subscription rates and agents ..66 Australian cover price is recommended retail only. Registered by Australia Post, publication No. NBPI2IO. Second class postage paid at Honolulu, Hawaii. Copyright Pacific Publications (Aust.) Pty. Ltd. Postmaster Honolulu; Send address changes to PIM Hawaii, PO Box 22250 Honolulu Hawaii, 96822. 3 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984 Founded 1930 by R. W. Robson (USPS 952480) Editor and Publisher Garry Barker Associate Editor Malcolm Salmon Advertising Manager Stephen Brandon Layout & Design Barry Badger Editorial Adviser John Carter A Pacific Publications production 76 Clarence Street, Sydney, 2000, GPO Box 3408, Sydney, 2001.

Cables; PACPUB Sydney.

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Expert Insurance Service throughout the islands * Queensland Insurance (Fiji) Limited Head Office; Queensland Insurance Centre, Victoria Parade SUVA. General Manager: R. Jackson Assistant Manager: Vijay Lai. Phone 23 851.

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Papua New Guinea

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Pacific Agencies

NEW CALEDONIA Ste. W A. Johnston, S.A.R.L. 5 Rue Anatole France, NOUMEA Phone: 272083.

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4 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

Pim Opinion

Why must it always be true that the only lesson of history is that men never learn from history? Even in an idyllic little country like New Caledonia the same weary old mistakes are being made in the run up to independence from the French.

The voices of moderation are being drowned out as hard-liners of both sides respond to impatience, fear and prejudice.

The French themselves do not wish to remain the colonial masters.

These days it is an expensive, thankless, and unfashionable task incompatible with their position in the world. But the predominantly French-origin farmers and businessmen who form what is known as the right-wing in New Caledonia think they can hold back the clock, if necessary by creating a situation in which the French will have to intervene.

The left-wing is equally difficult, demanding greater speed than cooler minds feel is wise for so small and vulnerable a nation. They justify their stand by pointing to the 131 years the French have ruled their lovely islands, and say they should not have to wait another half decade for what is rightfully theirs.

In the middle is the peaceable majority, of all races and groups, filled increasingly with doubts and fears and feeling itself forced to choose between the extremists of left and right.

It is a classic tragedy, seen so many times before in so many other places. On the face of it there should not be an argument, let alone any violence. There is economic imbalance but no bitter racism, as there was, and remains, in Africa.

New Caledonia is not ready for total and immediate independence. The French Government’s program, providing for a steady progression up to 1989, is probably the most sensible available.

But practice is one thing, and principle quite another.

Without the $230 million which annually pours into the country from the pockets of French taxpayers who probably don’t know where New Caledonia is, nor could care less... without steady, and large, investment in tourism, like the stunning $lOO million Tiare project now under way, the place could become just another tropical doldrum.

Of course, that is not the point that impresses the speechmakers, and, as usual, rhetoric has now very nearly replaced sense in the politics of independence.

There is a regrettable tendency on both sides of the argument to say that anyone not 100 per cent for, must be 100 per cent against.

Australia is not popular with either faction for pretty much that reason.

There is a curious, and naive, belief that Australia is poised, panting, to scoop up New Caledonia, and hand out lashings of aid money the moment the French disappear.

There is an equally erroneous expectation that if the situation really heats up the French will send their army to protect everyone from everyone else.

Melanesian impatience can be understood. New Caledonia is not even on the United Nations list of colonised countries ... a difficult matter for the cynical bureaucrats of that international talk factory because New Caledonia is, technically, part of France.

New Caledonia must have its independence. But it has to be achieved with justice for all people of all races who, by accidents of history, acts of hope, efforts of ambition, decisions of 19th-century French courts or whatever other means, today find themselves with all they possess, and all they desire, caught up on the tiny speck of Pacific rock which Captain Cook felt reminded him so much of Scotland.

The Melanesians, who have victory inevitably within their reach, must somehow convince the French colonials, and those who side with them for financial or political reasons, that they are not about to be dispossessed and tossed out, as happened in Africa.

In turn the colons must listen to the Melanesians, and co-operate with them.

Extremism must be rejected so that all may meet reasonably on the middle ground. Sadly,the prospects are not good.

Pacific Report

Revolt Put Down In Irian Java

A revolt by Irian Jaya-bom soliders serving in the Indonesian army m the province was put down with reported loss of life in February. 1 he rebels had planned a take-over of the capital, Jayapura, but Indonesian intelligence got wind of the plot. In the wake of the revolt more than 250 refugees fled across the Papua New Guinea Porder to Vammo The events created new strains in the already difficult relations between PNG and Indonesia. PNG Prime Minister Michael Somare early in March offered his government’s services as an “honest broker” between Irian Jayan rebels and the Indonesian authorities. Mr Somare said the OPM (Free West Papua) movement did not have a direct dialogue with Indonesian officials, and we are prepared to act as honest brokers.”

Indonesian reaction to the offer was not known at press time.

Vanuatu’S President Resigns

Vanuatu s President Ati George Sokomanu resigned in February following a court appearance at which he pleaded guilty to the late payment of road taxes. In admitting the offence, the president said the law must be upheld. He said that the conviction for late payment was only a contributory factor in his decision to resign another major factor was the lack of constitutional provision to protect the president or government ministers from prosecution in such cases. In accordance with Vanuatu’s constitution, Speaker j r imakata of the Representative Assembly took over the duties and functions of the presidency. An emergency meeting of the executive council of the ruling Vanuaaku Party called on the government to hold an immediate presidential election, and to take appropriate steps to give greater security to the position. A statement released after the meeting said that while it regretted the president s decision, it felt strongly that the integrity of the office had to be upheld. The council said it believed the president’s decision had been politically motivated, ” but did not elaborate A new election was scheduled for March 6, with three candidatesex-president Sokomanu, George Kalsakau, and Harry Collins.

There was no quorum for a vote on March 6 due to an opposition boycott, but President Sokomanu easily won a vote held on March 5 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

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Parliamentary Stand Off In Fiji

Fiji’s parliamentary opposition National Federation Party was persisting at press time in its boycott of parliamentary proceedings (PIM Feb. p 5). The Opposition walked out of parliament just before Christmas last year when Speaker Tomasi Vakatora ordered Opposition Leader Jai Ram Reddy to leave the House for refusing to stand while addressing the chair. The NFP and its partner, the Western United Front, at a meeting on February 12 decided to continue the boycott. It is understood that, before the meeting, Mr Reddy had urged that all members should return to the House except himself, as the row was between him and Mr Vakatora. However, with only one dissentient, the meeting voted to continue to boycott parliamentary sittings so long as Mr Vakatora remained as speaker. Those present were apparently swayed by the argument that Mr Vakatora had insulted the whole party by his action, and not just Mr Reddy. According to the constitution, any member who misses three consecutive sessions of the House loses his seat. Fiji’s Parliamentary arrangements for 1984 provide for the third session of parliament to begin on September 3.

If Destroyed , Rabaul Has Had Its Day

Rabaul will not be rebuilt in the event of its destruction by the anticipated volcanic blast, Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Michael Somare has announced. While the decision awaited final Cabinet approval, Mr Somare said the township of Kokopo, about 30 km south of Rabaul, would be the new administrative and commercial centre for East New Britain. He said Kokopo had been chosen because, unlike Rabaul, it had sufficient flat land for expansion. While Mr Somare was moving to ginger-up disaster relief preparations by local provincial authorities, it was announced by his office that the national government had asked Australia to send army engineers to build a new emergency airstrip for Rabaul.

The statement from the PM’s office said both Australia and New Zealand had been asked for help in the face of the expected eruption. Australia would be asked to build the strip at Tokua, well outside the danger zone. The existing airport is in the zone of highest risk from an eruption.

N-Protests Revived In Tahiti

After gathering dust for nearly 11 years, Tahiti’s old protest movement against France s nuclear testing in French Polynesia has been reactivated. Two rival committees recently formed have duo the old nuclear protest effort out of the closet, dusted it off, and put it back in the public limelight. The effort is the biggest and most senous since 1973, when 5000 marched through the streets of downtown Papeete in protest against the tests. Of the two committees one the Peace Committee, which is headed by PIM columnist Mane-Therese Danielsson claims to be non-political.

It embraces two opposition political parties, a women’s group and a conservationist group. Its February 25 march was reported to have mustered 1000 protesters. The second group claims to be purely political. It groups four small pro-independence parties without representation in the Territorial Assembly. It planned its demonstration for March 3. The committees have two common goals. Both want an end to the French tests, and the withdrawal from Polynesia of the Centre d’Experimentations du aafique (CEP) Jean Juventin, Papeete’s mayor and one of the territory s two deputies to the National Assembly in Paris, is a member of the Peace Committee. The present vice-president of the territory s Government Council, Gaston Flosse, has no personal history of opposition to the CEP, but he said in a press interview on February 13; “I would be slightly in favor of a referendum in the temtory Let the Polynesians decide the future of the CEP in Polynesia. —AI Prince in Papeete.

"Colons Refuse Dialogue" N.C. Tribe

M™ 9 , the la m d ° c c u P at ion at Voh and its repercussions in Noumea (see p 9), Independence Front leaders told newsmen S'Tr farmers war ? ted to settle lan d claims with the Kaneiks, but were prevented from doing so by the hardline antj-mdeiDencfence leaders. The events at Voh began when in mid-February Kanaks of the Oundjo tribe entered the property of il? sMnn'^ an t N !t! rtm f ? ml y and constructed a symbolic case (hut) f he,r dalm to the lanA Several hundred antihe d /^ Ce su PP° rte '?> man y o f ‘hem armed, had assembled at *stanre SmT 3 i he occu P afion - The hut was built at some distance from the gathenng, and was burnt down during the following night. Members of the Martin family had unsuccessfully called for the Garde Mobile to be sent in to expel the Melanesian “occupiers”. A spokesman for the Oundjo council of elders, Joseph Diela, said they regretted the burning of their hut, and that the Martin family had refused their offers of dialogue which had preceded the land occupation. Mr Diela said the Oundjo people were not looking for provocation, and were sorry the Martins had preferred to listen to hardline anti-independence leaders rather than negotiate with the tribe. Leaders of the main antiindependence party, RFCR, denounced what they called the “usual back-pedalling of the French administration”, and also denounced extremism, whether from Melanesian independentists or the far-right Caledonian Front. Independence Front leader Eloi Machoro said Kanak independence was on the way, but many French nationals had not learnt the lessons of French colonial experiences in Vietnam and Algeria, and were continuing to refuse discussion with the Kanaks. Helen Fraser in Noumea.

Mamalonfs Major Reshuffle

Solomon Islands Prime Minister Solomon Mamaloni in February announced a Cabinet reshuffle involving not only ministerial posts, but reorganisation in some ministries. This is the second major reshuffle since Mr Mamaloni came to power about three years ago.

Under the new arrangements, Deputy PM and Minister for Home Affairs and National Development, Kamilo Teke, will relinquish his post and take charge of his home provincial ministry of Guadalcanal. He has been told he will remain as deputy PM.

Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Trade Dennis Lulei will take over the ministry for home affairs and national development, and George Talasasa, present minister for employment, youth, and social development, will be the new foreign minister. A total of seven ministries in the 15-member Cabinet were affected by the reshuffle. Mr Mamaloni said the changes had become necessary “because of the individual performances of his ministers”.

American Samoa Presents Its Constitution

Governor of American Samoa, Peter Tali Coleman, has submitted the territory’s new constitution to the United States Congress.

American Samoa is an unorganised, unincorporated territory of the United States. The Samoans, at a constitutional conference in January and February, spent much time on defining an “American Samoan citizen and, eventually, defined a citizen as “a person bom in American Samoa of American Somoan ancestry or who was born in the United States, or any of its territories or possessions, of American Samoan ancestry. ” The proposed constitution also requires that all candidates for public office must be of American Samoan ancestry instead of, as at present, being United States nationals. Another important amendment is that “No organic act or similar legislation alienating Samoan communal land or destroying the Samoan way of life, including its customs and traditions, shall be enacted by the Congress of the United States or any federal agency without the expressed consent and approval of the traditional leaders and people of American Samoa.”

World Premiere For Bounty’S Child

April 28 in Sydney will see the world premiere of the film The bounty s Child The film tells the story of the 1983 4UOU-mile open-boat journey of Captain R. W. Bligh-Ware and crew from Tonga to Timor, which was a re-enactment of the 1789 longboat voyage by Bligh-Ware’s ancestor, Captain William Bliqh following the mutiny on the Bounty. The 96-minute, 16 mm color film is a distillation of 30 hours of film shot during the voyage by cameraman Rory McGuinness and John Scott (who made the journey in the boat) and Wayne Taylor. Produced by Will Davies and Greeted by Michael Edols, the film boasts some of the most celebrated names in the modem Australian film industry. Editing of the film was done by Richard Francis-Bruce, who edited the highly successful feature film, Careful He Might Hear You. The script was written by veteran film-maker and author, Cecil Holmes. Narration is done by Leo McKern, of Rumpole of the Bailey TV film fame. 1 he nlm was made by Look Film Productions Pty. Ltd., Sydney.

Pope'S Large Flocks In Png , Solomons

Commenting on preparations in Southeast Asian and Pacific countries for the visit of Pope John Paul II in May (PIM Mar p 5) the Sydney-based newspaper. The Catholic Weekly, reports that official church estimates are that in the two Pacific Island countries to be visited Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands the 7 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

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numbers of Catholics are 913,000 in PNG, and 40,000 in the Solomons. The figures represent about one-third and one-fifth of the countries’ respective populations. Reporter Frank O’Connell writes: "Pope John Paul will find a Church in PNG where Catholics are probably the largest Christian denomination.” Prime Minister Michael Somare has declared a public holiday in the National Capital District in honor of the Pontiffs visit.

Tonga Extends $Lo,Ooo Passport Scheme

Tonga is to extend its Passport Act amendment of 1982, which allows sale of passports to nationals of other countries who qualify as "Tonga-protected persons”. The extension offers passports to entrepreneurs who have invested at least STIO,OOO in the kingdom and who have sufficient expertise in their fields to become advisers to the Tonga Government. Parliament voted 10-4 to accept late last year after the bill introduced by the Minister of Police, the Hon. ‘Akau’ola, had received the prior approval of the Privy Council.

The extension eases earlier requirements on the leasing or sub-leasing of land, and people with STIO,OOO to invest in a project that assists the economy of the country become eligible.

But such people will not automatically receive the "protected persons” status and get passports. ‘Akau’ola said it would be easy for any member of the mafia, drug dealers, and criminals to produce the money, so they would first go carefully into an applicant’s background. They expect the new extension to appeal to people who find difficulty in travelling because of political circumstances, or because their own passports are not widely recognised. ‘Akau’ ola said the Republic of China (Taiwan) is one such case. Pesi Fonua in Nukualofa.

Solomons Wants Us. Embassy

The Solomon Islands Government is pressing the United States to establish an embassy in Honiara. On a recent visit to Honiara U.S.

Ambassador Virginia Schafer based in Port Moresby, she is also ambassador to Papua New Guinea suggested that the U.S. would comply, but wouldn’t say when. The Solomons also wants direct govemment-to-govemment aid from the U.S. At present, the country receives indirect assistance from such bodies as the International Human Assistance Program (IHAP), the Foundation for the Peoples of the South Pacific (FSP), and the Peace Corps.

While this is appreciated, direct assistance with the granting of scholarships for study in the U.S., and U.S. Government assistance in finding markets for Solomon Islands products would be greatly prized. George Atkin in Honiara.

Islands Business Changes Hands

The Fiji magazine. Islands Business, has been sold by the Stinson Pearce Group of Fiji to a group of Fiji journalists headed by Robert Keith-Reid, a freelance journalist who began his career in the early 1960 s with the Fiji Broadcasting Commission and was later with The Fiji Times, first as a reporter and then as news editor.

Vanuatu'S Paruament House China Deal

China will pay the costs of constructing Vanuatu’s new Parliament House. Vanuatu’s Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Nikenike Vurobaravu, was quoted in the country’s official government newspaper Tam-Tam in February as saying the Peking government has agreed to fund the new building. According to Radio Australia’s South Pacific correspondent, Sean Domey, a site near Independence Park in Port-Vila has been selected for the new parliament. A seven-man Chinese study team has been visiting Port-Vila doing a feasibility study. Last year, China built a stadium in Apia which enabled Western Samoa to host the South Pacific Games.

Png Film For New York Festival

A Papua New Guinea feature film in Pidgin will be screened at a major film festival in April in New York. The organisers of a festival called "New Directors/New Films”, selected the film Tukana for showing at the festival. Tukana tells the story of a young Buka Island man’s problems in dealing with the clash between Western and traditional values when he goes to work for the Bougainville copper mine. New York film critic Joseph Hurley, who submitted Tukana to the festival’s selection committee after seeing it last year in Honolulu, reports that people in New York have been keenly interested in the film. Tukana was produced by Chris Owen from the Institute of PNG Studies. The North Solomons Provincial Government provided some of the finance for the film. 8 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

New Caledonia: the gulf widens of W ®h d - t 0 P ubllsh f r GARRY BARKER was in New Caledonia at the time of a February land occupation fnH he « or J h w est of tha ™ am lsland - Here he looks at both sides of the argument in New Caledonia sat^sf^d 8 vvhate 88 and d l, ff,cult t,me for everyone” in the territory, predicting that “nobody will be totally Another tense chapter in the long story of New Caledonian independence from France is now being written in Noumea against a background of hardening positions, declining pahence, and rising anxieties. 1 he five Melanesian political parties making up the Independence Front have begun to respond to their own hardmers who themselves are makng poetical capital out of the ncreasingly shrill reactions of >o-called nght-wing extremists >n the “French settlers’” side.

The right-wing groups, cornposed of Europeans, many of them farmers, do not see how they can give up that which they have created, and wish to remain “French” forevermore, They are not French now, any more than South Africa’s Afrikaaners are Dutch and would not be either welcome or happy, in France if they turned up as a 50,000-strong group of refugees. Which is not the present point, but part of their dilemma The “left” is predominantly Melanesian, although liberalminded Europeans have joined with them, convinced that noone. whatever his political hue, has any chance of a future here unless independence is embraced, and made to work.

Each side is now beginning to frighten the other.

In mid-February right-wing stalwarts issued an aggressive statement demanding continuation of the status quo, virtually without end.

The left, represented by the Independence Front, a very loose collection of five political parties, immediately countered by sending a telex to France’s President Mitterrand demanding that all here who did not accept independence should be repatriated to France immediately, They alleged that the “malcontents” were mostly ex- Algerian colons, former paratroopers and “other fascists” who ought to be heaved out, anyway but, as usual in these affairs, the truth is a good deal more complicated than that.

Confrontation in New Caledonia's countryside as a "land occupation" by pro-independence Melanesians takes place in the area, the angry wife of French colon farmer (right) remonstrates with pro-independence activist (with microphone, left) as an officer of the gendarmerie looks on. In the backgroud, a unit of the Garde Mobile drills, plastic shields at the ready.- Photo by JACQUES-MAURICE CLERE. 9 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY APRIL, 1984

It all adds up to the virtual sinking of the moderate majority of the middle ground. Increasingly those who are worried about the complications of independence . . . and they include people of all races, indigenous, immigrant and mixed .. . are finding themselves forced to take one side or the other.

I spoke to a pleasant woman with a middle-management job in a busy Noumea office. “ I am not French,” she said, “although my father was. I went to Paris on holiday last year. I was a stranger.

“New Caledonia is my home.

I was bom here. My children were bom here. If they throw us out, where will we go?

Where to go?

“It is difficult to get into Australia or New Zealand these days, since they changed the immigration laws.

“But we don’t want to leave.

All we have in the world is here.

Why should we leave? Why should we be pushed out?”

“I am not yet afraid of violence but I am worried it will come. ”

Of course this woman was not like the hard-line farmers who are at the seat of the present trouble over land reform which, essentially, means handing it back to its Melanesian tribal owners. Inevitably they have a different outlook and, being in the country, do not have the feeling of community enjoyed by the people of Noumea.

The capital is, in fact, not a Pacific city at all but a very French enclave of 60,000 souls, of whom only about 7000 are Melanesian. The architecture, the gardens, streets, shops and cafes could have been plucked ready-made out of the South of France.

In some respects it is this very cosiness which causes part of the problem.

In the last French general election about 80 per cent of New Caledonians voted for the conservative Giscard d’Estaing.

That the socialist Mitterrand won was regarded as a disaster for their interests.

Cooler heads reject this notion, saying that whoever has power in France must proceed as fast as possible with Melanesian independence.

The French High Commissioner in Noumea, Mr Jacques Roynette, a man of calm ability who, in New Caledonia, can please very few these days, was more than clear when I spoke with him that France is working towards independence.

The program, which Melanesian activists say is too protracted, provides for completion of the process by 1989, by way of a referendum to test public opinion.

For Melanesians this is a catch because, as the population divides at present, they are in minority. They are therefore demanding a “filtering” of voters, excluding all those who are not ethnically Melanesian or who did not have at least one parent bom in New Caledonia.

For the French, who invented the slogan “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” and sealed it in swamps of blood around innumerable guillotines, this demand of the Independence Front presents an almost impossible constitutional problem.

But the telex to President Mitterrand has reinforced this stand and the assertion that Melanesians should have nothing to do with any referendum to dispose of that which is rightfully theirs. About the same time as this message was flitting across to Paris reports were coming back to Noumea of a meeting between President Mitterrand and New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Sir Robert Muldoon. The New Zealand leader said his talks had convinced him that France was moving towards giving independence to New Caledonia ”in a reasonable manner.”

Besieged What Sir Robert, and the French administrators, believe is reasonable will not be so greeted by either side in Noumea, and much less by the right, who see themselves both betrayed and besieged.

Although both right and left are now getting themselves pinned into dangerously inflexible positions, the Front’s most recent statement has sent shivers down European spines for it is by far their strongest yet, and is a notable turn away from their previous calm insistence upon the justice of their position, and their expressions of willingness to talk.

They are now, therefore, beginning to match the stubborn stand of the most determined of the “Caldoches,” the islandbom French who consider their sweat made New Caledonia what it is today.

In between these verbal bouts, on a hot February Saturday at Voh, in the north of New Caledonia’s main island, Melanesian activists invaded a farmer’s land, symbolically occupied it and built a token house. ” Mercifully, and to the credit of the right-wingers, nobody was hurt, for every farmer in this country, and a good many townspeople, have sporting rifles.

Adding to the drama, some Europeans in Noumea got a garbled version of what was happening, thought the Melanesians had killed a farmer or two, and angrily marched upon the residence of the French High Commissioner (in effect the colonial governor).

They pushed open his front door and stormed in shouting that troops should be sent to protect innocent Frenchmen and women from rape, murder and assorted other atrocities.

The gendarmes arrived post haste, and a potentially nasty affair was calmed down.

It is probably significant that after the farmers had chased the “invading” Melanesians off the land the two sides shaped up . . . about a kilometre or so apart so that the real risk of violence was fairly slim. The French gendarmerie was careful not to interpose its forces directly between the two groups, but kept its distance. In that way neither the Caldoches, nor the Melanesians had a shield behind which each could move up on the other.

The authorities, and some observers place importance on the fact that although both sides were probably quite heavily armed with sporting rifles and shotguns, no shots were fired, or even threatened. “They do not wish to hurt one another . . . yet,” I was told.

In short the unhappy affair was handled pretty well by the authorities who may take credit for the fact that it went no further than it did.

But the utterly Gallic capital of France’s biggest, and richest, Pacific possession, was shaken to its core, and things may never return to where they were.

Beginning There is little doubt that the foray at Voh was only the beginning of a testing and difficult period for everyone here.

The tragedy of New Caledonia is that nobody will be totally satisfied, whatever happens.

The Melanesians will win their independence,but they will also probably lose economically in the process. The Europeans or, perhaps it is fairer to call them non-Melanesians, will lose the paradise they have owned, and in which they have lived, very comfortably, at the expense of the French taxpayer.

And the Pacific will have another small hostage to fortune, and aid money, for there is not the slightest doubt in official French minds that they will have to go on footing nearly 40 per cent of New Caledonia’s budget for many years after independence.

French High Commissioner Jacques Roynette 10 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

New Caledonia: The Gulf Widens

Some lack of communication on telecommunications Telecommunications writer LIZ FELL reports on the 1984 conference of the Pacific Telecommunications Council (PTC). She writes of frictions between representatives of small Pacific Island nations and the giants of the Pacific Rim, but also notes that some of the giants, notably the U.S. and Japan, didn’t seem to be getting along all that well together either.

The weather is always an important attraction for those attending the annual conference of the Pacific Telecommunications Council (PTC) at the lavish Sheraton Hotel overlooking Waikiki beach in Hawaii.

This year both the weather outside and the temperature inside were constant topics for discussion. It was sunny and warm in Waikiki in January but freezing inside the over-airconditioned hotel. There was more than a sneaking suspicion that the temperature had been lowered for the benefit of the high-technology which was being exhibited in the conference area. It was also snowing in New York and Washington as American Government and industry leaders at the conference never tired of explaining.

While most conferees came from the U.S. there was also a sizeable contingent from Pacific Rim nations such as Japan, Canada, Australia and South America, with several people coming from as far afield as Russia, China, the U.K. and France.

Also this year, financial assistance to the amount of SUS6O,OOO was provided by the United States Information Service (USIS). This allowed the participation of a small group from Western Samoa, Fiji, Palau, Ponape, Tonga, Cook Islands, and the Marshalls, as well as people from Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. PTC President Joseph Gancie expressed his commitment to extending this representation next year.

Despite the South Pacific islands presence, their concerns were only really expressed in one major plenary session on the last day. This session drew together representatives from disparate parts of the Pacific to discuss ways in which their governments could co-operate and take advantage of the growth in telecommunications services.

The speakers were all highlevel officials from the U.S., Peru, Chile and Japan. The respondents came from Indonesia, Fiji and Western Samoa. Taking the lead, the U.S. speaker outlined some recent initiatives to assist underresourced and under-developed nations. These included the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) study of South Pacific needs, the development of a low-cost, low-power earth station for satellite links in rural areas, and the formation of the U.S. Telecommunications Training Institute.

The institute is a co-operative venture between many of the large U.S. telecommunictions corporations and the U.S. Government. It offers technical and management training to people from developing nations at various sites in the U.S. One international telecommunications consultant put its aims very succintly when she said that it was an attempt to get people to “Buy American”. It is clearly hoped that institute graduates will think of U.S. products when (and if) they are eventually in a position to influence purchasing decisions.

The Japanese Government representative at the session also spoke of the various types of co-operation and assistance offered by his country to less developed nations. These involve acceptance of trainees, despatch of experts for on-thespot training, and surveys and technological co-operation centres in places such as Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Japan also provides substantial financial assistance to organisations such as the International Telecommunications Union, which remains the primary telecommunications training provider in this area.

Respondents were all quick to criticise the U.S. training initiative. Emori Naqova from Fiji pointed out that South Pacific nations have a low economic base which means they simply can’t afford to send skilled technicians or engineers away to be further trained in high technology without creating hardship. Inevitably they leave gaps behind.

“It is more practical if the Keynote speaker Tetsuro Tomita of Japan ... left conference early after remarks by US opposite number. 11 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

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expertise comes to us and sets up high-level courses. At least our skilled staff can be called out to assist if there are problems with the network,” he said.

Naqova went on to praise a Japanese initiative of 1983: A six-week course was organised and conducted in Fiji for South Pacific engineers and technical officers to be trained in satellite technology, fibre optics, and other advanced systems. He expressed gratitude to the Japanese Government, and the hope that this was only the start of a series of similar courses to be conducted within the South Pacific region. If such courses were to be conducted away from the region, scholarships at least would be necessary, he said.

Western Samoa’s respondent, J. W. Moore, was also critical of the “well-meaning offers” from developed countries. He pointed out that, leaving aside those countries chich have a per capita income within the range of $4OOO-$ 10,000, there were still 45 other countries in the Pacific Basin with per capita incomes between 1 $lOO-$3OO per annum. He suggested that the audience should look at telecommunications development in this context, recognising that it was often a low financial and political priority for developing nations.

Despite the friction between developed and developing countries at this one session, it was tensions generated between the Americans and Japanese that really dominated the conference.

Keynote speakers Tetsuro Tomita, deputy director-general of the policy bureau in the Japanese ministry of posts and telecommunications, and Lionel Olmer, U.S. under-secretary of commerce for international trade, used the opening session as a stage to rehearse some of the arguments being used in the ongoing telecommunications trade talks between these two nations.

In fact, in response to some of the criticisms levelled by Olmer, Tomita cut short his stay at the conference and returned to Japan.

Over the past couple of years, the U.S. has been exerting pressure on the Japanese Government to open up its lucrative telecommunications market to U.S. suppliers. Olmer noted certain “deregulatory” moves of the Japanese with approval, and went on to discuss a new proposal which may go before the Japanese Diet in the course of 1984.

This proposal will open up the Japanese monopoly, the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone public company (NTT), to competition. However, it may also restrict U.S. companies from competing by foreign-ownership and domesticcontent requirements.

Olmer departed from his prepared speech with words of criticism of this possibility. He said: “We view with concern any provisions of this character, and have so informed the Japanese Government. We hope that Japan continues a process of opening up its market to competition by accelerating not discouraging foreign participation.”

Mr Tomita returned to Japan the next day.

One of the areas of negotiation between the Japanese and Americans is the regional satellite system which Japan has proposed for the Pacific. This proposal, first outlined at the PTC conference last year, involves the provision of highspeed links between the nations of the Pacific Rim, and telephone links for remote areas in the Pacific islands.

At a press briefing during the conference, Dr Saburo Okita, former foreign minister of Japan, and now chairman of the Institute for Domestic and International Policy Studies, confirmed reports that the U.S. and Japan were discussing this satellite proposal as a co-operative venture.

Okita stated that the Japanese were feeling pressure to purchase U.S. satellites. If this regional proposal were implemented, it would involve the two countries pooling their resources. The production of the satellites would be commissioned to the U.S., and the Japanese would lease out transponders on the satellite if they wished.

The Japanese proposal still requires consensus among leaders in Japan. If it were to become a reality, the Japanese believe it could be integrated with the existing global satellite service provided by Intelsat, the international satellite organisation to which most developed nations are signatories.

Joseph Pelton from Intelsat is not so certain. He announced Intelsat’s approval of a new service called VISTA at the conference. This service was designed with South Pacific rural needs in mind, and while it is still far from ideal, Felton is obviously hoping it will be used for the planned South Pacific domestic telephone links.

Smaller sessions and workshops provided a wealth of information in other areas. The communication needs of exporters, health workers, scientists and those involved in longdistance learning were on the agenda. There were also special sessions covering the use of ATS-1 social service satellite networks in the South Pacific, and the A.I.D. rural satellite projects in Indonesia, Peru and the Caribbean.

Many of these smaller sessions were marred by the fact that so many speakers had evidently failed to master the simplest techniques of speaking into a microphone. Such widespread incapacity was all the more extraordinary in a gathering in which most participants were inolved in manufacturing, buying, selling and distributing the technology of the communications industry.

The organisers have been watching this annual event grow larger over the last six years. Next year they anticipate that participants will break the 500 limit, the number regarded as the maximum if effective, informal contacts and formal discussions are to remain the conference goals.

Liz Fell.

Pacific area registrants at the 1984 Pacific Telecommunications Council conference (left to right): Zulkarimein Nasution, Centre for Communications Technology in Education and Culture, Jakarta; James Lange, University of Western Australia; Asterio Takesy, Federated States of Micronesia Telecommunications Corporation, Ponape; J.

W. Moore, Post Office, Western Samoa; Leonardo J. Salazar, Palau National Communications Corporation; Tavaki Buksh, SPEC, Suva; unidentified person behind Buksh; Fifimone Fifita, USP, Suva; Stuart Kingan, Prime Minister's Office, Cook Islands; Lazarus Vusoniwailala, University of Washington. 13 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

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The Death of Captain Cook Printed here is the first of two parts of a lecture, “The Death of Captain Cook”, delivered by Professor Greg Dening of the History Department of the University of Melbourne, to an audience of more than 300 at the State Library of New South Wales on February 14.

The lecture inaugurated a series known as the Dulcie Stretton Lectures, and was sponsored by The Library Society, a friends’ organisation based on the State Library of NSW.

You will know that the Hawaiian islands are a chain of islands stretching 500 kilometres on a northwest line, from Kauai in the north to Oahu, Molokai, Maui and Hawaii in the southeast. And you will know that James Cook in 1778 on his third voyage of exploration in the Resolution and Discovery, having mapped all the southern seas in his previous voyages, was sailing north from Tahiti to discover if there were a northwest passage between the Pacific and the Atlantic. Cook was pleased to come upon the island of Kauai. The islanders were recognisably Polynesian and he had experience of their ways and their language in all parts of the Pacific from Tonga to New Zealand to Easter Island. Most of all he knew he had a place of refreshment and retirement when the northern winter made passage too dangerous. So he provisioned himself quickly at Kauai, named the islands the Sandwich Islands, and went on with nothing remarkable to note save the warm welcome he and his men had been given, especially by the women, who sought intercourse with the sailors almost frenetically.

The sailors were flattered, of course, and willing to oblige, even though Cook had strictly forbidden all contact with women because he did not want to be first to bring them “the venereals”, but the sailors were also a little puzzled by behavior that seemed extravagantly lubricious even for Polynesians. They would know 13 months later when they returned that things are never what they seem in contact between cultures. The women came back to the ships then to secrete in the decking the umbilical cords of the children they had conceived. They had borne the children of gods and men, just as they bore and were eager to bear, out of marriage, the children of their chiefs who were also gods and men.

Historians in hindsight, and indeed Cook’s colleagues in reflection on what happened on this third voyage, have agreed that even at this stage all was not well. Cook’s temper, never good, was less in control, and he flogged more than 45 per cent of his crew, and many of them more than once. Poor Bligh, who wanted so much to be a hero like Cook, has been thought to be a violent man for flogging only nine per cent of his crew. Cook’s cool judgment with native peoples seems awry, and patience thin. He was sick with eight years of the strain of leadership in dangerous places and the horrendous food of voyaging. His poor stomach, kidneys, bowels and lungs would offer a grim picture for any “Body Program”. Sir James Watts, a medical historian, has played on the irony that in saving himself from scurvy and a Vitamin C deficiency, Cook lost out on Vitamin B, and he may have had worms which deprived him of niacin and thiamine. For those who do not read boxes of breakfast cereals seriously, Sir James has a grim warning as to what a lack of niacin and thiamin can bring: fatigue, headache and insomnia, breathlessness, irritability and depression, painful mouth and tongue, digestive disturbances, loss of interest and initiative, constipation or diarrhoea, loss of concentration and memory, psycho-neurotic personality change, sensitivity to sunlight . . . “Historians,” Sir James warns, “have ignored for too long the serious effects on decision-making from Vitamin B deficiences, which could help to explain some otherwise inexplicable actions of the great naval commanders.” Be that as it may, the Resolution’s men went to the northwest coast murmuring among themselves at their commander’s ill temper, and wondering at his imprudences.

The Hawaiian chain which they now left had been settled some 1500 years before by the same Polynesian people that had been blown or had sailed to every island in the vast Pacific. In their isolation on their different islands the Polynesians developed variations on the different themes of their culture. But they all, being islanders, were preoccupied with the history of where they had come from and the prospects of where they might go. Their myths told them they came from a distant place and they would go to a far-off land. Tahiti in all its dialectal differences is the Polynesian word for a “distant place. ” Hawaii with all its dialectal differences is a “far-off land.” Life, the Polynesians knew, both as Captain James Cook, portrait by John Webber, R.A. This painting was purchased for $A506,000 at auction in July 1983 by millionaire West Australian developer Alan Bond.

The State Library of NSW was also in the bidding. Its failure to secure the painting was an important factor in inspiring the formation of The Library Society, which aims to promote and raise funds for the State Library of NSW.—Picture courtesy of Sotheby’s Aust. Pty. Ltd. 15 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

individuals and as groups, both now and in the past, was a journey from Tahiti to Hawaii.

The Polynesians had another puzzle about themselves. They puzzled how to describe, how to act out, how to establish the proper relationship between the raw violence of power and the controlled violence of authority. Think for a moment of our own political system: think of the distinction we make of the legal authority of the crown and the power of politicians. Think of the etiquette, the protocols, the rituals by which we divorce authority of the crown and political power and the ramifications of that distinction through all of our social and legal life. Mr Hawke said recently that the world would be a better place if Soviet Russia and Communist China played cricket. I heard him say in that that he saw in cricket something he valued in culture the subtlety of the balance of rule and custom, the thin line that could be walked between competitive hostility and acceptable sportsmanship. We would be hard put to describe ourselves, whether republican or monarchist, without pointing to the balances we make between power and authority in our courts, parliaments and in government at all levels. And if we were asked to explain it, we would talk history Magna Carta, Long Parliament, Common Law. We put accession were about how the son had taken power, usurped it, killed his father. He buried his father as if he had conquered him.

Then he gained authority by marrying into the people of the land.

Indeed the women of the land, not just his wife, gave themselves to the chiefs, as they had given themselves to the Resolution’s men, for the sake of the children they would bear. “Chiefs,” the Hawaiians said in their proverbs, “are sharks that walk on the land.”

The Hawaiians played out these oppositions of stranger/Native, Sea/Land, Death/Life in innumerable ways. But the most important was in the seasons of their year. They divided their year into two. One part, the eight months March to October, belonged to the strangers and their god of war and sacrifice, Ku. The other part, November to February, belonged to the natives and their god of the land, Lono. Eight months were the ordinary months of the year, time of war and sacrifices, time of taboos, time when the chiefs demanded awesome protocols, a time when the proverb rang true: chiefs were sharks that walked on the land. The other four months were of the northern winter, but in Hawaii they were the months of bountiful food. They were the season of thunder and lightning, of Kona winds, of rain that scoured the creeks and enormous social, educational and mythical energy into making the distinction and keeping it real.

The Polynesians had some sense of the same opposition between power and authority. Their rulers, their chiefs, had both power and authority, but the Polynesians understood that the two came from different sources. They understood that power, always violent, always usurping, came from outside, belonged to strangers. But authority was always legitimate, always came from within, belonged to those born with it, belonged to natives. They set up their understanding in myths about the past, but also the present. At some time strangers had come from a distant place, Tahiti; they came with war, with human sacrifice. They came as man-eaters, cannibals. They came with their god of war and sacrifice Ku. Strangers came from the sea, “from beyond the sky.”

When the strangers came to the Hawaiian Islands, they found natives there, born of the land, belonging to the productive land.

The strangers conquered the natives, took power but gained authority by marrying the women of the land, by marrying into lines that were native. These myths were stories about the past but they were also cosmologies about the present. So when a chief died and his first-bom son came to power the ceremonies of brought the fish. They called it makahiki ma-tahiti, a voyage from a distant place. It celebrated the voyage of the god of the natives, Lono, to Hawaii. He came every year with the rising of the Pleiades and left with their setting. Makahiki was a carnival season in which there was no war or sacrifice, in which there were games, in which there were no taboos that if broken would bring death.

The productivity of the land was celebrated in gifts to the chiefs in their role as legitimate authority over the land. Makahiki began with a procession, early in November. The symbols of Lono were taken around the island in a right-handed procession. Clockwise, land to the right, sea to the left: land, life, right; sea, death, left. The chiefs retired to their own properties around which left-handed processions were made in sign of dispossession of their violent power. The symbols of Lono were a wooden crosspiece from which hung strips of white bark cloth and the skins of a bird, the albatross. At each district boundary which the Lono procession crossed there were ceremonies of gift-giving of food in extravagant abundance. The procession having circuited the island ended in Lono’s temple. When the makahiki season was finished Lono’s temple was dismantled. In the last days of the season the chiefs landed on the beach before the temple and as strangers in The Death of Cook, drawing by John Webber, R.A. Photographed at British Museum from an engraving in the museum’s possession. Engraving courtesy of State Library of NSW. Original drawing now in Dixson Gallery. 16 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

ceremonial battle defeated Lono and the natives again. They began the new year with a human sacrifice to Ku. A canoe was launched filled with food and gifts and Lono’s symbols and set adrift in the expectation that it would return again with Lono at makahiki.

With the coming of the northern cold and autumn fogs Cook turned south. He arrived off Maui on Novenber 26, 1778. He was crankier than ever and his crew were cranky at him. He was making them drink spruce beer instead of their grog and they murmured as the phrase went, mutinously. No use telling them that their grog was deficient in both Vitamin C and Vitamin B, they liked it. What was worse, Cook told them they were not going to winter in an island haven, they were going to keep at sea the whole winter long. He was still angry that he had not been able to keep his men from the women on his earlier visit to Kauai, and it was soon clear from the women who now came off to the ships, that the “venereals” had spread very quickly indeed. He had obviously decided that three months in one spot in the Hawaiian islands would not do his crew or the islanders any good. And he thought he would be better supplied with frequent visits to new places. So he began a long punishing voyage in huge winter seas, tacking and black stone with huts and statues and altars of wood or matting.

The priests of the temple came to the Resolution and were importunate that Cook land. When he did the people had melted away or covered their faces and bent to the ground as a crier went before Cook crying Lono, and warned them to make obeisance.

The priests led Cook around the pantheon of their gods in the temple. He was extraordinarily malleable to their wishes, prostrating himself at the statues, kissing them. The priests installed him on a sort of platform, anointed him, fed him, extended his arms like a cross of makahiki , wrapped him in a red tapa cloth, and began a litany that ended in a chant of Lono, Lono, Lono.

When they were finished with him, Cook asked if he could have a small enclosure beside the temple for his use as an observatory.

The priests were delighted to accommodate the tents and all the paraphernalia for observing the stars. The Pleiades were about to set and they were watching the stars as well. They kept asking when Lono would go. Kalaniopu’u, the chief of Hawaii, came with all the majesty of Hawaiian high chiefs. He would not meet Cook on the Resolution. He met Cook on the beach near Lono’s temple.

He did not challenge him, it is true: he honored Cook with the great feather capes, the Hawaiian’s richest possession. The British tacking again around the island of Hawaii. He would come to shore to trade and provision, then continue on his clockwise voyage around the island. Each time they came near to shore they noticed that the people were extraordinarily generous with their gifts of food from their land: they also noticed there were no chiefs among them. And all the people called Cook Lono. His own officers gave up trying to tell them that his name was Kuki or Tuti and began to refer to him as Lono too. And so under their white sails hanging from the cross of their masts and yards they made a right-handed procession around the island. On January 17, they arrived at Kealekekua Bay. They were astounded at the welcome they received. There were a thousand canoes in the bay, 10,000 islanders in them. They did not know that Lono’s makahiki The path of the god they called it procession began and ended every year at Kealekekua Bay, and that they were expected.

Kealekekua Bay is a half-moon bay with high cliffs in the centre, flattening to plains on both horns. In 1779 there was a large cluster of houses, almost a village, at the north-western comer and on the south-eastern corner there was a temple, or heiau. For the season of makahiki this heiau was Lono’s temple where the procession began and ended. In the Hawaiian style it was a raised platform of Museum has it still. And he too kept asking when Lono would go.

They went on February 4, the day the Pleiades set in 1779, the precise day makahiki ended. Before they went they needed firewood and they asked the priests if they could have the fencing and even the statues of Lono’s temple. The priests were not offended. They said they might have it all, save one statue of Ku.

His season was about to begin. They happily helped dismantle the temple, as they always did.

The season of Ku would ordinarily begin with a human sacrifice.

Two days before the Resolution left, William Watman, a much loved older seaman, died of a stroke. Cook’s crew were pleased that the chiefs asked them to bury Watman in the stone pavement of the temple. But they were a little mystified at the extravagant ceremony that accompanied the burial. All night the Hawiians chanted and prayed around the grave. They piled sacrifices of their own, pigs and food, around the cross that marked it. There is a plaque there now commemorating William Watman’s burial as the first Christian service in Hawaii. That may be so. No doubt the priests of Lono and Ku thought it more ecumenical than that, and the chiefs had made their sacrifice. • Next Month: Death, and a double apotheosis.

The Death of Captain James Cook, F.R.S., at Owhyee in 1779. From “Captain Cook’s Voyage”, Octavo Edition, 1784. Courtesy State Library of NSW. 17 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

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the month Question marks over July poll Once more the “to be or not to be” of the Territorial Assembly elections due in July (PIM Jan. p 26) is at the forefront of New Caledonia’s political preoccupations.

France plans that the elections should usher in a five year autonomy period, to be followed by a vote on self-determination in 1989. Leaders of the anti-independence Republican Party (RPCR) plan to triumphantly resume the power they lost in June 1982, when the centrists of the FNSC switched sides, under French guidance, and went into the coalition government council with the Independence Front (IF).

The Republicans have waited for these elections to prove that the socialist experiment has not worked, and that the majority of the territory’s population are still fiercely opposed to independence.

Recently the IF gave France notice that they won’t particpate in any future elections except a vote on self-determination “for the Kanak people alone”. The territory has been .given no clues as to the plans of the French Government to accommodate the IF demands for electoral reform.

But it would be strange for the ruling French Socialist Party, which supported the IF before they came to power, and steered them into local power 18 months ago, to stand back and hand the Republicans an election victory on a plate.

If the elections do not take place as scheduled, or if there is electoral reform, the Republicans have threatened they will physically prevent both the South Pacific Conference and the Festival of Pacific Arts from being held in Noumea in October and December respectively.

The leader of the RPCR, Jacques Lafleur, has said the 35,000 supporters of his party, plus their cattle, pigs and bulldozers will prevent these events from being held. This threat led the LKS, one of the five IF parties, to decide at their annual party conference to mobilise their members in the event of an RPCR attempt to disrupt Oceanians from holding their arts festival.

LKS leader Nidoish Naisseline told a news conference after their conference that while they did not support the festival because the Kanak people did not yet have the right to welcome their Pacific neighbors, they would not tolerate any disruption of it “We’ll be there if Mr Lafleur tries to block it,” he said.

The LKS have also said they will block entry to polling booths if the assembly elections go ahead without electoral reform. “We have not decided on the means but we’ll do everything possible to ensure the elections are not held,” Mr Naisseline said. “We’ll use demonstrations, even violence, depending on the situation.”

Mr Naisseline also accused the Mitterrand government of hypocrisy, saying that while the French Government is ready to recognise the rights of selfdetermination of the Palestinians, for example, they don’t concede the same rights to the Kanak people.

Speaking at the closing session of his party’s conference Mr Naisseline called for an awareness of the contradictions existing in the Kanak independence movement. He told the Noumea Notebook 200 delegates that for a party which envisages government an awareness of these contradictions was essential. He cited possible conflicts between the interests of the state and the maintenance of Kanak custom as an example.

Mr Naisseline, who is a great chief from Mare Island, added that while all Kanaks agree that custom must be respected, this was often only at the level of verbal agreement and that often the wishes of chiefs were not adhered to. He said that a contradiction existed between the LKS policy of promoting local, traditional foods (yams, taro, manioc, etc) in the economic development of the country and the fact that the experience of their co-operatives showed an increasing trend to the consumption of Western foods.

“We must recognise that our populations are alienated from traditions by the propaganda of TV, radio and newspapers in favor of Western products. ” He cited the case of an old man on New Caledonia’s east coast who killed one of his chickens in order to sell it to the local store and buy an imported frozen chicken, and of villagers who sell their fresh fish only to go and buy cans of sardines. A third contradiction cited by Mr Naisseline concerned the preservation of Kanak culture. He said the elders who possess the richness of this culture are dying off without imparting their Jacques Lafleur. .. “supporters will disrupt South Pacific Conference, Arts Festival—if..

Helen Fraser 19 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

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The LKS also elaborated a detailed program of government which they will use as a basis of discussion with other political parties. The program places particular emphasis on the economic, industrial and agricultural development of the territory.

Budget New Caledonia’s 1984 budget was passed in the Territorial Assembly by 19 votes to 11, with the Independence Front and the FNSC voting for it and the RPCR against.

The CFP3I billion (approximately $A223 million) budget features an increase in direct taxation, bringing it to 24 per cent of budgetary receipts compared with 16 per cent in 1980.

Indirect taxes, which were 37 per cent in 1982 have fallen to 31 per cent this year. Also decreasing is aid from the French state which fell from 30 per cent of receipts in 1980 to 27 per cent in 1984.

Running expenses of the New Caledonia administration have decreased in this year’s budget, as have the expenses of personnel. One of the main expenditure features of the government council’s budget is an increase in public works projects, up from 11 per cent of spending in 1980 to 13 per cent this year.

Speaking against the budget, Republican spokesman Georges Faure, warned that the RPCR would re-examine the tax structure when they regain power.

A new feature of the taxation structure is taxes'of up to 60 per cent on people in the super-rich income bracket, said to affect 140 taxpayers in the territory.

Tourism The New Caledonia government councillor in charge of the tourism and transport sectors Stanley Camerlynck told the Territorial Assembly that tourism here is expanding, while other tourist destinations in the South Pacific had recorded a drop in tourist numbers last year.

New Caledonia’s figures are up by 5.4 per cent. He said the territory received 87,000 visitors last year, a 40 per cent increse since 1978. Mr Camerlynck said New Caledonia hoped to attain 109,000 visitors in 1984 with the aid of a large promotional effort, especially focused on Australia. Helen Fraser.

Stanley Camerlynck ... upbeat on tourism. 20 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

KEEP keeps hopes alive Surrounded by a sea of Oriental and Caucasian faces, a recent American visitor to Honolulu was heard to ask if the native Hawaiians lived in the mountains above the city. No one could inhabit that particular terrain, but the visitor’s query reflected the fact that, in general, Americans on the mainland know very little about the 50th state, or its original Polynesian inhabitants.

Local residents also find it strange that although the television program Hawaii Five O has been extremely popular around the world, still today, after 15 years or more of viewing its hero chase the bad guys around what is an obviously very urban landscape, visitors continue to be surprised at Honolulu’s skyscrapers and lack of grass shacks. Stereotypical South Sea visions of the islands still prevail.

The lack of knowledge about Hawaii and its people has had serious consequences for native Hawaiians and their descendants. Knowledge about Hawaiians has been so limited that, as recently as a decade ago, they were not formally or legally recognised as native Americans, i.e., descendants of the aboriginal inhabitants of the United States, as were American Indians or the Eskimo peoples of Alaska. Absence of that recognition meant that Hawaiians were not eligible for federal programs which sought to remedy the poverty, social disorganisation, poor health, and low educational levels which plague so many native American populations.

Belatedly, in 1974, the U.S.

Congress did recognise Hawaiians as native Americans, but attempts to provide them with educational and other benefits available to American Indians were not successful. Not surprisingly, lobbyists and government agencies identified with American Indian interests were reluctant to share resources with another cultural group, especially one which was both unfamiliar and far away. There was also little real appreciation in the nation’s capital that Hawaiians occupied a niche at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder in their own homeland, a situation quite similar to North American Indians. Hawaiians differ from the latter, however, in that there were never reservations for indigenous peoples in Hawaii.

As one consequence, officials in the U.S. Department of Education suggested that information on the status of Hawaiians was needed in Washington, DC, in the form of a report that could be used to pound tables and beat on the doors of members of Congress.

The Kamehameha Schools, and Bernice Pauahi Bishop Estate in Hawaii, offered to conduct such a study. The former is the school for children of Hawaiian descent in Honolulu, and the latter is the estate founded by the late Hawaiian princess to support education for Hawaiian children.

The Native Hawaiian Educational Assessment Project was launched in 1981. The results have recently been published, and project director Neil J. Hannahs of the Kamehameha Schools has been sharing them around town by means of a well organised and polished talk and slide presentation.

The research project focused on Hawaiian youths under 18, and mainly relied on data that are widely scattered but already available from schools, state agencies, and social science and historical research. The approach is holistic, taking into consideration many aspects of the social, cultural, and physical environments of Hawaiian young people.

The definition of Hawaiian is inclusive and based on the definition employed by the 1974 federal legislation which recognised Hawaiians as Native Americans “any individual any of whose ancestors were natives of the islands prior to Captain Cook’s first visit in 1778”. According to Hawaii’s Department of Health figures, there are 9366 pure Hawaiians A View from Honolulu and 166,087 part-Hawaiians, at a total or 175,453, or 18.9 per cent of the state’s population of 930,270.

By this count, Hawaiians are the third largest ethnic/cultural group in Hawaii. The 244,832 Caucasians are the largest with 26.3 per cent of the population, and the 218,176 Japanese constitute 23.5 per cent. Filipinos are fourth with 104,541 or 11.2 per cent. Individuals of mixed but non-Hawaiian descent are 87,840 in number, or 9.4 per cent. The remaining groups are Chinese (5.1 per cent), Korean (1.3 per cent), Black (1.3 per cent), and Samoan (1.2 per cent).

The results of the study, while not surprising, are depressing. On national educational achievement tests, Hawaiians fall far short of national norms. Within the state, Japanese score highest, with Caucasians second, and both are above national averages.

With regard to the general conditions of Hawaiians, it was found that many suffer the general consequences of low income in a state with one of the highest costs of living in the nation. Hawaiians are overrepresented among the unemployed and on welfare rolls.

Their health is the poorest in the state, and life expectancy is shorter by a decade than that of all other ethnic groups. Crime, juvenile delinquency, and drug and alcohol abuse are recognised as major social problems.

Years of subordinate status, frustration, and the break-up of the extended family organisation appear to contribute to high rates of child abuse.

Coming back to education, Hawaiians are over-represented in the figures for school Robert C. Kiste looks at the Pacific The Ala Moana Hotel, Honolulu, seen from the Ala Wai yacht harbor. Life's a struggle for native-born Hawaiians in the bustling 50th State, but KEEP shows some people are caring... 21 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

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drop-outs, absenteeism, and truancy. Many miss as much as one-fourth of each school year, With a history of low academic success, and faced with the over-achieving Japanese and Caucasians, Hawaiians expect to do poorly and the prophecy becomes self-fulfilling, Hawaiian children begin school with performances equal to others, but fall behind within the first few years.

In addition to collecting data on the status of Hawaiians today, the study was also to determine if there were any special or alternative educational programs for Native Americans that might raise their achievement levels. A number of programs were surveyed, but none seemed particularly relevant to Hawaiians. Reflecting the general neglect of the welfare of Hawaiians within the State of Hawaii itself, only one such program was identified.

That effort is the Kamehameha Early Education Program, or KEEP, which was launched in the early 1970 s by Kamehameha Schools. Here we have the potentially awkward situation of a Kamehameha project being reported upon by a study team from the same institution. However, KEEP has been continually researched and monitored by professional social scientists since its inception, and there is no reason to doubt the success of the program.

KEEP is described as a “marriage involving anthropology and educational research”, i.e., anthropologists and educators have teamed up to design, monitor, and continually modify the program. The major goal of KEEP has been to create a reading curriculum that raises reading comprehension. It enrols children from kindergarten through the third grade.

The basic proposition behind KEEP is that traditional educational approaches are incompatible with some fundamental aspects of Hawaiian cultural values and behavioral patterns. The stance that has traditionally been taken by the schools is that children must change their ways of doing things to fit the culture of the school. KEEP reverses this position and attempts to make the school compatible with Hawaiian modes of doing inqs 3 Only a few examples can be given. Hawaiians prefer cooperative group efforts and group achievement to the competitive individualism of Westem society. Hawaiians prefer “learning by doing” to instruction by verbal directions and abstract rules and principles.

Much of growing-up for Hawaiian children occurs in the context of sibling and peergroup relations, rather than the more Western style of adult/ parental direction.

Learning groups in the KEEP effort are small and employ those styles of inter-action and learning that are familiar to and comfortable for Hawaiian children. Teachers and students both participate in common tasks. Children learn in informal ways, “talk story” as an informal communication style is an integral part of the program, and they literally learn to do by doing together.

KEEP students achieve well above national levels in reading comprehension tests, and there is no doubt about its success.

Such achievement for Hawaiian children raises their own self-esteem, and, at the same time, Hawaiians have not had to make more compromises and deny their Hawaiian ways.

The program and Kamehameha’s sponsorship of it are surely to be lauded. It is unfortunate, however, that it stands alone as an educational effort that has achieved some compatibility with Hawaiian ways. Considering the overall status of Hawaiians in the state, it would seem that KEEP is only a small beginning of what needs to be done.

Robert C. Kiste.

The Lure Of Phosphate

From Makatea to Mataiva When the French Phosphate Company of Oceania ceased mining activities in French Polynesia in 1966 it seemed like the end of an old-style colonial rip-off operation.

Over a period of more than 50 years this company, a large proportion of whose shareholders were actually British, had extracted more than 11 million tonnes of high-grade phosphate imbedded in the dead coral on the top of Makatea atoll in the north-western Tuamotus.

Methods of extraction were of the most primitive, with shovels and wheelbarrows the main implements.

It was not until almost the end of this long period that the local Territorial Assembly acquired sufficient power to slap a modest 20 per cent export tax on the precious fertilising stuff for the benefit of its rightful owners, the Polynesian people.

But now a new phosphate mining operation is being undertaken on the nearby atoll of Mataiva and once more the benefits to the hapless islanders seem ridiculously small, especially when the huge environmental risks are considered, since the Mataiva deposits are not on the surface, as at Makatea, but under the waters of the lagoon.

Existence of these and other underwater deposits in the Tuamotus has been known of since the turn of the century, but nothing has ever been done about them because of the prohibitive costs of getting them out Nothing, that is, until the mid-1970s when, as a result of prolonged drought and extensive crop failures on a world scale the demand for phosphate rose steadily, and the price reached about SUS7O a tonne.

The first person to act on the idea that the submerged Tuamotu deposits might at last be commercially viable was Jean Breaud, a French tycoon who since World War II has been investing heavily in Tahiti in practically everything you can lay a name to. (His great wealth made his son Olivier the victim of the first kidnapping in Tahitian history when, in 1980, he was seized by French gangsters and brutally murdered before the $2 million ransom had been paid (PIM May ’BO pi 7, and June ’BO pl 9).

In July 1976 Breaud formed a Tahiti-based company “for mineral prospection and participation in mining operations”. Among the shareholders were a number of his closest business associates, and a French-bom American expert on ocean mining, Andre Rossfelder.

Breaud then signed up several very large companies who were willing to put up the big money needed to get the pro- Postmark Papeete ject under way. The consortium thus formed comprised the French Societe Pechiney, the Canadian mining giant Comincon, and American Union Oil.

The last two companies each held 24.5 per cent of the shares, while Pechiney held 26 per cent and Breaud’s own small company 25 per cent.

Continued on page 55 Marie-Thérèse and Bengt Danielsson 23 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984 KEEP keeps hopes alive

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A Peko Wall send Group Member Teaders In battery technology 24 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY APRIL, 1984

trade winds How hydro-power came to Iriri Village, Kolombongara DENIS FISK tells the remarkable story of how the voluntary and co-operative efforts of a group of Australian experts in various fields, and the 110 people of a Solomon Islands village, have produced “the world’s first practical and complete village micro-hydro electricity generating system ”.

When the micro-hydro electricity was turned on at Iriri. a small leaf village on the island of Kolombongara, in Solomon Islands’ New Georgia group, the importance of the event for local people and the enterprise of the 110 Iriri villagers were recognised at an extraordinary, generous-spirited gathering.

Rivalries were put aside as 400 chiefs, village leaders and other dignitaries came from many miles around on November 20, 1983, to wonder as they saw at work the world’s first practical and complete village micro-hydro electricity generating system.

Small hydro schemes have indeed been installed to power expatriate-run institutions in the Solomons and elsewhere before, but these have required constant maintenance by experts.

The overwhelmingly significant triumph of Iriri is in providing a water supply, a microhydro electricity generator producing 7.5 kVA, and a distribution system which can be maintained . using many available, and some introduced, village skills.

The secret of success has been to devise a reliable electronic control to distribute a constant amount of the electricity produced. Excess electricity is “burnt off” as heat. This control method replaces the long-established but troubleprone mechanical control of water flow to the turbine.

It is no exaggeration to say that this marriage of high technology and village skills should have revolutionary offspring in other Pacific Islands and many other countries.

Already, it is being followed up in Papua New Guinea.

The potential for changing the economic and social lives of village people with access to the necessary river or creek is dramatic if, like Iriri, those villages want change and are willing to work for it.

The technical breakthrough has been achieved over six years with little finance by the group consisting largely of volunteer professionals with various engineering skills, centred on the New South Wales Institute of Technology in Sydney, Australia. They belong to an independent, non-profit organisation calling itself APACE (Appropriate Technology and Community Environment).

The volunteers formed the Microhydroelectric Group in response to the Iriri villagers’ need for power to continue their unusual, self-motivated, communal development of the village. This was Iriri’s answer to the pressures of rapid change affecting all Solomon Islanders.

Iriri is a traditional leaf village, built of bush materials on an extinct volcano, the beautiful conical island of Kolombangara. It is closer to the big PNG island of Bougainville than it is to the Solomons capital, Honiara, on Guadalcanal.

The village was by no means an ideal place to start such a project. The stream is not very reliable, it is 800 metres from the village, the head (body of water to be piped to drive the turbine/generator) is too low by the usual standards, and the power outlets (houses, workshops etc) are spread over a wide area, in the way of many Solomons villages.

But it was attractive as a proposition for the Sydney engineers because the people of Iriri wanted power badly and, if it could be made to work there, it could work almost anywhere.

Making it work required the inter-action, at various stages, of the two main groups already mentioned, the philanthropic Australian adventurer Dick Smith, Vinidex Tubemakers (a major Australian manufacturer of PVC pipes), the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), the Australian Government’s Office of National Development, and its energy, foreign affairs, and industry and commerce departments in Canberra, the Australian High Commission in Honiara, the Solomon Islands Western Province Premier Mr Hilli, Joseph Kana, chief of Iriri and one of the main moving spirits of the Iriri microhydroelectric scheme. He founded (with his brother-inlaw Solomon) Iriri village. Coastwatchers in World War II, Mr Kana and his brother-in-law set up the village on land from an earlier European settlement. He is pictured cutting timber for the turbine shed. 25 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

and the Solomon Islands federal cabinet.

The achievement must be seen essentially, however, as one by enthusiasts at both ends, rather than the result of an application of large amounts of money which is another way such results may have been achieved.

I was introduced to the details of the scheme by the Microhydroelectric Group’s coordinator, Dr Paul Bryce, of the NSW institute’s school of electrical engineering.

He told me: “We have been grateful for the help we’ve had from many directions, but what we have at present is a ‘Rolls -Royce standard’ control, whereas we should by now have a simpler and even cheaper device which would work just as well and be affordable anywhere in the world. We still need funds to develop this.”

He showed me color slides of the last eight back-breaking weeks of work by the whole of Iriri village, including vacationing students, in September and October of last year.

“From the beginning, our group, chosen for sympathy with the Iriri people’s desires, agreed to get the villagers completely involved. By their doing everything possible to build the scheme, it meant that they were not only seen to realise their ambition, but knew themselves that they had done so.”

Distribution of power from the generator to the leaf houses, community workshops, and community buildings was underground, to maintain the traditional look of the village.

This meant more work than simply stringing power lines from posts, but it was tackled with an enthusiasm which persisted throughout the two-anda-half-weeks of dawn-to-dusk labor required to complete the project.

Two young village men who were shown by an electrical engineer how to wire the houses to junction boxes, and take off lines from the mains, had taken over completely within two days, and were doing the job perfectly.

Villagers also came up with a faster way of inserting wiring into the protective PVC conduit before it went underground: they reasoned it was faster to pull the tubing on to strung wires.

The electronic control of generator output devised by Paul Bryce is a technological application of great significance for developing countries. It allows the marriage of high “The potential for changing the economic and social lives of village people with access to the necessary river or creek is dramatic if, like Iriri, those villages want change and are willing to work for it ...” technology with skills available in the village, with small risk of incompatibility arising afterwards.

Small hydro-electricity generating systems have generally relied on a mechanical control of water flow. When consumption of electricity fell, the mechanical control restricted the flow of water, so that the generator produced less electricity, bringing production and consumption into balance. However logical, the system was complicated and prone to breakdowns, needing the almost constant loving care of an engineer.

As anyone who has lived in the Pacific Islands knows, engineers are still just about the rarest of professionals produced there. So an engineer almost invariably has to be an expatriate, if one can be found for such a purpose.

Dr Bryce’s premise was for the production of electricity to remain constant. When the total supply was not needed by consumers for lighting or powering machines, the surplus should be “burnt off” in some way in more technical terms, the system required a “dummy load”.

The control directing where the power went had to be reliable, flexible, and rugged, requiring no adjustment or maintenance.

Bryce decided that this required use of the latest in electronics, with a control as reliable as a good transistor radio, and capable of replacement by a plug-in spare in the event of breakdown.

With Ken Offord, formerly with the NSW Electricity Commission, and in 1978 an advanced student at the institute, Bryce developed the rudimentary prototype control. It not only worked much as required, but even then showed a big cost-saving over the precisionmade mechanical water-flow control.

A productive solution was found to the problem of what to do with the “burnt off” excess electricity by using it in a copra dryer. (Now, there is a rural luxury an electric copra dryer. And doesn’t it make good copra!) Others who played a part include: Neil Crowley, a mature-age student at the institute and a member of the Microhydroelectric Group, who helped to develop and test a hydraulic turbine which could be made without expensive metal-casting facilities; Alex Revel, a mechanical engineer at the University of New South Wales; Iriri villagers laying PVC pipe on trestles through the Kolombangara bush from the Oriomo River dam to Iriri village.

The Microhydroelectricity Group in Sydney with (centre) the Iriri turbine/generator prototype which went to India for the CHOGRM meeting, and (front) a detailed sketch map of the early Iriri plan. Dr Bryce is at right in the dark coat. 26 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

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Lester Bemand, at present working for the Australian Atomic Energy Commission; Dr Hugh Williamson, a materials engineer; Mursalin New, who worked on perfecting the Pelton wheel driven by the water; Dick Smith, who provided airfares for Dr Bryce to visit Honiara to discuss UN funding with the Solomon Islands Government; UNIDO, which acceded to the government’s request for aid; and the Solomon Islands Government itself, which decided to contribute substantially with aid-in-kind to the project.

Payment to the group from the Australian Government for the prototype allowed further research to be carried on.

The prototype design of the micro-hydro was one of three Australian initiatives in renewable energy displayed in New Delhi during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Regional Meeting in September, 1980.

PNG looking again at TV?

Papua New Guinea may be toying again with the introduction of commercial television.

Speculation is strong in Port Moresby that the government is tempted by an offer reportedly made by the independent Newcastle station NBN3. PNG Prime Minister, Michael Somare. rejected these suggestions when he was questioned during a February press conference in Port Moresby and said television would be introduced to PNG when the country could afford it, which was not now.

No deal had been signed, he said. However,speculation continues along the lines that NBN3 would provide the programming and the expertise while the PNG government would establish its equity by handing over about $1 million worth of television studio equipment said to be in store there.

The rumors have rekindled the interest of Australian and New Zealand television promoters who, while cautious about PNG’s prospects as a television market, feel they ought to have a foot in the door, if not a whole leg.

A thriving video library system operates almost everywhere in PNG, just as it does in Fiji and other Pacific islands, offering, in the view of many citizens, most of the benefits of broadcast television, while at the same time avoiding some of the pain.

PNG (but not Fiji, whose government lays claim to the electronic air waves) also has a well-developed market in domestic satellite dishes in which the Australian company, Hills, famous for their rotary clothes lines, seem dominant.

These generally pick up the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s country programs satellite-beamed to rural Queensland and the Northern Territory.

Mr Somare is undoubtedly firm in his belief that his country cannot afford itself to establish a television network. Even to service Port Moresby would cost the government more than it could reasonably afford. He is also thought to feel that even if private television stations are allowed to set up, the government should have some control over program content, perhaps using the National Broadcasting Commission’s resources to provide news and current affairs segments.

Late last year the idea of opening the country to television was being floated fairly prominently, but the fever cooled after a very firm government statement opposing the notion, again on grounds of cost.

Fiji, which has taken a very measured look at the idea, seems to have made its mind up very firmly that it will not have private broadcasters handling the medium, and that it cannot afford to do it itself.

Instead, Fiji has opted for video and has set about establishing its own cassette production unit, funded in part by foreign aid, a good deal of it reportedly promised by West Germany.

The Pacific country most generously served with television is American Samoa where, it is widely conceded, the less said about it, the better.

South Pacific Brewery takes a world view One of Papua New Guinea’s most impressive export campaigns has been mounted by the South Pacific Brewery Ltd., of Port Moresby whose new export lager has been winning up-market appreciation, and encouraging sales principally, so far, in Hawaii and California.

S.P.’s general manager, Bruce Flynn, said in Port Moresby that the export drive would continue with planned expansion of sales into Britain, Japan and Australia, as well as some other countries. However ’’meaningful export incentives” were required and the company was negotiating with the PNG Government on this point, he said.

Beer sales in Papua New Guinea have been declining steadily over the last three or four years and, while the trend now appears to have flattened out, no increase in sales is expected within the country this year. Sales are down from 505,451 hectolitres in 1980 to 474,294 last year. The drop was caused by the long ’’dry” imposed by government during the elections and by strict regulation of sales especially on pay days.

A year ago South Pacific merged with San Miguel, their only competitor in PNG, in an agreement which ended a ruinous period of price-cutting competition and allowed SP’s management to ’’turn an unviable industry, which showed a loss of some Kina 6 million in 1982, around to show a modest profit in 1983," Mr Flynn said.

The recovery program would continue into 1984, he said, with the investment of Kl.B million in refurbishment and rehabilitation in the Port Moresby plant and a further K 1.2 million at the Lae brewery.

The most exciting development has been the growth of South Pacific export lager sales overseas. The beer, slightly stronger than the domestic brew, (4 per cent alcohol by weight, compared with 3.6 per cent) is sold in a spectacular package which last year won the ’’beer can of the year”

Michael Somare PIM Editor and Publisher Garry Barker, now on an extensive Pacific Islands tour, reports on many and varied economic initiatives and projects in countries he has so far visited. 28 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984 Hydro-power

award against world-wide competition. Development of the export image and the product itself is continuing with the planned introduction of a new stubby as well as the taller “Heineken-style” bottle, both in American-style six-packs.

Most of the current effort is going into development of the American market. California alone imports 18 million cases of foreign beer a year, and Hawaii two million, while Australia brings in only 300,000 cases.

S.P. would not neglect the Australian market but “one per cent of 18 million is a better target than two per cent of 300,000,” said Mr Flynn. Prospects also looked promising in Europe where drinkers’ tastes were moving markedly towards lager. Castlemaine XXXX, and New Zealand’s Steinlager, as well as Fosters Lager, were all doing well.

Sales of SP Export lager are now running at the rate of $1 million annually in California and Hawaii. The company’s agents in Queensland (Walter Reid) and in New South Wales (Brimps), are about to start new campaigns in department stores and liquor chains while, with the help of PNG’s department of foreign affairs and trade, new export markets are being negotiated in New Zealand, Solomon Islands, and West Irian as well as Japan and the U.K.

South Pacific has broadened its interest in non-alcoholic beverages with Bougainville Beverages, a joint venture in the North Solomons, and will begin canning aerated drinks later this year. They have also begun distributing Daisy milk and flavored milks, and Meadow Gold fruit juices.

Air Pacific eyes bleak Europe Europeans who visit the Pacific are usually either very rich, are on a family-reunion trip to Australia or New Zealand, or have some sentimental link with the islands. But, according to Air Pacific’s retiring deputy chief executive, Del Mannering, the package-deal tourist is on the way.

British Caledonian Airways, Europe’s largest privately-owned airline, with which Air Pacific has a general sales agency, has recently acquired Jetsave, one of Britain’s biggest tour wholesalers. Jetsave will now begin marketing the South Pacific for the first time, tempting Europeans down to our sunshine from their own gloomy winters.

Early estimates say Jetsave will be offering a package in the $9OO range to include five days in Fiji, two days in Honolulu, one day in Los Angeles and round-trip air fare. Jetsave, which annually sends more than 100,000 Britons to the U.S., expects substantial business from this new South Pacific venture.

Air Pacific also apparently intends to extend its present Project America route from Nadi to Hawaii and operate right into Los Angeles, probably in conjunction with British Caledonian.

It seems clear that the aggressive Fiji-based line is seeking expansion of its British Caledonian link.

How this may affect its agency with British Airways is unknown, although at one point last year the big carrier was concerned at possible loss of U.K.-bound sales generated on a joint basis through Air Pacific’s Australian and New Zealand services. Nor is it yet known how U.S. carriers would react to Air Pacific’s again bidding for a Los Angeles landfall.

In the early days of Project America, when the plan was to wet-lease a DC-10 from Western Airlines, other carriers such as Continental objected strenuously. In the end Western did not proceed with the leasing because their crews objected to Air Pacific personnel in the cabin of a Western Airlines aircraft. Air Pacific then rented an ex-Air New Zealand DC-10 from a leasing company in California, still using Western Airlines flight deck crew, and ground facilities in Honolulu, but retaining the option to put its own aircrew up front once they qualified on the aircraft type.

Bruce Flynn Tonga's King Taufa’ahau Tupou (second from the left) is escorted by John E. Burleigh (left) after a demonstration flight over Tonga in a Shorts 360 aircraft. Mr Burleigh, regional manager for Short Brothers (Australia) Pty. Ltd., recently took the aircraft on a visit to a number of Pacific Island nations. 29 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

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Optimism on New Ireland gold Great optimism is held in Papua New Guinea over what is reported to be a large goldbearing deposit on Lihir Island, New Ireland. Initial drilling tests, still in progress, seem to suggest that PNG may have a major gold deposit of about 20 million tonnes of ore averaging 2.1 grammes of gold per tonne.

However, New Ireland member of parliament and former PNG prime minister, Sir Julius Chan, has warned against overoptimism,and any idea in the public mind that the gold is lying about just for the taking.

The drilling tests are being conducted by a joint venture company formed by Kennecott, the big U.S. mining conglomerate, and Niugini Mining Ltd., a local PNG consortium, which also involves Australian money through the Sydney stockbroking firm of Hattersley and Maxwell Partners. The Lihir deposit is smaller, and less rich, than Ok Tedi (estimated 34 million tonnes at 2.86 grammes per tonne), but is in much easier terrain, on the coast and accessible for easy open-cut mining methods. Kennecott is also reportedly sampling another deposit near Lihir, on Simberi Island, in the Tabar group.

Lihir’s gold deposit is in sulphide form which is more expensive to process but, given the quite easy terrain, Kennecott’s experts are confident they have a viable mine, The gold finds have added to the current great optimism in PNG over a resurgence of mining exploration and activity.

Adding to this have been a number of very promising oil finds in the interior, in the southern half of the territory.

There was a strike at Duha about a year ago and, just a few months ago another strike, the initial flow from which touched 1680 barrels a day of condensate. These wells are, however, in very difficult country about 300 km from the coast, and have been drilled fairly close together. Other wells, more widely spread, will be needed before the full extent of the field is known.

Yet, good though the strike seems to be, it is probably not viable in the present oil industry conditions. There is reportedly considerable gas in the condensate. This would probably have to be re-injected into the wells while the condensate itself would have to be piped to the coast and carried by tanker from there. All of that will involve enormous capital investment.

BHP have also been operating an oil rig in the Vanimo area and have just drilled three backto-back wells there with, apparently, some encouraging signs.

Vanuatu: A disastrous Canberra ploy Vanuatu lost an estimated $lOO,OOO in January when an attempt to dictate terms to the cruise ship “Canberra” blew up in local faces. The trouble started when the people of Ifira Island, in the harbor across from Vila town, decided the world would be a better place if cruise ship passengers could be landed at the government wharf, run through a bazaar of handicraft and other stalls and then be delivered to a fleet of waiting taxis for their trip into town. The stalls, and many of the taxis, would, of course, be operated by the good burghers of Ifira who, incidentally, also claim ownership to all the land on which Vila town sits. Canberra, being too big to come alongside the wharf, always anchors out in Fort-Vila harbor and sends her day-trippers ashore in motor launches, using Burns Philp’s slipway and dock.

Bums Philp are the ship’s agents in Vila and, besides, their dock is virtually town centre and from there tourists don’t need taxis to get around Port Vila’s excellent duty free shops and restaurants. They can stroll.

Keen to help local enterprise, the Vanuatu Government conveyed their ’’decision” on the handling of tourists to the Canberra’s captain. He was less than impressed and, when the government persisted, and also insisted, sailed his ship off into the sunset, threatening never to darken Vanuatu’s door again.

The boycott was a disaster for the town. Canberra’s affluent passengers generally spend about $lOO,OOO on food, day-trips, and souvenir and duty-free shopping in Port Vila which is, in fact, one of the better such stops in the Pacific.

One jewellery shop alone says its usual turnover on ship days exceeds $lO,OOO. Negotiations began immediately with Burns Philp to sort things out, while community leaders set about convincing Ifira islanders of the error of their ideas. Last heard, BPs had managed to convince P & O that their passengers would not in future suffer any kind of handicraft ”stick-up” in Port-Vila and arrangements were fixed for the next 12 months cruise schedules... with Port-Vila prominently on the list.

Vanuatu's Minister for Civil Aviation and Transport Albert Sandy (right) is shown the computer system used in the Air Vanuatu Sydney office by Barry Sheely. Looking on are Mrs Sandy (left) and Air vanuatu's Advertising and Promotions Manager Kiera Lockyer. Mr Sandy was in Sydney to meet Ansett executives to discuss future expansion of Air Vanuatu. On his return to Port-Vila Mr Sandy announced that Ansett, in con junction with Air Vanuatu, would offer a Tuesday service out of Sydney from April 3. This would give Sydney its fifth non-stop service to Port-Vila. The other flights are on Saturday (two) and Sunday (two.) 31 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

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Oz rice company watches PNG Ricegrowers of Australia, the consortium which has the contract to supply about 90,000 tonnes of Riverina rice annually to Papua New Guinea, is anxious over decision by the Port Moresby government to allow importation of 5000 tonnes of Taiwanese rice through a local company which is understood to include among its directors Opposition leader lambakey Okuk. The contract with the Australian company is of very long standing and is important to both countries not only in terms of direct trade, but also because it provides a basic sustenance for shipping. Without the 90,000 tonnes of Australian rice to justify their service the PNG government broke their long-standing policy of buying exclusively from the Australian supplier and granted licence for 5000 tonnes to be brought in from Taiwan through a local marketing group. Although the shipment is only an experimental one Australian trade interests in Port Moresby are concerned that it represents the thin edge of the wedge. Taiwan currently has a glut of rice and is offering a variety very close to the Riverina type at what are said to be extremely attractive prices.

The Papua New Guinea company numbers among its directors a prominent and powerful politician.

Australia’s share of the PNG import market has been fading over recent years through a combination of competition from countries such as New Zealand, mainland China, Taiwan, Korea and Japan, and the opening of industries in PNG devoted to import substitution.

Papain plan aired in Vanuatu The paw paw, which grows like a weed in most Pacific Island countries, is now expected to be the source of good export sales for smart agricultural operators. The green fruit, if carefully scored, produces a latex-like substance rich in papain, an enzyme used to tenderise meat, clarify beer and perform a number of functions in the food and pharmaceutical industries.

Present world supplies come from Zaire, the Ivory Coast and Hawaii but, according to Albert Delhaye, a Belgian industrialist who attended an aid investment meeting in Vanuatu recently, there is ample opportunity for South Pacific growers to establish profitable markets with Australia and New Zealand. Delhaye’s company is one of two supplying the world market for papain.

He said that world demand was for between 70 and 75 tonnes of papain a year. His firm handled about 20 tonnes annually at prices ranging between $60,000 and $70,000 per tonne.

The catch for small Pacific countries is that an investment of about $3.5 million, not including the paw paw plantation, would be required for an economic factory to produce about 35 tonnes annually. He suggested a plantation area of about 220 hectares would be needed to supply such a factory.

Average yield is about 100 grams of papain per tree per year.

“Milking” the fruit while green does not affect its ripening, nor its use as a fruit for juices or preserves, although it would not be saleable for highgrade hotel table use because of the “milking” scars.

Japan credit card giant sets up in Fiji Japan’s increasing interest in the South Pacific is shown by the decision of Japan’s largest credit card company, JCB, to establish an office in Fiji. Japan Airlines and Air New Zealand now both run direct Tokyo- Nadi-Auckland services and these, in conjunction with other routes linking Fiji with Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii are bringing thousands of Japanese tourists to the islands each year.

One recent estimate suggested that about 9 per cent of Fiji’s 200,000 tourists now come from Japan.

JCB’s Fiji agent is Sunnybrook Holdings (Fiji) Ltd., whose managing director is Mike Brook, operator of the Castaway Resorts and one of Fiji’s most vigorous tourism entrepreneurs.

JOB was established in 1961 with major shareholding from Japanese banking groups and corporations such as Toyota Motor Corporation and Nippon Shinpan Co. Ltd. It moved into international business in 1981 and is now operational in 43 countries.

JCB is the fourth largest credit card company in the world with an annual volume of business exceeding SUS2OOO million. It also operates an extremely successful travel agency, JCB Travel Co. Ltd., with more than 30 major offices in Japan.

The livery of the South Pacific’s newest airline, Air Caledonie International (above) is the work of Sydney, Australia, designer Tony Lunn. He admitted to journalist Craig McGregor in a recent interview in the Sydney-based weekly The National Times that it was hard to take some product labelling art work seriously, but that he tried to be professional about it and enjoyed the big jobs when they came along— such as painting an Air Caledonie plane cream with a giant red hibiscus on the tail. 33 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

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Marshall Islands Oral Literature

Where publishing presents a moral dilemma Man This Reef. By Gerald Knight and La Bedbedin. Published by Micronitor, Majuro, 1982. 163 pp.

It is now almost 15 years since the first inklings of the sudden surge of hitherto unheard-of Pacific writers began to be felt among readers of the “Mana” section of Pacific Islands Monthly. The past decade has documented the emergence of a post-colonial Pacific literature through a series of stunning anthologies including Contemporary Maori Writing (A. H. & A. W. Reed, 1970), Black Writing from New Guinea (University of Queensland Press, 1973), Some Modern Poetry from Fiji (Mana, 1974), and a spate of other publications containing the writings of Western Samoans, New Hebrideans (Mana, 1975), Solomon Islanders, Australian Aborigines ( Meanjin, 1977), Hawaiians, and Cook Islanders.

Collectively they provide us with a completely new perspective from which to view any new work by Pacific writers a perspective which was unavailable as recently as only a decade ago.

This new literature encompasses some 1200 languages with the various forms of English and Pidgin (the two languages of this book) as their lingua franca. The authors of this Pacific literature acknowledge two literary traditions: the ndigenous oral literatures and the written one of the West.

Ehey regard themselves as tanjata whenua, a term in Maori A/hich means “people of the and.” A growing number of bilingual papalagi writers would ;ee themselves as increasingly a :>art of this literature, although heir attitude might best be summed up in something the Australian poet Les. A. Murray wrote in Meanjin in 1977: “The takeover smell, the gubba smell, is still strong on us . . .lam deprived of my natural audience by the stain of association; for now, and perhaps all my life, I have to live with that and try not to let it distort my work. I'm out to break that gubba-ism, though. I am grateful beyond measure to the makers and interpreters of traditional Aboriginal poetry and song for. . . showing me a deeply familiar world in which art is not estranged . . . and even goes magically beyond the human community ..."

Such a world in the Marshall Islands remains alive among its story-tellers. The view from the other side of this literature of convergence is given by the Maori poet Keri Hulme in her essay “Mauri: An Introduction to Bicultural Poetry in New Zealand.” (Only Connect , 1981): “A dual heritage is both pain and advantage. It gives you insight into two worlds.”

But she goes on to say that you are not wholly of either world, and “that can be a heart-rending experience.”

In Man This Reef Gerald Knight has given us 20 stories by the 78-year-old Majal (Marshall) Islander La Bedbedin, translated from tape recordings made by Knight under circumstances honestly set out in a careful introduction.

At about the time when the publication of Contemporary Maori Writing launched the collecting of the new Pacific literature, Knight was serving with the Peace Corps on Namorik.

There he came into contact with the contemporary oral literature of the Majal Islands.

By the mid-1970s he had moved to Rongelap, after a La Bedbedin, Marshalls story-teller. 37 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

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period of commercial fishing on Majuro. Here he met the over 100-year-old Majal Islander Telegraph. Knight became an apprentice to this story-teller and navigator.

“Usually I’d bring him some fish or jekaro . . . which were the two products of my two daily endeavors; and after he’d eaten he’d tell me a story or two or teach me the words to a chant or relate the ancestry of one or other of the island families or the lineage through which a piece of land had passed ... He took my apprenticeship very seriously, and apparently, according to custom, such an apprenticeship was a very formal procedure which involved either adoption by, or marriage into, the family of the navigator; and my more or less casual amateur anthropologist style of trying to collect a story here and a legend there was not at all acceptable to him.”

In the process Knight began to learn a language older than the Kajn Majal he had already learned; this was the language of the dri-jela (“those who know”). Knight slowly came to understand that in the language of the dri-jela there was “a name, not only for every particular reef, but every outstanding boulder upon them; not only every single islet, but every section of land upon them; not only every fish, but exactly in what areas among the 24 atolls it was poisonous; and not only for every cloud, but the exact position of the cloud in an overall weather pattern encompassing thousands of square miles of ocean; not only seemingly every bright star in the sky, but the seasonal weather conditions traditionally associated with its rising; not only a name for every plant and tree, but an exact cure precipitated by its use as a drug; and not only these thousands of names and technical terms, but a seemingly endless profusion of poetry incorporating it all down into an oral tradition of education.”

Knight had begun to appreciate the measure of a Pacific story-teller. At this point the island magistrate, Telegraph’s great grandson, accused him of demonstrating an “exploitative attitude" and confiscated his tapes and transcripts. Knight himself writes; “1 had mistakenly believed I could use, at my own discretion, something of sacred or magic, and therefore, profound value to others,” and accepted the decision. This is a dilemma faced by every Pacific editor. When Witi Ihimaera and I edited Into the World of Light one of our contributors, Wiremu Kingi Kerekere, gave us an opening waiata but he has steadfastly refused to allow a collection of his compositions to appear in print, believing that his is, above all, an oral art, and we did not press him for any further work.

Another Rongelap story-teller, La Tima, now invited Knight to come and live with him, and Knight determined to translate an autobiography rather than a chain of sacred stories. But before this project could proceed Knight lost La Tima’s trust.

So, two years after arriving on Rongelap, Knight came to live with his final informant, La Bedbedin. However, the magistrate, aware of what was happening, refused Knight permission to proceed. La Bedbedin resisted Telegraph’s great grandson and proceeded to allow Knight to make his recordings. The magistrate, for his part, arranged to have Knight deported.

A reviewer of Man This Reef, and, by implication, any reader, is thus faced with a very real problem. Are we to concur with Knight and La Bedbedin in further broadening the audience for these stories in the world beyond Rongelap, or should we agree with Rongelap’s magistrate and condemn their publication? My Western side cherishes any publication of such wonderful stories, for La Bedbedin is truly a great story-teller. But as a Pacific writer I am not so sure.

The early stories are clearly mythological and sacred and I have a real difficulty in knowing if such ancient stories should be published in the teeth of opposition. What Knight does not say, but what I suspect must be the case, despite La Bedbedin’s attitude, is that this kind of oral literature does not belong to any one individual but to the Rongelap islanders as a community and it is not for any one man to decide to disseminate them. Such a decision may well have been forthcoming had Knight sought it, for it is clear from his introduction that the magistrate was prepared to allow Knight to continue under certain conditions. This criticism also applies to the middle group of genealogical stories, for La Bedbedin is surely not the only one to have inherited them. I feel I must say no more about them.

None of these problems applies to La Bedbedin’s autobiography, which forms the third, and final, section of the book. As a child La Bedbedin was apprenticed to the navigator La Kebol, that is, he was taken as lon for La Kabol’s proa. There is a great wealth of knowledge in this section, for any Pacific sailor, with illustrations of Majal wappepe at the back.

The story, “Koptata”, gives an account of Rongelap under the Japanese. Again, for those of us used only to accounts of the Pacific war seen through the eyes of Australians and Americans, this is a disturbing view from another side. Of Rongelap’s Japanese garrison there was only one survivor, Koptata: “And in those year coming many will say his name in hate.

And many will say his name and laugh. But me I’ll feel only sorrow because I know his home was Hiroshima, and isn’t that first place to disappear from atomic bomb? So what is left for him now?”

The final story concerns itself with two lights which have touched the Majal Islands. “Today nearly one hundred year later like one wind from east to west story of Gospel has swept our world and light of Jesus had penetrated every island.” But La Bedbedin had married a woman from Bikini and there another light came one morning; “It is just at dawn when they see lighting of that thing there on western horizon. Bright like moon rising in black sky. And they hurry to wake those other.

What is this? They run out across lagoon when wind and sound of thing fall and blow them down upon beach. They wonder what?”

Rongelap was caught in the fallout. “And all of them have no hair and all children throwing up ... so we all wonder why do they make test with us?

Aren’t we people just like they are people?” So, here at last, we have a final insider’s story: of life after the bomb.

La Bedbedin is too great a story-teller not to try to point us in some direction with his words. So I must leave “the final word” to him: “. . . Those (Europeans) brought us light.

But I’m afraid they have turned away from God in pride of their own knowledge and strength.

Be aware to follow no man into darkness.”

Man This Reef is the translation of La Bedbedin’s name. It is destined to become one of the great flawed books of the Pacific.

D. S. Long. 39 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

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On Agriculture And

DEVELOPMENT Published every two months in English, French and Spanish by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Annual subscription: US$ 15.00 Six times a year CERES brings to its readers a unique package of information, analysis and opinion which provides a panoramic perspective of the activities affecting agriculture and rural life.

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To suscribe, please write to; FAO CERES Circulation Office, C-116 Via delle Terme di Caracalla 00100 Rome, Italy Free sample copies are available on request from; CERES Circulation Office (see address above) 00100 Rome, Italy Story-tellers of Kaliai show their paces Ol Stori Bilong Laupu. The Tales of Laupu. Stories from Kaliai, West New Britain, told by Jakob Mua Laupu, Benedik Solou Laupu and Maria Sapanga. Transcribed, translated and with an introduction by Dorothy Ayers Counts. Music transcription and analysis by Timothy J.

Keenan. Published by the Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies, P.O. Box 1Q32, Boroko, PNG. No I-SBN, price; .provided. '* Tales of Laupu is an unusual book. It is intended for use throughout Papua New Guinea, and contains a text in two languages, a glossary, musical notations, and photographs.

The stories, which are part of the rich oral tradition of the people who live in the Kaliai division of West New Britain, appear first in Tok Pisin. In the second half of the book, the stories appear in English, Dorothy Counts, who lived in West New Britain for two and a half years, explains the importance of oral literature to the people of Kaliai. The stories contain “historical, cultural or sociological truths: they reflect and reconstruct experienced reality”.

Story-telling is a common and enjoyable evening pastime in Kaliai, especially during the heavy rains which fall from December to April and inhibit trading journeys and ceremonies.

They delineate three types of story: a nasinga is a true account of historical events; a pelunga is rather like a legend, and may be about real or fabulous events; and a ninipunga is a tale that does not contain historical or legendary truth, a fictitious tale. This collection contains one example of a history, four legends, and 11 fiction stories.

The tales are a selection from the repertoire of two of the sons of Laupu, Jakob Mua and Benedik Solou, as well as Mua’s wife, Sapanga. According to Mua, widely recognised as one of the most knowledgeable and skilled raconteurs of the area, a story-teller is a “I’ll tell you about the origin of the aulu, the tumbuan, the masked figures that are still with us today.”Illustration from The Tales of Laupu story relating the origin of the tumbuan. 40 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

performer as well as a store of knowledge. If he is to hold the interest of his audience, he should not break the continuity of his story by pausing to search for names or facts, laughing at his own words, or engaging in extraneous conversation or commentary.

Music and song appear frequently in the oral literature, reflecting the importance of singing in the everyday life of the Kaliai people. They sing their grief at a death, or to give themselves strength during a difficult task, as well as to express contentment. Songs also act as a mnemonic device.

Some of the stories contain the words and musical notation of the songs, which usually occur as a necessary part of the story’s plot.

Four main themes are prominent in the stories; the obligation to share food; coconuts; the importance of premonitions; and suicide.

Suicide is not a common occurrence in Kaliai, but when it does happen it has great impact on the community. The act may be done by hanging or drinking poison, and embodies the notion that a person’s kin may bear responsibility for the death.

The story of “Pig and Frog” illustrates the importance of sharing; “Greed will not be tolerated. ” It shares elements of Western fables, with animal characters and a clear moral tone.

An astonishing story (fortunately classified as fiction) is “The Ignorant Husband”, about a young man strangely unaware of the purpose of his marriage. The language is graphically explicit one assumes this book is meant for older students of Papua New Guinean literature.

The stories are well translated and flow easily, except for some of the American words and phrases (gotten, gee aw ’c’mon, say, I could use a little rain) which seem rather out of place and irritating in this very unsophisticated literature.

The book, produced by the Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies, is attractively bound and illustrated, and -should become an important source work in the study of Papua New Guinea’s literature.

Jo Rudd.

Tahitian villagers’ vanished way of life recorded Two Tahitian Villages A Study in Comparisons. By Douglas Oliver. Published by the Institute for Polynesian Studies, sponsored by the Polynesian Cultural Center and Brigham Young University, Hawaii Campus. Pp. xiv, 557. ISBN 0 939154 22 6 (hard cover), ISBN 0 939154 25 0 (paperback). No price provided.

Tahiti is the largest island (52 km along its axis) in an archipelago known as the Society Islands, and is part of the sub-group called the Windward Islands. At the time of first European contact in 1767, Tahiti had an indigenous population of about 35,000. In 1880, France consolidated the Windward Islands as a fully annexed colony, and Tahiti still held the status of colony at the time of Douglas Oliver’s field studies there in 1954-55 and 1959-60.

This monograph is described by the author as an exercise in “controlled comparison.” This method of anthropological research has been in use for a long time, but its impact has been weakened by the fact that many of the societies compared have shared too few characteristics to permit sufficient “control.”

Oliver sidestepped this inherent problem by deciding to concentrate upon a single “species” of present-day Polynesian society and applying the comparative approach to its several sub-specific varieties of societal culture.

Wondering where to conduct his anthropological experiment, Oliver decided to return to the Society Islands he “did not consider the hair shirt to be a necessary uniform for field work” and he was already familiar with the islands from earlier research for his threevolume Ancient Tahitian Society. He elected to study two villages in Tahiti, while colleagues looked at a further six communities in the same area.

Feeling that an anthropologist’s most urgent and important professional duty is to describe a vanishing way of life, Douglas Oliver tried to provide a detailed and comprehensive picture of the “public” behavior of the residents of two rural Tahitian villages.

The length of the book (557 pages) is an indication of the thoroughness and scope of his investigations. Every detail of social life fishing, choosing a spouse, bringing up children, going to the cinema are all dealt with in affectionate and fascinating detail.

Chapter headings range over “ Subsistence, Kinship and Land Tenure, Sex and Marriage/’ and “ Passing through Life” (a rather confusing title for a very long chapter dealing with contraception, childbirth and death, and all stages in between). There are tables showing what the villagers spent their money on in 1954, and how many coconut palms they each owned. By the book’s publication in 1981, this way of life had vanished, due mainly to massive outside influences from expanded tourism and France’s nearby nuclear experiments.

Oliver’s aim was also to test the usefulness of the anthropological research method of “controlled comparison,” and Village of Atea, looking inland (with Assembly House at left). 41 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

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The Ausfrolion Development Studies Centre Notional University Monograph no. 31 Tourism and underdevelopment in Fiji Stephen G. Britton <yo

Fiji Tourism

A conclusion that doesn’t quite match the figures Tourism and Underdevelopment in Fiji. By S. G. Britton.

Australian National University Development Studies Centre Monograph No. 31, 1983. 232 pp. SAI2.

Attitudes towards tourism in the South Pacific tend to be polarised: there are those who regard the negative ecological and cultural impacts of tourism as out-weighing any economic benefits; and there are those who argue, often with some uneasiness, that the economic benefits of tourism in terms of foreign exchange and employment are vital to the health of some island economies.

Part of the reserve about tourism relates to the fact that it is a service and as such is less tangible than traditional exports of, say, sugar and copra.

Economists, of which the reviewer is one, are normally indifferent as to how foreign exchange is earned or employment generated, but is this attitude right? That is, is there any difference between a dollar earned from sugar exports and one earned from tourism?

There could be, and so economists are particularly interested in the answers to two questions: • What is the net impact of tourism on such measures as the balance of payments, economic growth, equity, poverty and employment? • How stable are the earn ings from tourism? That is, is it wise for a country to become too dependent on an industry which is subject to substantial fluctuations for reasons outside its control?

This should not be taken to suggest that economists are indifferent to social and cultural disruption. But since these effects are almost impossible to quantify, economists put them aside in the hope that the issue can be settled by considering more easily quantifiable factors (e.g. the costs of tourism may exceed benefits without considering social and cultural effects, or the benefits may exceed the costs by such an enormous amount that negative cultural effects can be tolerated). And, without intruding into other people’s area of competence, are there no positive effects from the interaction of tourists with local cultures?

All this is by way of introduction to a consideration of Stephen Britton’s monograph on tourism in Fiji. The book aims “to investigate the political economy of tourism development in a small Pacific Island state”, and concludes that “the industry is not considered to be an inherently appropriate development sector for the third world countries”.

Britton’s investigation is based on six “working hypotheses” (p. 7) which can be summarised as follows: the tourist industry is owned and operated by companies based in developed countries; and this shapes the way the industry operates. The book then presents an historical background to the Fijian economy (Ch. 2), and a description of the present tourist industry and tourist flows to Fiji (Ch. 3). One of the important points raised in this context is the “vulnerability of third-world-destined tourist flows to economic downturns in Western countries” (p. 58). An important issue here is the relative instability of tourism (which makes up about a third of Fiji’s exports) in comparison with other exports.

Avarind Rao, a Fiji scholar completing post-graduate studies in economics at the University of New England, has recently calculated that, in fact, Fiji’s earnings from tourism have been a good deal more stable than earnings for virtually all other exports. The Tahitian villagers’ vanished way of life to focus on the “economic” aspects of the communities studied, to add a little ethnographic learning to the hard discipline of economics. As Oliver says, however, it is probable that his account of a unique and vanished way of life will prove to be the most useful part of his monograph.

There are certainly some delightful descriptions. Speaking of preliminary courtship behavior, Oliver says, “To my age-jaundiced eye, there was nothing more comical than a young male in courting posture: wandering along the road or sitting beside it with others like himself; his fine physique hidden in poor fitting garments decorated with Hong Kong versions of Polynesian designs; his great spreading feet painfully inserted into unaccustomed and unlaced shoes; his head brilliantined with oily scent and crowned with flowers: and his heavy-browed and usually handsome face drawn up into a sick-cow expression as he sang to the accompaniment of somebody’s guitar the latest Papeete inanity about love and moonlight and absence.”

An appendix contains a very readable summary of the comparison the author was finally able to make between the societal economies of the villages of Atea and Fatata. The study is based on two characteristics: each village’s widely shared goals, and the extent to which they were actually achieved, and the natural and cultural factors responsible for the gaps between the achievable goals and their actual attainment.

As an anthropological document, the book is limited by its unfortunate lack of an index, and by language which is at times quite unscientific, though appealingly naive. As an intimate look at a recently vanished way of life with some excellent photographs it is well worth reading.

Jo Rudd. 43 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

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Bankers National Bank Year Established 1881 Export Manager Tony Babbage incl W F Tucker & Company Limited vulnerability argument against tourism, at least for Fiji, appears to be based on shaky empirical foundations. Further, on this point, it could be argued that for traditional exports, marketing bodies can act to reduce fluctuations in income to producers by, for example, minimum price schemes. This suggests that such exports may be more desirable than tourism, as regards the effects of fluctuations on the economy. However, given the high degree of foreign ownership in tourism, the expenditure and earnings remaining in Fiji will be much more stable than total tourism earnings. That is. at least some components of the industry have substantial proportions of fixed costs; as long as hotels, for example, are kept open, certain costs (e.g. wages of basic staff) have to be paid irrespective of the number of tourists arriving.

Of particular interest is the chapter on tourism and the Fiji economy. Using multiplier coefficients. Britton estimates the impact of changes in expenditure on tourism on magnitudes such as Gross Domestic Froduct, imports and demand for labor. He specifically considers net foreign exchange earnings from tourism. These amount to well under half the gross earnings, given the industry’s heavy dependence on imports (around 17 per cent of imports in the early 1970 s were for the tourist industry), salary payments to foreigners, and repatriation of profits. The linkages of tourism to other sectors of the economy are estimated to be relatively low, given high import requirements. Further sections consider government income and expenditure with respect to tourism, and the distribution (both international and local) of tourism receipts.

There is, unfortunately, no rigorous attempt to add up and compare the positive and negative magnitudes of these factors. Despite this, the chapter concludes with the remark that “in purely economic terms, the industry probably brings with it as many advantages as it does disadvantages” (p. 197). This does not square up with the facts presented earlier in the chapter, i.e., net foreign exchange earnings, employment generation, and net government receipts, are all positive and substantial.

Britton’s principal reason for this conclusion is that he considers the industry “has imposed on Fiji a development mode that (has) exacerbated those adverse conditions typical of a dependent capitalist social formation” (p. 198). In other words, the worsened distribution and political-social costs are assessed as exceeding the net economic benefits. He is entitled to his opinion but, as mentioned above, the data he presents does not obviously support this conclusion.

To be fair to Britton, he does not set out specifically to answer the questions outlined at the start of this review. His is a wider concern, moving into areas such as appropriateness and dependency. Nonetheless, if non-economists (Britton is a geographer at the University of Auckland) are going to venture into areas like the “political economy of tourism,” they must expect economists to scrutinise their findings. The latters’ strength in this sort of exercise, incidentally, is to answer such questions as “how much is it-costing us, in dollar terms, to follow a policy of self-reliance?”

Finally, there is little discussion of policy, although Britton does suggest that the Fiji Government is developing a more consistent stance towards tourism.

It is important to recognise that host governments do have ultimate control over multinational corporations. They can impose the terms and conditions under which these corporations must operate. And if they won’t toe the line, they can (quite easily) be encouraged to leave, as IBM and Coca-Cola have left India. Developing countries in general seem to have been quite successful in imposing their will on multi-nationals. The only problem has been sorting out what their will is.

In summary, Britton’s book is a useful compilation of data on tourism in Fiji, and a valuable contribution to the tourism debate.

Geoff Harris. 44 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

We dodge death by a whisker in Mamanila In the third extract from his “Melanesian Journey” travel diary ROBERTO PETTINI tells of the experiences befalling him and his brother MARCO as they begin their exploration of the islands of the Calvados Chain, in the Louisiade Archipelago of Papua New Guinea’s Milne Bay Province.

February 2, 1981: The weather yesterday was kind. The sea was too rough, and the sun was warm all day.

The trip on the small motor boat was extremely pleasant, as we spent it chatting with the captain, lying idly on the boat’s roof, and thinking aloud of “the story” just passed, and the one about to begin.

When we arrived in Nimowa last night, the Fathers welcomed us with open arms, as if they were waiting for us . . . We understood that Father English, without telling us, had contacted this mission by radio and prepared an unexpected welcome for us.

After dinner we chat until late, in a relaxed way, even having small glasses of liqueur, like old friends meeting again after a long time . . .

The mission much bigger than the one in Ginger was built in 1948, and here too, in addition to its religious function, attends to the hospital, the school, the store, and so on.

We tell about ourselves, who we are and what we’re doing, and ask a whole lot of questions about the islands of the Calvados Chain, especially whether it is still possible to “cross” the chain using local canoes.

The missionaries confirm that the islanders still move quite frequently between islands and that, if we are not pressed for time, there should be no difficulties. “They’ll be quite happy to have you with them . . . You could even leave tomorrow.

There is a canoe on the beach that has come here to buy something at the store and I think I’ve heard that they are going back to their village tomorrow. ”

February 5: We buy ourselves a stock of tobacco and rice at the mission store, as throughout the chain it will be difficult to find another with any stocks at all, and we load our packs in the canoe. The priest was right: the man had come yesterday and is leaving today, and is openly pleased to take us with him. Again it’s the time for goodbyes, thanks, handshakes, blessings . . . and then we go, the sail is lifted, the canoe rocks, the out-rigger lifts itself on the surface of the water, the two of us hang on as best we can, and the canoe sails amid general laughter and quickly heads out to sea.

The second lap of our Melanesian journey has begun February 6: Bailaine is the name of this village, the last on the south coast of Pana-Tinai, or Janet Island, which is the first and definitely the largest of all the Calvados Islands. From here we can still see the coast of tiny Nimowa; yesterday’s crossing was only a small “hop.”

It seems as if a distance greater than a one-day boat trip separates these people from the people of Rossel Island. Here people seem much more open I’d say warmer and readier to open their mouths, quicker to laugh.

The village is rather large and heavily populated, and we notice immediately, parked on the beach, many large canoes with sails and out-riggers like the one that brought us here.

Everybody is extremely kind and hospitable, and we spend most of the day in the huts of those who want us, sitting and eating with them, telling our stories and listening to theirs.

As we talk, chew and smoke, a woman is fussing near the fire.

Then she gets up to take something from the ceiling and I notice for the first time that above our heads, hanging like square salamis, there are scores of sago “bandols.” The woman takes one: it’s like a brick, for the sago powder is compressed and rolled in dried leaves. Two packets are tied together with a string, so that they are always coupled: this is what is commonly called a “ bandol l look at the woman crumbling some of the powder, mixing it with ground coconut and then frying some sort of pancakes, and I am told that on this island there are plenty of sago trees, and that from a “good tree” as many as 50 “bandols” can be produced with a week’s work, while a “bad tree” makes only 20 or 30.

It is also explained to us that on the other islands this food is a rarity and so it is exchanged for other goods, for example the clay pots from the island of Brooker, which are very similar to those from Tagula.

“Tomorrow my cousin is going to Bum-Bum (Grass Island) especially to barter some sago. If you want to go with him 11 February 7: The sun burns when you’re travelling by canoe, and our shoulders are already half raw, I have the idea of filling a little bottle with coconut oil, a very good excuse to do something together with the villagers. We go to collect a few ripe coconuts, from those already fallen from the palms; we grate their pulp, add one or two cups of salt water, squeeze the lot and leave it to simmer in a pot. Then someone points to a girl, and, with a touch of coquetry, he adds some perfumed leaves . . .

Bum-Bum doesn’t seem a very interesting village, and the men and the canoe that took us here are returning to Balaine today. The chain is still all wide open before us and we decide, without much thought, to jump on one of the canoes going to Cacahua.

The trip is short but definitely unusual and spectacular. This time the sea is really rough and for us, clinging on with clenched teeth, it’s a miracle that the canoe is not smashed to pieces by the pounding waves, that the patched-up sail is not torn to shreds by the wind, that the whole canoe does not capsize and toss us all into the sea, together with our packs and the bags of copra.

The “skipper” however seems amused rather than wor- Preparing lunch on one of the Calvados Chain islands. 45 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

ried. It is almost as if this was a competitive race, a game whose rules you know by heart, which gives you the opportunity to show your skill . . .

February 9: We crossed part of the island on foot, with packs on our shoulders, and guided and followed by the usual crowd of children. The village is located on a tiny island, and tonight, as I sit on the beach, I look at the many small canoes returning, loaded with food, bundles of leaves and firewood.

Women have returned after a day’s work in the gardens on Pana-Tinai Island.

“Why did you build the village here, on such a tiny island, rather than on the coast where you have your gardens?” The answer is very simple: “There are no mosquitoes here ...”

February 10: Lemen is about to die. He has been sick for two weeks, two weeks spent at home slowly dying. When I went to visit him, I found him with half his body paralysed, I heard him say a few incomprehensible words, and he was breathing with difficulty.

Someone has started to prepare the food for his funeral.

Soon it will be known that “ puri-puri” (magic) killed Lemen . . .

February 11: A few reflections sent by way of a small mirror tell us that Lemen is dead. (If the message had to be sent at night, a bunch of burning leaves would have been used.) We have just arrived at Maho, the village on the island of Sahara, opposite Nigaho.

The village chief and the two boys who brought us here have gone back immediately.

Sahara is very beautiful: three villages on a long white beach and no mosquitoes . . .

Still, there is no water on the island, and you can’t even grow a potato here as the ground is so rocky. In this case too the gardens are on another island, and every day of the year many canoes leave the village at dawn to go to Emenahe, returning at night or the following day.

Besides the pots, the shellmoney, the “ baghi” and the stone axes (old, sharp, polished stones, passed on down through countless generations), another object has a recognised exchange value among these islands. It’s the “lime stick,” a kind of small spoon used to spread on the gums the white coral powder that bums indispensable if you’re chewing betel. The “sticks” can be made of ebony or turtle shell, and we saw them in more or less everybody’s baskets.

In Nigaho they had told us that Sahara is really the “island of lime sticks,” so we spend a good part of today strolling about houses to find two sticks for us. We see them in all sizes, old and new, all with carved handles of more or less complicated design. A packet of tobacco and a T-shirt are sufficient to make both us and the former owners happy.

February 12: We leave early in the morning. Mamanila is a long way off, and it will take all day to get there. The reason for the trip? A pig, and not even a very big one at that. He has been placed in the canoe like any other passenger, and today he will change both owner and dwelling place.

Travelling by canoe is becoming more and more pleasant, especially if the sea and the wind are with us. This is our fifth canoe and crew, and we are getting used to this new life at sea. The initial awkwardness has given way to a certain ease in our movements. We’ve learned how to give a hand with the jobs, like constantly bailing out the water that gets in through the holes and the cracks, tightening and slacking the sail, even taking charge of the rudder.

Before getting to the village, we stop for a while on the coast of Pana-Wina. The “captain” of the canoe wants to show us a place where people go after death. “This,” he told us, pointing to a part of the coast infested by mosquitoes, “is the entrance . . . The spirits of the dead are all here, and some of us can easily ‘talk’ to them, sometimes even see them walking in the village. We know that they are well, and we are not afraid of them ...”

From a long way off, from the moment you can distinguish sounds, we hear the word “dim-dim” (literally “palepale,” meaning white man), shouted by children and repeated many times, like a cockcrow at dawn, by the men and women in the village. The “captain” of the canoe that brought us here explains in the local language who we are and where we are going, adding straight away a few details worth mentioning, like the fact that we chew betel, that we speak Pidgin, and that we can play a funny game with cards.

In the meantime it has been decided where we are to be lodged and, as soon as we return to the canoe, someone is already moving our luggage to a hut already cleaned up and arranged, where they have already placed a few mats.

Sometimes there are even pillows! ... In other words, tonight we sleep in Mamanila.

February 14: Last night we were nearly killed.

Ever since afternoon, the wind had been bending the coconut palms in a terrifying manner, and rain had been falling more and more heavily.

Then, last night closeted in our hut, with only the light of the lamp, we stayed up talking until late with the chief s family.

We wrote a few notes and then calmly went to sleep. It must have been one or two in the morning when an infernal noise suddenly woke us, we had barely opened our eyes when we saw that our hut had been literally split wide open by the trunk of a large tree that had been blown down by the fury of the wind.

Immediately the whole population of the village was up and out in the rain around our hut. Some were shouting, others kept asking: “Yu tu pela i dai-pinis or yu allright . . .?” (Are you two dead for keeps or all right?); others, in complete frenzy, made sure we were still in one piece by touching us . . .

We don’t really know how they interpreted this event, but it took a long time before we all stopped laughing and repeating to each other: “Dis pela stori i gut pela stori tru. ” (This is really a good story to tell.) February 15: The bad weather is still with us. In fact we came at the wrong time of the year, as the rainy season has just started.

The sea is frightening to behold, even from the beach, and all we can do is wait for the wind to die down, before we can even think of leaving.

Talking about magic is not easy at all. Those who should be able to answer your questions, even if they talk Pidgin, start stuttering and looking around; but if you insist a little, as we did today, something comes out.

Every man has three little phials containing a “magic liquid”, an extract of special herbs and leaves found in the bush, which he guards carefully and which serve three different purposes.

If, for example, you decide to leave with your canoe for another island in order to barter some shell-money or stone axes, the use of magic will ensure you a safe trip and easy and fruitful trading.

If you want the girl you love to fall in love with you, then you’ll use your liquid to spread on your face and armpits like a perfume, or to mix with something that you will then let her have.

The third phial is used to get a girl for only one night. The use of this third magic is closely linked to particular occasions such as feasts. These in all the Calvados Islands take place mainly between July and September, when food is plentiful.

February 16: The good weather is back. We are in the canoe, again at sea. • Next month: The private thoughts of Abraham, of Parallel Village, Pana-Umale Island The village on Brooker Island, Calvados Chain. 46 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

political currents South Pacific Commission faces a problematical future The South Pacific Commission is “embarking on a path undreamed of by its founders”, according to DONALD STEWART. In the following article he canvasses the pitfalls and the promise held by this new course for the future of the SPC and its now 27 member countries and territories. At different times during the 1970 s Mr Stewart represented Tokelau and Nauru on the SPC, and at South Pacific Conferences. From 1978-81 he was the SPC’s administrative director.

New membership arrangements for the South Pacific Commission approved in Saipan last October (PIM Nov. ’B3 p. 11) raise as many questions about the future of the organisation as they attempt to answer.

Under the new arrangements all 22 countries and territories within the commission’s area, together with the five “metropolitan” countries, are full members irrespective of political status or affiliation. This has created an entity whose potential political clout is enormous although the commission is specifically precluded by its charter from engaging in politics. How will this conflict be handled when it arises, as it is almost certain to do?

The “everyone’s equal” theory was raised by American Samoa at the 1979 South Pacific Conference in Tahiti and was promptly and vehemently denounced from the floor by Papua New Guinea’s then Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Ebia Olewale. With mighty PNG staring down tiny American Samoa, and in the face of continuing proposals for a single regional organisation (SRO) to supersede the South Pacific Commission (SPC) and the South Pacific Bureau for Economic Co-operation (SPEC), how did the SPC’s new membership arrangements come to pass in such a short time?

The answer lies partly in the push given by the SPC’s prestigious Secretary-General, Francis Bugotu, of Solomon Islands, who presented a paper to the 1983 Saipan conference, entitied, innocuously enough, “In- House review of the South Pacific Commission by the Secretary-General. ”

Much of this dealt with the nuts and bolts of the secretariat’s inner workings. But in one respect the expanded membership proposal it was of vast significance. Although the proposal had been prearranged at a special meeting in Canberra earlier in the year, it found extra and ready acceptance at the Saipan conference from the French and U.S. territories. PNG, however, this time represented by its respected secretary for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Paulias Matane, remained resolutely, and eloquently, opposed, and finally went along only to avoid destroying consensus.

Until his appointment as secretary-general, Bugotu was the senior diplomat of Solomon Islands, a country not exactly known for its feelings of tenderness towards the SPC. It was even rumored that his appointment would hasten the demise of the SPC by giving impetus to the thrust for an SRO. Why, then, did he take it upon himself to persuade the Saipan conference to adopt expanded membership proposals which, at first glance, appear substantially to strengthen the SPC’s role in the region?

Funding under the new membership arrangements raises further questions. Who will pay what? Although the metropolitans will almost certainly continue to cough up 92 per cent of the commission’s regular budget, the remaining eight per cent, to be split among 22 island governments, could cause problems. Last year’s conference agreed to a threetiered level of contributions from islands governments based on their per capita incomes, but left itself an “out” by making that decision subject to “ratification” by another meeting to be held this year. In other words they weren’t sure enough about the issue to make a final decision.

Why not? The total amount, less than $A300,000, is not large, especially when divided by 22. But funding has always touched a raw nerve among the islands members of the SPC.

Indeed, funding was the issue used to get islands governments into the SPC in the first place when, nearly 20 years ago, Ratu (now Sir) Kamisese Mara pleaded that they be allowed to contribute to the commission’s budget and thereby gain a say in its operations. For years since then islands governments have argued about how much they should contribute, and the per capita income formula, devised by Australia, is unlikely to put a stop to that.

Again, why not? Well, for a start, the reassessment appears to have been based upon a statistical formula which bears little relation to the islands governments abilities or inabilities to pay. For example, some governments which might be expected to be in a better position than others to contribute on a weighted basis would actually pay considerably less than at present. Among them are Fiji, Nauru and PNG. A middle group of eight countries would mostly pay quite a bit more, while the bottom group of seven, which includes some of the poorest countries in the world in income terms, would, with the exception of Solomon Islands and Western Samoa, pay substantially more $9OOO-$lO,OOO a year is a lot of money for countries like Tokelau or Tuvalu, and is half of what the islands “big boys” would pay.

This raises more questions because the new membership, and the per capita funding basis, create an Orwellian situation whereby although all gov- Author of this article, Donald Stewart, “wired for sound” at the 1979 South Pacific Conference in Papeete. 47 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

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ernments are equal, some are more equal than others, and this could produce political issues. How, for example, does Western Samoa, which blazed the islands’ path into the SPC in 1965, see itself now at the bottom of the list of contributors, while its territorial brother across the water in American Samoa is at the top? Is this the reward of independence? And who has more say, at least behind the the scenes? And so on.

Other political issues may unavoidably follow, touching defence and security matters in the American-dominated North Pacific, nuclear dumping and testing, and New Caledonian independence. How will the SPC, with its formal ban on political issues, deal with these if its new, full members, outweighing the original colonials, insist on bringing them up? And what would this do to the SPC’s relationship with the South Pacific Forum, and SPEC?

The SPC/SPEC issue, which has been studied for years, is not likely to lie down and die.

Under the euphemism “Proposals for a Single Regional Organisation’’ it is now the subject of review by a committee of four foreign ministers due to report to this year’s meeting of the South Pacific Forum in Tuvalu.

This is the most high powered study yet and there s a good chance that it will, at last, bring some movement on the question. After all, a report from four foreign ministers can’t be just tucked away and ignored as have previous reports. It could be that the expanded SPC will be just the catalyst needed by proponents of an SRO to bring about its creation before the SPC gets any stronger and starts playing politics, which would bring it into conflict with the Forum. On the other hand there may be those who would prefer to see the SPC in conflict with the Forum, because the latter would emerge the winner.

And then there is the school of thought which is happy to see the SPC survive as a convenient whipping-boy.

None of this touches on what the SPC actually does. Despite talk of overlap, duplication of effort, squandering of resources, administrative wastefulness and the like, the SPC over the years has done as good a job as could be expected in delivering technical assistance to the region, and continues to do so. Whether that will remain the case is really up to the Forum countries for, in the final analysis, it will be continued on page 52 For the first time in its 37-year history, the South Pacific Commission has three islanders in its top positions. From left to right they are; Secretary-General Francis Bugotu (Solomon Islands); Director of Programs Tamarii Pierre (Cook Islands); Deputy Director of Programs Vitolio Lui (Western Samoa). 48 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

Suspended Enga scores a first RAMA ANIO, newly appointed RIM correspondent in Port Moresby, reports on the political bombshell represented by the Somare government’s decision to suspend the Enga provincial government.

The Somare government stunned its political opponents in February when it suspended one of Papua New Guinea’s 19 provincial governments.

The suspension of the Enga provincial government for financial mismanagement was seen as a warning to those governments who have tried to abuse the “decentralisation” system.

Since last November, when major constitutional amendments were passed by parliament empowering the national government to penalise faulty and mismanaged provincial governments, many critics, including the premiers of the provinces, thought it wouldn’t be done. Even when the submission on Enga was put to Cabinet it was still thought and felt that the decision would not favor suspension. But Cabinet’s unanimous approval left the critics wondering what had gone wrong in their calculations. And, in the provinces, the feeling of vulnerability began to sink into those premiers and politicians who once thought themselves immune to national government checks and balances.

The passing of the legislation and subsequent suspension of Enga is quite an achievement for the 18-month-old government of Prime Minister Michael Somare. It is also a personal victory for Mr Somare’s business-like Provincial Affairs Minister, John Nilkare. The legislation was the brainchild of Mr Nilkare.

Despite the sensitivity of the issue, Mr Nilkare was concerned at the “unconventional” methods used by some of the premiers to rule their provinces.

Since provincial governments were established soon after independence in 1975, there have been numerous rumors, unconfirmed reports and allegations that some of the premiers had become minidictators who abused their powers and privileges and spent public money extravagantly to benefit themselves and others close to them.

Finally Mr Nilkare was given the ammunition, in the form of a report by the auditor-general, to shoot one of them down.

The report on Enga, an under-developed Highlands province with a population of 170,000, said the government of Premier Danley Tindiwi had mismanaged its finances and failed to account for it. Enga had not submitted a report on its accounts since Mr Tindiwi assumed power in 1980. The report said Enga had overspent its 1982 budget by almost K 400,000 (about $A480,000).

Its total budget for that year was K 3,995,400 and actual expenditure K 3,949,845.

Although there was a net under-expenditure of K 45,555, the over-expenditure on various votes amounted to K 399,477. Enga’s bank account was overdrawn on nine occasions between August 1982 and March 1983, the highest amount being K 1,151,616, and the lowest K 15,572. Said the report; “The overdrawing of the bank account and the ineffective control over the operation of the provincial government were directly attributable to the laxity in the maintenance of the book of the account.”

The report also listed the unauthorised use of purchase orders between November 1982 and March 1983. During that five-month period, 16 unauthorised purchase orders were used and amounted to K 6400. The highest amount was KlOl4 for five days’ motel accommodation for the premier and two others.

Mr Tindiwi immediately rebutted the report and said in his defence that it was the fault of the Department of Enga, the provincial bureaucracy. Mr Nilkare was not convinced by this argument and went ahead with the submission to Cabinet on February 8. Following its approval he sent a telex message to Mr Tindiwi on February 9 informing him that Enga would be suspended from noon that day. Mr Nilkare and Mr Somare announced the decision at a news conference at Waigani that afternoon.

Mr Somare told reporters that the suspension was provisional and would be for six to nine months. He said the decision was subject to confirmation by parliament (which began its first three-week session for the year on February 26).

Later, amid criticisms, Mr Nilkare strongly defended the action, saying it was “designed to save representative democracy and to restore responsibility, accountability and efficiency in Enga.’’ He said privately that it had been a hard decision to make, but had to be done in the interests of the people of Enga and the system of provincial government. Mr Nilkare said he was also studying similar reports on two other provincial governments, Oro and Sibu.

But he pointed out that financial mismanagement was not the only criterion for suspension. Another was corruption.

Surprisingly, Mr Tindiwi at first welcomed the suspension, but reiterated that he was not to blame. Then he threatened the national government with court action, saying the decision was unconstitutional.

Others who did not quite welcome the suspension included Opposition Leader lambakey Okuk and his deputy, Fr John Momis. Fr Momis, considered the father of provincial government, said the action was extreme and a setback for decentralisation, a process he had worked hard to achieve in his tenure as minister for decentralisation in the previous governments. He blamed the national finance department and Waigani bureaucrats for their unwillingness to decentralise financial powers to the provinces.

While heated debate continued between the government and opposition parties, the people of Enga took the news calmly. The vocal few had their say. As for the silent majority, it didn’t seem to matter that the province would go down in history books as the first casualty of the provincial government system a system that was designed to give them more say in their own affairs and make them economically self-reliant so that they could contribute to the country’s development and wealth.

Pama Anio in Port Moresby.

Danley Tindiwi John Nilkare 49 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY APRIL, 1984

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tropicalities When ‘Queen Rarotonga’ was Mexico’s darling GALAL J. KERNAHAN, U.S./Travelling Correspondent of the leading Mexican weekly newsmagazine TIEMPO, provides below an English translation of one of his recent articles; after relating the remarkable story of a Mexican fantasy “Queen Rarotonga”, he tells of a recent visit to the Cook Islands and of his meeting a person who could lay genuine claim to such a title.

Throughout the 19705, Mexicans were thrilled by, and suffered and rejoiced with, the beautiful Queen “Rarotonga”, sharing all her triumphs and anxieties in the weekly magazine, Tears, Laughter and Love, and in motion pictures made not in the South seas but in Guatemala.

In the drawings and on the screen, the semi-savage woman danced under the full moon and, then, two young men, longing for a single night of love with “Rarotonga”, duelled with whips. This being as shapely and exquisite as fictitious was the creation of Guillermo de la Parra Loya, president of the “Argumentos” Publishing House of the VID Group. The firm rated “Rarotonga” one of its greatest successes and, in a memorial booklet it issued four years ago, noted: “Rarotonga had an impact that has been studied by psychologists and sociologists, because, even though the personality was imaginary, the public, above all young people, were so captivated that many adopted her personality and her hairdo became famous in Mexico.” The customs and culture as well as the character of the Mexican “Rarotonga” (played in films by the showgirl, Gloriela) were inventions. The realities are very different.

Recently, our magazine’s travelling correspondent, Galal Kernaham, returned from Rarotonga, capital of the small nation called the Cook Islands, located 5000 km south of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean, where there are three queensi not just one. They are welleducated, serious persons, who symbolise the continuity of the best values of the Polynesian race. The doings of their “Mexican sister” surprise and amuse them. They are grandmothers, who view with indulgent curiosity the strange, wild “Rarotonga” that so fascinated people in a distant part of the world, The Cook Islands is an independent country of 17,000 inhabitants and 15 islands in free association with New Zealand, Its own flag is flown; its own national anthem is sung. It issues its own postage stamps, mints some of its own money, and receives visitors at a firstclass international airport.

The highest nobles of Rarotonga are called ariki in the Maori language spoken in the Cook Islands. The country is governed by a bicameral legislature made up of a parliament elected by universal suffrage and a House of Ariki that offers the law-makers advice and recommendations on traditional matters, The Queen of the District of Takitumu in Rarotonga, Pa Ariki, is current president of the upper house of the national congress. She is the wife of Prime Minister Sir Thomas Davis, K.8.E., who, as an internationally recognised scientist, is an example of the modernity of this small nation, Sir Thomas was senior medical monitor for Project Mercury, the pioneering series of U.S. space flights, In an interview granted TIEM- PO’s correspondent, Pa Ariki sketched the long path she Mexico’s fantasy “Queen Rarotonga”.

The real Pa Ariki of Takitumo, Rarotonga, pictured in the saloon of the liner QE II when it made its maiden visit to Rarotonga last year. 51 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

Stay at Aggie Grey’s . . . the South Pacific’s legendary hotel.

Situated right in the heart of Western Samoa. Enjoy Poly nesian-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 Samga. Cables: ‘AGGIES’Apia. politics, and not its track record, which will determine the SPC’s future and the Forum is the political master of the region, The question of merging the SRC and SPEC is not one full of administrative complexities but a question of political will. It will be worth noting whether the recently re-constituted SPC gives a shot in the arm to the expression of that will.

Secretary-General Bugotu will not be drawn on these issues which, he told me, are very big questions belonging in the political field. His membership proposals had been approved by conference; it was not his job to express views on what had been decided, but to implement those decisions. He did, however, confirm that he is “very happy” with the state of the SPC’s work program.

He may regret at least one effect of the new arrangements.

The old “committee of representatives of participating governments” soon to be replaced by a “committee of the whole” which determined total funds available to the commission, settled the fine points of the administrative budget, dealt with staff matters etc., proved that it could be extraordinarily difficult, even obstructive, with 13 members.

With 27, it is likely to become impossible. Some kind of house-keeping committee may prove to be essential.

Most of this is speculation about the future. Whatever happens it will be interesting to watch the SPC’s course as it embarks on a path undreamed of by its founders. followed before accepting her aristocratic duties.

“I grew up in New Zealand and wanted to prepare myself as a business executive secretary and to be a completely modern woman. I had not the least desire to go back to Rarotonga and. even less, to give myself to the responsibilities of an ariki. Their concerns, from my point of view, were out of date. In spite of this rebelliousness, the other ariki and my own people of Takitumu waited with infinite patience for me to mature. Slowly, I came to recognise my ancestral duties.”

The Cook Islands is a progressive nation that has signed the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and has satellite communications links with the rest of the world, including the PEACESAT network for regional technical and social information exchange.

Almost all the country’s citizens are bilingual and speak English as well as Maori. Our correspondent questioned the Queen about the functions of the aristocracy at present. She responded; “The ariki do not exercise political power but great social and moral influence. Our people consult us about a wide variety of things ranging from land tenure to matters of traditional ethics. Out of respect and affection, they keep us abreast of everything happening in our communities.”

According to Pa Ariki, her people are proudly jealous of what the nobility means within their society. She told TIEM- PO's correspondent: “Let me recount what happened in 1980 on the eve of the nomination of my husband as a ‘Knight of the British Empire’ (K.B.E) by Queen Elizabeth II of England. The people thought deeply over the implications for me of this title about to be conferred on my husband.

They advised that it would not be appropriate that I be known in the future either within our country or overseas as ‘Lady Davis’. On proper occasions, the use of ‘Lady Pa’ would be acceptable. One of my advisers pointed out an animal under the palms beside the lagoon and remarked, ‘Queen Elizabeth II could designate that pig, Lady Davis, and such it would be until it died, but Pa Ariki has been among us for thousands of years’.”

Further the Court of the Queen of Takitumu granted a title of Maori nobility to the prime minister. Thus were the protocol problems handled.

The president of the House of Ariki does not have green eyes, is not of Negro-Dutch ancestry and does not have an “afro” hairdo, and the marvellous adventures of the other “Rarotonga” notwithstanding prefers to be what she is: a 20th-century woman rooted in a rich and worthy culture.

With reference to the accomplishments of Maori civilisation, it is of interest to remember that the discovery of New Zealand by Polynesian navigators took place before that of America by Columbus.

The great open canoes began that 3000-km voyage to an unknown land from Ngatangiia, District of Takitumu, Pa Ariki’s realm in Rarotonqa.

Galal J.

Kernahan.

Salute to PNG’s “mostsmoked newspaper”

The etiquette of smoking in Papua New Guinea seems somewhat more involved than some other parts of the Pacific, at least according to Edward Donpos, of Maso Village, Uvol, near Rabual, East New Britain Province.

Mr Donpos wrote to the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald to congratulate him upon the quality of his production which had lately become, he said, “the most-smoked newspaper in our nation.”

“Village businessmen are now ordering it in 50kg bales for their trade stores and selling it at the rate of five pages for 10 toea (about 13 cents Australian) for customers to roll their own cigarettes.

“Alternatively,” he said, “the pages are each tom into three pieces, and the pieces sold, wrapped around a stick of local tobacco for 40 toea (about 52 cents Aus).”

Newsprint is favored over commercial rice paper leaves as used in Australia and by cowboys in the United States, Mr Donpos explained, because in New Guinea’s humid climate rice paper fails to survive the licking process and instead of sticking down collapses spilling tobacco all over the roller’s shirt front.

The pages of the Sydney Morning Herald, said Mr Donpos, were made of sterner stuff.

However, while some smokers claimed to favor one newspaper over the other on grounds of flavor, he felt himself that the local tobacco was such strong stuff it tended to overcome the palate of all but the most experienced.

Yet it was possible to differentiate among individual sections of a newspaper. The financial sections and race form pages as well as the classified ads were favored over those pages full of large pictures because of the effect of heavy layers of news ink upon the even burning of the page, said the writer. New Guinea tobacco sticks are made of whole leaves, rolled and soaked in molasses, and sell well although, again according to Mr Donpos, some more delicate souls are now turning to tinned or pouch tobacco, though still favoring newsprint for the wrapping.

Status of varying kinds also tends to be conveyed by the size of the “roll”. Minimum length is about five inches, although some can go to 18 inches, and all are usually about a quarter of an inch thick.

In Fiji locally-cured tobacco is not often burned in newsprint but a fine light brown paper, apparently obtained from Indian packages and paper bags, is favored by some.

Use of newsprint is however fading in most parts of the Pacific in favor of “tailormades” which stand up well, even during the worst of the wet season, for the very basic reason that they don’t require licking. 52 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984 SPC From page 48

letters Lament of two travellers (1) Nauru Warning: Travellers from Australia and Solomon Islands to Micronesia are now charged $8 an hour, without food, to sleep on Nauru.

Air Nauru no longer flies from Honiara and points south to Ponape in one day. You are required to change planes in Nauru, and use one of the beds in their Hotel Menen. You are supposed to arrive in Nauru at 9 p.m. Tuesday (in my case actually midnight), and the flight to Ponape boards (but doesn’t in my case depart) at 7 a.m. the next morning.

The Nauru Consulate in Melbourne now demands you obtain a visa for “one day”, and has the audacity to charge $6 for their stamp. The bed at the Menen Hotel is $3O; the airport departure tax $10; so you are charged about $8 an hour to stay on that island.

Air Nauru does give a sandwich to passengers boarding in New Zealand, but “dinner” on the Honiara-Nauru flight is one glass of fruit juice. I don’t know if their hotel has a restaurant, or what the island of Nauru looks like, and never will.

Robert Sperry

Adelaide SA Australia (2) PNG It has been my good fortune to visit Papua New Guinea several times in the past few years. Is the national government, or the national airline, interested in bringing tourists into the country? Evidently not, judging by the airfares charged for the last leg of the journey from New York to Port Moresby.

I recently researched airfares for a possible holiday in PNG, and came up with the following: New York to Honolulu return (approximate one-way mileage 5129) SUS4SO: Honolulu to Port Moresby return (4000 miles) $ U 51350. New York to Manila return (10,335 miles) $US1100; Manila to Port Moresby return (2442 miles) SUSISOO. New York to Brisbane return (11,794 miles) SUSI6OO; Brisbane to Port Moresby return (SUS7OO).

As can be seen from the above, the major cost of going half way round the world to visit PNG is the last leg of the journey. Are the air fares charged for flights into Port Moresby set at an artificial high to protect Air Niugini?

My first stay in the country, 1943-45, was all expenses paid . . . Please, whoever is perpetrating this fare inequity, help us New Guinea buffs. We would like a more affordable holiday in your beautiful country.

Roger F. Sykes

Elmira Heights N.Y.

USA Tichborne?

Tlchbourne?

Tui Garnett inquired (FIM Oct. ’B3 p 9) who was “Sundowner”, author of Rambles in Polynesia, Wild Life in the Pacific, etc. He was, according to our catalogue, one Herbert Tichboume. Regret no further biographical details available here.

Lan Knights

Information Officer Royal Commonwealth Society Information Bureau, London UK Mr Knights’ information generally confirms that of reader Rod Ewins (FIM Jan. p 7) except that Mr Ewins replied to Mr Garnett’s inquiry by saying that “Sundowner” was the penname of “H. C. Tichborne” (without the “u”).

A misplaced high point Thank you for the offprints of my brief note on “The First Fijians to Meet Europeans” (FIM Oct. ’B3 p 23), and the most unexpected cheque which I have donated as a subscription to the Ono-i-Lau school.

Unfortunately, I made a rather serious error in the article: the highest peak of Doi is not Naisoyaga but Naisogovula. Naisoyaga is a high point on Onolevu but not Doi. Do you think it would be possible to correct his with a brief note?

Incidentally, but of much less consequence, there is a typesetting error in the next column; “Two sand bays ...” should read “Two sand cays . . .”; there are no bays in this area, sand cays being sandy islets.

With my very best wishes to all who labor at FIM.

Garth Rogers

Department of Anthropology University of Auckland Auckland New Zealand CUSO by no other name. . .

Recently your publication printed an article mentioning our organisation. Unfortunately, it used our former title instead of the new one. In 1981 we changed our name; CUSO is no longer an acronym but the full title of the organisation.

For years we have fought against an image of a students’ organisation. Oftentimes, our acronym was even wrongly spelled out as Canadian University Students Overseas rather than Canadian University Service Overseas. This served to perpetuate the image.

CUSO is not and never was a students’ organisation. Our workers have always been professionals or skilled, qualified people. They have ranged in age from the early 20s to the mid-70s, the average age today being 30. Many are taking a mid-career break or early retirement to join our organisation for two years’ service in the developing world, and they have years of experience to offer as well as paper qualifications.

Because our workers have been known as “volunteers,” this has apparently suggested that they are unpaid and unskilled. They are neither the overseas government or agency requesting CUSO’s services pays their salaries (admittedly lower than in Canada but adequate for a reasonable lifestyle in the Third World), and our workers are not accepted for placement unless they are qualified.

Having labored for 20 years under the misconception that we are a students’ organisation, we decided to change our name simply to CUSO in the hopes of setting the record straight in the public mind. The fact that the name-change has not registered with some members of the media is now beginning to hurt us.

Slater St.,

Barbara Malone

Ottawa, Director Canada Public Affairs CUSO.

An elusive broadcaster I am very taken up with the hobby of shortwave listening.

In March last year a broadcasting station calling itself “Radio Tropical, the Voice of the Nuclear-free Pacific” made a very brief appearance on the air. No location of the station was given, and the only clue seemed to be reference to “Pacific Magazine”. I eventually was able to find an address for a Pacific Magazine in Honolulu and wrote to Radio Tropical care of the editor. I have had no response from either the radio station or the magazine.

It has now been suggested to me that the “magazine” mentioned was not a publication but a radio program of that name.

However, I have not been able to discover which if any of the Islands broadcasters carries a program of that title.

I am writing in the hope that perhaps one of your readers will be able to help me.

T. C. L. SYMES Wellington New Zealand 53 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

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Address Tel: from the islands press From an advertisement in the Papua New Guinea Post- Courier Would you like to plan your family the family welfare association advises the use of Condoms for men. Condoms are safe and easy to use, and only cost 75t for 10.

From The Fiji Times Twenty-one homes and a community church in Vatulele village, Koro, are now lighted on power from the sun. The solar photovoltaic lighting units were installed by the Vatulele Village Electric Co., a village venture formed to buy, instal and maintain the solar systems . . . The electric company is the brainchild of Peace Corps volunteers Robert and Elizabeth Clarke who live and work in Vatulele. The solar units are the property of the village committee and are sold to homes for $lOO.

From Povai (published by the Vanuatu/Pacific Community Centre) November 2nd elections in the Cook Islands returned Sir Tom Davis to power. That’s a blow for POVAI and the NFIP movement since Sir Tom always does what the white boy from down under, Muldoon, tells him.

From the Home Game (women’s column) by Virginia Truax in the Samoa Times.

Good show! Need lingerie in ecru or skin tone? Save money by dyeing white undies in strong hot tea.

From the Marianas Variety News & Views.

Power bills are not the only ones that haven’t been collected.

According to testimonies presented at budget hearings Tuesday morning before the Senate Fiscal Affairs Committee, less than 10% of the government’s water bills have been paid for fiscal year 1983. The fiscal year ends on Sept. 30. Out of $421,370 in bills mailed to consumers, only $40,101 has been received to date. The Committee told Public Works that their record of collections was unsatisfactory and that efforts should be made to enforce payment.

From The Tonga Chronicle reporting King Taufa’ahau Tupou’s comments on Tonga’s failure to meet New Zealand’s demands for produce.

“. . . Rock melons are fetching good prices in comparison to water melons, but Tonga growers tend to like planting water melons. The types of fruit that receive greater demand on the market are not those that the Tongan growers are planting.”

From a political commentary by Mika in The Samoa Observer.

“Not worth listening to.” “How did these people get into Parliament in the first place?” “Couldn’t the Prime Minister answer questions without dragging debates into those low of low personal attacks?” “Samoa should have a three-member Parliament Tofilau, Tupuola and a clergyman to bury whoever gets strangled first.” These are some of the terms presently being used by some people to describe the near-fracas situation taking place in Parliament. And many seem to agree . . .

From a letter by Listener in The Samoa Observer I must congratulate the Speaker for his superb handling of Parliament. There is a man who knows the standing orders so intimately well that he delivers a ruling quoting from the House’s book of laws so as to make Moses’ ten commandments appear like a child’s story book . . .

From the Police Patrol column in Marianas Variety News & Views.

September 7.5:44 a.m. Moses Pangelinan told police that someone had siphoned gasoline from bus No. 4. September 8.6:18 a.m. Moses Pangelinan reported that someone drained 10 gals, of gasoline from a school bus. September 9.5:58 a.m. Moses Pangelinan reported that someone siphoned gasoline from a school bus. September 11.5:46 a.m. Moses Pangelinan called police and reported that someone drained the gasoline from one of the school buses.

From an editorial in The Times of Papua New Guinea.

Justice for all, is one of the great democratic slogans. And it is an area which can put democracy itself at risk, if it fails to be more than a slogan. In Papua New Guinea today, we are in danger of sliding towards differential access to democracy.

There appears to be emerging, a pattern of three tiers of justice. If you are an expatriate, you can get justice if you pay for it. If you are a politician, you get justice because you are a politician. If you are neither, you get justice if you are lucky An extract from a letter by P. R. Sharp, Rabaul, in the Papua New Guinea Post-Courier. . . . While not agreeing with this (the practice of homosexuality), when observing some females, it’s a wonder a lot more of us aren’t queer . . . 54 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

from page 23 The arrangement thus met official requirements that majority shareholders must be French.

The registered name of the company spelled out its program; Raro Moana, or “Under the Sea”.

By 1978 a team headed by Rossfelder had surveyed the whole Tuamotu archipelago and taken hundreds of core samples from the bottom of 30 atolls. Analyses carried out concurrently in French and American laboratories over the next two years showed that there were indeed important deposits of high-grade phosphate under the shallow lagoons of three atolls Pukapuka, Mataiva, and Niau. Pukapuka was deemed too distant and isolated, so it was decided to undertake more thorough investigations of Mataiva and Niau to determine the precise extent and volume of their deposits.

Like all promoters Breaud and company were at pains to spread the idea that the revival of phosphate mining would usher in an era of general prosperity. The bait was eagerly taken by the new Autonomist majority led by Vice-President Francis Sanford, who was faced with a steadily worsening economic situation and rising unemployment. Every new investor was given a warm welcome, without too many questions asked.

The only people not jumping for joy were the 174 inhabitants of Mataiva, and the 152 who lived on Niau. They protested that the prospecting, and even more the actual mining, would pollute the lagoon and kill the fish on which they depended for their livelihood.

When told of the fabulous wealth coming their way, they replied that the money they made by producing 500 tonnes of copra a year was sufficient for their needs. And the lagoon was theirs. So, please, keep out.

But, unfortunately for them, French law does not recognise individual or communal ownership of lagoons in the territory.

So the Raro Moana people could go ahead unhindered in 1979-80 making 400 test pits in the lagoon of Mataiva, which they had chosen as their first target, its phosphate being of a better quality than that of Niau.

Sure enough, the disturbed environment reacted in the most unpleasant manner by poisoning the fish, which, when eaten by the islanders produced the typical ciguatera symptoms of paralysis, vomiting, joint pains, respiratory disorders, and so on.

To combat the ensuing animosity and criticism the Raro Moana people in April 1981 offered to pay for an environmental impact study. It was carried out by French army doctors from the Moruroa nuclear testing site, and, to nobody’s surprise, they found no cause for alarm at Mataiva.

The consortium might just as well have saved its money, for by now it was quite clear that the Mataiva project had the full backing of the French Government one of Jean Breaud’s great strengths is his extensive network of political and business contacts in Paris where all important decisions affecting French Polynesia are still made.

The fact that the project was indeed destined to go ahead was signalled when parts of a giant dredge began to arrive for assembly at Mataiva even before the “environmental impact study” had been completed.

With the monster dredge assembled, the local people were told that it would be scraping off the “useless” seven metres of sand which overlay the estimated 20 million tonnes of phosphate under the lagoon.

Where would they be putting the sand? Back into the big hole there will be in the bottom of the lagoon after the phosphate is taken out.

This revelation made the Mataiva people, if possible, even more opposed to the mining plans, and, in a dramatic turn-about, Vice-President Sanford assured them that nothing would be done against their will.

But it was too late. Two months later Sanford was swept from office by the most pro- French and pro-business of all the local leaders, Gaston Flosse. The Raro Moana technicians were thus able to carry out their next step undisturbed: they extracted 900 tonnes of phosphate from Mataiva which was to be subjected to industrial trial treatment in US plants.

Then nature itself took a hand: between December 1982 and April 1983 six cyclones came literally out of the blue to revage French Polynesia, and the last two passed directly over Mataiva, destroying all houses and coconut plantations.

Those who stayed behind, resisting the temptation to flee to Tahiti, benefited from the emergency aid in food, building materials and money quickly provided by the local govemment. It also occurred to them (after some prompting from Raro Moana officials) that a new prosperity might be just around the corner if they changed their minds and went to work for the phosphate consortium.

Raro Moana quickly produced a splendid blueprint for a huge mining complex, to be operational by 1986. It would be extracting a million tonnes of phosphate a year, mainly for export to Japan and New Zealand. It would comprise wharves, living quarters for at least 300 workers and their families, and a rinsing plant.

As for the financial benefits to the territory, Raro Moana officials have tried hard to make us believe that their offer of CFPIOOO million a year paid to the government is a generous one. But considering that they will be taking out a million tonnes a year, this corresponds only to CFPIOOO (SUS 6) a tonne, which, expressed as a percentage of total value, is even less than the old Makatea company paid.

It’s being suggested here that local politicians should visit Nauru and leam from crafty President Hammer Deßoburt how to handle these problems.

But people who have this idea forget one thing: Nauruans never got a fair deal on their phosphate until their island became independent.

Marie- Thérèse and Bengt Danielsson.

A Tenorio siren song unheeded Pedro A. Tenorio wants to unleash American private enterprise in the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas and as lieutenantgovernor of the 16-island chain, what Tenorio wants is of some consequence.

Like a born-again capitalist, the 43-year-old leader has a gleam in his eye when he talks about the economic virtues of the Northern Marianas.

What do the islands offer?

Tenorio says: good weather, a favorable tax structure, a politically stable government intimately tied to the United States, a reliable work force, Notes from the North Floyd K.

Takeuchi on Micronesia One of the phosphate prospecting sites in Mataiva. 55 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

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and a minimum wage from another era $1.95 an hour. (The current rate in the United States is $3.30).

But for all of Tenorio’s praises, few American firms have nibbled at the bait. Companies are investing in the Marianas and heavily in the booming tourist sector. But the great majority of the firms are Asian, dominated not surprisingly by Japan.

“We’re somewhat disappointed that we don’t have more U.S. investors,” Tenorio told PIM. “We’re the newest territory of the U.S. and politically we’re bound to the U.S.

But economically more foreign companies are interested. We’d certainly like to see the presence of American companies. ”

What is preventing an influx of American private sector dollars is the prohibitive distance between the Northern Marianas and the U.S. mainland 9340 km. That, plus the fact that most Americans have never heard of the islands, let alone the neighboring groups that make up the Trust Territory.

Those who can recall the names of any of the Micronesian islands probably fought there in World War 11, or know someone who did.

The Northern Marianas’ dilemma is ironic. Few people anywhere are as pro-American as the 18,000 Chamorros and Carolinians of the group. Indeed, they are boastful of the fact that they will become U.S. citizens when the trusteeship is terminated and their fledgling Commonwealth status becomes “official”.

Pedro A. Tenorio is a good example of the faith those people have put in things American. He received his undergraduate degree in science from the University of Hawaii, and went on to get two master’s degrees, one in hydrology and the other in environmental health, from the same institution.

His easy command of English makes him one of the most articulate politicians in the Northern Marianas, if not Micronesia, and, given his relative youthfulness, Tenorio definitely is a leader to watch.

At the moment, he seems content to play second fiddle to : the governor, Pedro P. Tenorio, his cousin. They are an odd i couple; “Pete P. ” has the political muscle, but he seems more comfortable away from the limelight. “Pete A.”, on the other hand, relishes the spotlight and wears his aggressiveness on his sleeve.

They are up for re-election next year, and the lieutenantgovernor says he is happy to back the current governor. But given the fluid politics of the Marianas, no one will hold Tenorio to his word come 1985.

Like many regional leaders, the lieutenant-governor got his start in education. In the mid- -19605, fresh out of college, he taught science to high schoolers on Saipan, capital of the group.

By the mid-19705, Tenorio was director of the office of transition studies and planning. In that critical role, he helped to lay the groundwork for the inauguration of the first Commonwealth government in January, 1978.

What sets him apart from so many other Micronesian officials, or Pacific leaders for that matter, is that Tenorio seems to honestly believe that private enterprise is the key to development.

“The government policy is to encourage foreign investment as much as possible,” he likes to say. “We’re trying to scale down government services as the prime source of employment.” That is hardly the usual rhetoric one hears in Micronesia.

Because U.S. firms have been slow to invest in the Northern Marianas, Tenorio says Asian companies have dominated the scene. In this regard, the Commonwealth government holds an important trump card. Under the provisions of the covenant which established the new government, local authorities can control immigration.

While they cannot confer U.S. citizenship on foreigners or supply “green cards”, the highly-prized papers which make an alien legal and eligible for employment, the Northern Marianas officials can and do allow in those outsiders who it feels can benefit the economy.

Most foreign workers are from either the Philippines or South Korea. Nothing unusual there. But the Northern Marianas has probably become the only place where Chinese communist laborers work under the American flag. The men were brought in by a Hong Kong group to build a condominium on Saipan.

Tenorio says Hong Kong could become an important source of investment capital.

With Peking’s take-over looming, wealthy residents of the British colony are looking for safe havens for their money.

Since the Northern Marianas can, in effect, confer U.S. resident status without the red tape usually associated with American immigration, it is an attractive destination.

Beyond such post-colonial concerns, the Northern Marianas are also an attractive visitor destination. If private sector development is going to free the islands from undue reliance on government, it will be growth in tourism that ensures the change.

About 9000 sun-worshippers flock to Saipan every month, mostly from Japan. There are 700 hotel rooms in the group, again the majority on Saipan.

The flagship hotels are managed by Hyatt and Inter-Continental.

Growth is expected to continue in the double-digit range for the foreseeable future. The construction of hotels and the expansion of present buildings may have a hard time keeping up with the demand.

Tenorio recognises that tourism will play a central role, if not the primary one, in economic development. But he also is enthusiastic about other investment possibilities. One in particular is manufacturing.

There are at present two garment factories on Saipan.

They pay no gross receipt tax, and in addition, “we have a very favorable import tax waiver” from the U.S. which allows goods to enter that market unimpeded if at least 30 per cent of the product is locally produced. Tenorio hopes the notion of the Northern Marianas as an entry point to the United States will catch on.

The Northern Marianas are by no means trouble-free, particularly for investors. Typhoons are known to frequent the area, and the local government continues to have problems pumping enough water (particularly during dry spells) as well as ensuring an affordable and reliable electrical supply.

But in comparison to other emerging governments in Micronesia, the Northern Marianas has come a long way in a relatively short time. The government is bullish about the future, and perhaps rightly so.

Pedro A. Tenorio brags that “the business outlook looks good to me, the prospects are very good. ” Once the word gets around, they might look even brighter.

Floyd K. Takeuchi.

Lt.-Gov. Pedro A. Tenorio ... “Born-again capitalist” 57 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

Maritime College

Certificate Of

Competency Courses

1984 Courses: Operate on a modular basis consisting of multiple subjects examined separately, allowing the student maximum flexibility in planning hisor herstudy. Students couldattendthe College for about three or four weeks and complete one or two subjects, or stay nine months and finish a certificate. Where applicable the College will obtain exemptions from equivalent Department of Transport exams for successful students.

DOT prerequisite short courses: Are also offered including Radar Observer, Radar Simulator, Fire-fighting, Survival, Radio Telephone (restricted), Management and First Aid.

Other courses: Are also available for lower grade certificates.

Accommodation and meals: Are available on campus.

Overseas applications: Must be accompanied by an approved Australian Government Form M 146, obtainable from the Australian Embassy or High Commission in the applicant’s home country. No visa charge applies to those undertaking only certificate of competency courses.

The College: Is situated on a picturesque site overlooking the Tamar River, 7 km from the City of Launceston, and close to major tourist attractions. College facilities include some of the most sophisticated equipment in Australia.

Forfurther information: Contact MrL. Piperon(oo3) 26 0764 or Mr P. McGovern on (003) 26 0706.

Please send me more information on Certificate of Competency Courses.

Name: Address: Send to: Admissions Office, Australian Maritime College, P.O. Box 986, Launceston, Tas. 7250.

Telephone: (003) 26 0731 PIM Certificate Commencing dates of next modules • Master Class 1 • Master Class 2 • Second Mate 1 • Second Mate 2 12/3/84 1 2/3/84 14/5/84 14/5/84 Cut out and send Postcode 21363 people Fiji’s consul-general in Sydney for the past three years, Douglas Walkden Brown, has retired and will return to Fiji after he’s motored around most of Australia. So far, Fiji Foreign Affairs is silent about the identity of his successor. The position has been advertised, but no announcement had been made by press time. The Sydney office assumed considerable importance during Mr Brown’s tenure, particularly regarding trade relations. In the 19605, when Fiji’s colonial government was running affairs, it was decided to have a Fiji representative in Sydney, but he had no diplomatic rating and, at the outset, operated mainly in the tourism sector. The office now has a trade commissioner, Neville Smith, as well as a consul-general.

Mr Brown is a retiring sort of gentleman. He was born in Parkes, NSW, and went to Fiji in 1947 as principal of the Navuso Agricultural School, retiring in 1960 to become a dairy and poultry farmer a few miles outside Suva. Six years later he was elected to the Fiji Legislative Council and, until he retired from parliament, held several ministries. He was minister for agriculture, fisheries and forests, minister for lands, and minister for natural resources. When he retired from parliament, he became consulgeneral in Sydney. He’s retur-’ ning to Fiji to live in Suva but he won’t be allowed to retire completely. For a man of his talents, there’s always a place on government committees.

“I think surf photography is just as exciting as surfing. When I get a good shot, I just hoot and hoot and hoot until I can’t hoot any more.”

So says Peter Crawford, an Australian in his early 30s who, as well as having been Australian kneeboard surfing champion seven times, is probably the world’s top surf photographer.

He is senior staff photographer for the U.S.-based magazine Surfer, the world’s most respected surfing publication. He also works for Sailboarder, another American publication with a worldwide circulation, and directs and photographs for Waves, an Australian surfing magazine.

Douglas Walkden Brown 58 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

In between times he does all the surfing amd water sports photography required by a Sydney television station.

He told Jill Bowen, in a 1982 interview with The Australian Women’s Weekly: “I’m something of a salt water matador, turning, swerving, ducking, constantly. I have to to survive. I’ve only been clobbered once ...”

It happened at Burleigh Heads, Queensland, in February, 1982. Head above the water, camera secured in readiness around his neck, Crawford waited for the action. It came all too soon.

“Tom Carroll, one of Australia’s promising board riders, appeared out of the blue and his board smacked the camera around my neck. It split the housing wide open, and it was made of 20 mm Perspex, so if it had been my head ...”

Crawford’s greatest relaxation is moonlight surfing. “It’s like no other sensation,” he says. Do sharks worry him?

“I’m shark bait, whether I’m surfing at night or during the day. My wife Gail worries, but she’s used to it now”.

Crawford is proud of Australia’s position as premier world surfing nation. He says of the world’s top 16 surfers, 10 are Australians. The rest, he says, are South Africans, Californians and Hawaiians who gave the world surfing in the first place.

Pitcairn Miscellany reports: “We have recently been notified that the education officer/ government advisor for 1984/ 85 is Leon Salt. Of course Leon will take over as editor of Miscellany as well. He will be accompanied by his wife and four children. We wish him and his family all the best for their tour of duty here. They are certainly in for the ‘experience of a lifetime’.”

Dr Felix Wendt, head of the University of the South Pacific’s school of agriculture at Alafua, Western Samoa, has resigned.

Announcing his decision, Dr Wendt said that the growing conflict between the Western Samoan Government and the university over the future of the Alafua campus facilities had contributed to it. Among other things, he would now be devoting more attention to his plantation.

Victoria Roberts, widow of the legendary Pat Roberts who founded the Rabaul Shipping Company, was recently in Fiji for the marriage of her daughter Dorothy to Gus Peters of Tamavua.

Interviewed in Suva “Aunty”

Vicky said she found the Fiji shipping scene very interesting and might consider settling in Viti Levu . . . but nobody took her very seriously she is well in control of Rabaul Shipping where she is managing director after the death of her husband on June 9 last year. “Life would be very boring without shipping,” smiled Victoria, who doubtless contemplated the wedding of her daughter against the memory of her own marriage in 1960. It was the biggest occasion Rabaul has ever seen ... it even caused postponement of the races.

The leader of an Australian Aboriginal country and western music group, Harry Williams, has described his recent tour of Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu as “unreal”.

He said people in all three countries were amazed to see children and a woman performing on stage. Mr Williams said “all eyes were glued” on his wife, Wilga, when she played the bass guitar, and when she started singing everyone began clapping.

He said a major reason why the group clicked in the three countries was because it was a family, and families were very important in the South Pacific.

Australia’s Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Clyde Holding, said the group, Harry Williams and the Outcasts, was one of the few Aboriginal bands to have toured overseas. He said the group presented one of the more contemporary images of Aboriginal talent in playing country music which was peculiarly and particularly Australian.

The University of the South Pacific has named two pro-vicechancellors, the first such appointments at USP.

They are the Head of the School of Education, Dr Robert Stewart, and the Director of the Institute of Social and Administrative Studies, Esekai Solofa.

The announcement of the new appointments added that the posts of dean of planning and personnel, and dean of academic affairs, will be abolished when the terms of the current holders run out.

The pro-vice-chancellors will concentrate chiefly on university administration in addition to their present responsibilities.

Gordon Oliver, surely one of Fiji’s most vigorous hoteliers, has taken over operation of the Tradewinds Hotel in Lami and is telling everyone that the sky is the limit to his ambitions.

His first move, widely applauded in Suva, has been establishment of a new restaurant in the hotel. Called “Bounty Old World Mariner” this establishment features a salad bar built into the hull of an old British whaling boat. On the walls is original acrylic artwork painted by American, Deborah Scales, and a collection of antique ship relics.

The restaurant is notable for its booths which provide privacy as well as private telephone outlets and call buttons for stewards.

The new restaurant, and the adjacent “Bounty Bar”, are the first moves towards complete renovation of the Tradewinds Hotel, says Oliver. He has already built a jetty for his Air Coral Coast seaplane service, set up a waterfront patio to accommodate 25 for drinks and snacks, and rebuilt the hotel shop.

Tradewinds fell on fairly hard times a few years ago after a Hong Kong entrepreneur bid to take it over. The entrepreneur left Fiji without, apparently, completing the purchase.

A pair of high-powered boats destined for two of the Pacific’s most remote island nations, left Sydney’s Darling Harbour recently aboard the cargo ship Lahe.

The first of these was a 12-metre Randall luxury game fishing boat similar in design to the Australia II syndicate’s Black Swan management boat, which is on its way to Christmas Island. It is intended to serve big-game fishermen visiting Christmans Island’s rich waters from Honolulu, 1200 km away.

The second boat is a 7.5metre Broadbill catamaran powered by twin 140 h.p. outboards which will be used by the Tongan department of telegraphs and telephones to service communications links to the group’s outlying islands.

Both boats are being provided to the island nations under an Australian aid program and were bought on behalf of the two countries by the government agencies section of Bums Philp and Co. Ltd.

Shipment was arranged by the Sydney-based Pacific Islands Freight Services.

Peter Crawford - Michael Andrews picture 59 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

Local Agents And Papua New Guinea

REPRESENTATION RABAUL: M. & C. Seeto, P.O. Box 131, Rabaul.

Telephone 92 2919.

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

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APIA: Burns Philp (South Sea) Company, Ltd. yachts PESI FONUA reports from Vavau , Tonga: THERE was a celebration in Vavau, Tonga’s prime sailing region, in January when Minister of Defence, Crown Prince Tupouto’a, officially opened the slipway of D. C. Coleman Marine Services.

A local yachting personality, Don Coleman, 48, who ran the South Pacific Yacht Charters out of Vavau for three and a half years, has gone into business on his own.

Coleman will specialise in maintaining small boats and cruising yachts, confident of keeping his five-man work force busy, since Vavau is becoming a popular destination, receiving upwards of 150 cruising yachts each year.

At the time of the opening he had 14 yachts booked in for servicing nine local boats and five oceancrossing yachts sheltering at the Port of Refuge for the hurricane season.

“It’s common practice for cruising yachts to find shelter where maintenance work can be carried out during the hurricane season from November to March, and the Port of Refuge offers one of the best shelters in the South Pacific,” said Coleman, an engineer from California who has 20 years sailing experience in the South Pacific. He taught at technical college in Papua New Guinea and ran a holiday resort in the Marshall Islands before moving to Tonga with his family.

“We also build wooden boats up to nine metres long from Tongan and Samoan hardwoods, and in the near future we’d like to incorporate a shipping chandler and make and repair sails.”

It has not all been plain sailing for Mr Coleman. The local authorities clamped down when his excavations threatened to undermine the island’s harbor ring road. And he had to cope with the Tongan land-transferring system which often confounds foreigners who want to use land in the kingdom.

But then in January he received confirmation of a 20-year lease for his site on the Neiafu water front, and his slipway, capable of servicing boats of up to 40 tonnes, began operating.

Don Coleman of the newly established D. C. Coleman Marine Services, Vavau, Tonga, pictured by his slipway. - Pesi Fonua picture. 60 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

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

Australia - Fiji

KKL (Kangaroo Line) Pty. Ltd., operates a 4/5 weekly cargo service from Sydney and Melbourne to Suva and Lautoka.

Details from KKL (Kangaroo Line) Pty. Ltd., 4th Floor, 19-31 Pitt Street, Sydney (235-0322), Dalgety Shipping, World Trade Centre, Melbourne (616- 6700), 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, 19 Pitt Street, Sydney (27-9851), 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); Newcastle, Sofrana Sydney (27-9851); Clements and Marshall, Burnie, Tasmania (31-1833), Carpenters Shipping, Harbour Centre Building, Ist Floor, Thomson Street, Suva, Fiji (312-244), Tlx FJ2199.

Australia - Samoas - Tonga

Warner Pacific Lines operates a regular cargo service from Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne to Nuku’alofa, Pago Pago, Apia and Vavau.

Details from Hetherington Wesfarmers Shipping Agency, 37-49 Pitt Street, Sydney (27-1671).

AUSTRALIA - NEW CALEDONIA -

Fiji - Samoas - Tonga

Pacific Forum Line operates a fully containerised service (general, reefer and ro-ro) from Sydney to Noumea, Lautoka, Suva, Apia, Pago Pago, Nuku’alofa, Sydney. Cargo centralised from Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane.

Details from: Pacific Forum Line, P.O. Box 796 Auckland: Union Bulkships, 333 George Street, Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne; Union Co., Lautoka, Suva, Nuku’alofa: Pacific Forum Line Apia; Polynesia Shipping Pago Pago.

AUSTRALIA - LORD HOWE IS -

Norfolk Is

Compagnie des Chargeurs Caledoniens operates four-weekly cargo service Sydney - Lord Howe Island and Norfolk Island.

Details: Hetherington Wesfarmers Shipping Agency, 37-49 Pitt Street, Sydney (27-1671).

Australia - Kiribati

KKL operates a 5/6 weekly service from Melbourne and Sydney to Kiribati (Tarawa).

Details: KKL (Kangaroo Line) Pty.

Ltd.. 4th Floor, 19-31 Pitt Street, Sydney (235-0322) and Dalgety Shipping, World Trade Centre, Melbourne (616-6700).

Australia - New Caledonia

And/Or Vanuatu

Sofrana-Unilines ships serve Noumea every three weeks from the main ports along the east Australian coast.

Details from Sofrana-Unilines, 19 Pitt Street, Sydney (27-9851), 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), Newcastle, Sofrana Sydney (27-9851); Clements & Marshall, Burnie, Tasmania (31-1833).

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

Details Hetherington Wesfarmers Shipping Agency, 37-49 Pitt Street, Sydney (27-1671).

Compagnie Generale Maritime operates a monthly service from Sydney to Noumea, Port Vila and Santo, for containerised and break bulk cargo.

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

Australia - Nauru - Marshall

Is. - Kiribati

Nauru Pacific Line operates regular cargo service from Melbourne to Nauru, Majuro and Tarawa. Passenger service to Nauru only.

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

Australia New Zealand

The Australian National Line (ANL) and the Shipping Corporation of New Zealand operate a 10-day container service between Sydney and Melbourne to Auckland, Wellington, Lyttelton and Port Chalmers.

Details from ANL, 20 Bond Street, Sydney (232-0444) and Shipping Corporation of New Zealand Ltd., PO Box 3420, Auckland, (797-210).

AUSTRALIA - NZ - FIJI -

Hawaii - Us

P&O liners call at Auckland, Suva, Pago Pago and Honolulu 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 (237-0333).

AUSTRALIA - NZ - FIJI - TONGA - VANUATU - NEW CALEDONIA -

Solomons - New Guinea

Sitmar Cruises operates a yearround cruise program to include the above countries.

Details from Sitmar Cruises, 39 Martin Place, Sydney (239-9000); NSW, reservations & enquiries (008 42-2277); Rest of Australia, reservations & enquiries (008 22-2277).

AUSTRALIA - NZ - FIJI - TONGA - VANUATU - NEW CALEDONIA -

Solomons - Samoas - Tahiti

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 (237-0333).

AUSTRALIA - NZ - SOLOMONS - PNG Pacific Forum Line operates containerised and general cargo service from Lyttelton, Napier and Auckland to Honiara, Lae, Port Moresby, Brisbane.

Details from Pacific Forum Line, Auckland: Steamships Shipping, Port Moresby; Sullivans Ltd., Honiara; Union Bulkships, Brisbane.

Australia - Micronesia

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

Details: N.P.L. (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

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

Australia - Tuvalu

KKL operates a three monthly service from Sydney and Melbourne to Tuvalu (Funafuti). Subject inducement.

Details from KKL (Kangaroo Line) Pty. Ltd., 4th Floor, 19-31 Pitt Street, Sydney (235-0322).

Australia - Png

KAP New Guinea Lines cargo vessels call at Melbourne, Sydney, Port Moresby, Lae, Madang, Wewak, Manus, Kimbe, Rabaul, Popondetta.

Details from K. Asia Pacific Pty. Ltd., 19-31 Pitt Street, Sydney (232-2277), Dalgety Shipping, World Trade Centre, Melbourne (616-6700).

AUSTRALIA - PNG - SOLOMONS - VANUATU A consortium of NGAL7PNGL and CONPAC/NEL have four vessels operating a joint service from east coast Australian ports to Port Moresby, Lae, Alotau, Madang, Wewak, Rabaul, Kavieng-Kimbe, Kieta, Honiara, Vila, Santo.

Details from Burns, Philp & Co. Ltd., 51 Pitt Street, Sydney, (2-0547); Interocean Swire, 8 Spring Street, Sydney (2-0522); New Guinea Express Lines, 37 Pitt Street, Sydney, (241- 3991); Vila Agents, PO Box 971, Port- Vila (2490) Tlx, NH1044.

New Guinea Express Lines operates a weekly container service from Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane to Port Moresby, Lae, Alotau, Kimbe, Rabaul, Kieta, Honiara, Kavieng, Madang, Wewak, Santo, Vila.

Details from New Guinea Express Lines, PO Box R 73, Royal Exchange, Sydney (241-3991); New Guinea Express Lines, 127 Creek Street, Brisbane (221-9333); New Guinea Express Lines, 327 Collins Street, Melbourne (61-3053); Niugini Express Lines, Port Moresby (21-4572); Lae (42-1536); Niugini Island Cargo Services Pty. Ltd., Rabaul (922-467); Bougainville Agencies Pty. Ltd, Kieta (956-089); Alotau Stevedoring & Transport, Alotau (61- 1318); Ngatia Wholesalers Pty. Ltd., Kimbe (93-5102); and Trading Company, Mendana Avenue, Honiara (588); Vila Agencies Ltd., PO Box 971, Vila, Vanuatu (2490); John Lum & Associates, PO Box 65, Santo, Vanuatu.

Australia - Tahiti

Compagnie Generale Maritime operates a monthly service from Sydney to Papeete for containerised and breakbulk cargo.

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

Australia - Tahiti - Us

KKL operates a 4/5 weekly cargo service from Melbourne and Sydney to Papeete, and a fortnightly service to US west coast.

Details: KKL (Kangaroo Line) Pty.

Ltd., 4th Floor, 19-31 Pitt Street, Sydney (235-0322) and Dalgety Shipping, World Trade Centre, Melbourne (616- 6700).

Australia - Nz - West Coast

South America

South Pacific Seaboard Service offers a regular cargo service from Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne to New Zealand ports Lyttelton and Tauranga and to the west coast of South America, calling at Beu’ventura, Guayaquil, Cailao and other ports ori inducement.

Details from South Pacific Seaboard Service agents, Meridiart Shipping & Transport Agencies, 50 Clarence Street, Sydney (290-1633), Tlx 25970; Melbourne (67-5907); Brisbane (267- 6355); Adelaide (47-6600); Oceanbridge Shipping Ltd., 22 Emily Place, Auckland (33-279). Tlx 60523; lan Taylor Y Cia Ltda, Prat 827 Of. 301, Valparaiso, Chile (59096), Tlx. 30331.

SINGAPORE - HONG KONG - FIJI -

Islands Ports

Kyowa Shipping Co. Ltd. operates a monthly service from Singapore, Hong Kong to Lautoka, Suva and then to island ports.

Details from Carpenters Shipping, Harbour Centre Building, Ist Floor, Thomson Street, Suva, (312-244), Tlx FJ2199.

Far East - Fiji - New

ZEALAND New Zealand Unit Express (N2UE) operates a monthly palletised cargo service from Manila, Keelung, Kaoshiung and Hongkong to Lautoka, Suva and thence to NZ.

Details from Carpenters Shipping, Harbour Centre Building, Ist Floor, Thomson Street, Suva (312-244), Tlx FJ2199, Burns Philp, Suva (311-777) P&O S.N. Co. Wellington (736-477) or Nedlloyd Swire Pty. Ltd., Sydney (20- 522).

Nedlloyd operates bi-weekly cargo service with four ships from Sourabaya, Jakarta, Bangkok, Port Kelang and Singapore to Suva, Lautoka and NZ ports.

Details from Nedlloyd (Aust.) Pty.

Ltd., 8 Spring St., Sydney (27-3801).

Burns Philp (SS) Co. Ltd., Suva and Lautoka.

Far East - Mid-S. Pacific

China Navigation’s New Guinea Pacific Line operates a regular container service from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Manila, Port Kelang and Singapore to Port Moresby, Lae, Rabaul and Honiara monthly and to Wewak, Madang and Kieta every three months. Cargo from the same Far Eastern ports to the South Pacific ports of Noumea, Santo, Vila, Papeete, Pago Pago, Apia, Rarotonga and Tarawa will be shipped via Japan on the monthly Bali Hai service.

Details from Steamships Trading Co.

Ltd., P.O. Box 1, Port Moresby (22- 0222).

Kyowa Shipping Ltd., operates monthly services from Japan to Guam, Saipan, Solomons, New Caledonia, Fiji, Western and American Samoa, Tahiti, Cook Is. Tonga and Vanuatu.

Details: Hetherington Wesfarmers Shipping Agency, 37-49 Pitt Street, Sydney (27-1671); Carpenters Shipping, Suva (312-244), Tlx FJ2199.

Guam - Northern Marianas

Saipan Shipping Co. Inc. operate a weekly service via barge carrying containers and conventional cargo between Guam and Saipan and Tinian.

Details from Saipan Shipping Co.

Inc., P.O. Box 8, Saipan, CM 96950 (Tel: 9707) Tlx 783619; Guam agents Maritime Agencies of the Pacific Ltd.

Inter Pacific Islands

South West Pacific Containers offers a scheduled container service with 23 day frequency between Apia, Honiara, Lae, Noumea, Nuku’alofa, Pago Pago, Port Moresby, Santo, Suva and Lautoka, Vila. Transhipment to overseas markets can be arranged. Breakbulk cargo, heavy lifts and refrigerated accepted.

Burns Philp and Co., 7 Bridge Street, Sydney (20-547) Tlx AA20290. 61 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

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No. 1 hatch 3 ton s.w.l. No. 2 hatch 5 ton s.w.l.

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Japan - Fiji - Island Ports

Kyowa Shipping Co. Ltd., operates a monthly service from main ports of Japan to Suva and Lautoka and thence to island ports.

Details from Carpenters Shipping, Harbour Centre Building, Ist Floor, Thomson St., Suva (312-244), Tlx FJ2199.

Japan - Fiji - Island Ports

Bali Hai service operates a monthly service from main ports of Japan to Lautoka and Suva and thence to island ports.

Details from Carpenters Shipping, Harbour Centre Building, Ist Floor, Thomson St., Suva (312-244), Tlx FJ2199 and Burns Philp, Suva (311- 777).

Japan - Micronesia

The NYK Shipping Line operates a monthly cargo service from Japan to Micronesia, calling at Yoko, Nagoya, Kobe, Guam, Saipan, Truk, Ponape and Majuro, returning via Yoko, Nagoya and Kobe.

Details from Burns, Philp & Co. Ltd., 51 Pitt Street, Sydney (2-0547).

Japan - Micronesia

Saipan Shipping Co. Inc. operate a monthly service from Japan to Saipan, Guam, Truk, Ponape, Majuro (Kosrae and Ebeye on inducement).

Details from Saipan Shipping Co.

Inc., P.O. Box 8, Saipan, CM 96950 (Tel: 9707) Tlx 783619; Japan agents Kyowa Shipping Company Ltd; Guam Agents Maritime Agencies of the Pacific Ltd.

Japan - Png

Mitsui O.S.K. Lines operates a monthly service from main ports Japan and Port Moresby, Rabaul, Lae, Madang, Kieta and Kimbe.

Details from Robert Laurie (PNG) Pty. Ltd., PO Box 922, Port Moresby (21-2466/21-1898).

New Caledonia - Fiji - West

Coast North America

PAD Line operates an approx. 3weekly ro-ro service from Noumea and Suva to Honolulu and West Coast USA and Canadian ports.

Details from Sofrana-Unilines SA, BP 1602, Noumea (27-51-91), Tlx NMO4B; Carpenters Shipping, 100 Thompson St., Suva (312-244), Tlx FJ2199.

Png - Inter - Mainport

Papua New Guinea Line offers scheduled 10-20 day coastal liner services linking all PNG major ports with containerisation, reefer, heavy lift and transhipment facilities.

Details from PNG Line, Box 543, Port Moresby, PNG (21-1174), Tlx 22269.

Png - Uk/Continent

The Bank Line & Columbus Line operate a regular joint service from Port Moresby, Oro Bay, Kieta, Rabaul, Kimbe, Madang and Lae to Hull, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp and Le Havre.

Details from The Bank Line (A’asia) Pty. Ltd., 51 Pitt Street, Sydney (27- 2041); Tlx AA 24063; Columbus Line, Lae (423466) Tlx NE 44171; or lines’ local agents.

Solomons - Uk/Continent

The Bank Line & Columbus Line operate a regular joint cargo service from Honiara to Hull, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp and Le Havre.

Details from The Bank Line (A'asia) Pty. Ltd., 51 Pitt Street, Sydney (27- 2041); Tlx AA 24063; Columbus Line, Lae (423466) Tlx NE 44171; or the lines’ local agents.

NEW ZEALAND - VANUATU -

Solomon Islands - Papua New

Guinea - Australia

Pacific Forum Line operates a 28 day cycle container shipping service from New Zealand direct to Vila, then on to Honiara, Lae, Port Moresby, Brisbane, back to Lyttelton, Napier and Auckland.

Details from Pacific Forum Line, PO Box 796, Auckland (790-050) Tlx 60480; PO Box 971, Vila, Vanuatu (2490) Tlx 1044.

NZ - COOK IS - NIUE - TAHITI Shipping Corporation of NZ Ltd. operates cargo services based on pallets 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: Cook Islands; Niue Govt. Offices, Niue Island Compagnie Maritime Polynesienne, BP 368, Papeete, Tahiti.

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

Details from Reef Shipping Agencies, PO Box 3382, Auckland, NZ (77- 1221-3); M.V. Fijian Shipping Agencies Ltd., Private Bag, Suva, Fiji (31-1056).

Pacific Line with one ship operates three-weekly ro-ro cargo service New Zealand, Lautoka, Suva.

Details: Sofrana Unilines, 18 Customs Street, Auckland (773-279) PO Box 3614, Telex: NZ2313; Carpenters Shipping, 100 Thompson Street, Suva (312-244), Tlx FJ2199.

Nz - Fiji - North America (Wc)

Blue Star Line Ltd. Pacific Coast container services. 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., PO Box 192, Wellington (739-029).

Burns Philp (SS) Co. Ltd., GPO Box 355, Suva, Fiji (311-777), Tlx. FJ2168 Burship.

Nz - Fiji - Samoas - Tonga

Pacific Forum Line operates a fully containerised three-weekly service (Gen/Reefer) from Auckland to Lautoka, Suva, Apia, Pago Pago and Nuku’alofa.

Details from Pacific Forum Line, Auckland: Union Co. Auckland, Lautoka, Suva and Nuku’alofa: Pacific Forum Line, Apia.

Pacific Forum Line operates a fourweekly service to Noumea, Lautoka, Suva, Apia, Pago Pago and Nuku’alofa. Details from Pacific Forum Line, Auckland: Union Co., Tauranga, Lautoka, Suva, Nuku’alofa; Polynesia Shipping, Pago Pago.

NZ - N. CALEDONIA - VANUATU -

Png - Solomons

Sofrana Unilines with three ships operates to Vila and Santo, to Honiara and Papua New Guinea and to Norfolk Island and Noumea (No passengers).

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

NZ TAHITI Compagnie Tahitienne Maritime SA (as CTM-Tahiti Line) operates one ship, MV Bounty 111, monthly Papeete New Zealand. (No passengers).

Details from Sofrana Unilines, PO Box 3614, 18 Customs St., Auckland Tlx NZ2313; Agence Maritime Cowan, PO Box 9012, Papeete (39042), Tlx Tahitlin 322 FP Tahiti).

Nz - Tonga - Samoas

Warner Pacific Line services Auck- 62 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

Roush Otun Ims

General Management, 10 Lutego 24,81-364 GDYNIA, POLAND, Phone; 20-19-01, Cables: POLOCEAN Telex: 054-231 <P Q J s anr S 3 1 '-r 7T Si v> *>l* 2.* •V «■ r‘v? & vw» H M f l Vi f? 3

South Pacific Service

ANTwIRp m °nuXfl^ C Bn?,CM d HAMBURG, ROTTERDAM, MIDDLESBOROUGH/IMMINGHAM, S^^PORF D^nr R r!^’ , t ROUEN ’ PAPEETE (via PANAMA), NOUMEA. AUCKLAND, HONIARA, RABAUL, LAE, oiN(jArURE, by our multipurpose vessels carrying dry and reefer containers, reefer chambers, heavy lifts, breakbulk or palletized, bulk liquids. a i A^TOA POLISH OCEAN LINES Representatives AUCKLAND T.B.A. Telex 21517 NZ “UNISHIP”. SYDNEY Mr Walenciak Telex 20428 AA “SLEIGH"

AGENcfsTITD ?ifex?lsl7NZ°UNlßh£- NM “ SATO ”- AUCKLAND UNIVERSAL SHIPPING ocNCIES LTD., Telex 21517 NZ UNSHIP - SOLOMONS MELAN CHINE SHIPPING CO., LTD Telex 66335 HO “SYMECO”. PNG STEAMSHIPS TRADING CO., LTD Telex 42423 NE “STEAM".

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Polynesia Line's new MS Polynesia 550-container ship provides regular monthly cargo service between Papeete, Pago Pago and Apia in the South Pacific, and Long Beach and Oakland on the US Pacific Coast.

Polynesia Line

Interocean Steamship Corporation General Agent Apia f dk a u Q =to 5* £ 3 * & v Suits 90803 Pago Pago Serving Polynesia is all we do—and we do it better! land, Nukualofa, Vavau, Apia, Pago Pago fortnightly carrying general and freezer cargoes.

Details from McKay Shipping Ltd., Downtown House, 21 Queen St., Auckland, PO Box 1372 (30-299). Cables MACSHIP, Telex NZ2554, Warner Pacific Line, Box 93, Nukualofa, Tonga: Mealelei (Western Samoa) Ltd.

Private Bag, Apia, Western Samoa, Kneubuhl Maritime Services, Box 39, Pago Pago, American Samoa, 96799.

Nz - New Caledonia

CP Line operates a monthly cargo service from Auckland, Napier and Mt.

Maunganui to Noumea.

Details from McKay Shipping Ltd., PO Box 1372, Auckland (9-30229); Tlx 2554 NZ.

EUROPE - TAHITI -

New Caledonia

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

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

Europe - Tahiti - New

CALEDONIA - NEW ZEALAND -

Solomons - Png - Europe

Polish Ocean Lines offers regular monthly sailings for containerised and breakbulk cargo and reefer space, conventional and in reefer containers, from Hamburg, Antwerp, Dunkirk and Rouen to Papeete, Noumea, New Zealand, Honiara, Lae, Manila and Singapore, returning to Europe via Suez.

Other ports in the South Pacific can be served with inducement.

Details from Sotama, BP 9170, Papeete (27805), Tlx. 296; SATO, BP C 2, Noumea (272094), Tlx. 163 NM SATO: Union Steamship Co of NZ, PO Box 50, Apia, Tlx. 25; Williams and Gosling, PO Box 79. Suva (312633), Tlx. 2163; Warner Pacific Line, PO Box 93, Nukualofa (21089), Tlx. 66219; Universal Shipping Agencies, PO Box 2282, Auckland (30930), Tlx. 21517.

EUROPE - TAHITI - W. SAMOA -

Fiji - N. Caledonia

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

Details Nedlloyd (Aust.) Pty. Ltd., 8 Spring Street, Sydney (27-3801); Carpenters Shipping, 100 Thomson St., Suva (312-244), Tlx. 2199 FJ and Vetari Street, Lautoka (63988), Tlx. 5215FJ.

UK - N. CONTINENT - W. SAMOA -

Tonga - Fiji

The Bank Line & Columbus Line operate a regular joint cargo service from Hull, Hamburg, Bremen, Antwerp, Rotterdam and Le Havre to Apia, Nukualofa, Suva and Lautoka.

Details from The Bank Line (A’asia) Pty. Ltd., 51 Pitt Street, Sydney (27- 2041); Tlx AA 24063; Columbus Line, Lae (423466) Tlx NE 44171; or lines’ local agents.

UK - N. CONTINENT - PNG - SOLOMONS The Bank Line & Columbus Line operate a regular joint cargo service from Hull, Hamburg, Bremen, Antwerp, Rotterdam and Le Havre to Port Moresby, Lae, Madang, Kimbe, Rabaul, Kieta and Honiara and on inducement to Yandina.

Details from The Bank Line (A sia) Pty. Ltd., 51 Pitt Street, Sydney (27- 2041); Tlx AA 24063; Columbus Line, Lae (423466) Tlx NE 44171; or lines’ local agents.

UK/N. CONTINENT - TAHITI -

N. Caledonia - Vanuatu

The Bank Line & Columbus Line operate a regular joint cargo service from Hull, Hamburg, Bremen, Antwerp, Rotterdam and Le Havre to Papeete, Noumea, Port-Vila and Santo.

Details from The Bank Line (A’asia) Pty. Ltd., 51 Pitt Street, Sydney (27- 2041); Tlx AA 24063; Columbus Line, Lae (42-3466) Tlx NE 44171; Ets A M.

Fare UTE, Papeete; Ets. Ballande, Noumea and other local agents.

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

Details from The Bank and Savill Line Ltd., 51 Pitt Street, Sydney (27- 2041) or Orient Shipping Services, 32 Bridge Street, Sydney (241-2753).

US - HAWAII - MICRONESIA - E.

Malaysia - Brunei

PM & O Lines operates three fully self-sustained container vessels every 21 days from San Francisco, Los Angeles and Honolulu (via transshipment at Majuro) to Majuro, Ebeye, Kosrae, Ponape, Truk, Saipan, Yap, Koror, Kota Kinabalu, Labuan and Brunei. Note: service to Majuro from Hawaii is not offered.

Details: PM & O Lines, 181 Fremont Street, San Francisco, California 94- 105, USA. (415) 543-7430, Tlx 278016, Cable PMONAV. PM & O Owner’s Rep. P.O. Box 803, Saipan, N.M.I. 96950, Cable COMMONTIME SAIPAN. Tlx 783605.

US - HAWAII - NAURU • MICRONESIA Nauru Pacific Line operates regular conventional and container services from San Francisco and Honolulu to Majuro, Ponape, Truk and Saipan.

Cargo is accepted for Nauru and Kosrae with transhipment at Majuro and Ponape.

Details from N.P.L. (Australia) Pty.

Ltd., Nauru House, 80 Collins Street, Melbourne (653-5709); Nauru Air and Shipping Agency, SJite 2803, 185 Berry Street, San Francisco, California 94107 (415-543-1737); Nauru Air and Shipping Agency, Suite 506, 841 Bishop St., Honolulu, HI 96813 (808- 523-0441).

Hawaii - Tahiti - Samoas

Marshall jslands Maritime Co operates a service every 32 days between Honolulu, Papeete, Pago Pago and Apia.

Details from the Maritime Co. of the Pacific, 567 South King Street, Suite 310, Honolulu, Hawaii, Morris Hedstrom, Box 189, Apia, Western Samoa and the Marshall Islands Maritime Co., Box 679, Majuro, Marshall Islands.

Us - Noumea - Fiji

PAD Line operates an approx. 3weekly ro-ro service from West coast USA and Canada to Noumea, Suva and Lautoka.

Details from Sofrana-Unilines SA, BP 1602, Noumea (27-51-91), Tlx.

NMO4B; Carpenters Shipping, Harbour Centre Building, Ist Floor, Thomson Street, Suva (312-244), Tlx. FJ2199; Trans-Austral Shipping Pty. Ltd., PO Box R 232, Royal Exchange, 2000 (231-8411), Tlx. AA21204.

Us - Tahiti - Samoa

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

Details from Polynesia Shipping Services Inc. PO Box 1478, Pago Pago 96799.

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 96799. 64 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

ALL THE NEWS IN A FLASH The South Sea Digest tells you what you want to know about the Pacific Islands in a few words. All the leading firms and diplomatic missions read it. You can phone or write or call for a follow up.

See insert for subscription details:

The South Sea Digest

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deaths Raphael Karepa In New York on February 7. aged 35.

A senior member of Papua New Guinea’s diplomatic service, Mr Karepa was serving as counsellor to PNG’s permanent mission to the United Nations.

Expressing “shock and sadness” at the news, PNG Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade Rabbie Namaliu said the cause of Mr Karepa’s death was not immediately known, but that arrangements were being made for his body to be sent back to PNG.

Mr Karepa came from Koiari Village in Erave, southern Highlands Province.

Usaia Sotutu In Tavea, Bua, Fiji, on New Year’s Eve, 1983, in his late 80s.

The Rev. Usaia Sotutu was a missionary, soldier, and member of the famous Australian Coastwatchers group who operated behind Japanese lines in the Solomons in World War 11.

Mr Sotutu is best remembered for leading the Fiji battalion in the Solomon Islands to safety through jungle tracks unknown to the Japanese. His intimate knowledge of the Solomons and his bravery in the war became a legend.

Mr Sotutu had served as a missionary in the Northern Solomons for about 20 years when the islands were invaded by the Japanese in 1942.

Ex-staff sergeant and a former editor of Nai Lalakai, the late Luke Vuidreketi, in a tribute, said Mr Sotutu decided to stay behind after his family had been taken to safety in a submarine.

Mr Vuidreketi recalled the fighting in and around the Numa Numa trail at Sisivi, in the Solomons.

The Japanese, outnumbering the Fijians almost 10 to one, almost encircled the battalion aiming to annihilate it, when Mr Sotutu came on the scene, with a Lt. Keenan, and actually led the battalion to safety through an unknown track towards the north and down the west coast north of Torokina.

“After this tough battle and a breakthrough in the encirclement, the Fijians had felt they never had a hope of survival, having been informed from air reconnaissance that the enemy was closing again in greater numbers from all sides.

“Our battalion commander asked the Coastwatchers if they knew a way out.

“Mr Sotutu’s reply that day has been remembered over all these years by the men of the Ist Battalion. It was: ‘lf there are 99 tracks known to the Japanese on Bougainville, I know of the 100th. Follow me’.”

Fila Fae In Newcastle, Australia, on February 10, aged 22.

Samoan-born boxer Fila Fae collapsed in his dressing room on February 7 after a bout in Newcastle. He had fought the major preliminary of the evening to a draw, and was taken to hospital unconscious.

Dr Norma Ruth McArthur Dr Norma Ruth McArthur, a noted specialist in Pacific studies at the Australian National University, “still had a bed full of academic books” up to within one week of her death on January 17, according to a colleague.

Dr McArthur was bom in Ararat, Victoria, in 1921, and had suffered a relapse of a long terminal illness 18 months ago.

She began her career at ANU in 1952 when she took up a position as research fellow in demography at the research school of social sciences. From 1956 she spent two years as Census Commissioner in Fiji.

Before she left the school in 1970 as professorial fellow, she wrote and had published in 1967 a book entitled Island Populations of the Pacific, an influential work which questioned the popular theory that Pacific populations had been decimated soon after the arrival of the Europeans in the 19th century. This was her major publication.

Reviews praised the book but said she had relied on European figures to the exclusion of contemporary archaeological finds which had revealed more about very early population trends.

As a result of this criticism Dr McArthur then embarked on her second PhD, in 1970, this time in prehistory. This stage of her work sent her to live on Aneityum, in the New Hebrides group, today’s Vanuatu.

Preparing herself physically for research on the island, which had no roads, included walking up Canberra’s Black Mountain and back every day before she began work. She was then in her early 50s and spent two seasons of several months each on the island, doing research. Other censuses were undertaken in the Solomon Islands and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands (today’s Kiribati and Tuvalu).

After Dr McArthur joined the department of Pacific and South-east Asian history in 1975 as a senior research fellow, she undertook further statistical and historical work on populations in New Caledonia and Hawaii. Between 1975 and 1977 she was also a representative of the non-professorial staff of the institute of advanced studies of the AND Council.

She became a visiting fellow in the research school of Pacific studies in the department of Pacific and South-East Asian history in 1980.

Gene Lai In a road accident near Navua, Fiji, on January 27, aged 38.

Mr Lai, managing director of the P. A. Lai Company, a bus-building firm in Suva, was killed when the light van he was driving collided head-on with a heavy goods truck.

The speedometer on Mr Lai’s van was stuck at 140 kmh when inspected by police. 65 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —APRIL, 1984

Service Page

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K' r F I N t CHAMPACNt COGNAC * A *. -S'* I few....