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THE COVER Men and recently-circumcised boys of lohnanen village, Tanna, Republic of Vanuatu. Circumcision ceremonies remain an important part of life in the traditional ’’custom” villages which still flourish in Vanuatu. Photograph is by Norman Douglas, author of VANUATU A Guide, soon to be published by Pacific Publications.
PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY Vol. 56 No. 11 November 1985 Jean-Marie Le Pen 12 Jacques Bourgoin 14 Rawdon Dairympie 14 Bernard Smith 43
In This Issue
NEW CALEDONIA ELECTIONS Sue Williams -| 2 reports from Noumea on the September 29 poll in New Caledonia which saw the pro-independence FLNKS party win control of three of the territory’s four newly created regional councils. But, as she writes, they’re far from out of the woods yet ...
FIJI’S TOURIST INDUSTRY Dr Norman Douglas -| g has been in Fiji to make a close study of the country’s important tourist industry. He gives his views in a report which is notable both for its critical spirit, and readiness to offer constructive suggestions for possible new avenues of the growth of the industry.
ALCOHOL IN THE ISLANDS Sue Williams reports 21 on a South Pacific Commission-sponsored conference on the growing problem of alcohol in Pacific Island countries. The experts were there, they talked seriously about the problem and admitted that solutions are as far away as ever.
TELEVISION IS COMING TV is coming to the 23 islands and, following recent agreements between the Fiji Government and Australian TV interests, it’s coming faster than many expected.
PACIFIC FISHERIES A South Pacific Commission- 3*] sponsored conference on Pacific fisheries faced the intractable problem of getting the big fish-taking nations to come clean on the extent of their catches.
Kathy Johnston reports.
Grappling With The Art Of The First 42
ENCOUNTER In the second part of a three-part series, Professor Bernard Smith discusses the problems faced by the artists on Cook’s voyages in depicting first encounters between Europeans and people of whose existence they had not even been aware previously.
CONTENTS American Samoa 49, 52 Books 39 Cook, Capt. James 43 Cook Islands 37 Deaths 65 Fiji 16, 23, 26, 45,47, 51 Fisheries 31 French Polynesia 41 Hawaii 49 Islands Press 57 Japan 31 Kiribati 9 Letters 9 New Caledonia 12,39 New Zealand 49 Pacific Report 7 Papua New Guinea 28,50 People 53 PIM Opinion 5 Political Currents 51 Service Page 66 Solomon Islands 41,49 South Pacific Commission 21,31 Stamps 56 Television 23 Tonga 24 Tourism 16 Tradewinds 31 Tropicalities 45 United States 31,49 Yachts 59 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 NOVEMBER, 1985 Editor and Publisher Garry Barker Associate Editor Malcolm Salmon Advertising Manager Richard Thomson Layout & Design Barry Badger Editorial Adviser John Carter A Pacific Publications production Founded 1930 by R. W. Robson (USPS 952480) 76 Clarence Street, Sydney, 2000, GPO Box 3408, Sydney. 2001.
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Pim Opinion
Whoa back, Shultz The vexing row which persists over New Zealand’s desire to become the non-nuclear Switzerland of the Pacific has reached the point where all participants should stop and take stock of themselves, and of what they are about to wreak upon the region.
Mr Lange, particularly, might ask himself if, perchance, he has been temporarily blinded, by the glow of his Greenpeace halo, to the long-term consequences of New Zealand’s approaching ejection from ANZUS, and too haughty in rebuffing the obviously genuine concerns of many of his countrymen, some of them defence experts. How much of his undoubtedly widespread support in New Zealand comes from considered thought in the electorate, and how much from the euphoria of discomforting giants?
But is the United States not also guilty of ignoring the lantern while it slaps at the moth? Speaking to journalists late last month, U.S.Defence Secretary, Caspar Weinberger, was adamant that there was no way the U.S. could accept the N.Z. position, or alter its rules on disclosure of the weaponry aboard its ships. His position can be understood. But it is the more aggressive tone of the Secretary of State, George Shultz, who is seen as seeking to punish Mr Lange for his “defection” from ANZUS, which is worrying the nations of the South Pacific.
While there is no current, or foreseeable actual threat of aggression in the Pacific, an ANZUS weakened, or, rather, a New Zealand rejected, damages Pacific confidence. Many Pacific Island countries might be worried by Mr Lange’s nuclear policies, but they are similarly wary of insensitive behavior by the U.S.administration.
Australia, particularly, is embarrassed by being made to appear to have to choose between the U.S. and a life-time friend and cousin next door.
Canberra decided to air its anxieties publicly. Their ambassador to the U.S., Mr F.Rawdon Dalrymple, in a speech on September 24 to the Asia Society of America, set out, with great clarity, Australian policy on the Pacific, and warned Washington of the consequences of some of its attitudes. It was a speech cleared at the highest levels in Canberra.
The ambassador sought to tell Washington, and the White House, that things are changing in the Pacific. He spoke of the closeness between Australia and New Zealand, and the growing ties with both the Islands and the swiftly-prospering countries of South East Asia; of the immense commercial and political importance of Japan, and the huge potential of China. In all of this he constantly referred to the many powerful and vital links with the United States.
But America was ignoring, perilously, the growing importance of the South Pacific, he said. It had not thought through the consequences of some policies among them, although he did not specify it, undoubtedly the matter of chopping New Zealand off at its defence socks.
Political independence in the region had attracted new political presences, he said. Some were within the western alliance, and some were not. So far, intrusions by the Soviet bloc had been limited, primarily because of the pro-western orientation of the island countries, but, he said, that comfortable situation was now threatened.
The two major causes of friction, he said, were nuclear testing and tuna fishing, and this magazine can do nothing but welcome such recognition of warnings we have sounded for years.
France is the main culprit on the first issue, and America on the second. Neither country has given the slightest indication that South Pacific anxieties bother them in any important way.
“The United States is seen as being less than helpful by giving credence to French arguments that the testing does no particular harm,” Mr Dalrymple said. “It is precisely that French testing which has been a major influence in the formation of the climate of opinion in New Zealand which is now causing such anxiety to both the United States and Australia over the future of ANZUS. ”It will be an act of folly if we in our alliance context continue to countenance and permit nuclear testing in the South Pacific and it would be even worse if we were, in addition, to countenance and permit the dumping of nuclear waste in the Pacific...”
Mr Dalrymple’s warning was both calm and very clear. The United States must stop stomping around the South Pacific like a heedless hippopotamus, following damaging policies dictated by North Atlantic interests.
That his words fell on deliberately deaf ears was bluntly marked by the gravel-voiced former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick, who retorted that the French had a right to test, and if the site happened to be on a piece of France 20,000 kilometres from the rest of it, that was no reason for the neighbors to complain. It was a singularly unnecessary and ignorant statement.
The U.S. is clearly unwilling to upset the French because of Atlantic considerations. Yet it is precisely because of this that America’s position in the Pacific has been damaged.
But, for most island countries, the nuclear matter is not nearly so immediately irritating as the buccaneering behavior of the American Tunaboat Assocation. It would be easy enough, one suggests, to have that angry boil eased if there was even moderate will in the U.S. administration to do so. Clearly there is not.
Mr Dalrymple proposed that some kind of South Pacific office be set up by the State Department to make higher officialdom more aware of regional opinion. Another bit of bureaucracy is quite unnecessary. All Washington needs to do is open its ears to its very own people in the region.
Washington may think it can damage Mr Lange by heaving him out of ANZUS, and by making a bilateral defence agreement with Australia, and so they might They may think they can ignore the region’s concerns over French nuclear testing. They may think the domestic political pressure exerted by the A.T.A. more important than the anger of the little island nations over what they regard as the plundering of their fisheries. Yet in the end it may be the U.S. itself which will lose and that would be very bad for all of us. 5 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
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Pacific Report
Caledonia Councils Elect Leaders
New Caledonia’s four new regional councils met for the first time on October 6 to elect their presidents, who will sit on the executive committee heading the new Territorial Congress. As expected, the leader of the Kanak Socialist Liberation Front (FLNKS), Jean- Marie Tjibaou, was elected president of the northern regional council. His colleagues, Yeweine Yeweine and Leopold Joredie, were elected as president by the Loyalty Islands and the central regional council respectively. Jean Leques, of the right-wing anti-independence party RCPR, was elected president of the southern council. At a meeting in Noumea on October 8, RCPR man Dick Ukeiwe was elected president of the overall Territorial Congress. He received 29 votes, against 13 for Mr Tjibaou.
Electors were the members of the four new councils. (See earlier report, p. 12).
Port Moresby'S Crime Rate Down
Port Moresby’s state of emergency has inflicted lasting damage on the city’s raskol gangs, according to a parliamentary committee which has been overseeing its implementation since the beginning of July. The committee reported to the Papua New Guinean Parliament that the emergency, which includes a late-night curfew, had only ever been intended as a temporary measure against crime and should be lifted on November 4. It recommended a gradual easing of emergency provisions, but suggested that road blocks and police patrols continue. Parliament was told there should be a tightening of security at corrective institutions, that an emergency provision prohibiting demonstrations and protest marches be lifted and that juveniles be separated from older prisoners in jails. The government will seek changes to the constitution to provide for the introduction of vagrancy laws aimed at stemming rural drift to the towns, which it believes exacerbates unemployment and lawlessness. The Prime Minister, Michael Somare told Parliament that critics who had doomed the state of emergency before it even began had been proved wrong. He said in the 15 weeks before the emergency there were 523 break and enters reported in Port Moresby, while in the 15 weeks since there had been only 91.
Robberies were down from 182 to 36, sexual assaults from 60 to 30, motor vehicle thefts from 194 to 26 and the weekly average of serious offences down from 64 to 12. Mr Somare said the average reduction of serious offences since the emergency began was 80 per cent. The incidence of pack rape, which had been escalating, had virtually been eliminated and there had been no crimes of violence reported during the nightly curfew hours. He said the government intended to introduce bills to allow householders to purchase tear gas, to prevent the sale of ammunition to people not holding a firearm licence, to define offensive weapons more strictly, and to give extra search powers to police operating in a declared curfew. The government also intended to introduce legislation to allow Cabinet to impose a curfew where and when necessary without having to declare a state of emergency. Mr Somare said that one of the great achievements of the state of emergency had been the capture of 100 prison escapees. Australian Associated Press.
Mara Balks At U.S. Aid Terms
Fiji’s Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara said in October he might regret some of the provisions of a proposed agreement for American aid to his country, and refuse to sign it. Ratu Mara was due to visit Washington later in the month to open the embassy being established there by Fiji. During the visit, it had been expected that he would sign an agreement making Fiji the first South Pacific country to receive direct American aid, amounting initially to about SUS 3 million a year. However, Ratu Mara said he did not like some provisions of the proposed agreement, adding that they would not be manageable if they were applied to other countries which gave aid to Fiji. Observers in Suva noted that under one clause in the proposed agreement with the U.S., Fiji would have to confer full diplomatic status as missions on American aid organisations.
Polynesian Church Slams N-Tests
The 1985 Synod of the Evangelical Church of French Polynesia has reaffirmed its “extreme opposition” to continued French nuclear testing at Moruroa Atoll. The Synod declared in a resolution that since President Mitterrand had not replied to a letter on this subject sent by last year’s Synod, another letter would be sent, reiterating the church’s opposition to nuclear tests, and also its long-standing demand for a popular referendum on the matter to be held throughout French Polynesia. The church, the largest and most influential in the French territory, also expressed its concern about continued unrestricted immigration into the territory, the dispossession of the Maohi people of their lands through the tax regulations governing land sales, and the rising cost of living.
Islanders For Conference Games?
South Pacific Island countries may become a part of the Pacific Conference Games under a proposal being studied by conference officials following a meeting in Canberra. The Pacific Conference Games have been held every four years since 1969, most recently at Berkeley, California, last June. They comprise a full Olympicstyle track and field program, except the marathon, the walks, and the decathlon and heptathlon. The Canberra meeting was critical to the future of the five-nation track and field games following the announced withdrawal in August of the United States, which lost interest in them in the light of the nowadays packed international program; however, conversion of the games to a junior (under-20) competition lured the U.S. back and ensured their immediate future. The Pacific Conference Federation accepted an offer from the West Nally International Sports Promotion group to hold the next three games every two years at a huge new complex being constructed at Waikoloa on the Kohola coast of Hawaii’s “big island” starting in 1987. Not only are the Americans still in, along with Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Canada, but China was also admitted to the conference during the Canberra meeting.
South Pacific Island participation is a suggestion from Australia.
The idea would be to invite two athletes from each island group to take part in half-a-dozen events run in conjunction with the games.
They would not compete against the strong teams from the six conference member countries, just among themselves. Proponents of the idea argue that it would be entirely appropriate for the island athletes to join in what should be, granted the surroundings, one of the more colorful events on the international athletics calendar.
Details of this, and other proposals on marketing and television rights for the new-look games, will be worked out over the next few months. The multi-million dollar “Sports World” project is being financed by the giant Transcontinental Development Corporation of Santa Barbara, California. The 34-ha complex will include a stadium for athletics, cycling and football seating 35,000 spectators, plus an indoor sports centre, four baseball diamonds, two new golf courses, and a Grand Prix motor-racing track.
James Shrimpton.
New Cuts In Png Public Service?
A cut of about 4000 in Papua New Guinea’s 50,000-strong public service has been called for by Public Service Minister Father John Momis. Fr Momis said on a radio program that the cuts were necessary because of the country’s difficult economic situation.
The service was last reduced in 1983, when almost 2000 public servants were retrenched, and another 400 moved to other government departments. A Radio Australia report said the idea in 1983 was to remove public servants who weren’t doing their jobs effectively.
Yale , Princeton Promote Islands Travel
A new twist to Pacific Islands travel promotion has come from an unlikely source America’s prestigious Ivy League universities.
Both Yale and Princeton Universities, arch-rivals to each other, have scheduled education-plus-travel programs in 1986 for their well-to-do alumni. The Yale program, in March, 1986, takes the alumni from San Francisco to Sydney to Port Moresby and then by cruise ship through Indonesia; the Princeton program takes place on the Hawaiian island of Maui. The Princeton program is called “An Alumni College in Hawaii” and is scheduled for January 21-29, 1986. It stresses substance rather than island-hopping, 7 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
being a colloquium on “The United States and the Pacific Powers; Partnership or Rivalry?” Seven Princeton professors, headed by Donald Stokes, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School, will give lectures and lead seminars during an intensive, five-day schedule of activities. The location of the alumni college is the Hyatt Regency Maui on Kaanapali Beach. Yale’s program will take place on the cruise ship Illiria which Yale says has . .85 officers and crew serving only 135 guests ... a higher ratio of personnel to passengers than any other cruise vessel. .. ” The Illiria leaves Port Moresby on March 16, stopping the next day at Thursday Island in Torres Strait, then cruises along the coast of Papua New Guinea without stopping. The long Indonesian part of the journey, 11 days and numerous stops, concludes with the inevitable Bali. The alumni are then flown to a weekend in Hong Kong before returning to the States. The Yale tour also features a couple of professors, J. Joseph Errington, a Yale anthropologist, and Gerald Larue, an emeritus professor of archaeology at the University of Southern California. This program is one of 18 being mounted in 1986 by the Association of Yale Alumni. These outings are not cheap. The shorter Princeton session costs $ U 51595, double occupancy, and $5lO more if one travels alone. Air fare from New York would add another S7OO per individual. This is a bargain compared to the range of costs (including airfare from San Francisco) quoted by Yale; from $4695 per person to $7695 depending on the nature of the accommodation on the Illiria and on whether one was travelling alone or with a companion. The Princeton fee includes a presumably tax-deductible S2OO contribution to the university, while Yale’s fee includes a contribution of S3OO. The ingredients for putting together such an outing seem to be: a prestigious tour promoter (the university), one or more persons who can speak with authority about the area (the professors), and, most important, a mailing list of reasonably well-to-do likely customers (the alumni). America’s private colleges and universities pay a remarkable amount of attention to their graduates (as sources of funds, among other things) and maintain a steady pattern of mailings to the alumni. Princeton, for example, publishes a slick, well-edited 32-page publication for its graduates every week of the academic year. While neither of these programs emphasised the independent nations of the Pacific, there is always another year, and with Yale, anyway, a long list of universitysponsored trips. Maybe it would be mutually helpful if Fiji chatted with the Harvard Alumni Council, and if Stanford University rang up the Solomon Islands?
David S. North in Washington.
Rainbow Warrior: The View From Europe
When visiting Europe in the past, the only Pacific news items I have seen in the local papers have been short notices, rarely more than five lines, announcing in a matter of fact way the detonation of still another nuclear device at Moruroa. It has therefore been an unusual experience during my recent European trip (early September until well into October) to find in all French, British, German and Scandinavian newspapers, day after day, front-page stories about events taking place in such well-known Pacific places as Moruroa, Papeete, Auckland, Wellington and Canberra. The reason, of course, is the Rainbow Warrior affair. On the other hand, I cannot find anywhere in the two-foot-high pile of newspaper cuttings about the various aspects of this tragi-comic affair which has accumulated on my hotel room table a single reference to the problems, sufferings and aspirations of the people most deeply involved, i.e. the Polynesians in whose islands 112 nuclear bombs have been detonated during the short space of 20 years. Reading these articles, it is almost as if the 118 islands of French Polynesia were uninhabited except perhaps by a few lovely hula girls stretching out welcoming arms to French bigwigs, usually in gold-braided uniforms, in an occasional press photograph. The numerous French radio, TV and newspaper reporters who were despatched to the Pacific to cover the presidential trip to Moruroa in early September continued to meet the popular demand for a good, real-life spy yarn, in never-ending instalments, and therefore paid scant attention to native problems and politics. (Well, a few of them praised the Polynesians in general terms, contrasting their friendliness and hospitality with the dourness and hostility of the Kanaka in New Caledonia, so unhappily misguided by a handful of agitators.) A feature of the coverage in the French press has been the fuss made of the two agents imprisoned in New Zealand, the so-called “Turenges”, who seem to be seen by government and public alike as valiant soldiers deserving of high decorations because “all they did was obey orders”. There is also general agreement in France about the Greenpeace activists. They are, according to this particular “national consensus”, wittingly or unwittingly doing the work of the Russians with American money! Blithe indifference to the effects on islanders of events associated with the Rainbow Warrior was well to the fore when at the end of September the prestigious SOFRES Institute conducted a public opinion poll to find out what the French people actually thought of the whole affair. None of the questions concerned its implications for the Polynesian people. The closest the pollsters got was in the question: “Are you in favor of or opposed to France continuing its underground testing in the Pacific?” Not less than 60 per cent approved, only 24 per cent were opposed, and 16 per cent had no opinion. This represents a “national consensus”, we are told, which should be respected by all peoples in the Pacific. So far no French politician or editorialist has cared to mention the embarrassing fact that all political, civic and church leaders who count in French Polynesia have for several years now been asking the Paris government to organise a local referendum in French Polynesia to allow the people most concerned, i.e. the islanders themselves, to decide the issue.
Bengt Danielsson in Stockholm.
Oz Warns U.S. On French Tests , Tuna
Australia’s Ambassador to the United States, Rawdon Dalrymple, has highlighted the dangers to U.S. and Australian interests in the South Pacific from the perceived tolerance of the U.S. for French nuclear testing at Moruroa, and from U.S. policy on tuna fishing in the region. Speaking at a meeting of the Asia Society in New York on September 24, Mr Dalrymple said of the South Pacific: “Now in this situation where you have this huge sweep of the world’s surface containing only a number of scattered mini-states it should be possible for us as allies and with the accumulation of goodwill there is towards us, and the resources at our disposal it should be possible for us to ensure the continuing friendship and goodwill of the island states. But difficulties have emerged and I want to mention the two principal sources of difficulties. The two problem areas are nuclear issues and fear of nuclear damage of one sort or another, and secondly concern about fishing stocks and the need to exploit the one major resource the region has namely fish. Now in those two problem areas, areas of discontent and concern in the South Pacific, the two agents about which there is the most concern are respectively the Republic of France and the United States tuna fishermen’s activities in the region. There are in fact two problems to do with France in the South Pacific. One relates to their handling of the political crisis in their colony of New Caledonia and the problems which face them in what is I think an inevitable process of decolonisation. I don’t propose to discuss that and the other is the one to which I just referred, namely French policy on nuclear testing in the South Pacific. Now on that issue it seems to me the United States is seen as being less than helpful by the states of the South Pacific. And that is because the United States has tended, is seen anyway, to have tended, to side with France on the issue of nuclear testing in the South Pacific. It is considered in the region that the United States could, if it wanted to do so, exert strong influence on France to cease testing on Moruroa Atoll. 1 might say in parenthesis that it is precisely that French testing which has been a major influence in the formation of the climate of opinion in New Zealand which is now causing such anxiety to both the United States and the Australian governments in relation to the future of Anzus.” On the tuna problem, Mr Dalrymple said: “It seems to me that it is an urgent matter from the point of view of our interests in the South Pacific that the United States in consultation, I would hope, with Australia and New Zealand, presses ahead either with making changes to your current legislation governing the activities of your tuna fishermen and/or that you make haste to get into place the multilateral agreement on fishing in the South Pacific which along with some new aid measures would result in benefits to the South Pacific countries from United States fishing involvement in the South Pacific which would quite clearly exceed any potential benefits from the involvement of the Soviet Union.
Now that is something which you could do at very small financial cost. We are talking about small amounts of money. But it is something which no one else can do for you or cannot do completely for you. Certainly Auxtralia can’t, if only because we are not a major high-seas fishing country. We don’t have ships like the Jeanette Diana with all the modern technology and we aren t in that league; we’re not experts and we can’t give these countries the sort of technology which you and the Japanese can.” 8 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
letters Local lore and the Earhart case I am very interested in Julian Putney’s account of Flying Lady’s voyage in search of Amelia Earhart’s landing place (June PIM).
The old people of Marakei and Butaritari atolls in the Kiribati group have a legend of the lost land of Bikenikarakara.
This land, vouched for by many, is said to lie some 60 miles to the eastward of a line bisecting Marakei and Butaritari, but has not been seen by anyone now living. The Kiribati word “bikenikarakara” denotes a low sandy cay, without palms, inhabited by birds. The islands of Howland and Baker fit this description but are some 600 miles away. As canoe voyages were measured in days sailing and not distance I have always assumed that one of these islands could be Bikenikarakara and that the distance was wrongly judged, or more likely wrongly relayed in the voyage history. A canoe blown away in a “westerly” would fetch up in this area within a week, well within the staying power of a Kiribati fisherman. Those familiar with life on the low atolls would survive on either of these islands, and sail back downwind when the normal trade wind resumed. City-bred Europeans would be unable to survive for long, although the means of survival would be all around them.
In the 1950 s I was talking to the old sailorman Beatau, at Matang Village, Nonouti. He had been around a bit, aboard sailing vessels repatriating labor from the Queensland canefields, and could spin an interesting yam. In the course of conversation I asked him about Bikenikarakara. He said: “It used to be there but has now gone.” Then right out of the blue, with no prompting, he said; “That is where that American aeroplane woman landed”. When questioned further, he said: “Yes she thought she saw an island but it had sunk. ”
If satellite references show an island northwest of Howland it could well be Bikenikarakara. I have sailed over this area on voyages between the Line, Phoenix and Tarawa on many occasions, often diverting to sight Howland or Baker, and circling them to fish for the larder. (The fishing off uninhabited islands is really something!) I have never sighted any other land, which is probably just as well, if a cay or reef exists.
This area of the central Pacific abounds with vigias, mirages and large fish shoals. Some vigias arise out of gin bottles, but by no means all. On several occasions I, and the watch on deck, have sighted definite land and even taken bearings, at eight to 15 miles, that has disappeared on closing. At night or in rain, the first sighting of a treeless cay can be the surf under the bow. They do not even show up on radar (although the birds do!) One has to be very sure of one’s navigation, when in this area.
Difficult in small craft. Would a scientifically designed and orientated satellite “see” a vigia? I don’t know, but I have carried many scientists aboard in this area, and most of them were “nuts”!
While on this subject I heard from a Gardner Island settler that when the island was resettled in 1938, they found the skeleton of a European woman, a handbag and shoe, etc. It was thought that this could be Earhart and the remains were taken away for analysis, and the surmise disproved. I would be very interested if anyone else has heard of this story and/or its outcome. What a tragic story.
Some poor yachtie survivor wandering around an uninhabited, and to her, inhospitable island!
I would like to know the position of the Flying Lady island if confirmed.
Capt.
E. V. WARD Limassol Cyprus Taking a warped view of Tahiti?
First of all, I would like to say that Pacific Islands Monthly is the best thing that ever happened to the Pacific. It is news for all of us to read. I no longer have to wonder what is happening in other parts of the Pacific. However, there are a few things that I would like to comment on.
I don’t think that a certain article in the August, 1985, issue was very fair. I refer to the article “Time warp for Tahiti visitor. ”
This article reeks of the typical white man who wants to be one up on the rest of the white people, showing this by being able to tell all about the reality of life in a place that most wish to visit and are either considering visiting or are unable to (but nonetheless dream of visiting).
If Marie-Therese and Bengt Danielsson think that they are telling the world something that they don’t already know, then I personally feel that my intelligence (along with millions of others) is being insulted. By now, most people know that modernisation has struck even the most remote places in the world. Anyone travelling with the idea that they are going to see the world the way it was even a few hundred years ago is probably not in a suitable The elegant Flying Lady in quest of flying lady Amelia Earhart. Her 1983 mission came tantalisingly close to solving the mystery of the landing place of Earhart and Fred Noonan. But almost at the last minute “the risk of possible loss of vessel and human life in this remote area in those conditions was just too much” - and the expedition had to withdraw. They last sighted their target island “in the midst of a fierce squall”. - Julian Putley photo. 9 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
state to travel. And most people realise that in the name of tourism, people will tend to overstate the qualities that lure tourists and visitors to their countries.
I also strongly resent this blatant discrediting of Tahiti. I know it is outrageously expensive. So is my home Hawaii.
Yet people (not necessarily naive ones, at that) are still flocking there year round. The fact is, there are hardly any places that one could label a tropical paradise in Hawaii any more, but it is up to the individual to decide what does and doesn’t appeal to them. I strongly feel that Marie-Therese and Bengt Danielsson are pushing their personal likes and dislikes on the readers, and what they say about what you should imagine if you are in old Tahiti may be just what they have found through research, but not necessarily what anyone else would have found in old Tahiti. Especially in view of the living conditions of the less fortunate people in Tahiti (of whom I hear there are many), I think that more constructive (though honest) articles could be written about a place which though modernisation has changed it somewhat, is still quite a paradise.
There is always the financially well-off Westerner who would like to buy with his money his own personal paradise on his own terms, and become a local person, and tries to show the rest of the world how much he has adapted. I hope, though I am sure they disagree with everything I have mentioned, that the Danielssons might give some thought to this.
I’ll never forget a few years back when a terrible hurricane hit Tahiti and Gabilou was appealing to us in Hawaii for help and he didn’t overstate or understate anything. This kind of attitude should be shared by people writing articles in your magazine.
There are those of us who had our own experiences in Tahiti as well as other places, and have found what Marie- Therese and Bengt Danielsson have to say to be quite untrue as far as our own personal opinions are concerned. ( You see? Personal opinions).
Thank you for your time in reading this letter. In spite of the article, I am madly in love with Pacific Islands Monthly, as it has made me feel at home, no matter where I may be.
Gale Faataualofalele
AFASIO Suva Fiji Poison pens at work Photocopies of a periodical with the provocative title of Racial Loyalty It’s Great to be White are being circulated through the post in Sydney, apparently as an unsolicited contribution to the debate on race relations.
This has to be one of the vilest racist diatribes to have appeared in recent times. It is stuffed full of statements such as “only a ruthless, determined White Racial movement emblazoned into a fanatic religious zeal can save the white race from such a fate worse than death mongrelization and death.” Racial Loyalty is published by the Church of the Creator at it’s (sic) World Center, Otto, North Carolina.
In its Issue No. 23 of April 1985 this rag has an article entitled “An eyewitness report from the Hawaiian Islands, aloha to you Kamaaina”, written by a Ben Klassen, who adds the mysterious letters P.M. to his name. The article is an attack upon the Mormon Church in Hawaii, and the Polynesian Center at Laie in particular.
However, the most alarming aspect of this writing is its denigration of the Hawaiian people. No cognisance can be taken of demagogic ravings such as “there are practically no ‘pure-blooded’ Hawaiians left in the islands, but only a mishmash mixture of mongrels, the prolifically breeding mud people are further being reinforced by a massive invasion of the more aggressive Japanese, who, thanks to American collaboration and encouragement, are rapidly buying up and taking over a choice piece of American real estate. This despite the American military forces at great cost in men and material smashing the military power of this yellow peril only 40 years ago.”
It is of concern that such reactionary drivel is being circulated with the obvious intent of creating racial disharmony. It is to be hoped that it will not be given any credence in Australia or elsewhere, and will not affect the sincere efforts being made by thinking people who wish to bring the peoples of the Pacific region closer together.
Bill Coppell
Waverton NSW Australia N-free zone idea helps I was disappointed to read your editorial “Nuclear Pragmatism” in the June ’B5 PIM.
Your view of the “umbrella of American strength” keeping the Pacific free misses the point military strength doesn’t have to include nuclear strength. If it did, every military engagement would have to include nuclear weapons.
The argument used by many that a nuclear balance is necessary to avoid nuclear war has much going for it. But how high does that balance have to be?
It is worth asking oneself just how many people the world over feel the world is safer now than back in 1945 when there were just two nuclear weapons?
Not many, I bet.
The nuclear stockpiles, East and West, need to be reduced not increased. Keeping the Pacific “nuclear-free” is one step in that direction.
Emmanuel Gumbo
Thornbury Vic.
Australia Alfred Farago would like a female or male Pen Pal in VANUATU. My interests are Island living, music and making good friends. Write me at 804, 1039 View St, Victoria, B.C VBV 4V6, CANADA.
Tourists from Japan seem particularly prone to become “hooked” on Tahiti’s charms. 10 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
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Vital Win For Kanaks
...but will "fortress Noumea" open its doors?
The first stage of the French government’s plan for New Caledonia’s independence has gone like clockwork.
As predicted, the elections of September 29 have given the F.L.N.K.S. legitimate control of three of the four new regions in the territory, the North, the Centre and the Islands. The fourth region of Greater Noumea remains the enclave of the loyalist French.
Polling day passed virtually without incident, much to everyone’s relief, despite a jittery election lead-up which saw barricades again going up across the main inland roads and bomb attacks in Noumea.
The incident which created the most domestic headlines, and drew the attention of the international press, was a bomb blast in the capital in the final days of the campaign. This devastated the Land Office and the Office for the Development of the Interior and the Islands.
Police say the explosive was the most powerful used in any bomb attack in the territory since the troubles began last November.
No-one has claimed re- After shooting themselves in both feet over the ’’Rainbow Warrior” affair, and running into renewed international opposition to their nuclear testing program at Moruroa, fuelled by indignation over President Mitterrand’s visit to the atoll, the French have finally done something right ... the territorial elections in New Caledonia. Anti-Mitterrand political elements in France have done their best to bolster loyalist resolve in the islands, and a peaceful transition to independence remains very much at risk but, as SUE WILLIAMS reports from Noumea, the vital framework may now be in place for sensible negotiation by both sides. sponsibility, however the motivation behind the attack was obviously political. The Land Office is responsible for buying back land for the Kanak people while the development office is responsible for promoting growth outside Noumea, particularly Kanak projects.
The campaign also saw a massive effort by the right-wing parties, the R.P.C.R. and the Front National, to maintain control with visits to the territory by French Opposition heavyweights, Jacques Chirac, president of the R.P.R., Francois Leotard, secretary-general of the Republican Party, and Jean-Marie Le Pen, head of the Front National, along with a host of deputies from the French parliament and even the president of French Polynesia, Gaston Flosse.
All played on the fervent patriotism of the loyalist French in New Caledonia, urging them to ’’continue your resistance” and to hold out for just another six months until the legislative elections are held in France next March. After that, said the visiting politicians, the faithful French in the territory would be rewarded by the new, rightwing, government in Paris which would ’’respect the wishes of the overwhelming majority to keep the Tricolor flying over our Pacific territory. ”
The French polls could certainly pose a problem for the F.L.N.K.S. It has now become clear that if the right wins power, as is very much on the cards, one of its first moves could be to hold a referendum on the independence question with a very clear-cut question: ”Do you want to stay French?”
Under the guidelines proposed by the Opposition leaders the F.L.N.K.S. would clearly lose as is shown by a breakdown of the votes for the regional New Caledonia election of September 29. Even though the F.L.N.K.S. has won control of three of the four regions, the anti-independence parties, the R.P.C.R. and the Front National, polled by far the biggest vote — 61 per cent, compared with 34.8 per cent polled by the independence parties, the F.L.N.K.S. and L.K.S.
Consequently the loyalist parties also have a 12-seat majority in the new 46-seat Territorial Congress. However, this does not detract from the F.L.N.K.S. victory as most of these seats are in Noumea and the Congress is being seen as nothing more than a paper tiger, with all of the major decisions on the territory being made in Paris.
In the final break-down the R.P.C.R. has won 17 seats in Noumea, the Front National three and the F.L.N.K.S. one.
In the Northern region the R.P.C.R. holds two seats, its Facing page: The “two sides of the argument” in New Caledonia pro and anti-independence - are well expressed in these two pictures. Top: Melanesians, in the east coast mining town of Thio, vote in the September 29 elections - needless to say, the FLNKS swept the poll. Below: French residents wait outside a school-cumpolling-booth in a middle-class area of Noumea to cast their votes - the anti-independence RPCR party romped in in the capital. AAP photos. 13 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —NOVEMBER, 1985
brother party, the R.P.C. has one seat and the F.L.N.K.S. six.
The Centre region, which was the most hotly-contested, sees the F.L.N.K.S. with five seats, and the R.P.C.R. with four.
In the Loyalty Islands the F.L.N.K.S. has four seats, the L.K.S. one and the R.P.C.R. two seats.
The result clearly shows the polarisation of the population on the independence question.
Those parties such as the L.K.S. and Caledonie Nouvelle, which had been promoting a middle line have been effectively smashed in the result.
The contradiction between the most popular overall party (the R.P.C.R.), and the group which will have overall control of the new Congress (F.L.N.K.S.), has stung the loyalists. The local newspaper, Les Nouuelles, speaking of the result the day after the poll, dubbed it ’’the birth of a monster”.
R.P.C.R. president, Jacques Lafleur, warned that Edgard Pisani, the French minister in charge of New Caledonia, and principal author of the independence plan, did not realise the consequences of his action.
He pointed out that two-thirds of the inhabitants had voted for France. These people, he said, should ’’hold on to their courage and hope.”
As for the F.L.N.K.S., their leader, Jean-Marie Tjibaou, is happy, convinced that 80 per cent of the Kanak people have now shown their desire for independence.
Mr Tjibaou has reason for his satisfaction. In winning the three regions his people have also effectively won control of much of the territory’s wealth ~ the nickel and prime agricultural land in the north and the centre, and Noumea’s vital power and water supply, also based in the centre.
This is exactly according to the French government’s plan.
During Edgard Pisani’s reign in New Caledonia as High Commissioner and special envoy of the French government, he stressed that one of his main goals was to break the stranglehold the people of Noumea had over the territory’s riches - to share the wealth.
This election result allows that to happen. Fortress Noumea will have to negotiate and recognise the F.L.N.K.S. as a legitimate political power.
Likewise the F.L.N.K.S. will need to deal with the business leaders and entrepreneurial resources of Noumea.
In fact one of the most important opportunities this election result presents, once the rhetoric has died, could be that it finally brings both sides of the independence argument to the negotiating table and starts the difficult task of healing the bitter rift between them caused by several years of uncertainty and more recently violence throughout the territory. Sue Williams, in Noumea.
Peeling more skins from the 'Rainbow Warrior' onion For the French government of President Francois Mitterrand, the Pacific has become a sort of watery equivalent of Napoleon’s Moscow, and may yet be its Waterloo.
On the one hand Paris faces the further ignominy this month of what is bound to become something of an international ’’show trial” of its two secret service agents charged in New Zealand with murder, arson and the sabotage bombing of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior.
On the other hand there is the festering sore of New Caledonia and the burgeoning campaign of the Kanaks for their independence from colonial rule. The Mitterrand government had won points for its handling of that problem, but not at home where the votes are.
Few ordinary Frenchmen, berets akimbo, sucking on their As the judge, jury, lawyers and the world’s press settle for the trial, in Auckland, of two French spies charged with sabotaging the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior speculation grows that the government of President Francois Mitterrand will founder upon a distant, palm-fringed, Pacific shore. For not only is his government on the defensive over the Greenpeace scandal, but it is under siege by French conservative politicians condemning the Socialists’ ’’betrayal of French patriots” in New Caledonia. The first round in Noumea is over, with others still to come. But there is no interim peace for Mitterrand.
French credibility hangs by a thread from the Greenpeace affair. forthcoming French metropolitan elections. (See Sue Williams’s report, this issue).
Mitterrand is being accused by his Republican party and Front National opponents of having “betrayed” stalwart Frenchmen living in what is legally, if illogically, a part of France.
Gitanes and complaining about the price of uin ordinaire could probably care a jot about New Caledonia. And yet the rightwing of French politics, in hot pursuit of what blood has not already leaked from Mitterrand’s sorely-battered government, has gone far towards making it a central issue for the 14 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
New Caledonia Elections
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In fact, and despite the furore stirred by Jacques Chirac and Jean-Marie Le Pen, and their supporters, the result of the territorial assembly election in New Caledonia looked to be one of the few things which had gone right for President Mitterrand in recent months. It was no more than a good start, for opposition would undoubtedly grow, regardless of the true logic on the ground.
But, even with the election successfully, and fairly peacefully, completed, there can be no respite. The Greenpeace trial looms, and French reputation, in the hands of Mitterrand, is very much on the line.
Confronting this embattled modern-day Napoleon, New Zealand’s prime minister, David Lange, also a socialist, makes an unlikely sort of Iron Duke, although he lives in Wellington.
Yet there is obviously plenty of iron in his soul over the Greenpeace bombing. Despite attempts, albeit half-hearted, to persuade him that the trial of the individual agents should not go ahead now that the Defence ministry in Paris has admitted ordering the attack, he remains utterly determined to rub French noses in the merde.
That he aims to do thoroughly, but, of course, with dignity and the full weight of British-type justice. Indeed, it might be that last bit which hurts the French most of all. That, and the fact that the rest of the world seems to agree with Lange, the angry bumble-bee so far away in a land which, up to this point, the French had always viewed with considerable disdain.
Auckland police, whose masterly piece of steady, methodical detective work led to the capture of the hapless agents on July 12, (see PIM, October), say that they have more than 200 witnesses and 1000 pieces of evidence. It should be quite a trial.
Meantime, the damage wrought both inside and outside France is considerable.
The Rainbow Warrior bombing gave Greenpeace enormous publicity - far more than it would have managed from the confrontation it originally sought with the French navy at Moruroa and continued to invite with its enlarged, postbombing, flotilla.
Greenpeace was, of course, only one of several matters over which nations had swung angrily against the French.
On September 25 Australian prime minister, Bob Hawke, threw his gauntlet into several faces by not only reiterating his government’s displeasure over continued nuclear testing at Moruroa,but challenging the U.S. to join the condemnation of French actions inthe South Pacific. ”It does seem to me to be a matter of logic that, if the U.S. does not express its concern about ... the French, then there will be a reaction of disappointment amongst South Pacific countries,” Mr Hawke said.
This statement followed by only a few hours the particularly tough speech in New York by Australian ambassador, Rawdon Dalrymple, in which he warned the U.S.: ”If you want the South Pacific to become an area where the Soviet Union, Cuba and others of that stripe can find fertile ground for anti- United States, anti-West propaganda and activity and in which they can develop activities directly prejudicial to our interest, then continue with a policy of indifference to what the French are doing there.” ’’Continued French use of Moruroa atoll for nuclear testing is absolutely certain to prejudice the South Pacific people against the West against the United States and Australian interests in a way that will quite possibly prove very costly. ”1 would urge you to use your enormous influence to persuade the French to stop nuclear testing in the South Pacific. ”1 think the future of your relationship with France can withstand the pressures of such a policy but I am not sure ...that the future of your relationship with the South Pacific can be assured if you turn a deaf ear to their concerns.”
While the ambassador’s speech was apparently not cleared with Canberra there has been no criticism of it in Australia and definite support of it by prime minister Hawke. It all added up to the strongest public criticism Australia has so far made of U.S. policy in the Pacific. So far, the Reagan administration has seemed a good deal less than moved.
Criticism of the French has been weak, and some influential people have even defended both the nuclear testing and the sabotage of Rainbow Warrior.
A U.S. State Department spokesman carefully conceded that America was ’’aware” of Australian concern, but said France had an independent nuclear force and the testing was a matter for French decision. The U.S. ’’noted” French statements that underground testing was ’’essential to the modernisation of the French nuclear deterrent,” the spokesman said. Australia was officialcontinued on page 29 France’s Ambassador to New Zealand Jacques Bourgoin ... his seat has got considerably warmer since July 10. - Lawrance Bailey photo. 15 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
“Rainbow Warrior”
Does a vital industry need a shake-up?
Dr NORMAN DOUGLAS attended the 1985 Fiji Tourism Convention. In this article he takes a hard look at tourism in Fiji, and offers ideas on possible ways out of its present difficulties.
The signs heralding the 1985 Fiji Tourism Convention were not auspicious. The week before the event Jonati Mavoa, minister for Foreign Affairs, Tourism and Civil Aviation, had died, following injuries in a fall.
Mavoa had been widely regarded as an enthusiastic supporter of tourism in Fiji one of the few enthusiasts in government, it was said. A few days later, the daily Fiji Times and Fiji Sun gave failings in tourism’s consumer relations front-page priority.
“Rip-offs hit tourism; complaints increasing ...” headlined the Fiji Sun , informing readers that more tourists were being “mistreated” by duty-free dealers and handicraft sellers.
The 49 complainants referred to probably received scant consolation from an assurance by the Fiji National Duty Free Merchants Association that such complaints were “normal”.
“Are we really Friendly Fiji?” wondered the Sun’s brief editorial.
The Fiji Times left its assault for the morning of the convention’s opening. “FVB Hears of Profiteering,” it heralded, elevating a report by the bureau’s Sydney marketing manager, Bill Whiting, to headline status. Whiting had informed a meeting in Suva, with some justification, that visitors to Fiji were complaining about the high cost of food and poor rate of exchange offered by hotels. FVB board members, John Birch, president of the Fiji Hotel Association, and Mahendra Patel, Fiji’s leading dutyfree merchant, neither of whom evidently eats or cashes travellers’ cheques at hotels, expressed surprise, even disbelief.
In the light of these happenings, the convention’s theme: ’’We’re out to win you over” had more of the sound of struggle than may have been intended, and its location - Suva’s big, but bleak, Civic Auditorium hardly invited the same degree of warm response from delegates as many previous convention venues at resort hotels, where the bar and the pool were only seconds away. Convention regulars were quick to admit that it seemed a much more sober, constrained, serious affair than usual; some went so far as to suggest it was symptomatic of a low point, even a malaise, in Fiji tourism.
If this is so, what is wrong with Fiji’s first (or second, depending upon whose account you read and what additional arithmetic is required), revenue earner?
There are some quick and obvious responses to this question: The weather. Fiji, where according to most of its publicity, the sun smiles as habitually as do the people, has experienced nine cyclones in the past five years - four of them in the first few months of 1985.
The shortage, say tourism entrepreneurs, of ’’international standard” hotel rooms an estimated 500 more per year until 1990 are needed to boost declining visitor numbers and enhance the package tour market, they say.
The absence, say some guarded critics, of a real commitment on the part of the government to tourism and a tourism policy. ’’You know,” one leading hotelier told me, ’’the prime minister has only once mentioned tourism publicly, and that was to criticise it.”
The dubious value, say some promoters, of recommending places like Nadi with its Canberra in Suva. P & O, thought seriously about giving it a miss Pictures Norman Douglas Pacific Profiles. 16 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
predatory duty-free salesmen, or Suva with its intimidating sword-sellers (’’what’s your name, mate?”), to tourists seeking a ’’new cultural expertence.”
The decline of the Australian dollar, says everyone, which effectively means (at least in mid-1985), that visitors from Fiji’s largest market are paying between 20 per cent and 30 per cent more for every good or service that they buy, depending, of course, upon both daily fluctuations in the floating Australian currency, and where the luckless tourist cashes his money.
Whatever the reasons, and there are more than these, visitor numbers are down. May and June of this year saw, respectively 2000 and 1786 fewer visitors than those months in 1984 - and 1984 had given much ground for optimism. Visitor figures, over 235,000 for the year, had suggested that the quarter million mark might soon be achieved, Perhaps it might, but not yet: visitor numbers for the first quarter of 1985 were lower than for any period since early 1983 the time of Cyclone Oscar low enough for the usually intractable airlines to introduce a special limited season fare of SA3SO from Sydney to Nadi and return. This was probably the best of indications that all was not well, The cyclone factor in Fiji tourism is indisputable, additional evidence for the cynics who claim that an economy which gives prominence to such an erratic industry is bound to be precarious, but no less bistressing for that. The locations of Fiji’s major resorts - the Coral Coast, Nadi and the Mananucas are both their strength and their weakness. In the latter area several resorts were obliged to close for repairs after extensive damage early this year, and those that didn’t probably should have. Some months after the last cyclone, Hina, had passed over Castaway Island, one resort which remained open, the place still looked like a disaster area, with two large piles of debris identifying the limits of the beach and another greeting visitors at their landing point. Untidiness and wear were evident throughout the resort’s facilities. ’’What a dump,” observed one disappointed tourist. ’’The only thing that’s not run down here is the price.”
The plight of the resorts has been exacerbated by the increasing reluctance of international insurance companies to involve themselves in underwriting all too frequent disasters (see PIM, May, 1985), and the tendency of overseas media (read Australian in this case), to report only the worst news. A benevolent Providence would be the most valuable asset to Fiji tourism over the next few years, but industry people are of the view that more vigorous promotion of the ’’look, we’re still going strong” kind should be mounted in the wake of every cyclone to offset the adverse reports. The FVB’s Bill Whiting puts especially strong emphasis on the importance of such publicity, and with Australia low value currency or not still providing up to 40 per cent of Fiji’s tourists it’s hard not to agree.
Most sections of the industry also agree on the urgent need for more (and more, and more) hotel rooms. At the Suva convention this issue was particularly addressed by the bureau’s research consultant, Alastair Mclntyre, a man whose vocabulary consists almost exclusively of statistics.
For the “more rooms the more tourists” enthusiasts the most heartening sign for some years was the ceremonial ground-breaking in late June at the site of the proposed Sheraton Fiji hotel, a $3O million, 300-room complex on Denarau Island which also houses the Regent of Fiji. Few people were happier about it than the Tui Nadi, Senator Ratu Napolioni Dawai, who, by virtue of his connection with the land for both hotels has probably benefited more from tourism than most Fijians, though Ratu Napolioni was quick to point out that such development was good for Fiji as a whole.
Left: Levuka - coming alive with Sunday shopping? Above: Post-cyclone debris on Castaway Island. The resort didn’t close but is probably should have. 17 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985 leed a shake-up?
Why the almost obsessive concern for additional hotel rooms when the 3923 which Fiji already has can boast only a 58 per cent occupancy rate, and hotels on the Coral Coast and in Nadi habitually have far less than that? This is not an unreasonable question to ask, but when I asked it of a couple of interested parties they both regarded me rather condescendingly before replying, as though the answer was selfevident: “It’s the multiplier effect,” said one, who, when pressed for further details, insisted that the new custom which new hotels brought must necessarily create an additional demand for ancillary goods and services. So, what was good for the Sheraton was good for the country? Right.
The other man was more direct. “People don’t go to countries for a vacation. They go to hotels,” he said, Yet, if tourism is as good for the country as Ratu Napolioni and other concerned people have claimed, why hasn’t it had the recognition from government that it merited? But now it would have, as Peter Stinson, suddenly finding himself minister for tourism, on Jonati Mavoa’s death, made clear in his opening speech to the convention: “Tourism,” said the portfolio’s new holder, “is now an integral part of our economic development strategy. ” To give additional weight to his observation, Stinson announced the formation of a ’’fully-fledged” Department of Tourism, with the astute and popular Nelson Delailomaloma as its director.
What would the department achieve that the Visitors’
Bureau, one of the country’s first statutory bodies, could not?
No-one seemed entirely sure, but at least it was a step in the right direction. This was a view endorsed by the Fiji Times which described Mr Delailomaloma as “a dynamic man who will bring in more creative ideas to the industry.”
But wouldn’t it also cost much more to maintain a “fullyfledged” department and, given the downturn in Fiji’s fortunes, wasn’t this perhaps the wrong time for it? No, it meant finally a commitment on the part of government to the potential of tourism and its part in the country’s development.
What about the tourist who wasn’t as committed to the country’s development as the government, but wanted a reasonable dollar’s worth of value and was finding this increasingly hard to obtain, since by common admission, Fiji, exchange rates aside, was becoming an increasingly expensive destination, and complaints about value for money were becoming more frequent? An annual increase of 10 to 15 per cent in hotel tariffs and related services is considered normal, but the price increases in many Fiji hotels have been little short of extortionate.
In three years tariffs at some hotels have trebled and there has been no corresponding increase in quality. One very ordinary holiday apartment house in Suva hiked its tariff by over a third in one hit. At the ’’prestige” resorts daily rates of Fsloo or over are becoming increasingly common; and in most of these establishments nothing has changed in the past few years except the size of one’s bill.
Has there been a commensurate rise in costs and wages in Fiji? Nothing like it; all that seems to have been assumed is an on-going willingness on the part of tourists to pay almost any price for an apparently desirable destination. Part of the rapid rise in tariffs in resort hotels can be explained as an attempt by owners to compensate themselves for hurricane damage costs, especially given insurance company reluctance, but much of it is simply avarice and there are indications that some of Fiji’s immediate competitors - Bali, for instance may benefit from travellers’ disenchantment with rising tariffs in Fiji, just as they have benefited from Fiji’s weather woes.
Evident also is some kind of confusion about what levels of tourists Fiji seeks to attract. At the convention Rory Scott, one-time head of the FVB and long-time exponent of tourism planning in the Pacific, spoke of a need to attract as a sort of semi-permanent visitor, the “high technology businessman” who could run his enterprise from “warmer and friendlier climes” and also of tapping the non-Japanese Asian market which accounted for about 2.5 million travellers annually.
These groups would presumably help to fill the free-spending end of the market, but there are other groups - more economically restrained - and Air New Zealand’s Penny Lucyk drew attention to the need to cater for the budgetminded Canadian travellers, now in the Pacific in increasing numbers and seeking self-contained accommodations that enabled them to do their own cooking. Whether tourism in Fiji can successfully respond to both ends of the market indeed, whether it really wants to - remains unclear.
Far more clear is the fact that there is a curious imbalance in the geography of tourism in Fiji.
Entrepreneurs, aspiring and actual, in the Northern Division (Vanua Levu, Taveuni, etc.), have long felt neglected by the apparent lack of interest in these large islands and some, at least, hold the FVB directly responsible for the lack of travellers’ awareness.
“I cannot understand why they don’t tell people more about this area,” complains Paul Jaduram, Labasa hotelier and businessman, now owner of a small resort off northern Vanua Levu. “The publicity leads people to think that Fiji consists of only one island.”
Improved air and ferry services to Vanua Levu may make a gradual difference, but for the time being these remarkable islands remain Fiji tourism’s forgotten half. Northern Division entrepreneurs laun- The Fiji Visitors Bureau ... “they have heard complaints of 'profiteering’..."
ched their own publicity campaign at the convention, with the slogan, “The North’s Got It All,” although statements comparing quaintly dilapidated Savu Savu with Bora Bora or Maui seem a trifle far-fetched.
In Fiji’s other colonial frontier town, Levuka, on the island of Ovalau, local businessmen and councillors are also showing an awakened interest in the tourist dollar. The fledgling Ovalau Tourist Association has promotion plans for Fiji’s old capital and Levuka’s mayor, Councillor Hoteshwar Subrail, speaks of making the town ’’come alive” for tourists and locals with such drawcards as Island nights and Sunday shopping.
Shopping, not necessarily in Levuka’s charmingly cluttered multi-purpose stores, remains for many visitors one of Fiji’s main attractions. The myth of the extensive choice, high quality and low cost of ’’duty free” goods has helped to sustain visitor interest for a long time, but has recently being showing signs of strain as more tourists, especially the ’’boat people” carried by F and O and Sitmar, long thought of as easy marks by duty-free merchants, complain about over-pricing, dubious quality, touting and harassment.
P and O, faced with its passengers’ constant criticism of Suva as the ’’least enjoyable” port in the Pacific, considered dropping Fiji’s capital from its cruise itineraries. To Fiji tourism’s relief it has not done so, but the relationship remains touchy. A ’’Destination Suva” committee which seeks to improve Suva’s tourist image is working on this aspect but for many one-day visitors to Suva, shopping in Gumming or Pier streets can still be an uneasy proposition Illustrating the ills of tourism in Fiji is, of course, much easier than curing them, but plainly more is needed than a favorable change in summer weather patterns, or an aggressive marketing campaign which continues to stress the same and somewhat misleading qualities: endless white sand beaches, limitless sunshine, perpetually grinning people...
Almost all of Fiji’s tourism publicity ignores the dynamic fact of the country’s multiculturalism. In most travel brochures more than half the population simply does not exist. Yet other multi-cultural destinations - Singapore, and Malaysia for example -- have made a great deal of their ethnic mixtures and have profited by it. Part of Fort Vila’s great appeal is its vibrant multiracial society. For an increasing number of travellers cultural matters are somewhat more significant than hotel swimming pools or duty-free shopping, yet much of the Indian cultural appeal of Fiji or its British colonial history and character are consistently ignored in favor of the tired old tropical paradise cliches. As a result, the genuine interest of places like Ba, Labasa, Levuka and even Suva itself is overlooked, while visitors are directed towards the commonplace and predictable.
The spectacular inland scenery of Fiji’s major islands barely rates a mention, yet there are features within all of them which are unique in the South Seas. The development of a more honest and diversified approach to promoting Fiji must surely stimulate and attract visitors whose interests extend beyond the obvious.
The increasingly frequent complaints about the cost of eating in Fiji could be partly offset if visitors were made aware that - at least in the town areas - other possibilities exist.
An island resort has a captive clientele, but in Suva and Nadi it is possible to have a perfectly acceptable Indian meal for less than Fs2 and a Chinese one for only slightly more. How many visitors are made aware of these options?
Nor is there any good reason for hotels in Fiji to levy ’’service charges” - some of them absurdly high - for cashing travellers’ cheques. Offering a bank rate for encashment should be part of the service offered to patrons. It is an affront to hospitality to do otherwise. There is little excuse for being unaware of daily bank rates (can this really be the case for tourist hotels?) and less excuse for not offering them.
It will require attention to these basic matters in addition to the formation of a Department of Tourism and Schools of Tourism Studies, multi-lingual promotional brochures and the introduction of legislation limiting litter, livestock and sword-sellers (other resolutions adopted by the convention), if tourism in Fiji is to regain some of the credibility and much of the custom it has recently lost.
Tourism has clearly established itself as an essential part of Fiji’s economic development, and has now apparently received belated ’’official” recognition of the fact. Yet, ironically, coincidentally with this, has come much criticism of the way the visitor business is conducted, and a decline in visitor numbers. Even though midyear visitor numbers appear a little more encouraging, the time for extensive re-appraisal of this very significant industry has obviously arrived if the criticism is not to become constant and the decline is not to continue.
Norman Douglas.
Tourists and duty-free outlets In downtown Suva ... it’s still an uneasy business at times. 19 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
In 1966 Since 1966 Shaddock has gone from exploring a new market to being a major supplier of electrical appliances to the Pacific. Shaddock discovered the Pacific. And the Pacific discovered Shaddock. The Shaddock range of domestic and commercial appliances has established a reputation for dependability and performance throughout the region. Today Shaddock is still exploring. Exploring new ideas, new technology, new products. It is the type of exploration that keeps Fisher and Paykel, the New Zealand manufacturer of Shaddock, the southern hemisphere's largest "exporter of major appliances. discovered the Ihdfic SHACKLOCK
"Deadly demon booze assaults pacific..."
In New Caledonia during early September 16 young men were hospitalised after a drinking bout in which 5 litres of a concoction known as uin bleu were consumed. This libation is not a product of some new and adventurous vineyard in the Pacific, but a deadly mixture of methyl alcohol, usually obtained from duplicating machines, lemon juice, sugar and water.
Since 1981 it has claimed the lives of 10 people in New Caledonia, seven of them in one binge alone in March of that year and the other three in two separate incidents this year.
The 16 latest victims were lucky. All recovered. However, the incident served to turn a spotlight on the growing problem of alcoholism throughout the Pacific, a problem which was, concurrently, and coincidentally, the subject of an international conference in Noumea. Delegates from 22 Pacific nations attended the week-long gathering which was hosted by the South Pacific Commission (SPC).
Although few reliable statistics are available, it soon became apparent early into the conference that problems do exist, not necessarily in the form of chronic alcoholism, but drunkenness and its sideeffects, such as alarming increases in car accidents, suicides, brawls, wife and child beating, According to the S.P.C’s chief epidemiologist, Dr Richard Taylor, much of the responsibility for the problems must be worn by the major western nations. ’’Alcohol was introduced into the Pacific by the early explorers and beachcombers around the region,” he said. ’There are some local alcoholic drinks which are produced in the Pacific, in particular sour toddy, which is the fermented sap of the coconut palm, and also ’bush beer’ which is produced by the fermentation of local tropical fruits and vegetables, although both these local drinks also appear to be the products of introduced ’technology.’ So far as we can see alcohol consumption has never been traditional in the region, although it now is incorporated into the cultures of many countries. In some places, for instance Papua New Guinea, beer and pigs are now on par as far as gifts are concerned.”
In fact beer is by far and away the preferred drink throughout the Pacific, be it Prime, Hinano, Fosters, Budweiser, Vailima, or South Pacific.
One of the papers presented at the conference, by Dr Matt Marshall, of the • University of lowa, in the U.S.A., quoted brewery officials as saying that beer had become more popular than wine in recent years in the Pacific because it was less expensive and because it makes people feel less heavy and tired.
This assertion was supported by the somewhat startling revelation that American Samoa was recently ranked the number three beer-drinking nation in the world, on a per capita basis, just behind Australia and One of the highlights of the week-long conference was a cocktail party at which a special non-alcoholic bar was set up to serve such concoctions as Green Garden, Lemon Milk, Tomato Cocktail, and Sportive Youth Cocktail.
Those who sampled them said they were really quite good. Adventurous drinkers among PIM readers who would like to sample a couple should follow the directions below.
SPORTIVE YOUTH Take four oranges, two lemons, eight tablespoons of powdered sugar, four egg yolks, 125 g of fresh cream, half a litre of fresh milk and 10 ice cubes. Squeeze juice from the oranges and lemons. In a blender or mixer, whisk the juice with the sugar, the 4 egg yolks, beaten, the cream, the milk and, last of all, the ice cubes.
Beat for 3 minutes on medium speed and then on fast for another minute.
GREEN GARDEN: Take 500 g of fresh carrots, one tomato, 100 g of celery, a sprig or two of parsley, 4 slices of lemon, one grapefruit, a little salt.
Wash the carrots and peel them, chop roughly and put into a juice extractor. Add the tomato, also chopped, and the parsley, washed in cold water, but not cut.
Peel the heart of the celery, wash, cut into pieces and add to the other vegetables in the juice extractor. Turn on the extractor and collect the juice in a jug. Pour into four glasses. Squeeze the grapefruit, making sure no pips get into the juice.
Share the juice around the four drinks. Sprinkle each with a pinch of salt and decorate the top of each glass with a slice of lemon. 21 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
West Germany.
There also appears to be quite specific times for drinking ... after work, on weekends and at special occasions. The weekend binge is especially popular, especially on pay weekends and the conference was told that in many places it was common for a whole weekend to be given over to binge drinking and recovery from the bout.
Dr Marshall supports the belief that Pacific Islanders drink to get drunk ... ’’drunkenness being neither strongly stigmatised, nor viewed as unpleasant.
Instead it is looked upon as a usually pleasurable state when fear and shyness disappear, relaxation and courage increase, people dance and sing, and they find the boldness to speak about things they would never dare to mention otherwise. ”
In fact alcohol has now become so integrated into island life that according to Dr Anthony Polloi, the chief of public health services in Palau, ”a party is not complete if alcohol is not served. A leader in a community is seen as less of a leader if he does not provide alcohol during a community function or project, such as clearing roads, and the like. ”
Dr Polloi went on to tell the conference that in his homeland alcohol was even served at funerals and that most people considered it the best social lubricant.
It also emerged during the discussion that most of the drinking is done by men, alcohol still being either condemned or prohibited for all women.
Indeed, the most vocal delegates to the conference were women, relating distressing accounts of increased domestic violence and economic hardships throughout the islands caused, they believed, by alcohol or, as the delegate from Vanuatu dubbed it: ’’the evil power affecting our people in the Pacific.”
Just why drinking is a predominantly male activity appears to be culturally and socially rooted. Studies of the region over the last three decades show that for many islanders the most popular form of relaxation is ’’having a yarn,” usually in single-sex groups. In the past these sessions at least for the men’s groups would have been helped along by the odd drop of kava (called yaqona in Fiji where it is at the very core of social behavior, now for many Indians as well as for all Fijians). But today in many islands the preferred lubricant seems to be alcohol with the yarning sessions turning into simple drinking bouts.
The male and female roles are also very clear-cut in island societies. While it is acceptable and even seen as masculine for a man to be drunk, it is not acceptable that women appear so.
Frustration is another reason put up for the abuse of alcohol frustration caused by the inability to cope with the inevitable problems which arise in communities tom between two worlds the ancient traditional, and the modem, with all its costly material temptations.
Many of the island nations are suddenly discovering what unemployment is and means.
The difficulties of having to adjust to urban life when one is used to a rural setting. Having neighbors living close at hand who come from tribes or clans which are traditional enemies.
In some countries the frustration now apparent in the indigenous peoples has been caused by colonisation. New Caledonia provides the perfect example of this. Research carried out by Georges Zeldine in 1981 discovered that the French territory was the only South Pacific nation where chronic alcoholism was found to be a problem among indigenous people.
Among the reasons Zeldine advances to explain this are the drinking patterns introduced by the French, ”a desire to emulate the European life-style, and the wide gap they perceive between their former status in the territory and their current status in the European-dominated economy.”
The delegate from Vanuatu backed this up, saying that attitudes in his country had definitely changed since independence with people now showing more responsibility and turning back towards their traditional social drink, kava.
He noted that kava production had developed into a notable industry in Vanuatu with one Chinese businessman developing a process where the drink was mass-produced in liquid form and sold in bottles, ice-cold.
To combat the growing alcohol problem the conference produced 68 recommendations for delegates to take back to their governments. Despite their own enthusiasm for these measures, many delegates said they foresaw difficulties in getting them implemented. For most governments alcohol is a good revenue-spinner, so good, in fact, that many governments are considering setting up their own breweries so they can reap the full financial benefit of their people’s drinking habits instead of handing the money over to Australia and France the major beer exporting nations for the Pacific.
Apart from the financial gain, these governments also argue that such developments will also help provide jobs and raise living standards for their people. To counter the moralist arguments, they also claim they could help curb the alcohol problem by controlling themselves the alcohol content of the local product.
Dr Taylor suggested that this was not realistic and would result only in people increasing their intake to achieve the same effect. He believed that commercial practice and the need to capitalise on investment in a brewery would simply persuade governments to encourage consumption rather than limit it.
With this in mind the conference worded its recommendations quite strongly, urging governments to lift their game in enforcing current laws and tightening up in areas such as licensing and imports, as well as cracking down on drink-driving and violence resulting from drunkenness.
The recommendations will undoubtedly cause some ruffled feathers throughout the region. But the conference delegates profess to be unaffected by such a prospect and have decided they will meet again within two years to compare notes and see if they have been able to put the cork back into the bottle.
Sue Williams in Noumea.
Top: A participant in a drunken brawl ends up in the hands of police. Below: “Breathing into the bag” to test drivers’ blood alcohol levels is one measure being used in efforts to stem the alarming increase in drink-driving car accidents in Pacific Island countries. 22 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
Packer’S “T-Team Wins”
Fiji opts for space age television Fiji is to have broadcast television by 1987. It will be set up by Australia’s Publishing and Broadcasting, Ltd. (PBL), which runs the Channel Nine Network in Australia. The company is headed by Kerry Packer, who gained controversial international prominence over his espousal of ’’Technicolor show biz” cricket, and other activities designed to boost his television audience.
However, the Fiji government will maintain what is described as ”a strong voice” in the selection of programs to be screened on the local rebroadcasts.
PBL’s application was one of two proposals considered by the Fiji government. The other was from Television South Pacific (Fiji), Ltd., put together by three Suva businessmen, including advertising and public relations man, Matt Wilson, with the similarly named, but unrelated, John Savage and Jerry Savage.
In announcing the decision the prime minister, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, said a detailed economic assessment of the two proposals had been undertaken. PBL will undertake the project in three stages, each covering different parts of the country, starting with the densely-populated urban area around Suva, then the other fairly closely populated areas and, finally, the outlying island regions.
PBL will initially invest about Austss.s million. However, the project will be a joint venture between the Fiji government Fiji has decided, apparently with some suddenness, to sign an agreement with Australia’s Channel Nine for joint-venture television broadcasting system.
The move has taken other suitors by surprise, has heightened competition for rights to broadcast in other Pacific countries, like Tonga and Western Samoa, and has also touched a bureaucratic wrangle currently in train in Canberra over Australia’s role in Pacific broadcasting. Our correspondents in Suva, Sydney and Canberra, examine the scene. and PBL, with the government’s equity provided in the form of land for the television stations and transmission facilities around the country.
The prime minister emphasised that the ultimate aim was to bring television to all parts of the country as soon as possible.
Until now the Fiji government has been reluctant to allow television because of the scattered nature of the islands.
Their policy was to keep television on ice until the outlying islands and remoter rural areas had been supplied with electricity. The decision to grant a television broadcast licence to PBL appears to represent a considerable shift in what was generally regarded as a major government priority. The government has reaffirmed its decision, though, to allow more funds to speed up electrification of rural and outlying areas.
An inter-departmental committee within the Fiji government will be set up to work with FBL in the establishment of the television service. In addition the Fiji government will appoint one director to the five-member board for the new company.
Two other directors will also come from Fiji and will be appointed in consultation with the Fiji government.
Nor will the Fiji government be liable for any losses incurred by the joint venture; PBL has guaranteed to underwrite the financial performance of the enterprise.
PBL says it will be guided by the views of the government in the selection of foreign programs and has agreed to give ’’top priority” to the inclusion of local programming. From the beginnning, it says, much emphasis will be given to the local news, weather information and items of local interest.
The company hopes to employ about 50 people before the first station goes to air.
Education, health and agriculture are three areas which will receive program attention as quickly as possible.
The social consequences of Kerry Packer of Australia’s PBL ... a winner in Fiji. 23 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
introducing large quantities of foreign television programs, particularly American-style ’’cops and robbers blood, bash and crash” material on which PBL’s Australian channels rely quite heavily for their programming, has always concemed the Fiji government and will be approached carefully, The East-West Center in Hawaii and the Australian National University in Canberra will be asked to carry out a study as quickly as possible, The government has said that the findings of this study team will have a strong bearing on the type of programs which it is planned to be broadcast, Independent observers of the industry believe the survey will be an honest attempt to handle a probably impossible problem and point to places like Papua New Guinea where a quite strong body of opinion exists asserting that violent television programs have been a powerful factor in accelerating crime rates among young and impressionable people.
Video sets (that is television sets linked to video tape recorder/players) are extremely common in Fiji. Official estimates put the figure between 30,000 and 40,000 while unofficial estimates run as high as 60,000.
Video tape libraries flourish in every town and suburb, and behind the counters of even quite small village stores, renting tapes for as little as 50 cents a night, Video sets are often communally-owned and charging a small fee for an evening of The battle of the satellites While the advertising markets available to commercial television in the islands might be quite small, getting access to them has been a matter of importance to at least two Australian television networks -- Kerry Packer’s Channel Nine and Rupert Murdoch’s Channel Ten.
The men from Ten were therefore astonished and upset when they stepped down from an Air Pacific Boeing 747 at Nadi late in September, to find that Channel Nine’s negotiators were also at the airport but on their way out, with the contract in their hands.
There would appear to be little that Channel Ten, or anyone else, can now do but swing swiftly around and head off to woo such other regional governments as Tonga and Western Samoa. But getting in there will not be easy.
Tonga’s King Taufa’ahau has already rejected an offer from Channel Nine because ’’the cost would be too burdensome.” Whether any other commercial channel has made a better offer is not known, although the prospect of such a bid succeeding has receded into the dim distance now that two fundamentalist Christian churches in the U.S. have offered a complete television broadcasting system to the kingdom.
The offer was made after the king appeared on the churches’ American network during his last visit to the U.S. He said recently that the system would be established by January, 1986.
With Papua New Guinea’s first commercial television network gone to the Parry organisation based on Newcastle’s NBN, Channel 3, Fiji was the biggest plum left available to those who saw opportunity in extending their interests into the South Pacific. For all of them it was an obvious move. All the Australian channels derive program material from the U.S., using the Intelsat Pacific satellite. The satellite is within range of receiving dishes which exist, or might be set up, almost anywhere in the Western Pacific.
Beyond that, however, the Channel Nine success in Fiji threatens to bring to a head the whole complicated diplomatic and commercial problem faced by the Australian government over regional television.
At the core of this question is the use of the series of three Australian satellites to be ’’flown” by the Aussat corporation. One of these was recently launched and is now operating.
Another is to be put up before the end of this year and a third in 1986, probably now earlier rather than later.
It is this third satellite which is most interesting, for the Australian government recently allowed Aussat to change the dedication of three of the unit’s transponders to cover the South Pacific. This alarmed the Australian Overseas Telecommunications Commission which saw it as undermining the unchallenged monopoly of international communications it has always had and which, so far, continues with Intelsat. American telecommunications interests have periodically chafed over the OTC monopoly but have not seriously challenged it.
Now Aussat, in effect, has sided with the U.S. by arguing that if it is allowed to compete with Telecom in the domestic communications field it should also be allowed to take on OTC in the very profitable international area.
The sort of business which the Aussat 3 development could attract is shown by the New Zealand government’s immediatelyexpressed interest in having access to the facility.
Their officials have been in Canberra discussing a variety of projects and cooperative possibilities.
News Ltd (Channel Ten), the Western Australianbased Bond Corporation and an independent company called Television Australia-Satellite Systems, have been negotiating with Aussat over use of the third satellite’s very powerful 30watt transponder. OTC has responded by introducing a new Vista system on Intelsat which gives an earth station competitive with the more powerful transponder and smaller earth stations offered by Aussat.
Forum Island countries are also watching developments because of proposals, discussed at the AUSSA 24 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
Space Age Television
Hindi movies, or extended sessions of TheA-Team or Dynasty in someone’s frontroom is a common method of meeting hire-purchase charges.
Almost all the English-language video casettes on hire are pirated from broadcast television in Australia, New Zealand, arid the U.S. Fiji businessmen, mainly Indian and Chinese, have set up quite elaborate networks, often using relatives living in the Western countries to keep them supplied by airmail with recorded programs, The initial recordings are then copied and sent out to libraries, Quality varies considerably -from quite good to eye-straining ’’video blizzard,” but prices are adjusted accordingly by the desperately competitive libraries.
The same system seems to work with Hindi movies, highly popular with Indian women in Fiji. At least one major Bombay commercial cinema film distributor is believed to have a flourishing trade with Fiji, supplying them with video tapes of first-run Hindi films. This has driven Fiji theatre-owners to distraction because it has meant that the video libraries have been able to offer films that are box-office block-busters in India (and thus potentially very profitable in Fiji), sometimes well before Fiji cinemas get them.
In the last five years ’’home video-cinemas” have very seriously damaged the previously very lucrative business of the movie house operators who have been unable to compete or manage to stop the video pirates.
Fiji does not have a copyright law and is not a signatory to international copyright conventions. The film industry’s ’’copyright police” have made repeated visits to Fiji, but have failed to stop the trade and may now quietly have accepted the inevitable.
Indeed, some of the loudest critics of video piracy appear now themselves to be deeply involved in the video piracy trade under another name, of course.
While any move against the libraries would be enormously unpopular with the entire population, the Fiji government has shown concern about the type of programs available, and the fact that they have virtually no control over them. Some efforts have been made to stop pornographic tapes, but the flow of cassettes is now huge, and quite beyond the resources of officialdom to supervise. Quite hardcore pornography is available within certain very limited circles, but, in general, that seamy and worrying side of the video trade in western countries does not intrude generally in Fiji.
Excessive violence in commercial television programs, like The A-Team, T.J.Hooker, Miami Vice , and all the other trash pumped out by the international industry, is of much more immediate concern to the Fiji government.
It is possible that this factor was among those influencing the government to amend its previous policy and allow the introduction of broadcast television before full electrification of the rural villages had been achieved. Certainly the government seems anxious to exert some control over television programming. It is also expected to tighten laws on copyright and censorship, which may have the effect of stunting the business of the video libraries.
Social cynics observe, however, that if all the now very popular (and not very edifying), series are culled out of the country’s broadcast programming, the fast-moving Indian businessmen of the islands will soon find a way to offer them on cassette.
PBL at present daily receives about 50 hours of programming from Los Angeles to Sydney, using the Intelsat satellite, recent annual meeting in Rarotonga, to foster a common, inter-linked, broadcasting system. Aussat 3 would allow them to do this with technical ease and, with expectable Australian government help, relative economy. Thus, they feel, they could hold back at least some of the more violent of American-style programs about the effects of which upon their unsophisticated communities they show considerable worry.
While recognising the Islands’ desire to do as much of their own thing as possible, Aussat also argues that the Pacific is logically an area for Australian interest and influence and that their system should be promoted before Japanese and American companies swamped the telecommunications field in the Pacific.
Meantime, Channel Nine has scored a notable coup with its Fiji deal and must now be seen as a contender to provide the sort of general regional television system with local input which the South Pacific Forum is probably talking about, even if it might not yet quite realise it.
Staff Writer
Tellite Coverage Areas
Ratu Mara photo: Lawrance Bailey Alan Bond
Space Age Television
the ’’footprint” of which covers Fiji and many other South Pacific island countries and which will be an integral part of the system the Australian company will introduce.
While the Fiji television systern will not depend utterly on ’’canned” American material beamed down from the satellite, a good percentage of programming will, inevitably, come to the islands in that fashion.
The traffic will be two-way, in that Australian programming will also be available on the satellite channel to which the PBL receiving dish in Fiji will be tuned. Material received from the satellite will be recorded, edited, fitted into local programming, with local announcers and local advertising, and re-broadcast around Fiji, The impact of commercial television upon existing radio and print media in Fiji is expected to be considerable, They have so far said little, and it cannot have surprised them, although most expected more breathing space than they now have.
A quick survey of major advertisers in the country suggests that few, if any of them will increase their overall budgets. Some say they will probably devote about 50 per cent of their current radio and print budget to the new medium. The biggest losers are expected to be the government-owned Radio Fiji and the recently-started private Radio F 96, which caters for Suva and the surrounding areas. However, much will depend upon the times of transmission of television.
Video tape dealers are also expected to find their trade , . , win mg o a c e.
Another question being asked is why the Fiji government has, apparently quite suddenly, gone ahead with the Channel Nine proposal when, for years, it said television could not come unless it could be provided for everyone in the country, including the outerisland communities.
One possible answer is the approach of the next general election, currently set down for 1987. Control of television is seen as giving the Alliance government an edge over its rivals, the opposition National Federation Party and, perhaps especially, the newly-formed Labour Party.
Opposition politicians are already complaining that the government will turn television coverage of all sorts of government functions into political promotion and propaganda always provided, of course, that the television service is in operation well before the campaign begins.
Austerity is key at Fiji summit The Fiji government held its second national economic summit in Suva at the end of September. The two-day meeting brought together some 300 delegates representing all sectors of the community and the economy.
Like the first summit held in February this year the September meeting was also boycotted by the opposition National Federation Party and the Fiji Trades Union Congress. However several opposition parliamentarians and some top F.T.U.C. officials did attend as observers in other capacities.
The prime minister, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, in his opening address, said there was some reason for optimism, but sacrifice and hard work were still required. While Fiji’s economy had performed well, it could have been better if natural disasters had not caused so many setbacks.
Fiji was in its 15th year of independence, an important crossroad. Through enterprise, hard work and dedication Fiji had made very substantial economic and social progress since 1970. Fiji could have achieved higher rates of economic growth if it was not for natural disasters and an adverse world economy. In 1984 the economy had recovered very quickly from the cyclones and drought of 1983.
The prime minister said the general assessment was that the country was confronted by economic difficulties, but these were not insurmountable.
There was reason for optimism for the future, but it would require hard work and dedication.
Fiji must now concentrate on Ratu Mara (right) chats with Finance Minister Mosese Qionibaravi (partly obscured on left), and Economic Development, Planning and Tourism Minister Peter Stinson after the opening of the recent economic summit meeting. - Talat Mehmood photo. 26 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
Space Age Television
* % eW p* P&O have been cruising the Pacific for over 50 years Every few days or so a big P&O cruise liner docks at one of the South Pacific’s most enchanting and popular islands. Some people have even suggested we are the Pacific!
“Take me awav _RO accelerating economic growth, generating more employment opportunities, broadening its economic base through continuing efforts to diversify, and maintaining a stable balance of payments position, Ratu Mara said. ”In very simple terms, it means that everyone must work hard, increase productivity and continue to share the burden of adjustment a bit longer. ”
Referring to the wage freeze imposed last year the prime minister said it was better to adopt “mild unpleasant policies” than to be faced with very unpalatable adjustments later on.
The summit produced a communique listing 41 points sent for discussion by seven special economic task forces set up by the first summit last February to examine Fiji’s financial future.
This communique will form the basis of the next Five-Year Development Plan, to run from 1986 to 1990. Subjects covered range from agriculture to education,and from youth to the role played by the judiciary.
It noted that the nation could not continue to live with its current budgetary deficit.
It was agreed that the Tripartite Forum, through which government, employers and trades unions negotiate national wage rates, be retained in its present form. However, the Wages Guidelines Committee of the Forum is to have four members and continue to fix the annual wage rise limit (which, lately, has been zero).
The original Tripartite Forum was made up of delegates from the Fiji Trades Union Congress, the Fiji Employers’ Consultative Association, and the government. The new, fourth, delegation will represent interests outside the main employer-employee bodies.
Far from all of Fiji’s businessmen participate in F.E.C.A. Indeed the association has seemed to be supported to any extent only by major companies, among them such as Burns Philp, Carpenters, Fiji Gas, and Fiji Sugar Corporation. Equally, far from all of Fiji’s workers are unionised. In general union organisers are welcomed only in the bigger firms, again many of them expatriate. Smaller companies have fairly actively discouraged unionism - even to the point of waiting out a strike. And no strike in Fiji has gone longer than about three weeks and in such cases has seldom gone in favor of the workers.
The committee’s main function will be to discuss and propose a new national wage guideline. Political imperatives indicate some kind of increase; financial ones dictate that it should be very small.
The prime minister said a national economic council would also be set up under the chairmanship of deputy prime minister, Mr Mosese Qionibaravi, thus providing direct, highlevel government contact with the main elements of trade, commerce and industry. This national economic council will be made up of delegates from government, unions, employers, rural bodies, women’s organisations, youth and voluntary groups, industrial associations and local governments.
By this possibly somewhat unwieldy body the Fiji government hopes to be able to tune its delicate economy rather more accurately and with the full support of most sectors of the economy. For instance, the national wage guidelines committee will be told regularly, by the N.E.C., of the state of the country’s economy, and what wage increases it can (or cannot) afford to grant.
But, said Ratu Mara, the government would also submit its own assessment of the economy, in addition to that provided by the N.E.C.
Thus, Ratu Mara clearly hopes, the austerity which most believe must continue in Fiji will be supported by general national consensus. From Our Suva Correspondent. 27 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
Joe Davis: Rise and fall of a'rough diamond' To Papua New Guinea, barrel-chested Joe Davis was famed as a right good rough diamond and self-made successful man. His jovially piratical manner and his somewhat outrageous publicity stunts like the ’’two-headed car” he had built at his car wrecking yard - added to this swashbucWing aura - right up to July 2. After that the fame grew, but in different directions.
For it was on July 2 in the run-down Port Moresby suburb of Six-Mile, that a posse of Port Moresby police surrounded the premises of the Yugoslaviaborn Davis and hauled him off to Bomana jail.
Davis was charged on 53 counts involving receiving and possessing stolen property, possession of unlicensed firearms, passing valueless cheques and operating an illegal business.
Applications by lawyers to have him released on bail were refused.
Then the Chief Collector of Taxation, Mr John Lohberger, filed claims totalling 1.4 million kina against Davis for alleged non-payment of taxes over the last 10 years. The Tax Office claims that Davis operated a number of businesses which had not been registered and were not paying tax.
Three weeks after Davis’s arrest, two Filipinos who had been charged with conspiring with him were summarily deported to Manila.
About the same time two senior police officers, including the one in charge of the overall Davis investigations, were suspended from duty pending investigation of the treatment of an Australian woman, an explosives expert who had worked at the Bougainville copper mine.
Police sources were upset that the two officers, Assistant Commissioner Gamini Ora and Chief Inspector Kenneth Albert Smith, had interrupted questioning of the woman about drugs. The woman was allowed to leave PNG and travelled to Australia, a matter which was seen in Port Moresby as somewhat mysterious.
Mr Ora was later reinstated, on new duties, but Inspector Smith was sacked by the Police Commissioner, Mr David Tasion.
Opposition politicians hinted strongly that Smith ’’knew too much” about alleged links between organised crime and local politicians, but before anybody could pursue it further, Smith left for Australia with his wife and teen-aged son.
Smith told Australian newsmen on arrival at Brisbane that he had indeed come across evidence of prominent people involved in crime and he said he considered his sacking to have been ’’unjust.”
Commissioner Tasion retorted that Smith had not done his job properly, had been unprofessional, and that some of the charges he had laid against people associated with Davis might have to be withdrawn because of lack of evidence.
Mr Tasion denied Smith’s claim that he had fled PNG because he was about to be charged over drugs. Deputy Opposition Leader, Mr Paul Torato, then promised to name people linked to criminals in PNG ... under parliamentary privelege.
Another fuss associated with the Davis name resulted when police tried to follow the Filipinos’ deportation with a hurried exit order for Alfred Keith Ward, a New Zealander married to a Papua New Guinean, who had managed Dicksons Panel Shop, allegedly another Davis company. Lawyers for Davis petitioned the National Court to stop the deportation, saying Ward would be a vital witness, but the court ruled there was nothing to stop Ward being brought back later to give evidence.
People’s Progress Party stalwart, Mr Warren Dutton, was among a number to protest against the hurried plane trips for possible witnesses, ”In the best interests of the country all people who have been accused of breaking laws must be charged, tried and, if found guilty, punished under our laws,” he said, Mr Tasion said he was doing his job, was under no pressure from politicians to remove witnesses from the country and wished people would let the police get on with their job.
Noel Pascoe in Port Moresby Davis out on bail Port Moresby’s most celebrated used car dealer Joe Davis is out of jail, freed on bail of 1000 kina (about Austsl3oo), pending trial on 12 charges ranging from false pretences to receiving stolen goods.
All arise from police raids upon his various panel-beating, wrecking and second-hand goods yards in and around Port Moresby. The raids took place during the recent concerted campaign by police against rascals and house-breaking gangs.
Initially Davis faced a total of 49 charges of various kinds.
Some were dismissed by the courts. Others were dropped by the police.
Defence lawyer, Mr Peter Steel, told the national court when applying for bail that his client did not have a passport, all his assets had been frozen and his businesses were closed down.
Davis, bom in Yugoslavia Joe Davis at one of the wheels of his “two-headed” Mazda car. The other “driver” is Babani Maraga, at the time a PNG Post-Courier journalist. 28 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
ly snubbed.
U.S. reaction on the Greenpeace affair was also lukewarm, possibly because of Washington’s annoyance with New Zealand over the nuclear ships and ANZUS row, but also, it appeared to most observers, because it was determined not to be critical of France, even over a piece of state-sponsored terrorism which, normally, in the case of Europe, Africa, or the Middle East it is swift to condemn.
Former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Jeane Kirkpatrick, went astonishingly further by asserting in public interviews that there was ”an important difference” between international terrorism and the sabotage of the Rainbow Warrior.
Thus, nobody seriously expects even their present acute embarrassment to persuade the French to give up their nuclear testing program on Moruroa, at least not in the immediate future. Rather, their determination is likely to increase, says David Lange. The protests of Australia and New Zealand had simply entrenched the French to the point where ’’they will continue their tests, even if there is no strategic, scientific or military imperative for them,” he said.
Indeed, it is not opposition to the testing which is causing their present embarrassment, but rather the fact that, by the Greenpeace bombing, they have been made to look arrogant, and inept to the point of stupidity. The idiotic Inspector Clouseau is seen to be alive and well and running things in Paris.
France’s allies have been made to wonder about her judgment.
Her enemies have been given comfort.
Even the normally pro-establishment Paris newspaper, Le Monde, was moved to warn that the Mitterrand government was losing credibility over the Greenpeace affair. ’’French influence is directly at stake,” said the paper.
The big crack in the Mitterrand facade came with the resignation on September 20, of the Minister of Defence, Mr Charles Hernu, and the sacking of Admiral Pierre Lacoste from his post as director of the French external espionage service, the DGSE. Hernu, who had run French defence affairs since 1981 was replaced by Paul Quiles (pronounced Keyless), whose nickname in the Socialist Party is ’’Robespaul,” (piquantly adding to the Napoleonic flavor of it all). This is a reference to the infamous Robespierre, the French revolutionary responsible for the terror of 1793 and 1794 in which thousands of ’’enemies of the people” were executed.
Mr Quiles won his ’’Robespaul” sobriquet when, at the Socialist Party Congress of 1981 he called for ’’heads to roll” in a purge of civil servants who were, in his eyes, impeding implementation of socialist programs.
Quiles is 43, the son of a former artillery officer, was himself a paratrooper and remains a captain in the air force reserve. He is thus believed to have more in common with the military than the bureaucrats and is expected to make a tough defence minister. Greenpeace should expect firm response to their efforts. ’’When I make a decision I see it through,” he said in a recent interview.
One of his first decisions was to close the Instruction Centre for Underwater Combat Swimmers at Aspretto, Corsica, the school at which the DGSE teams trained for their attack upon Rainbow Warrior.
Heads have also rolled in the DGSE. Admiral Lacoste has been replaced as director by the tough General Rene Imbot, formerly chief of staff of the French army. He moved swiftly to ’’stop the rot” of political infighting inside the agency.
Within hours of Imbot’s appointment four French soldiers, a colonel, a captain and two senior n.c.o.’s, had been arrested for leaking secrets of the Greenpeace affair to the Paris press.
The colonel, Joseph Fourrier, was deputy head of DGSE counter-espionage. The captain, Alain Bourasse, was said to be the man who leaked to Le Monde details of a third team of frogmen in Auckland and the allegation that it was they who planted the limpet mines on Rainbow IVarrior.The Le Monde story led to the resignation of defence minister Hemu.
General Imbot is said still to be seeking a fifth man whom he wishes to question about leaks to the press.
This man, Captain Paul Barril, was formerly head of the National Gendarmerie Intervention Group (GIGN), a crack anti-terrorist unit. He had become a sort of James Bond figure in the popular French press until he was in effect dismissed in 1983.
Barril had been seconded from the GIGN to a special anti-terrorist co-ordination office at the presidential Elysee Palace in Paris. This unit was dissolved after a series of political scandals and conflicts between the Defence and Interior ministries. Barril was caught in the middle of the fight and suspended at his own request.
The GIGN also made the news in the Pacific earlier this year when one of its marksmen shot and killed the militant Kanak leader Eloi Machoro during an F.L.N.K.S. siege in about 50 years ago, is believed to have fled Europe with his wife in the wake of the communist repression of the 19505.
He came first to Australia and then went to Papua New Guinea where his rough diamond ways and obvious business acumen soon gained him considerable reputation.
In awarding bail, Judge McDermott accepted two sureties from the Pacific Adventist College at 14-mile, outside Port Moresby. The college, run by the Seventh-day Adventist Church, had agreed to let Davis and his wife, Irene, stay there until the end of the year. Mr Steel said the college had accepted Davis ’’purely on charity, with no other involvement. ”
Davis will have to report twice every day to the college principal and tell police if he wishes to leave the college premises.
Judge McDermott said that by comparison with the general nature of cases brought before the courts he was not satisfied the receiving and misappropriation charges laid against Davis were of a serious nature.
Earlier, Davis was fined 4400 kina (about Austss72o) for possession of bird of paradise plumage and 22 dried skins, in breach of the Fauna Act. He was also fined 60 kina (about Austs7B), for running a secondhand car dealership without a licence and SOOkina (about Austs6so) on two charges of unlawfully possessing firearms.
The victim vessel Rainbow Warrior. .. the name will not go away 29
“Rainbow Warrior”
Continued from page 15 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
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By implication there is much still to embarrass the French in the Auckland trial, set to begin on November 4, of DGSE agents Captain Dominique Prieur and Major Alain Mafart.
Indeed the flames of French ire have licked even at President Mitterrand himself, and his prime minister, Laurent Fabius.
At the end of September the French newspaper, Le Figaro said president Mitterrand ’’knew about the involvement of French agents,” knew that his defence minister, Hemu, had ordered the Rainbow Warrior to be ’’neutralised,” and knew that the equivalent of US$6OO,OOO had been granted from secret funds administered by the office of prime minister Fabius. All of this was conveyed to the president by the prime minister on July 17, said the newspaper.
This was after the bombing had occurred, but well before the French government stopped denying any knowledge of the affair.
As late as September 27 Fabius was saying in television interviews that it was September 21 before he learned the truth of official French involvement.
On October 1 the independent French news magazine Le Point ran a story linking senior aides of President Mitterrand with the Rainbow Warrior bombing. The article said that three of the president’s senior people met with the then DGSE chief, Admiral Lacoste, several weeks before the July 10 bombing in Auckland harbor.
The magazine said the meeting took place about mid-May in the office in the Elysee Palace of the president’s secretarygenerakl, Jean-Louis Bianco, and was attended by diplomatic adviser, Hubert Vedrine and military counsellor, General Jean Saulnier. Admiral Lacoste allegedly told them he had an agent inside the Greenpeace organisation. This operative, Christine Gabon, had described the extent of the confrontation Greenpeace planned. ”It was decided then to study measures appropriate to the new situation,” said Le Point.
Several French, British and other newspapers had run stories linking French officialdom with the planning of the sabotage ... indeed several reported that Defence Minister Hemu had angrily ordered that Rainbow Warrior be ’’neutralised” and it was this which the over-reacting DGSE had interpreted as a clearance for a bombing.
But Le Point’s story was the first alleging that the presidential office was in on this planning.
Nobody knows how accurate these stories might be, but there is a growing body of opinion that while some French ministers and bureaucrats were undoubtedly guilty of plotting the destruction of Rainbow Warrior, much of the continuing furore may be aimed more at undermining President Mitterrand than at digging out the truth.
The French government continued to limit official comment on the affair.lt has admitted that DGSE agents planted the bombs which ripped the Rainbow Warrior’s hull and killed the Greenpeace photographer, Fernando Pereira. Prime Minister Fabius hoj blamed Charles Hemu and Admiral Lacoste for ordering the attack. But that is as far as the government will go. They say the matter is closed. But, in the intensity of French politics in the lead-up to the next elections, very obvious efforts are being made to keep the debate going, assisted, inevitably, by the spies’ trial in Auckland this month.
Staff Writer. 30 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —NOVEMBER, 1985
“Rainbow Warrior”
trade winds
Worry Over Tuna
Islands ask fishers to 'fess up on catches As the economic importance of the South Pacific tuna industry continues to grow Pacific island countries are stepping up the pressure on American, Japanese, and Korean purse seine fishing vessels to put their cards on the table about just what they are catching and where.
As things stand there is more misinformation than truth, and quite a lot of heat under a variety of collars on both sides of the problem.
The fishing boats do not like being constrained, and the island nations object to what a good many of them see is the rape of their prime, and in some cases only, real economic asset.
They don’t mind the fish being caught; they do object to not making any money out of it.
Some tuna men, and particularly the American Tunaboat Association, respond by saying that tuna are migratory, that the whole ocean is their territory (and not just the Pacific Ocean at that), so why should anyone pay simply because the tuna happened to be caught on its way through someone’s exclusive economic zone? The Japanese, particularly, and also some other major tuna fishing nations, including the Soviet Union, have negotiated licence deals with many island nations within whose 200-mile zones their boats operate. But others, including the Americans, who have stood on what they see as their rights to the freedom of the seas.
It is a long-standing and interminable argument, but it is beginning to have serious political consequences outside the fishing industry, as evidenced by the deal Kiribati has done with the Soviet Union.
At the same time as this row is developing there is parallel concern about tuna stocks. Are they being over-fished? Some say yes, others dismiss the idea.
Scientists charged with finding the truth say they lack proper information, partly because tuna boats don’t report accurately or fully what they are doing.
All of this came up for discussion at the recent fisheries technical conference held by the South Pacific Commission (SPC), at Noumea. Finding more data about tuna populations was “a matter of urgency,” the conference concluded.
The urgency of the problem was increased, everyone agreed, because the licensing of distant-water fishing fleets was seen as a major new source of revenue for some countries.
Many countries are also planning to step up their own exploitation of the tuna resource, with their own small fleets and shore facilities.
Kiribati, which has sold a licence to the Soviets, has also been given a trawler, a wharf and a freezer facility under Japanese and E.E.C. aid programs.
Scientists speaking at the Noumea conference said: “The long-term success of these ventures depends ultimately on the magnitude of the tuna resource and the extent to which it can sustain exploitation.” But, they confessed, they had insufficient information on either vital aspect of the industry.
The SPC began tuna-tagging in 1977 under its Tuna and Billfish Assessment Program.
“Lured in part by the large stocks estimated by the SPC, large scale purse seining has been introduced with impressive success, and catches have increased from very low in 1978 to over 350,000 tonnes in 1984,” the scientific report to the conference said.
Initial studies by the SPC concentrated on skipjack tuna, and over 150,000 skipjack in the central and western Pacific were tagged and released to try to understand their migration patterns and the interactions between neighboring fisheries.
Using information from the 6200 skipjack tags returned, scientists concluded that skip- All the weight brought to bear for the Fisheries meeting in Noumea ... the delegates assembled. 31 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —NOVEMBER, 1985
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jack are capable of extensive migrations, and that there are no clearly differentiated geographical stocks.
The program also concluded that although the skipjack tuna resources of the whole region are very large, in some countries the catch was approaching the limits of what could be sustained without affecting local fish populations.
In recent years, the SPC’s tuna program has concentrated on yellowfin. Purse seine catches of yellowfin tuna in the western Pacific have increased ten-fold from around 10,000 metric tonnes in 1978 to estimates of around 100,000 metric tonnes in 1984.
Fisheries scientists with the SPC have been looking at two questions; what is the effect of this increase on the overall stocks of yellowfin in the western Pacific, and what is the effect of purse seining on longline fishing? These questions can only be answered accurately if both purse-seiners and long-liners report their catches.
But these details are not easy to get.
Several scientific research methods have had to be abandoned because of a lack of data, the scientists say, and the tuna assessment program has made its tentative conclusions based on catch records submitted by Japanese fishing vessels.
Dr John Sibert, head of the tuna assessment program, says that this data indicates that despite catch rates 10 times higher than in the late 19705, yellowfin tuna stocks have not been severely affected. “There is no evidence that the western Pacific yellowfin surface stocks vulnerable to purse-seining have declined,” he said.
But he added a strong note of caution.
“There is definitely something going on with the tuna population. We must monitor the situation closely to see when the fishing effort begins to affect the fishery. These kinds of estimates can be misleading, because people think they can fish at a high effort forever,” he said.
“We have not attempted to calculate the size of the yellowfin tuna resource,” he went on.
“We just don’t have enough data to do that.”
Yellowfin tuna catches in 1984 were worth US$23O million, according to the Forum Fisheries Agency. Purse seiners generally catch tuna which stay closer to the surface, often the younger and smaller fish, while the older, larger, fish, which do much of the breeding, are the target of long-line fishermen.
Long-line fishing is more selective. Last year about twothirds of the yellowfin long-line catch went to the Japanese sashimi and sushi market, representing an economic value about three times greater than the equivalent weight of purse seine-caught fish.
Are the purse seiners affecting the long-line catches? The available data suggests not, says Dr Sibert, although longline catch rates in the last two years are substantially down compared with 1979, and have in fact been declining for at least a decade.
But there could be a time lag before any impact of purse seining on long lining is shown, because of the difference in the age and size of the fish targeted by the two types of vessels.
Scientists also have several other hypotheses, but these are impossible to check without more information from fishing vessels.
What Dr Sibert terms “the shoot-out at Data Gap” is a regular event faced by the tuna fisheries scientists. The data that are available come from records supplied by vessels to island countries in the western Pacific as a condition of access arrangements which allow the vessels to fish within the 200mile exclusive economic zones.
But the available records don’t always cover international waters, and they are incomplete in many other areas.
The American Tunaboat Association has come under fire for failing to provide fishing records prior to 1984. Earlier catch rate information is considered important to establish longer-term trends, and to document changes related to the unusual oceanographic phenomenon several years ago, known as El Nino.
“We can’t answer questions about what the tuna assessment program would show if we had all the data from the American vessels,” Dr Sibert told the conference. “I don’t see why we couldn’t ask the A.T.A. to supply the data prior to 1984 it’s ancient history to them, but it would be of great value to us.”
Australia’s delegate to the Noumea conference, Mr Bill Hughes, recommended that the U.S. be asked to supply information for 1982 and 1983.
“Those are two critical years which might give us further information on where we are headed with the tuna fishery,” he said.
New Zealand’s representative, Mr John McKoy, agreed, saying, “it is desirable to get the most complete set of data possible. But it is not just U.S. vessels for which we have incomplete data. We need more also from Korea and Japan.”
American Tunaboat Association president, Mr August Felando, told the conference: “We do have some problems with the confidentiality of the information we might supply.
Of course, there is some concern about exactly what use the data would be put to. We’re for using it for scientific and conservation purposes, but we are against any use for competitive purposes. ”
Mr Felando was assured by SPC delegates and staff that all information given to the tuna assessment program remained confidential.
In a later interview with Pacific Islands Monthly Mr Felando explained: “We have entered into agreements with various people to retain confidentiality.
It is more than a promise within our own membership we have agreements with others.”
He declined to specify which others.
“We’re not concerned that the information might be used for management of the resource,” he said. “We are already subject to that in the Atlantic. We have the greatest concern for the resource.”
The conference sent a recommendation to South Pacific Conference in Solomon Islands at the end of September that the tuna assessment program be extended beyond its scheduled end in September, 1986, to continue study of the resource.
Fisheries scientists want to embark on another major tuna tagging project. Additionally they will use data from Pacific island and foreign fishing vessels, to provide an assessment of the potential for further expansion of tuna fishing in the region.
“But further analysis (of the tuna resource) may be an exercise in arm-waving, unless we get more complete data from the fishing vessels,” Dr Sibert warned.
Kathy Johnston in Noumea, and staff writers.
A Japanese purse-seiner hauls up a catch of skipjack tuna somewhere in the Pacific. 33 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
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Cook Is. go aviating Competition for airline landing rights in the Cook Islands has boiled up with news that the Cook Islands government has taken control of Rarotonga’s international airport under a new agreement signed in August by the New Zealand prime minister, David Lange, and Sir Thomas Davis, prime minister of the Cooks.
The deal effectively opens Cook Islands skies to all comers and ends what has been a near monopoly for Air New Zealand.
Sir Thomas reports high interest, particularly from Australian airlines, in providing connections out of Sydney to Rarotonga by way of Melanesia and Polynesia. The Cook Islands lie strategically-placed in the line of islands running due east from the Queensland coast - New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Fiji, the Samoas and Tonga, the Cooks and French Polynesia. Some, like Fiji and French Polynesia, have major tourist industries.
All the others have plans to develop in the industry.
Rarotonga airport was built by the New Zealand government in the 1970 s under an aid package and until now it has been administered by the N.Z.
Department of Civil Aviation.
The runway is capable of taking a Boeing 747, although not at full load, and Air New Zealand has been operating both those airliners, and smaller Boeing 737 twin-jets out of Auckland.
Of Australian airlines vey likely to be interested in the Rarotongan connection, Ansett already has a toe-hold through its interest in Polynesian Airlines, which it runs in conjunction with Air Vanuatu. Ansett, which made a very spirited bid to take over Fiji’s Air Pacific (now run by Qantas under a three-year management contract) is expected to display the greatest enthusiasm for boosting services from Sydney.
Polynesian Airlines has regular services to Apia, Western Samoa, and also flies to Port Vila, in Vanuatu, and it is thus already possible to make an island-hopping trip with Ansettmanaged aircraft to Rarotonga by way of those ports.
Sir Thomas Davis has been critical of Air New Zealand, saying the line has neglected good tourism potential out of Australia and North America to the Cook Islands. ’’There is no way Air New Zealand would look after our Australian market because of a conflict with New Zealand’s own tourist industry. ”
On present figures Sir Thomas is picking up a lossmaking enterprise which until now has been subsidised by the New Zealand taxpayer.
The airport costs about NZ$2 million a year to run and returns about NZ$5OO,OOO in revenue.
Air New Zealand claims it has been subsidising its services out of Auckland at a cost of several millions a year, but during the last six months the Cooks has become more attractive to holidaying Kiwis, and Air New Zealand aircraft have been flying in fairly much full. Sir Thomas is confident the airport would break even with the addition of only two more international flights. Indeed, he is more interested in boosting tourism, particularly from Australia, than in actually making the airport do much more than meet its costs.
Within this concept is the recent decision to increase tourist capacity by spending SNZ7 million on extending the Rarotongan Hotel to add another 108 beds.
Of the 33,000 tourists who visit the Cooks each year about 55 per cent now come from New Zealand and 25 per cent from Australia.
The airport takeover will not cause undue problems to the Cooks because the facility is almost totally localised already.
Only four New Zealanders are still on the staff, and Sir Thomas said the handover agreement provided for New Zealand technical assistance when required.
Around Avarua, the Cooks capital, the euphoria of having one’s own airfield has caught on. Local entrepreneurs are talking of building new roads into Rarotonga’s tiny, rugged, interior to develop new hotel sites, just as they have done in nearby Tahiti.
There are definite plans to expand tourism on the tiny beautiful atoll of Aitutaki which has the picture book qualities of an ideal Polynesian atoll. Good landing strips are already established on nearly all of the country’s islands and atolls,and the days of copra boat travel for tourists is now pretty much a thing of the past.
Roy Vaughan in Rarotonga.
The managers, gathered from all over the world, discussed product development, corporate objectives and methods of achieving greater efficiency and more professional customer service in today’s highly competitive marketplace.
Within the conference, regional forums were held to discuss critical issues affecting the insurance industry including the enormous bills faced by insurers in the wake of the big cyclones which hit Fiji Eric and Nigel in January and Gavin and Hina in March, 1985.
The situation in Vanuatu, where Cyclone Nigel caused damage, was also considered.
One of the major areas of discussion was the shrinking and hardening of world reinsurance markets, reflecting the generally more difficult business insurers are facing world-wide.
Pacific regional executives of QBE Insurance (International) Ltd., met in Sydney late September during the company’s international conference. Left to right: Tony Gouldson, branch manager, Wellington, New Zealand; John Laidlaw, regional manager, Pacific; Ron Jackson, general manager, Queensland Insurance, Fiji; Dan Carroll, manager, Vanuatu; Brian Cottrill, manager, International division; lan Brown, manager, New Zealand; Tom Sarti, general manager, Queensland Insurance, Papua New Guinea; Eddie Gordon, manager, Pacific agencies (Tahiti and New Caledonia). 37 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
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books A “first” in the study of New Caledonia’s politics Politics in New Caledonia By Myriam Domoy. Published by Sydney University Press, 1984. xvi + 302 pages. ISBN 0 424 00101 2. Price $A32.50.
Readers with an interest in the South Pacific will be indebted to Dr Domoy for her study of post-war politics in New Caledonia, extending from 1945 to 1978 with a postscript covering the years 1978-82. This is the first close political analysis, either in English or French, to be made of the territory which, in spite of its small population of 145,000, has in the past year caught the attention of countries of the South Pacific and galvanised political circles in France.
Being French, Dr Domoy has an easy grasp of a French colonial system. She has made wide use of printed French sources and personal interviews with a broad cross-section of the Caledonian community.
However, she is also at home in the English-speaking world. At the Sorbonne in Paris she studied the Black Panthers movement in the United States.
The present book was written in Australia at Monash University in Melbourne, while the author was a doctoral student in political science.
Political events are moving so fast in New Caledonia, especially since the successful boycott of the elections of November 18 last year, that political commentators are in great danger of falling behind the times. Dr Dornoy’s study might be thought to be dated because virtually all the Mitterrand regime, which came to power in 1981, lies outside the scope of her book. Her secret is to concentrate on the underlying structure of present-day New Caledonian society, a summary of which is set out in a brief and elegantly written introduction.
As a result the book is up-todate in spirit and very readable.
The choice of 1945 as the starting point for the study was well made. This was an important year in New Caledonia, when Melanesians began to take part in the political life of the territory. The author tells the story well. With the abolition of their old inferior status under the so-called indigenat, their acquisition of French citizenship, and their gradual admission to the electoral rolls, Melanesians soon occupied key political positions in opposition to the Noumea establishment.
In 1953, L’Union Caledonienne, whose slogan was deux couleurs, un seal peuple, won a majority of the 25 seats in the Territorial Assembly elections, and of its 15 seats nine were held by Melanesians. This coalition of “petits blancs” and Melanesians maintained a majority position in territory politics until the late 19605.
With the prosperity of the nickel boom Europeans began deserting to the conservative parties.
Melanesian politicians such as Yann Celene Uregei and Andre Gopea left to form specifically Melanesian parties and eventually opted for independence.
Today 1’ Union Caledonienne is almost an entirely Melanesian party. Under the leadership of Rock Pidjot and Jean-Marie Tjibaou, it is the principal political party within the Kanak pro-independence movement.
An extensive social and institutional setting for the strictly political analysis is an important feature of the book. This includes a chapter on the history of colonisation, which will remain of great value until a comprehensive history of the Statue of France’s General Olry in Noumea ... he is credited with putting down the most serious Kanak revolt against French rule in 1878.
island has been written. Chapters on population structure, the law and institutions, and the land problem and the economy enable the author to fully document her views of New Caledonian society. A special chapter is devoted to the church and its role in education, the trade unions and the media. As the church and the press have always had considerable influence in the colony, their inclusion is welcome. Since World War II unionism has played an ever-increasing role.
Although the historical chapter is sound in outline, it can be questioned on many points.
The author is too ready to rely on authors who have only a passing acquaintance with the island, such as Hartley Grattan and Andrew Coates. Her uncritical acceptance of historical myths, such as that a British annexation of New Caledonia was nipped in the bud by the French and that, as a result, the British naval commander responsible committed suicide he actually lived to become an admiral and died in his bed is a minor blemish. More serious is the uncritical acceptance of a spectacular decline in the Melanesian population shortly after annexation. The author is often careless with dates: for example, those for the founding of the leading Melanesian party, I’Union Caledonienne. This title was first used in the Territorial Assembly elections of 1953.
The polarisation of New Caledonian society between Noumea and the bush emerges from a study of the 1976 census. Dr Domoy’s conclusions are thoroughly confirmed by the census of April, 1983.
While some 80 per cent of Europeans and other non- Melanesian immigrant groups congregate in greater Noumea, the bush is predominantly Melanesian. Only about 900 agricultural enterprises in the hands of Europeans were operative up until 1984.
Educational and work force data illustrate the privileged position of the whites. The present minority position of the Melanesians (42 per cent) is shown to be the outcome of government-promoted immigration from France and the French territories of the South Pacific, especially Wallis and Futuna, in the 1960 s and early 1970 s to provide labor for the nickel boom. The benefits of the boom have gone primarily to the European community of Noumea whose privileged position is bolstered by financial contributions from France, amounting at times to 40 per cent of the gross domestic product of the territory.
Dr Dornoy shows that the French administration keeps a tight hold on key areas, including internal security, external affairs, immigration, justice, finance and communications. It also adminsters the municipalities and Melanesian affairs.
Territorial politics is regulated by a Statute which regularly changes to meet the needs of the French. Except for a brief period between November, 1984, and August of this year, the representative of the Republic, the High Commissioner, has always headed the terrritorial administration.
Since the end of World War 11, the French administration has aimed generally at keeping both the Melanesian and European communities at arm’s length, and since the late 1970 s has looked to the establishment of a multi-racial society, based on the premise that all Caledonians are French citizens with equal rights and duties. But such an attitude is totally foreign to Melanesian tradition. The view that Melanesians, as the original occupants, have sovereign rights is at the root of the Melanesian independence movement. It is greatly to Dr Domoy’s credit that she highlights this contrast, several years before the French Government in the Pisani plan recognised that a stable multi-cultural society could be built around Kanak sovereignty'.
Dr Dornoy’s book will help to break down the isolation of New Caledonia as a French territory in a predominantly English-speaking region of the world an isolation which goes beyond a difference of language, and is bolstered by the maintenance of political, administrative, financial and career systems tied to those of a distant European nation.
Barry Shineberg.
A bizarre shipwreck sparks a tale of greed The Golden Spike. By Ted Morrisby. Published 1984 by Brolga Books, 17 Main North Road, Menindie, SA 5081, Australia. ISBN 0 9099 12 12 2. Price $A16.95.
Without being too precious about it, I think one can argue that a good novel is more than merely a good story. It ought to tell readers things they didn’t know, encourage them to speculate about subjects they’d not previously pondered.
On both scores, The Golden Spike works well. It is precisely the sort of book one would expect from its author, and just the style of book every journalist says he’ll write one day but seldom does.
Morrisby was a journalist for more than 30 years, starting in Sydney before moving to London where he eventually transferred from newspapers to television current affairs and documentaries. He’s also a skilled yachtsman.
Wisely, he decided to base his book on that varied experience. I suspect his characters are also drawn from it and if that surmise is correct, he’d be a man worth meeting. If his gorgeous heroine is based on Mrs Morrisby, I’d be delighted to meet her, too, with or without her husband. I might add that if she’s based on someone else Mr Morrisby might have had a spot of explaining to do.
Be that as it may, The Golden Spike is rooted firmly in that most vigorous of human characteristics greed. It’s always had a bad image, but the plain fact is that a lot of things wouldn’t get done without it.
The problems start when it gets out of hand which it does with a will in this story.
As the author explains in a foreword, the tale is based on the bizarre loss in 1866 of the American square-rigger, General Grant. With 83 people and, more to the point, nine tons of gold aboard, the ship strayed off course while on the South Polar route from Melbourne to London via Cape Horn.
It ran into a cave in the Auckland Islands, south of New Zealand; as the tide rose, the Independentist leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou speaks at the 1981 funeral service for Pierre Declercq, a Frenchman who was secretary-general of the pro-independence Union Caledonienne and who was shot dead at his home in September of that year. The crime remains unsolved. 40 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
ship was forced to the roof and its masts speared through its bottom. Since then, no fewer than 19 expeditions have been mounted to find the ship and its gold; all have failed.
Enter John Barr, maker of TV documentaries. He is assigned to make a doco on an expedition mounted by a Pommy Polls millionaire to find the ship and its precious cargo.
Barr quickly finds himself entranced by the whole thing; his research takes on a life of its own as his reporter’s nose, aided by a dollop of luck, sniffs out information other treasure hunters had missed in the preceding decades.
Part of his luck is Wikitoria (Wiki) McFee, a gorgeous Maori green eyes, purpleblack hair, creamy skin, breasts “fit for a cavalier’s hand”, etc. etc.
It’s not wrecking the story for intending readers to report that Mr Barr and Miss Wiki find the gold. The question then posed, and one I won’t answer, is whether they can keep it.
I’ll certainly say that it’s in this area that the book develops some weaknesses. When the General Grant went to the bottom, 15 of the 83 people aboard survived. Ten were rescued 18 months later, largely due to the indomitable spirit of one James Teer, an Irishman who had lusted for gold all his life.
The author has the spirit of Teer return to John Barr, even to the point of dictating Barr’s actions. It doesn’t work at all well. Why does a hard-nosed reporter suddenly allow himself to be put to fright by a ghost? I found the frequent references to Teer’s bewitching of Barr annoying, the more so because it’s all so unnecessary. As mentioned above, honest greed would seem to me to be quite sufficient a spur for Barr’s actions.
Having said that, it would be churlish not to recognise three strengths of the book.
The first is dialogue, the skill which most first novelists lack.
Mr Morrisby doesn’t always get it right so that Barr often comes across as being too pompous to be totally believable. But for the most part the dialogue flows easily and credibly.
The other two areas where the book works well are in its background and in the sailing sequences (I use the word advisedly; the author has clear hopes of his story being filmed).
The landscape, of course, lends itself admirably to good descriptive writing the desolate Auckland Islands, New Zealand itself and the endless open space of the Pacific.
As to sailing, the blurb promises “one of the most graphic descriptions of a storm at sea since Conrad’s Typhoon”. It’s not in that class but it’s not at all bad, the reader having been painlessly educated in the ways of the sea in less testing episodes aboard a variety of craft.
At the end of the book, one feels comfortable with the key characters (or at least those of them that are still alive) and interested in their future. 1 doubt there’s a better way of commending a book than that.
As for Mr Morrisby’s future, one hopes he’ll be back with another story. He could do worse than tell the tale of those 15 survivors of the General Grant. Eighteen dreadful months on one of the more desolate islands the world has to offer? And just one of the 15 a woman? There’s got to be a good yarn there.
Ian Hicks. 134 years on, Tahitian dictionary republished A Tahitian and English dictionary, with introductory remarks on the Polynesian language, and a short grammar of the Tahitian dialect: with an appendix containing a list of foreign words used in the Tahitian bible, in commerce, etc., with the sources from whence they have been derived. Tahiti: printed at the London Missionary Society’s Press. 1851. ui, 314, 7 pp.
Republished in facsimile, with 17 pp. of addenda, by Haere Po No Tahiti. 1984. Price not given.
This dictionary has for some time been regarded by linguists and historians as a valuable source of information on the language and culture of Tahiti for the period of around 1810- 40. As such a source, and as one of the best examples of 19th century missionary lexicography in the Pacific region, its republication is a most welcome event.
No compiler credit appears on the original title page, but the introductory remarks of 1851 indicate (p. vi) that the dictionary “was arranged by the Rev. John Davies, of Papara”, and was actually substantially ready for printing by around 1839. However, logistic and other problems delayed publication until 1851.
The addenda in this republication include a brief account of Davies’ endeavors as missionary, historian and lexicographer between his arrival in Tahiti in 1801 and his death there in 1855, and a bibliography of his works.
David Walsh.
Story of a grand old Solomon Islander Kanaka Boy. An autobiography by Sir Frederick Osifelo.
Published by The Institute of Pacific Studies and the Solomon Islands Extension Centre of the University of the South Pacific. No price announced.
Sir Frederick Osifelo, a former Speaker of Solomon Islands Legislative Assembly, a leading light in the making of the country’s constitution, and the first Solomon Islander to receive a knighthood, made a light-hearted comment on his award of Knight Bachelor conferred in 1977 when he told the Legislative Assembly that his KB “really meant Kanaka Boy. ” His witticism has made it as the title of his slim volume of autobiography.
He touches lightly on many things, including the Japanese invasion, which merits a page and a half. But he underlines his profound religiosity, and there are many holy highlights in his book.
It also affords invaluable insights into the mind of a Solomon Islander, a mind without prejudice as he relates his role under “British Protection”, and the transition when Solomon Islands became independent on July 7, 1978.
John Carter. 41 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
Grappling with the art of the first encounter In the second of three instalments of the lecture by Professor Bernard Smith on “The Functions of Art on Cook’s Voyages” (The Dulcie Stretton Lecture, 1985) he discusses botanical illustration, the infant art of “ethnographic illustration,” and finally, the aesthetic element present in all forms of art practised on the voyages.
Although Banks’ scientific interests were wide-ranging, his central passion was botany. The study of botany on the Endeavour , and all that it opened out for subsequent scientific field work in the Pacific, was due entirely to Banks’ initiative. When he approached the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Egmont, for permission to travel with Cook, Egmont agreed, but added “we cannot find room for people skilled in Botany and the drawers of plants. ” But later, Phillip Stephens, Secretary to the Admiralty, smoothed things over and gained permission for Banks’ party to travel with him. It was Banks’ ambition to continue Linnaeus’ work in the Pacific; to collect and classify plants according to the Linnaean system. But there was also a strong practical bent to his interests. We must remember that he became a member of the Royal Society of Arts, the first organisation in Europe to promote the relationship between science and technology, even before he became a member of the Royal Society. It was Solander, his professional botanist, who first classified the breadfruit tree of Tahiti, and Parkinson who made the first drawing of it. But it was Banks, with the enthusiasm of his Society of Arts colleagues in the West Indies, who energetically got behind the idea that resulted in the Bounty voyage, in the hope that the African slaves in the West Indian plantations might be taught to prefer breadfruit to banana.
Undoubtedly the greatest artistic achievement of the Endeavour voyage lies in the quality of the botanical illustrations produced by Sydney Parkinson, and it is pleasing to note that this has at last been adequately recognised in the fine book on Parkinson recently published by the British Museum of Natural History and edited by D. J. Carr. Like the coastal profiles, botanical illustrations were drawn within well-defined graphic conventions. A flowering specimen had to be collected in order to be classified according to 42 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —NOVEMBER, 1985
Linnaeus’ sexual system. George Ehret, who worked with both Linnaeus and Banks, provided a graphic key for Linnaeus’
Systemae Naturae (1759). Parkinson had to delineate carefully the structure of the flower and the ramification of the leaves, and note the colors before the plant faded.
A specimen was first collected and then described and classified by Solander. Parkinson made a preliminary drawing noting essentials. Later a finished drawing was made, either by Parkinson or a botanical illustrator back in London, then an engraving was cut for publication. Parkinson worked with great skill and assiduity during the vouage and produced over 1000 drawings of plants, many only basic sketches. From these Banks had about 740 plates engraved, but for some reason never fully explained he did not publish the engravings. Perhaps Banks, who became a particularly despotic president of the Royal Society, chose in the end not to publish, preferring that the world of science should beat a way to his house at Soho Square if they were interested in the material he had collected in youth at such hazard to his life. However, the Alecto press has recently published Banks’ engravings at great expense in a magnificent edition, by the time-consuming a la poupe method favored by the famous French 18th-century botanical illustrator, P.-J. Redoute. It is an astoundingly beautiful series, but it is most unlikely that Banks would have ever contemplated publishing his plates in color. That was not the practice among English men of science, and would have been beyond even his means.
The third important category of Cook voyage art is the kind we should now call ethnographic illustration. It is curious that Alexander Buchan, who was taken to draw the figures and dresses of native people, wasn’t at all skilled at drawing the figure. Despite the late Dr Lysaght’s energetic efforts, we still possess no reliable knowledge of Buchan prior to his joining Banks on the Endeavour, and it’s something of a mystery why he was chosen.
When the Endeavour reached Tierra del Fuego Banks asked Buchan to draw a sketch of the first encounter with the local Indians, in the Bay of Good Success. He then developed this sketch into a gouache painting. Meagre, rudimentary as it is, it is of considerable historic importance for it is one of the earliest drawings to survive made by a European artist of an encounter with a primitive, non-literate people, that was made at the actual moment of encounter. It is also the only drawing of an event in the Endeavours voyage in which European confronts non-European.
It was only as Cook gradually became aware that his voyages were making history that such encounter drawings and paintings became an increasingly important aspect of Cook voyage art.
Perhaps on the Endeavour both Cook and Banks soon realised that the three artists on board did not possess the kind of skill required for this kind of history painting.
What Buchan could produce with reasonable skill were drawings of native artifacts. But when he came to draw a man, and then a woman, of Tierra del Fuego, I suspect that he had recourse to an engraving by John Pine to assist him, which he would have found in Shelvocke’s Voyages, a copy of which Banks had taken with him. In the 18th century when learning to draw the figure or anything else, one usually began by copying engravings. These are, however, finished drawings, developed from sketches made in the field. Slight and perfunctory though these field drawings are, they rest at the base of the whole ethnographic, visual enterprise.
They served a variety of functions. They could be used by Banks as an aide-memoire for writing up his journal, or by the artist, at some convenient time later on the voyage, to make a developed drawing, or they could be handed over to artists in London as a basis for preparing drawings for engravings to illustrate the published accounts of the voyages. For example, two field drawings by Parkinson of Maoris defying their enemies were used to provide the finished drawing for the engraving that later appeared in his Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas published by his brother Stanfield after Sydney’s death. Field drawings of Polynesian dancers at Raiatea, by Parkinson, were later handed over by Banks to the neo-classical draughtsman Cipriani. From them and the verbal accounts of Raiatean dancing, Cipriani made a drawing which Bartolozzi engraved for Hawkesworth’s Account of the voyage. Cipriani also made a painting, which recently came to light in Sussex. It had been erroneously attributed to John Webber.
Sydney Parkinson had not been trained as a figure draughtsman A crowded Maori war canoe drawn by Heinrich Sporing (above) and by Sydney Parkinson (left). “Sporing depicts an indiscriminate pack. But Parkinson, having read Hogarth’s Analysis of Beauty carefully (a copy of which he took on the Endeavour with him), has learnt how to compose an ordered composition, grouping and articulating his figures as a Greek sculpture might have done on a pediment or frieze.”
First encounter - Alexander Buchan in this 1969 drawing depicts “inhabitants of the island of Terra del Fuego in their hut.” 43 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
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Construction Equipment Co. 24 Salisbury Road, Hornsby NSW 2077, Australia. Phone (02) 476 2666 SAL &FLSTS3E and although he drew some figures for Banks at Banks’ special request, I am convinced that he considered that his responsibility to Banks stopped with his natural history drawing for which he was being paid; and his other drawings were made for himself with a view to publication in his own journal. This was Stanfield’s view and I think that it is the correct one, and dealt with it in some detail in Volume I of the Art of Captain Cook’s Voyages. Most historians tend to favor or exonerate Banks in his quarrel with Stanfield Parkinson and thus obscure the independent contribution that Sydney Parkinson made to the voyage. In a parallel fashion, but for different reasons, the important scientific work of the Forsters, father and son, on the second voyage, has tended to be obscured by over-patriotic British or imperial historians.
Although all the categories of art practised on Cook’s voyages were primarily of a documentary and informational character, an aesthetic element is everywhere present, and it may be seen at work tending to combine the documentary categories into a new kind of landscape and figure painting, the kind which I have called typical landscape, and becomes common in Europe and elsewhere during the first half of the 19th century.
Consider Parkinson. Though trained as a botanical illustrator he clearly possessed aspirations to become an artist in the Royal Academy sense of the word. Many of his wash drawings were obviously made entirely for aesthetic pleasure, such as his picturesque View up the (Matauai) River among Rocks. More often he combined a sense of picturesque composition with the requirements of documentary art as in his drawing of a Marae in Raiatea. Here he is already foreshadowing the kind of landscape I have called typical landscape.
We may notice Parkinson’s feeling for aesthetic form by comparing the drawing by Heinrich Sporing (whom Banks called in to draw for him after Buchan’s death Sporing was Banks’s secretary) of a crowded Maori war canoe, with one of a similar subject by Parkinson. Sporing depicts an indiscriminate pack. But Parkinson, having read Hogarth’s Analysis of Beauty carefully (a copy of which he took on the Endeavour with him), has leamt how to compose an ordered composition, grouping and articulating his figures as a Greek sculptor might have done on a pediment or frieze. • To be concluded, PIM December Engraving by Thomas Chambers, 1773, based on Parkinson: “A Man, Woman & Child, Natives of Terra del Feugo in the Dress of that Country.” 44 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
tropicalities Offshore historians enjoy the experience I feel like a fraud,” announced Convenor David Routledge, in his opening remarks. “There should be a Pacific Islander in my place.” His viewpoint had more than a few supporters at the mid-year fifth conference of the Pacific History Association which was held at the University of the South Pacific, Suva.
In quick time, however, there were two Pacific Islanders, and outstanding ones at that, in Dr Routledge’s place on the rostrum of the USP’s main lecture theatre.
In order of appearance they were the Honorable Ratu David Toganivalu, Fiji’s Deputy PM, who delivered the opening address, and Professor Albert Wendt, USP’s Professor of Pacific Literature, who presented the keynote lecture.
These details alone were sufficient to distinguish PHA 1985 from its four predecessors, but there were others and not the least of them was the venue itself it was the first such conference held outside Australia.
It was probably appropriate then that the organisation of the Suva conference, for which Professor Ron Crocombe, incumbent president of the association and Professor of Pacific Studies at the USP, was largely responsible, should have attempted to shift the bias in favor of Islander concerns.
And although the opening night presence of Ratu David Toganivalu and Professor Wendt had less to do with Pacific history than with good entrepreneurship on Crocombe’s part, what they had to say reinforced the strong sub-text of the conference that Pacific Islanders should be the ultimate intellectual arbiters of Pacific History.
The rod to lay upon colonial history’s backside was taken up with particular vigor by Professor Wendt, who charged papalagi (European) historians with erasing the historical memory of Islanders in order to replace it with their own. “We are what we remember,” declared Professor Wendt, but an alien memory had for too long been substituted for an indigenous one. This experience, of course, is not peculiar to Pacific Islanders Africans and Indians (American and Asian) were victims of it also. But neither is intellectual colonialism peculiar to Europeans consider those cultures overcome by Islam.
Never mind, Professor Wendt was in splendid rhetorical form and those whom he didn’t fully Above: Historians afloat ... John Garrett (standing, left) and David Routledge (right) convene a seminar on the Rewa River delta. Top: Convenor David Routledge... “I feel like a fraud ...” - Norman Douglas Pacific Profiles photos. 45 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
convince, he at least managed to confuse. “What on earth was all that about?” asked one bewildered delegate afterwards.
The conference was showered with a plethora of papers fitted, not always comfortably, into nine separate categories and covering almost every historical concern from the influence of climatic change to labor relations and trade unionism.
This abundance meant that as many as four sesssions were being conducted simultaneously and made it impossible for even the most agile delegate to get the benefit of more than a fraction of the proceedings. This was typical academic super-marketing, some distance away from the association’s original more relaxed purpose. Any estimate of the conference’s quality, therefore, has to be based partly on a restricted sample and partly on hearsay.
Gender Relations, among the best attended series of papers, turned out for the most part to be not about relations at all but almost exclusively about the position of women. This is certainly a valid re-discovery of the past, since Pacific history, or most other history for that matter, has to date been almost exclusively about men. Revisionist interpretation not conspicuously underpinned by feminist theory on the part of Penelope Schoeffel, Caroline Ralston, Margaret Jolly, Patricia Grimshaw and Judith Binney effectively enhanced the status and significance of islands women, both the high born and the commoners, in some cases blaming the suppression of women’s role on the “colonial memory”.
But the most impressive contribution to the gender cause came from Niel Gunson of the Australian National University, one of Pacific history’s most erudite scholars, who temporarily vacated missionary history, the field for which he is best known, to deliver a splendid paper on “Sacred Women and Female Headmen (!) in Polynesian History”.
Not far from the Gender room with its mostly female scholars, was the Penetration room, where a number of mostly male academics examined early alien contacts with the Pacific Islands, ranging from David Hanlon’s treatment of first encounters on Pohnpei (Ponape) to Robert Langdon’s accounts of historical associations between Peru and Easter Island. Langdon had recently been in both places and brought even more than usual of his customary enthusiasm to his expositions. The Penetrationists, however, had the misfortune to be on the same bill as Professor Oskar Spate, a hard enough act to precede but an even harder one to follow. (It says something for the significance of the Suva gathering that both Professor Spate and Professor H.
E. Maude were present. These two masters of their craft and godfathers of the association had been present at the first conference in 1980, but had missed the intervening three conferences.) Elsewhere, the past was being re-discovered in a number of ways. The rather blandsounding category “Social and Political History” was used to embrace a variety of inputs, from Japanese policy in Palau during the Mandate to an appraisal of Solomon Islands first colonial capital, Tulagi.
In these sessions of very variable quality, however, there were papers by Malama Meleisea and Simione Durutalo which successfully undermined the received wisdom about Dr Wilhelm Solf of Samoa and Sir Arthur Gordon of Fiji respectively, showing them to be something less than the beneficent enlightened administrators that standard works of Pacific history have claimed. This was revisionism at its most effective, the re-discovery of the Pacific’s colonial past by indigenous scholars.
I was unable to attend any of the several papers on religious history (in addition to the Gender and Penetration rooms there was also a Lotu room), and didn’t speak to anyone who had done so; and, because of the somewhat confused programming and frequent changes of schedule, heard only fragments of the presentations on Historiography. Other sessions which looked promising, at least on paper, fizzled out when scheduled participants either changed their topics or failed to appear at all, a problem not encountered in previous conferences of the association.
By the time of the association’s general meeting on the fifth day of the conference, several delegates were beginning to show signs of mental and physical weariness the latter contributed to by two rewarding but exhausting “historical” tours on the weekend; one to Naililili Mission and the Rewa Delta, the other to Fiji’s fascinating old capital, Levuka.
Some delegates, victims of quirky international flight connections, had already departed.
The meeting produced no surprises, except perhaps for the large numbers of Pacific Islands students who had been generally absent from most of the other proceedings, and a particularly tactless criticism of the “Canberra School” of Pacific history at the AND from an Australian historian whose enthusiasm for what seemed like her first trip to the islands was allowed to temporarily obscure her judgment.
There was general agreement that the first islands-based PHA conference had been a success thanks largely to Professor Crocombe, who knew all along that it would be. ANU doctoral graduate Crocombe, the association’s retiring president, handed the presidency over to ANU doctoral graduate Professor Sionc Latukefu who, with characteristic sincerity, described the five day affair as a “beautiful conference”, a view which most of the 150 or so historians, anthropologists, political scientists, linguists and geographers who had been present appeared to share.
Norman Douglas.
Professor Oskar Spate addresses the Pacific History Association’s fifth conference in Suva ... a hard act to precede, an even harder one to follow.
Incoming Pacific History Association president Sione Latukefu (left) assumes the mantle from outgoing president Ron Crocombe. 46 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
Fiji’s Fabulous Fong Fiji triumphed at the inaugural Pacific Bowls Championship held at Tweed Heads, New South Wales. The venue is known far and wide as the ”Taj Mahal” of bowling clubs, with facilities which are, simply, sumptuous. And it was a fitting background for the splendid performance of Fiji’s husband and wife team, Peter and Willow Fong.
Peter took the gold for the men’s singles after dropping only one game to Rudi Wild, of Papua New Guinea, and then beating the hot favorite, Denis Katunarich, of Australia, in the last round.
Peter also partnered Peter Thaggard to win the bronze medal in the pairs competition.
Willow Fong, partnered by Janki Gaundar, won the bronze medal in the women’s pairs, and then went on to win the bronze in the fours with Filo O’Meagher, Miri Seru and Robin Foster.
The wins were all the more remarkable as the Australian greens run much faster than those in Fiji and the Australian home team therefore had considerable practical advantage, as well as the benefit of playing on their own ground.
Peter Fong is the most successful bowler in Fijian history and a three-times Commonwealth Games competitor.
He took up the sport in 1969, five years before his wife. ”We play with the same club in Nausori (just outside Suva in Fiji), but we rarely team up,” he said. ”If we are together on the green we can’t get on at home.”
Willow agreed. ”We don’t play together because we usually have differing opinions on the game. Peter gives me plenty of advice, and plenty of telling-off. I listen sometimes but other times I’m stubborn.”
Peter Fong has won 19 singles and 11 pairs titles in Fiji and is rated very highly in world lawn bowls circles. He has been a regular competitor in regional and international events and is seldom out of the medal tallies.
Willow is a similarly good player, and although she has yet to match her husband’s remarkable collection of trophies, she, too, is rated as an exceptional international competitor.
In the Pacific championships Australia topped the overall medal tally with New Zealand a close second. Hong Kong and Fiji won four medals each, and Canada one medal.
Tiny Wendy Maybury of Papua New Guinea, the girl with the flashing smile, was unanimously voted the personality of the games by the Australian audiences. Indeed, all the Pacific players, with their exuberance and obvious enjoyment of the game, won the hearts, and the support, of the crowds which flocked in to see them play.
The next Pacific Games will be held in 1987 in Papua New Guinea.
Bill and Marion Bramwell in Tweed Heads.
Smiling faces in the Pacific Islands crowd at the bowling championships at Tweed Heads. Top: Wendy Maybury (left) and Bilu Kugame with their 10th anniversary of PNG independence badges on their shirts. Bottom: Peter and Willow Fong toast one another - in tea. 47 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
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Maori-Hawaiian ties celebrated at Bishop The recent “Celebrating the Maori” exhibition in Honolulu combined art works from the Bishop Museum collection with photographs of Maori carvings by New Zealander Brian Brake.
Conceived to honor the 50th anniversary of Te Rangi Hiroa’s (Sir Peter Buck’s) directorship of the Bishop Museum, the exhibition featured pieces from Buck’s personal collection and Maori art works collected in the 19th century by Eric Craig.
This exhibition gave the U.S. yet another opportunity to view Maori art (in addition to the Te Maori show currently in San Francisco).
But the direct interaction between the Maori and their cousins the Hawaiians made the Bishop’s opening unique and underscored the special meaning behind the exhibition.
For the first time in many years the Maori greeting cry karananga was answered by a Hawaiian greeting chant heahea , especially reactivated by Honolulu’s Hawaiian community for the occasion. Other old customs such as the honi (nose touching), the giving of leis, and the presentation of traditional Maori and Hawaiian songs and dances continued well into the night, making the opening a true Polynesian-style celebration.
However, perhaps the best vignette to illustrate the spirit of the Bishop’s Maori exhibition was the sight of an elderly Maori woman wearing her kiwi feather cape standing in front of the display case containing the kiwi feather cape of Te Rangi Hiroa (himself of Maori and European parents). The Maori lady was deep in conversation with her Hawaiian counterpart a woman dressed in a mumu with feather lei, and for an instant it was hard to tell where the museum exhibit left off, and the present began.
Caroline Yacoe. 13 days on the buses for Faaitua Logo The San Francisco Chronicle of August 21, 1985, reported: An elderly Samoan became lost and rode buses for 13 days before being rescued in San Francisco, police said yesterday.
Faaitua Logo, 72, unable to speak English, took bus after bus to the end of the line, only to climb on board the next one that came by, said his granddaughter, Levenia Lese.
He ended up 50 miles from the San Jose flea market where he was separated from his family on August 3, police said.
Speaking through an interpreter, he said he had been riding buses during the day and sleeping under trees or bushes at night.
Logo, who worked on banana plantations in American Samoa before moving to California two years ago, said he also “prayed morning, noon and night.”
When he got lost in the flea market crowd, he started walking in the hope that he would happen by his family’s home in Palo Alto, about 12 miles away.
Logo was found Friday when a passer-by, Jorge Michael, noticed him sitting on a comer saying, “Samoa.” A Samoan group was called and came to his aid.
“He was so happy seeing the first Samoan that he was crying,” said Julia Moliga, Secretary of the group Samoans for Samoa.
Movies “Make criminals”
Solomon Islands is having problems with its criminals and authorities blame theatres and books. They say the local badeggs are applying to local conditions the overseas criminal methods they learn from movies and books.
Solomon Islands Minister for Police and Justice, Swanson Konofilia, says that although increased crimes can be expected in free enterprise societies, his country needs a strong, organised, dedicated and disciplines police force.
Mr Konofilia says police officers must prevent crimes, protect lives and properties, apprehend offenders and keep law and order. But, in order for Solomon Islands policemen and women to carry out their duties effectively anf efficiently, they must receive relevant training, he said.
George Atkin in Honiara.
Tekoteko figure from the gable of a meeting house in Rotorua, New Zealand. The tekoteko represents the ancestor after whom the house was named. Eric Craig Collection purchased 1891. - Photo courtesy of Bishop Museum.
Maori group at opening of Bishop Museum’s Maori-Hawaiian exhibition in Honolulu. - Caroline Yacoe photo. 49 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
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Viles Tok Ples Skul is up and running in North Solomons RUTH SAOVANA- SPRIGGS, co-ordinator of the Viles Tok Pies Skul (VTPS) project in Papua New Guinea’s North Solomons Province, explains how the project works. She wants to make educators in other South Pacific countries “aware that there are ways of maintaining local languages and traditional customs and cultures.”
If modem civilisation, education, money, training in English and such things cannot afford an average person in the North Solomons Province of Papua New Guinea equal opportunity for the benefits and privileges of modem life such as higher education and a secure place in the job-sector of the economy what is there to offer them?
Babies draw their strength from mothers. The Viles Tok Pies Skul (VTPS) is like the “Mother of Resources.” Viles (village) Tok (talk) Pies (place) Skul (school) the VTPS are Schools of the Mother Tongue.
In these schools the children are taught to read, write and count in their local languages together with traditional history, culture and customs, traditional children’s games, songs and dances, with the addition of some Western pre-school skills some elements of science for example. It is a program designed for the two years before the child enters community school.
About five years ago the VTPS were established in the North Solomons Province. The project was born purely out of the constant demands for such schools by local people in the North Solomons Province. The high demand for education of this kind arose from the unmistakable fact of the rapid loss of local languages, customs and culture, traditional lore, and the like. It arose from loss of pride, but also from love of the local languages and traditional ways of living.
Earlier this year an ethnomusicologist from Australia, Mr B.
Lobban, had an encounter with a lad who has had VTPS education, and is now in grade two in community (elementary) school. Mr Lobban wrote: “The old saying, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, came immediately to my mind when I was travelling recently in the Haku language area of Buka. This area is one of the first to have a Viles Tok Pies Skul, with the program now in its fourth year.
“A colleague and I were staying with a local family whose nine-year-old grandson, Albert, had had two years training at VTPS before moving to the local community school. Of an evening while I was writing up my journal he would share the lantern light, beg paper and a pen, and then write sentences, only occasionally asking the spelling of a word.
“Often during our stay Albert said he wanted his photograph taken and finally I suggested that he and a small friend come down to the beach for a series of action pictures. They were both very pleased with this and were very vocal during the event.
“Walking back from the beach, and as we climbed the cliff, Albert talked non-stop in English. He chatted generally about the plants, wild life and village life. He was obviously thinking in English and his use of the language was much more sophisticated than what one normally hears in rural areas from nine-year-old boys. Comparing ALbert’s English language use with boys of his age from other parts of both PNG and other countries in the southwest Pacific showed he had a much better grasp of the structure of the language. His only real difference from these other boys was in his VTPS education program. He had first learnt formal language and writing skills in his own language at VTPS schools before having to cope with the new language.” 50 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —NOVEMBER, 1985
political currents
Fiji’S Nfp Still Upset
Will Irene lead a stampede?
Speculation is buzzing in Fiji that numbers of National Federation Party politicians are close to defecting to the newly-formed, multi-racial Labour Party, among them the former deputy leader of the NFP, Mrs Irene Jai Narayan.
She, and others sympathetic to the rebel “Youth Wing” of the party, are openly and sternly critical of the present leader, Mr Siddiq Koya, who sacked Mrs Narayan from her longtime position as deputy leader.
Significantly, this row has developed at a time when the trade union movement has entered parliamentary politics by founding the Labour Party with a group of national figures quite likely to find favor among many of the NFP’s erstwhile adherents or, to put it with possibly greater accuracy - NFP voters who support Mrs Narayan rather than Mr Koya, and they appear to exist in substantial numbers.
There was “nothing wrong” with the formation of the Labour Party, Mrs Narayan told the recent convention in Lautoka of the Youth Movement of the NFP.
Although Fiji Indian politics are notorious for passionate rhetoric and frequent refusal to recognise facts, the row within the NFP this time has all the earmarks of a major crisis. No love has ever been lost between the shrewd and sharp Mrs Narayan and the autocratic Mr Koya. Now there is open guerrilla warfare.
A good deal of the ire emerged during Mrs Narayan’s bitterly-critical speech to the Youth Movement convention.
She seemed to be saying that the Koya-led NFP had a death rattle.
“If anyone thinks the NFP can be strong again, then that person is fooling himself,” she said.
“It has no future and is no longer virile as an opposition.
An opposition party is supposed to question the government and keep it on its toes, but that is not the case here,” she said. She accused Mr Koya of having compromised himself to the point that he could not cross swords with the prime minister, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara. “Mr Koya and the Prime Minister meet in the Scotts Restaurant in Suva and that is where the future of the country is discussed,” she said.
When a party remained in power for a long time it formed the view that it was fire-proof, she said. “The Alliance government is acting in that fashion now.
“The recent crime commission report pointed out that the police force should be increased to combat the increasing crime in Fiji, but the government says it does not have the money. Yet the prime minister can make numerous overseas trips, taking 12 or more in his group each time.”
She complained, too, about government policy which gave 50 per cent of scholarships at the University of the South Pacific to Fijians while the remaining half had to be shared among the more numerous sector of the population made up of Indians, Chinese, Part-Europeans and others. Debate on such topics was stifled in parliament, she said.
Staff Writer.
“Increase practical aid to islands” - seminar The developed nations should increase their economic and technical aid to the tiny Pacific island countries to ward off the possibility of increased Soviet influence in the Pacific region, participants in a regional symposium in Tokyo said.
The recent Soviet offer of about US$2 million a year to Kiribati for fishing rights, and their concurrent approaches to other island nations, including Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Fiji and Papua New Guinea, could lead eventually to establishment of a land base and the entanglement of the islands in international political power plays.
This prospect worried some Australian and New Zealand politicians, diplomats and foreign affairs specialists, Garry Barker, publisher of the longestablished Pacific Publications group of Australia, and editor of Pacific Islands Monthly , told the annual symposium of Japan’s important Pacific Society. He said that the major nations should not ignore this development, no matter how mild it might seem in its present very early stages.
“Two million dollars is probably in the petty cash tins of the developed countries; a sum so small it is of quite little moment,” he said. ‘The small island countries might have tiny economies, and some of them may never be truly viable, but their position in the Pacific is strategically of great importance. Kiribati straddles the trade routes between Australia and Japan. If its exclusive economic zone is taken into account, it covers a huge area of the world. ‘‘We should pay closer attention to the needs and aspirations of the islands,” said Mr Mrs. Irene Narayan 51 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —NOVEMBER, 1985
Barker. “We should try to produce in them the ability to survive and to grow, and we should do that, not only because it can be seen as our humanitarian duty to spread prosperity, but also because of that most powerful and relevant of reasons, self-interest.” (Since the symposium Japan and the European Economic Commission have, in fact shown interest in Kiribati's fishing industry, and have provided significant aid and support, in equipment and capital).
Within this particular facet of a very wide problem lay the difficulties many island countries had with the Tuna Boat Association of the United States which refused to recognise national rights within e.e.z’s over catches of migratory fish like tuna. This tarnished the good and cooperative relationship which the U.S. had with almost every Pacific island nation.
The islands generally found very little in common with the Soviet Union. None had the slightest desire to become embroiled in the super-power struggle. And yet all had the need to survive and to develop as best they could the small resources available to them, he said.
The panel of speakers, which also included the ambassadors to Japan of Papua New Guinea, and Fiji, as well as Aoyama Gakuin University professor, Shinkichi Eto, agreed that Western nations should increase not only the quantity, but also the quality of their aid.
In many of the countries there was an elite class, educated abroad, and a larger class which either worked, or lived at subsistence level in traditional style villages. There was a shortage of qualified middle managers to organise and supervise workers. Professor Eto said.
“We need people to be trained to be experts.” said PNG Ambassador Joseph Nombri. "We need experts, too. If you do a job and don’t train somebody to take that job. then the idea of having assistance is lost to us.”
Western nations should make more effort to study the needs of the island peoples to properly channel aid, said Eto.
“People need to go there and see for themselves what is really needed; not what they think may be effective,” said Fiji ambassador Joseph Gibson.
While the size and remoteness of the countries has made it difficult to attract investment from the developed countries, the islands needed only small investments to achieve quite startling results. Ideas, enthusiasm, and a bit of capital were often of more value than elaborate projects, he said.
Ambassador Nombri said he worried that efforts such as those of the Pacific Basin Economic Cooperation Council would develop the Pacific region for the sole benefit of the major rim countries.
“1 would like to see Japan, as a leading nation in these discussions. focus on the Pacific islands to bring forth the views of the Pacific islanders, so they share resources equally and do not again become colonised peoples.” he said.
All speakers observed that Pacific islanders valued their independence and saw economic self-sufficiency as the way to protect it.
“We want to dispel the myth that the islanders are generally well-off and, with just a little help here and there, will continue to happily subsist with what they get from the land and the sea.” said ambassador Gibson.
“Independence who needs it?” says Coleman While the Micronesian trust territories administered by the United States have now set themselves on a course towards self-government, the only American-run enclave in the South Pacific seems much less anxious to loosen the ties that bind them to Uncle Sam.
Former governor of American Samoa, Peter Tali Coleman, in Rarotonga to watch the Forum meeting, and attend the Pacific Islands Conference sponsored by the East-West Center of Hawaii, sounded confident whenever he talked about the long-term future of his country’s dependent status.
“Who wants to be independent?” he demanded of journalists questioning him about his apparent lack of independence fervor. “What about Africans? Are they better off now they are independent? We are happy as we are.
“The United States has given us an opportunity to decide our future, and as of now we feel our present status is the best,” he said.
As an unincorporated territory of the U.S., American Samoa has the right to elect its own governor (now A. P. Lutali, who took over from Mr Coleman earlier this year), and legislative assembly. They manage most of their local affairs.
But, where their Pacific island neighbors sometimes have to scrimp and save a bit to get the material luxuries of life that is, if they decide they want their sometimes doubtful benefits Uncle Sam takes care of American Samoa’s major worries.
Indeed, the financial support from America now not only allows it to take care of itsei but a good deal of it spills over in the form of cash in neighbors’ pockets. About 90 per cent of the 5000 workers employed at the two fish canneries in Pago Pago come from nextdoor Western Samoa.
“We have a very close working relationship with Western Samoa,” said Mr Coleman.
“Remittances to families back home in one year would be worth between SUS 4 million and SUS 7 million.”
Additionally, it is an open secret that many a Western Samoan has gained work in Pago Pago, got himself a “green card” and toddled off to join the estimated 100,000 Samoans now living in Hawaii and Los Angeles.
American Samoa, with a population of 37,000, has an annual Budget of about S(JSBO million. One quarter of that is direct Budgetary support from Washington. In addition, there are annual Federal grants totalling SUSI 2 million, and a capital works program which is worth an average of a further SUSS million each year.
American Samoan children get free school lunches, and when they reach retirement age they get pensions.
The two tuna canneries set against the steep sides of Pago Pago harbor, owned by Van Camp and Star, handle about $2OO million worth of fish a year.
With all of those greenbacks coming in to keep American Samoa looking fertile, it seems unlikely, at least according to Mr Coleman, that any idealist in Washington would get much of a welcome on any suggestion that raise their own flag.
From Roy Vaughan in Rarotonga.
PIM’s Barker Ambassador Nombri Peter Tali Coleman 52 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
people The University of Papua New Guinea Council has announced approval of the appointment of Professor Timothy Beaglehole of New Zealand as the next UPNG vice-chancellor.
Until his appointment Professor Beaglehole was deputy vice-chancellor of Victoria University, Wellington.
The retiring UPNG vicechancellor, Dr Elton Brash, leaves Port Moresby this month for a post in Canberra.
Max Gaylard is Australia’s new high commissioner to Solomon Islands.
Mr Gaylard joined the Department of Foreign Affairs in 1968, and has served in Mexico City, Rangoon and Singapore.
The newly appointed director of New Zealand’s Pacific Island Affairs Unit is Tony Johns of Wellington.
Mr Johns will head the unit which has been set up to assist the Minister of Pacific Island Affairs, Richard Prebble, to promote the development of Pacific Island people in New Zealand.
Between 1979 and 1981 Mr Johns was secretary to Cabinet in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, being responsible for the establishment and operation of the Marshall Islands’
Cabinet Office. A barrister and solicitor, he has also served as legal adviser on Niue Island, and undertaken two short-term consultancies for the University of the South Pacific.
Dr. Te’o I. J. Fairbaim has been appointed acting director of the Pacific Islands Development Program (PIDP) at the East West Center, Honolulu.
He succeeds Filipe N, Bole, who has returned to Fiji to enter politics.
Fairbaim, from Western Samoa, completed his PhD in Pacific History (Economics), at the Australian National University, Canberra, in 1963. At PIDP for the last two years, he has been co-ordinator of the Indigenous Business and Private Sector Development Project, one of eight projects carried out by the program under the mandate of the standing committee of the Pacific Islands Conference.
PIDP was estabished in 1980 to help meet the special development needs of the Pacific Islands region through cooperative research, education and training. The program’s aim is to provide leaders in the Pacific with detailed information on issues that they have identified as being of urgent concern, and to offer alternative strategies for reaching development goals.
Dr Fairbaim has been a research specialist in the field of Pacific development economies. He has carried out consultancy planning work for the United Nations in the Cook Islands and Western Samoa, as well as for the South Pacific Commission and the South Pacific Bureau for Economic Cooperation.
Professor Andrew Horn has recently taken up the chair of English in the University of the South Pacific’s School of Education.
Professor Horn was bom in New York City and had all his undergraduate and graduate education in the United States, holding a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature from Dartmouth College, and a Masters degree in English literature from Columbia University.
From 1968 to 1985 he has taught literature and theatre in universities in a number of African countries.
He is an experienced broadcaster and actor, interests reflected in one of his books, Theatre in Community Development, which is in the process of publication by the Ford Foundation.
Now working with the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) is the former Cook Islands Minister for Post and Telecommunications, Mrs Fanaura Kingstone.
Mrs Kingstone is based at the ESCAP office in Port Vila, Vanuatu, but is expected to travel widely in her capacity as an adviser on social development.
When her term as minister was up, Mrs Kingstone returned to New Zealand, where she has played a leading role in the Cook Islands community.
Lawrance Bailey, former editor of the Cook Islands News, has left the employ of the Cook Islands Broadcasting and Newspaper Corporation to go into business on his own account.
The staff of the corporation farewelled him in traditional fashion with a feast also attended by the chairman of the board, Pomani Tangata, who thanked him for his service.
Sir Clinton Marcus Roper, for 17 years a High Court Judge in New Zealand, has been sworn in before the Queen’s Representative, Tangaroa Tangaroa, for a term of three years as Judge of the High Court of the Cook Islands.
Drs Emosi and Teremoana (nee Tupa) Puni have recently joined the staff of the Rarotonga Hospital, Cook Islands.
Mrs Puni is the first Cook Islands woman to have qualified as a medical doctor, having graduated from the Fiji School of Medicine in 1973.
With her husband, Samoanborn Dr Emosi Puni she has served in several hospitals in the region. Teremoana specialises in paediatrics and general medicine while Emosi specialises in obstetrics and gynecology.
Teremoana is glad to be back home and serving her own people and both doctors are looking forward to rewarding and useful service to the Cook Islands community. Neville Pearson.
Due in Tonga just after Christmas to give two concerts are the remarkable US pop group known as The Jets.
The Jets are the eight children of a Tongan couple, Mr and Mrs Maikeli I.
Wolfgramm, formerly of Matahau, Tongatapu, but now resident in Minneapolis, USA.
Their children Leroy, 19, Eddie, 18, Eugene, 17, Haini, 16, Rudy, 15, Kathy, 13, Elizabeth, 11, and Moana, 10 are regarded as the most successful group since the Jackson Five hit the American pop music scene a few years back.
Mr and Mrs Wolfgramm recently visited Tonga, where they were received by the king, to discuss arrangements for the December visit.
Early reports said that the group would be accompanied by an entourage of about 60, including reporters and photographers for major US newspapers, magazines, and TV networks.
On their way to Tonga the group will do promotions in Honolulu.
Half of the proceeds of the Tonga concerts, likely to be held at Nukualofa’s Mala’e Pangai, will be donated to the Tonga Red Cross.
Tony Johns . . . helping New Zealand’s Islander residents. 53 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
Francis Narayan, financial controller of the Fiji Electricity Authority, is to join the Asian Development Bank as a financial analyst.
Mr Narayan, who will be responsible for assessing projects submitted by borrowing countries, will take up his appointment in Manila in December.
Ratu Mosese Duilomaloma, the first local port engineer of the Ports Authority of Fiji, has retired.
Ratu Mosese joined the PAF in February 1981 as port engineer. He had spent his working life with the Public Works Department.
Jack Pidik, president of the Papua New Guinea Softball Federation, was in Sydney for competition matches for the Michael and Mrs Somare Cup as part of the country’s 10th independence anniversary celebrations in September.
“Softball is a very, very popular game back home,” he told a Sydney newspaper.
“In Fort Moresby, for example, there are nearly 50 men’s and women’s clubs, and when you play matches you get thousands of people to watch, sitting up in trees, on the back of trucks . . . everywhere. They are very vocal.” Mr Pidik said that softball was also becoming popular in the mountains, where rain definitely did not stop play. “They play on the airstrips and run off when the planes arrive,” he said. “But they always pray for rain because the airstrip has to close and they can play without interruption.”
Warm appreciation of the work of English musicologist, explorer, author and composer David Fanshawe has been expressed by cultural affairs officials in Micronesia.
Mr Fanshawe spent most of last year in the area, recording traditional music and other sounds. He is now in the fifth year of a colossal six-year project of collecting Pacific music for use in his next composition, Pacific Odyssey.
Moses N. Sam, chief of the Division of Cultural Affairs in Palau’s Ministry of Social Services, said the government of the republic was concerned about the impact of influences from abroad, and new cultures, on Palau’s “diminishing culture”.
He said Mr Fanshawe’s contribution of about 20 hours or recorded Palauan music and chants was “a giant step toward preservation of our culture”.
Gerald R. Knight, curator of the Alele Museum in Majuro, Marshall Islands, wrote: “We of Alele Corporation feel very fortunate to have had David Fanshawe among us to record the spirit of these changing times in these ever evolving cultures in which we drift, often at the mercy of their tides of change and renewal. Experience has shown us all that our tomorrows will not be exactly as were our yesterdays. Therefore we see great value in documenting the folk arts, historic accounts and oral literature and other cultural and artistic expressions as they are appreciated today.
“We all have much to learn from David’s most professional recording methods and state of the art equipment, as well as his dogged determination to document whatever traditional sounds his microphones track down. If his methods seem overly determined let this be a lesson to us all who daily allow so many historic and culturally significant sounds to pass unrecorded, and but fitfully documented through our ears into the obscurity of our all too mortal recollections.
“Here is a man who is doing something that we all know all too well needs to be done as immediately and as thoroughly as possible.”
During his time in Micronesia, Mr Fanshawe spent time with two of the greatest surviving Pacific navigators, Hipour and Piailug Mau, recording their ancient mariner’s chants.
In Australia on a brief visit following his time in Micronesia, Mr Fanshwe said of Pacific Odyssey in a newspaper interview: “The work is a vast autobiography communicating the spirit of the islands and including pagan invocations, prayers, the sounds of oceanic reefs, especially birds, and the noise of a hurricane. It is about preservation of culture. It says: here is your child, safeguard him.”
Highlights of the September 10th independence anniversary celebrations on the University of Papua New Guinea campus were performances by a Chinese acrobatic troupe, and by the Warumpi Band (above) from Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia. They were also a great hit during their September- October tour in Rabaul (audience 4000), Arawa (Bougainville, 6000), and in Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. The Warumpi Band - part Aboriginal, part Caucasian - is a unique development on the Australian rock scene. In picture, band members left to right on tree: Neil Murray, Sammy Butcher, George Rrurrambu.
Standing front: Gordon Butcher. Not in picture: Hilary Wirrie.
David Fanshawe geared up to go . . . gratitude from Micronesia. 54 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
We’ve gone to considerable lengths seats Available now seats Available now Available soon seats to meet the growing needs of the South Pacific For further information contact British Aerospace, Hatfield, Herts, England on (07072) 62345 Telex: 22411 or British Aerospace Australia Ltd., I Cl House, 61-69 Macquarie Street, Sydney, NSW2000 on 27-4622 Telex: 20448 ...upwbere we belong British Aerospace pic, 100 Pall Mall, London.
Pacific stamp box The Papua New Guinea Philatelic Bureau advises that the new address for the Mailing Point in New Zealand is P.0.80x 13342, Johnsonville, New Zealand. The Crown Agents have sold a 49 per cent interest in Crown Agents Philatelic Corporation (U.S.A.) to Stanley Gibbons Inc. The sale is explained as ’’part of the company’s re-organisation,” but there is so far not very much informatiom about what, if anything, Stanley Gibbons, the massive philatelic dealer, intends to do with its acquisition.
Collectors will now be looking for the three multi-colored Cook Islands stamps commemorating the Second South Pacific Mini Games, held at Rarotonga from July 31 to August 9, 1985. The stamps feature three of the events which were held: golf, tennis and rugby, and were issued on July 29, both individually and as a miniature sheet. A surtax of 10 cents was charged on the miniature sheet with proceeds going to help finance the games.
Niue has also issued a set of four stamps commemorating the Games.
Cook Islands has also issued a set of three stamps, each commemorating one of the three Pacific Islands Conferences to which they played host during what was one of the busiest periods of diplomatic, political and sporting activity ever seen in the country. The three conferences, run from July 30 through to August 10, were the South Pacific Forum, the South Pacific Bureau for Economic Cooperation’s annual meeting, and the Pacific Islands Conference.
Tonga issued a set of five stamps on June 18 to mark the 175th anniversary of the departure of Will Mariner, a 13-year-old lad who found his way to Tonga. He was befriended by Chief Finau and later became a Tongan chief.
However, he became home-sick and returned to England. There he became a book keeper, married and later drowned in the Thames river. The story of his voyage to Tonga, and his subsequent rise in Tongan society, is one of the most fascinating tales of European adventuring in the Pacific.
Philatelists will also be interested to know that the Tonga Philatelic Bureau claims that the Will Mariner issue is the most advanced form of postage stamp yet issued because of a new computerised perforation process. Tonga has again used ”peel-off” self-adhesive stock for this very colorful issue, produced for them by Salsall Security Printers, Ltd., of England. Solomon Islands has issued a set of four stamps aimed at raising awareness of the country’s links with Japan. Individual stamps show a Japanese-built telephone exchange, a fishing vessel (Solomon Islands has a joint venture with Taiyo Fishing Company of Tokyo), a Japanese shrine and a coastal village scene. Background notes on the scenic stamp indicate it is of a view tourists like to capture on their Japanese made cameras. Cynics say that Christmas these days starts half a dozen shopping days into January. That isn’t quite right, but it does seem to get earlier and earlier, particularly in the stamp business. New Zealand has won the prize for being first off the mark this year with its Christmas stamps which were issued on September 18. The issue is of three stamps, 18, 40 and 50 cents, in strong solid colors, depicting the Nativity and three stylised angels. 56 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
from the islands press From an editorial in the Fiji Times, Suva A SMALL group of trade unionists turned up in Marks Park, Suva, yesterday to celebrate Labour Day. The organisers blamed the bad weather for the poor turnout, but people here generally go to watch sports or have an outing on the beach on a holiday, and show little interest in ceremonies.
Because of this kind of apathy, Fiji does not even celebrate Independence Day, although Fiji nationals living abroad get together for the celebration in different comers of the globe.
So, the organisers of the first Labour Day should consider themselves fortunate that they were able to attract at least 70-odd people.
Divine intervention in Cook Islands politics alleged in a Cook Islands News report report on the Cook Island Party ending the coalition with Sir Thomas Davis’s Democratic Party.
Speaking about Mr Henry’s demotion from the office of Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Pirangi said that it was God who had carried this out and replaced him with Dr Maoate.
“Geoff has made three stupid decisions for the party and God answered and kicked him out.”
From a letter under the heading Fence Sitter by Agoa Hisiu, Central Province, in the Papua New Guinea Post-Courier, Port Moresby.
Mr Ba’a Seoa Ure, the Nara Kabadi member, is a very well-known fence sitter. Any minute he can defect to either the government or opposition ranks.
Is he aware that he has done absolutely nothing for the Nara Kabadi people as their representative in the Central Provincial Goverment?
A letter by Elva Yager in The Norfolk Islander.
The only sensible thing I have seen in connection with the Norfolk Island Development Plan, is the front cover carrying the words of our Anthem “In as much”.
Parts 1 to 3 are a lot of trash so to save time and expense it would be a good idea if the planners and the Minister for Lands called the whole thing off.
Do they really think that we are idiots who will give the government control of our freehold property?
Remember we are a territory UNDER Australia. They were asked to send a representative to keep Peace and Good Order in the form of an administrator.
We went through all this a few years ago. Don’t kid yourselves we are not going to go through it all again!
From a letter by Dilu David, Boroko, in the Papua New Guinea Post-Courier, Port Moresby.
If jail escapees are caught by the police, they must chop their legs off.
If they don’t do that and just put them in prison, they are going to do the same again and the police are going to spend a lot of time looking for them.
Another thing they could do is just lock them in the room with a guard and let them go without food until they die.
From the Marianas Variety News & Views, Saipan.
Fruit bats need not disappear from any of the Mariana Islands if strong measures are taken now. The Division of Fish & Wildlife has begun an active fruit bat research and management program that can increase fruit bat populations with the aid of public support and co-operation. Like other game animals it is possible to manage fruit bats so that a portion of the population can be safely harvested and eaten at traditional fiestas.
From The Tonga Chronicle, Nukualofa.
When she married eight years ago, Ms Kafo’atu Fehoko of Holonga made a false oath that she was 18-years-old but she was only age 12.
Ms Fehoko pleaded guilty before Supreme Court Justice Giles Francis Harwood on Monday for the false oath. She was sentenced to six months imprisonment.
A letter by “Hopeful” in The Tonga Chronicle, Nukualofa In my opinion, women should own land in this country, because if they have no husband, they can live on their own land and home. And if they are orphans they could keep themselves on their own land or could lease it for money to keep them and satisfy their wants.
Some couples have much land, and their children are only girls. Their land gets lost because the women are not allowed to own it.
I hope that the women of Tonga may soon be able to own land.
According to some reports the streets of Lae, Papua New Guinea, are thick with sellers of so-called" lucky tickets”.. a sort of illegal lottery trade of which the common denominator appears to be that there are very few winners. Lae city manager, Mr Richard Moaitz, said recently the trade would be restricted to charitable organisations. Others would be rubbed out because “they put up prizes they cannot afford to pay,” use playing cards, and ’’cause a lot of littering.” Papua New Guinea Post-Courier cartoonist, Grass Roots, saw another discipline working on the lottery operators. 57 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
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Carriers also accept heavy lifts, overlength and cumbersome parcels.
Ports of Service: Loading: Papeete, Apia, Suva, Lautoka, Noumea, Port Vila, Santo, Honiara, Port Moresby, Lae,Madang Kimbe, Rabaul, Kieta, Darwin.
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yachts
Lan G. Menzies
reports from Darwin , Australia: • SCIROCCO. The New Zealand cruising yacht Scirocco won both line and handicap honors in the recent Darwin to Ambon Foster’s International Ocean Yacht Race.
Owned and crewed by Frank and Janet Hall, and their sons Greg and Michael, of Whangarei, New Zealand, Scirocco crossed the line only 52 minutes ahead of her race rival Evergreen.
A former 1954 Sydney-to- Hobart winner, Evergreen was previously named Even, and languished in Port Moresby for many years before being bought by her present owner, Bill Gibson. Now based in Gove in the Northern Territory, Bill has restored her to her former racing glory.
The other 24 competitors in the 530-nautical-mile race were not to cross the finishing line until about eight hours later.
Final results see table later in story.
Darwin Harbor has not seen the likes of the start that set the fleet on its way to Ambon. The 26 yachts, accompanied by a host of spectator craft, enjoyed a moderate breeze as they sailed down the harbor. After rounding the first mark off the Darwin Sailing Club, it was up spinnakers and away.
From then on the race was a constant battle between the lighter Scirocco (9.5 tonnes) and the traditional and heavier Evergreen (28 tonnes). Heavy weather favored Evergreen while lighter airs were definitely to Scirocco’s advantage.
Favorable 20 to 25-knot winds in the first 24 hours saw a record run by the fleet around Cape Fourcroy, and then continued to push them on to the outer Indonesian island of Babar.
Scirocco and Evergreen, with only five miles separating them, were the first to close with the entrance to Ambon Harbor. They then sat virtually becalmed for almost 10 hours.
Evergreen, who ran aground during the final approaches, was later to be penalised one hour by the Protest Committee when she received enthusiastic “outside assistance” from local fishermen.
This penalty however, did not alter either the handicap or line placings.
The journey down the harbor to the port of Ambon itself, some 12 sheltered miles between high mountains, is notorious for its contrary wind and weather conditions.
It has been known to take up to 24 hours.
With her lighter displacement in the calm conditions Scirocco was able to build up a narrow lead on Evergreen to take out the honors.
The Sydney yacht Pelagian, who won the Cruising Division colors, has had a highly successful ’B5 season. She was similarly placed in the Cairns to Port Moresby yacht race earlier this year.
With the increasing participation by cruising yachts, it is becoming fairly obvious that the Darwin to Ambon race will form an important leg in any cruising yacht’s passage across Australia’s “Top End”. Of the 24 yachts who finished, 21 would be rated as cruising yachts.
Three of these, even though fitted out for international cruising, competed in the racing division.
In addition to the international yachts listed, other countries represented included the United Kingdom, France, and the Australian yacht Bungee under charter to an Indonesian crew. This crew included representatives from both the Ambon business community and the Indonesian Navy.
Most of the cruising yachts competing this year will go on to cruise Indonesian waters before making passage for either Singapore, Sri Lanka or Christmas Island. Entry in Above left: The Warwick 42 Scirocco, built, owned and crewed by the Hall family of Whangarei, New Zealand, lies to anchor before the start of the Darwin to Ambon Foster’s International Ocean Yacht race. Scirocco went on to take out both Line and Handicap Honors in the race. Above: Frank and Janet Hall, with their younger son Greg, in the saloon of Scirocco. Their eldest son Michael was to join them later from the U.K., to assist crewing Scirocco. — lan Menzies photos. 59 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
Line Honors
Scirocco (New Zealand) 89:03 hours (ET) Evergreen (Gove, NT) 89:55 hours (ET) Exocet (Darwin) 97:31 hours (ET) Bungee (Gladstone, Qld) 100:55 hours (ET) Pelagian (Sydney) 101:56 hours (ET) Alma (U.S.A.) 104:00 hours (ET) Ocean Onyx IV (New Zealand) 104:14 hours (ET) The race record of 84:00 hours elapsed time was set in 1982 and is held by the Darwin-based Crowther catamaran.
Whimbrall.
Handicap Honors
Racing Division Cruising Division Scirocco Pelagian Evergreen P enjoy Exocet Princess II Bungee Alma Ocean Onyx IV Beagle the race does not guarantee an Indonesian cruising permit, but as race participants are granted a group permit, it sure helps.
Increased participation this year prompted the Indonesian authorities to provide additional SAR support from its naval base at Halong.
An extra patrol boat and helicopter were allocated for this specific role.
Even better news is that senior officials from Jakarta, who attended the presentation of awards, indicated that serious consideration is now being given to opening up specified cruising routes through Indonesian waters.
The Cruising Yacht Association of the Northern Territory (CYANT), is to be congratulated on its diplomacy. They may have succeeded, after many years, in opening up one of the world’s most interesting cruising grounds.
Cruising yachts who may wish to participate in the 1986 Darwin to Ambon Race, and would like further information, should contact the author, C/o “Yachtscene”, GPO Box 1677, Darwin, NT, 5794, Australia.
Scirocco, portrait of a winner Launched in Whangarei, New Zealand, in October ’B3 Scirocco was self-built by Frank and Janet Hall over a two-year period. A Warwick 42 design, she is triple-planked kauri over fully laminated kauri frames, and has a fin keel with skeg rudder. Using a two-part epoxy saturation system, Frank has done such a good job of fairing the hull, that one could be excused for thinking she is GRP.
Scirocco’s principal dimensions are LOA 12.8 metres (42 feet), a beam of 3.7 metres (12.1 feet), and draught of 2.1 metres (6.9 feet), and has a designed displacement of 9.5 tonnes.
Frank has fitted Scirocco’s interior entirely in teak with liberal use of white panels to give a light and airy atmosphere. A narrow double quarter berth to port is fully enclosed and contains a navigation station adjacent to the companionway. The galley to starboard is extremely well-planned, with a fully-gimballed Mariner gas and masses of bench space.
Electronics and communications on board are not exotic, but sufficient for any cruising yacht. A Furuno FSN 80 Sat Nav assists in the navigation whilst a Codan 8121 SSB and a Cybernet CTXSOOO VHF satisfies communication needs. Frank has found the Noel Lloyd’s SSB net on Onerahi sports radio (4419.4), to be invaluable while cruising the South Pacific.
The net gives coverage from the western Pacific right through to Hawaii.
Frank was also impressed with the quality of both the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and commercial radio coastal weather forecasts and reports emanating from Darwin. They were extremely detailed and broadcast at hours to suit the mariner.
Scirocco, despite her victory, was built for comfortable long-distance cruising at a reasonable rate of knots. Frank and Janet Hall, with their younger son Greg, have covered many cruising miles since they departed their home port of Whangarei in April ’B4.
Tonga was the family’s first objective, with six weeks spent cruising the northern islands. Then it was on to Fiji and a further six weeks. While in Fiji they competed in the Beqa race and set a new race record for the cruising division on the return run. (Rumor has it though that they were the only yacht in that division!) Vanuatu was the next stopover.
Then it was on to Solomon Islands where Frank found that attempts to pay the “light fees” with an Australian $lOO bill met with total disapproval. His advice is to have plenty of dollar notes of $lO or less they just do not use higher denominations and they don’t give change.
Regardless, the Halls voted Solomon Islands the best cruising ground yet, with beautiful protected anchorages and friendly local villagers. The Northern Solomons proved the most rewarding, with the sheltered waters of Wana Wana Island as their most remembered stopover.
Scirocco’s Australian landfall was made at Cairns, where the Halls spent the seven months of the cyclone season. The family’s arrival in Darwin saw them joined by their eldest son Michael, who had flown out from the U.K. for the Ambon race.
With the excitement of their double victory behind them, and their numerous trophies stowed away, the Hall family are now cruising Scirocco through Indonesia. Their passage will then take them to Christmas Island and on to South Africa.
Ian G. Menzies.
Homeported in Gladstone, Queensland, Pelagian took out Handicap Honors in the Cruising Division of the Darwin-Ambon race. lan Menzies photo.
A well fed crew is a happy crew - or so the saying goes. Janet Hall has few problems in keeping her family happy, from this superbly laid out galley on board their yacht Scirocco. - Ian Menzies photo. 60 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY —NOVEMBER, 1985
PRACTICAL WATER POWER by J. L. Harrison-Smith This is a book for the doit-yourself man. The result of 50 years of practical experience and experiment. If you are building a small hydro unit this book will save its cost many times over.
Price NZ$l5 posted from the author. (Add extra NZ$2 for air mail). 120 Seventeenth Ave, TAURANGA, NZ.
Shipping schedules Should any shipping company wish to have its services cargo and passenger included in these listings they should contact PIM.
Australia - Fiji
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), Wiltrans Agency Pty. Ltd., 21st Floor, 60 Market St., Melbourne (614-4788) Tlx 30163. ACTA Pty.
Ltd., Brisbane (221-3116); Elders-ANL Pty.
Ltd. Port Adelaide (47-5688); Newcastle, Sofrana Sydney (27-9851); Websters-ANL, 58 Charles St., Launceston, Tasmania (320- 555) 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 Nukualofa, Pago Pago, Apia and Vavau. Feeder service available from Apia to Cook, Christmas, Fanning and Washington Islands.
Details from Hetherington Wesfarmers Shipping Agency, 37-49 Pitt Street, Sydney. (27-1671) AUSTRALIA - NEW CALEDONIA -
Fiji - Samoas - Tonga - Nz
Pacific Forum Line operates a fully containerised service (general, reefer and ro-ro) from Sydney to Noumea, Lautoka, Suva, Apia, Pago Pago, Nuku’alofa, Lyttelton, 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; SCONZ, Christchurch.
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
K. Asia Pacific operates a 5/6 weekly service from Melbourne and Sydney to Kiribati (Tarawa).
Details from K. Asia Pacific Pty. Ltd., Goldfields House, 1 Alfred Street, Circular Quay, Sydney (232-2277), Tlx 122143.
KAP New Guinea Lines call Tarawa after PNG ports on a 35 day basis from Melbourne and Sydney/Brisbane.
Details from K. Asia Pacific Pty. Ltd., Goldfields House, 1 Alfred Street, Circular Quay, Sydney (232-2277), Tlx. 122143.
Warner Pacific Line operates a 6 weekly containerised/breakbulk service to Tarawa from Melbourne/Sydney/Brisbane and Auckland. Details from Hetherington Wesfarmers Shipping Agency, 37-49 Pitt Street, Sydney (27-1671); Mac Kay Shipping Ltd., Downtown House, Queen Street, Auckland (30-229).
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), Wiltrtans-Agency Pty. Ltd., 21st Floor 60 Market St., Melbourne (614-4788) Tlx 30163 ACTA Pty. Ltd., Brisbane (221-3116), Elders-ANL Pty. Ltd., Port Adelaide (47-5688), Newcastle, Sofrana Sydney (27-9851); Websters-ANL, 58 Charles St., Launceston, Tasmania (320-555).
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, Melbourne and Brisbane 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 and the New Zealand Line operate a 10-day container service (TRANZTAS) between Sydney and Melbourne to Auckland, Wellington, Lyttelton and Port Chalmers.
The Tranztas service has been extended to cover Burnie and Fremantle on a direct call monthly basis linking to the main New Zealand ports.
Details from ANL Shipping Agencies, 20 Bond Street, Sydney (232-0444) and ANL Shipping Agencies, “World Trade Centre", Cnr Flinders and Spencer Streets, Melbourne (611-2323) or New Zealand Line, Pastoral House, 98 Lambton Quay, Wellington (728- 5000).
AUSTRALIA - MARSHALL IS.
Warner Pacific Line operates a 6 weekly containerised/breakbulk service to Majuro from Melbourne/Sydney/Brisbane and Auckland.
Details from Hetherington Wesfarmers Shipping Agency, 37-49 Pitt Street, Sydney (27-1671); Mac Kay Shipping Ltd. Downtown House, Queen Street, Auckland. (30-229).
Australia - Marianas - Guam
Fsm - Palau
Micronesia Transport Line operate a 55 day containerised/breakbulk service from Melbourne/Sydney/Brisbane and Auckland to Palau, Yap, Guam, Saipan, Truk, Ponape and on inducement, Kosrae.
Details from Hetherington Wesfarmers Shipping Agency, 37-49 Pitt Street, Sydney (27-1671); Sofrana Unilines Customs Street, Auckland (77-3279).
Australia - Nz - Fiji - Tonga
Vanuatu - New Caledonia
Solomons - New Guinea
Sitmar Cruises operates a year-round cruise program from Sydney to include the better known ports in the above countries, plus a number of unspoilt and largely unknown, island paradises.
Details from Sitmar Cruises, 39 Martin Place, Sydney (239-9000); NSW, reservations and inquiries (008 42-2277); Rest of Australia, reservations and inquiries (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 - PNG -
Solomons - Vanuatu - Nz
Pacific Forum Line operates a containerised and ro-ro from Brisbane to Port Moresby, Lae, Honiara, Port Vila, Lyttelton, Napier and Auckland.
Details from; Union Bulkships, Brisbane Steamships Shipping, Port Moresby and Lae; Sullivans Ltd, Honiara; Vila Agents Port Vila; SCONZ Christchurch, Napier and Auckland.
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
K. Asia Pacific operates a 3 monthly service from Sydney and Melbourne to Tuvalu (Funafuti). Subject inducement.
Details from K. Asia Pacific Pty. Ltd., Goldfields House, 1 Alfred Street, Circular Quay, Sydney (232-2277), Tlx 122143.
Warner Pacific Line operates a 6 week containerised/breakbulk service to Funafuti from Melbourne/Brisbane/Sydney and Auckland.
Details from Hetherington Wesfarmers Shipping Agency, 37-49 Pitt Street, Sydney (27-1671); Mac Kay Shipping Ltd., Downtown House, Queen Street, Auckland (30-229).
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., Goldfields House, 1 Alfred Street, Circular Quay, Sydney (232-2277), Tlx 122143. Dalgety Shipping, World Trade Centre, Melbourne (616-6700).
Australia - Png - Solomons
Sofrana Unilines (Aust.) P/L operates a 3-4 weekly cargo service to PNG ex-main ports on the east coast of Australia.
Details from Sofrana Unilines, 19 Pitt Street, Sydney (27-9851) Tlx 25327.
Australia - Png - Solomons
VANUATU A consortium of NGAL7PNGL and CON- PAC/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., P.O.
Box R 124, Royal Exchange, Sydney 2000 (2-0547); Nedlloyd Swire, 8 Spring Street, Sydney, (2-0522); New Guinea Express Lines, 37 Pitt Street, Sydney, (241-3991); Vila Agents, PO Box 27, Port-Vila (2456), Tlx NHIOII.
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, P.O. 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); Nuigini Island Cargo Services Pty. Ltd., Rabaul (922-467); Bougainville Agencies Pty.
Ltd, Kieta (956-089): Robert Laurie (PNG) P/L Madang (82-2157); Garamut Enterprises P/L Wewak (86-2106); Burns Philp (PNG) Ltd.
Kavieng (94-2133); Alotau Stevedoring & Transport, Alotau (61-1318); Ngatia Wholesalers Pty. Ltd., Kimbe (93-5102); and Tradco Shipping, Mendana Avenue, Honiara (22588); Vila Agents Ltd., PO Box 971, Vila, Vanuatu (2490); John Lum & Associates, PO Box 65, Santo, Vanuatu (329).
Australia - Tahiti
Compagnie Generale Maritime operates a monthly service from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane to Papeete, for containersised and break bulk cargo.
Details Compagnie Generale Maritime, 12 Castlereagh Street, Sydney (231-3700).
Sofrana Unilines (Aust.) P/L operates a 3/4 weekly cargo service to Papeete ex main ports on the east coast of Australia.
Details from Sofrana Unilines, 19 Pitt Street, Sydney (27-9851) Tlx 25327.
Singapore - Hong Kong - Fiji
Islands Ports
Kyowa Shipping Co. Ltd. operates a monthly containerised and breakbulk cargo service from Singapore, Hongkong 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 (NZUE) now operates a monthly service accepting containerised and break bulk cargo from Manila, Keelung, Kaohsiung and Hongkong to Lautoka, Suva and thence to New Zealand ports.
Details from Carpenters Shipping, Harbour Centre Building, Ist Floor, Thomson Street, Suva (312-244), Tlx FJ 2199; 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 Surabaya, Jakarta, Bangkok, Port Kelang and Singapore to Suva, Lautoka and NZ ports. 61 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
WeVe just made the ocean smaller!
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.
Polykesim.Ine
Interocean Steamship Corporation General Agent Olsi AS u Q =tO £ is & * V Apia Pago Pago Papeete * m Serving Polynesia is all we do-and we do it better!
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 Hongkong, Taiwan, Manila, Port Keiang 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, Raratonga and Tarawa will be shipped via Japan on the monthly Bali Hai service.
Details from Steamships Shipping, PO Box 634, Port Moresby (22-0289).
Kyowa Shipping Ltd. operates monthly services from Japan to Guam, Saipan, Sol* mons, 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., PO Box 8, Saipan, CM 96950 (Tel. 9707), Tlx 783619; Guam agents Maritime Agencies of the Pacific Ltd.
HAWAII - TAHITI - SAMOAS - TONGA - KIRIBATI - FIJI -
Solomons - Png
Star Shipping Associates operates a monthly service originating in Honolulu and destined for Pago Pago, Papeete, Apia, Nukualofa, Suva, Vila and Port Moresby.
Details from Star Shipping Assoc., P.O.
Box 25988, Honolulu, Hawaii 96825. Ph (808) 396-4256; Polynesia Shipping Services in Pago Pago and Burns Philp Agency in Apia, Nukualofa, Suva and Port Moresby.
Japan Fiji Island Ports
Kyowa Shipping Co. Ltd. operates a monthly containerised 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.
Bali Hai service operates a monthly containerised 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).
Saipan Shipping Co. Inc. operates 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., P.O. Box 922, Port Moresby (21-2466/21- 1898).
New Caledonia Fiji West
Coast North America
PAD Line operates an approx. 3-weekly 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, Harbour Centre Building, Ist Floor, Thomson 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 AA24063; 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 AA24063; Columbus Line, Lae (423466), Tlx NE 44171; or the lines' local agents.
New Zealand Australia
PAPUA NEW GUINEA SOLOMON IS-
Lands Vanuatu
Pacific Forum Line operates a containerised and ro-ro service from: Lyttelton, Napier and Auckland to Brisbane, Port Moresby, Lae, Honiara and Port Vila.
Details from; SCONZ Christchurch, Napier and Auckland: Union Bulkships Brisbane; Steamships Shipping, Port Moresby and Lae; Sullivans Ltd, Honiara; Vila Agents, Port Vila.
Nz Cook Is. Niue Tahiti
New Zealand Line operates cargo services based on pallets and similar units from Auckland to Niue, Cook Islands and Tahiti.
Details from the NZ Shipping Agencies International Ltd., P.O. Box 3420, Auckland (79-7210); Waterfront Commission, P.O. Box 61, Rarotonga; Cook Islands; Shipping Office, Govt, of Niue, P.O. Box 107, Niue Island: Compagnie Maritime Polynesienne, P.O. Box 368, Papeete, Tahiti.
NZ FIJI Reef operates a regular 18-day service from Auckland to Suva and Lautoka. Also passenger accommodation.
Details from Reef Shipping Agencies, P.O.
Box 3382, Auckland, NZ (77-1221-3), Tlx 60633; M.V. Fijian Shipping Agencies Ltd., Private Bag, Suva, Fiji (31-1056).
Pacific Line with one ship operates threeweekly ro-ro cargo service New Zealand.
Lautoka, Suva. No passengers.
Details: Sofrana Unilines, 18 Customs Street, Auckland (773-279) P.O. Box 3614, Tlx NZ2313; Carpenters Shipping, 100 Thomson 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., P.O.
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 containerised and ro-ro 21 day service from Auckland to Lautoka, Suva, Apia, Pago Pago and Nuku’alofa.
Details from: Pacific Forum Line, Auckland and Apia, Union Maritime, Lautoka, Suva and Nuku’alofa; Polynesian Shipping, Pago Pago.
Nz N. Caledonia Vanuatu
Png Solomons
Sofrana Unilines with three ships operate 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), P.O. Box 3614, Tlx NZ2313. 62 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
Polish Ocean Lines
General Management, 10 Lutego 24,81-364 GDYNIA, POLAND, Phone: 20-19-01, Cables: POLOCEAN Telex: 054-231 Q © -K & fir LA y V m % & A.' K>-v 8 .’•V
South Pacific Service
We offer monthly service to and from: GDYNIA, HAMBURG, ROTTERDAM, MIDDLESBOROUGH/IMMINGHAM, ANTWERP, DUNKIRK, ROUEN, PAPEETE (via PANAMA), NOUMEA, AUCKLAND, HONIARA, RABAUL, LAE, SINGAPORE, by our multipurpose vessels carrying dry and reefer containers, reefer chambers, heavy lifts, breakbulk or palletized, bulk liquids.
POLISH OCEAN LINES Representatives AUCKLAND Mr. A. Sieradzki. Telex 21517 NZ “UNISHIP”. SYDNEY Mr. Walenciak. Telex 20428 AA “SLEIGH” _ POLISH OCEAN LINES Agents TAHITI SOTAMA Telex 296 FP “COUTIMEX”. NEW CALEDONIA SATO Telex 163 NM “SATO”. AUCKLAND UNIVERSAL SHIPPING AGENCIES LTD., Telex 21517 NZ “UNISHIP". SOLOMONS MELAN CHINE SHIPPING CO., LTD Telex 66335 HO “SYMECO”. PNG STEAMSHIPS TRADING CO., LTD Telex 42423 NE “STEAM”.
Your Business Partner
Japan S. Korea Taiwan Singapore Hong Kong To: Solomon Is., New Caledonia, Fiji, W. Samoa, A. Samoa, Tahiti, Cook Is., Tonga, Vanuatu, Tuvalu. Nauru To: Guam, Saipan, Truk, Ponape, Majuro, Yap, Koror Taiwan Hong Kong Singapore Philippines To: Papua New Guinea, Pacific Islands.
J* {* s. r KYOWA KYOWA SHIPPING CO., LTD.
HEAD OFFICE: 6th Floor., Kikushima Bldg., 2-3, Hamamatsucho 2-chome, Minato-ku, Tokyo 105, Japan Phone: 03(437)2885 (Rep.) Cables: “MARIQUEEN" Tokyo Telex: 242-4651 Kyowa J.
OSAKA OFFICE: 7th Floor., Okajima Bldg., 2-14, Nishihonmachi 1-chome, Nishi-ku, Osaka, Japan Phone: 06(533)5821 (Rep.) Cables: “MARIQUEEN" Osaka Telex: 525-6271 Ssiosa J.
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, P.O. Box 3614,18 Customs St.. Auckland, Tlx NZ2313; CTM-Tahiti Line, P.O. Box 9012, Papeete (39042), Tlx Tahitlin 322 FP Tahiti.
Nz Tonga Samoas
Warner Pacific Line services Auckland, Nuku’alofa, Vavau, Apia, Pago Pago fortnightly carrying general and freezer cargoes.
Details from McKay Shipping Ltd., Downtown House, 21 Queen St., Auckland, P.O Box 1372 (30-299). Cables MACSHIP, Telex NZ2554, Warner Pacific Line, Box 93, Nuku'alofa, Tonga; Mealelei (Western Samoa,) Ltd. Private Bag, Apia, Western Samoa, Pacific Maritime Services, P.O. Box 2617, Pago Pago, American Samoa (633- 2728) cables; Pacmar SX2OS.
Tahiti New Caledonia Vanuatu
Solomon Is. New Zealand
Png Singapore Europe
Polish Ocean Lines operate in a semicontainer type vessel to the following ports, from Papeete, Noumea, Santo, Vila, Yandina, Honiara, Auckland, Rabaul, Lae, Singapore, Port Kelang, Penang then to Mediterranean ports and Europe via the Suez Canal. (Other New Zealand ports subject to inducement).
Details from Universal Shipping Agencies Ltd., 6th Floor, 38 Fort Street, Auckland 1, New Zealand (30931), Tlx 21517.
Europe Tahiti
New Caledonia
Compagnie Generale Maritime operates services from Europe and Mediterranean ports to Papeete and Noumea using three ro-ro and multi-purpose vessels thus ensuring a bi-monthly sailing to and from.
Details Compagnie Generale Maritime, 12 Castlereagh Street, Sydney (231-3700).
Europe Tahiti
New Caledonia New Zealand
Vanuatu Solomons Png
EUROPE Polish Ocean Lines offers regular monthly sailings for containerised and break bulk cargo, also conventional reefer space and reefer containers, from Hamburg, Rotterdam, Dunkirk, Rouen to Papeete, Noumea, Auckland, Santo, Honiara, Rabaul, Lae, Singapore, returning to Europe via Suez, other ports in South Pacific can be served directly with inducement or otherwise via transhipment.
Details from Sotama, BP 9170, Papeete, Tel 427805 Tlx 373 PF / SATO; BP C 2, Noumea Cedex Tel 272094 Tlx 163 NM / Universal Shipping Agencies P.O. Box 2282 Auckland Tel 30930 Tlx 21517 / Vanua Navigation P.O. Box 44 Vila Tel 2027 Tlx 1033 / Melan Chine Shipping Co. P.O.
Box 71 Honiara Tel 21678 Tlx 66335 / Steamships Trading Co. Ltd P.O. Box 89 Rabaul Tel 922952 Tlx 92929 / Steamships Trading Co. Ltd P.O. Box 85 Lae Tel 424666 Tlx 42423 / Union Steamship Co. of NZ Ltd P.O. Box 50 Apia Tel 21781 Tlx 225 / Warner Pacific Line P.O.
Box 93 Nukualofa Tel 22088 Tlx 66219 / Fiji Agents T.B.A.
Europe Tahiti W. Samoa
Fiji N. Caledonia
Nedlloyd offers regular cargo services from Continental ports to Papeete, Apia, Fiji and New Caledonia.
Details Nedlloyd (Aust.) Pty. Ltd., 8 Spring Street, Sydney (27-3801); Carpenters Shipping, Ist Floor, Harbour Centre Bldg., 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 (423-466), 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’asia) Pty.
Ltd., 51 Pitt Street, Sydney (27-2041), Tlx AA 24063; Columbus Line. Lae (42-3466), 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, Porl-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 Hawaii Micronesia
E. Malaysia Brunei Papua New
Guinea Philippines
PM&O Lines operates three fully self-sustained container vessels on a sailing frequency of every 28 days from the San Francisco Bay area, Los Angeles, and Honolulu to Majuro, Ebeye, Kosrae, Ponape, Truk, Saipan, Yap, Koror, Kota Kinabalu, Brunei, Lae, Kieta and Rabaul.
Service is also offered utilising the same vessels on the same 28-day frequency from the Philippine ports of Manila, Cebu, and Davao and General Santos and the Papua New Guinea ports of Rabaul, Lae and Kieta to Hawaii, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Finally service is available from Davao, Cebu, Manila, Hong Kong, Keelung and Kaohsiung to Saipan, Guam, Honolulu, Lae, Rabaul and Kieta.
Details from PM&O Lines, 181 Fremont Street, San Francisco, California, 94105, U.S.A. (415) 543-7430, Tlx 278016; Cable PMONAV SFO; PM&O Owners representative, P.O. Box 803, Saipan, N.M.I. 96950.
Cable COMMONTIME SAIPAN. Tlx 783605; Anscor Transport and Terminals Inc., P.O. Box 7023-5, Metro Manila, Philippines (521-8074) Tlx 65021 ATTI PN.
Us Hawaii Samoas
Kiribati Nauru
Nauru Pacific Line operates regular conventional and container services from San Francisco and Honolulu to Christmas Island, Pago Pago, Apia, Tarawa and Nauru.
Details from N.P.L. (Australia) Pty. Ltd., Nauru House, 80 Collins Street, Melbourne (653-5709); Nauru Air and Shipping Agency, Suite 2803, 185 Berry Street, San Francisco, California 94107 (415-543-4517); Nauru Air and Shipping Agency, Suite 506, 841 Bishop St.. Honolulu, HI 96813 (808-523-0441).
Us. Noumea Fiji
PAD Line operates an approx. 3-weekly ro-ro service from west coast USA and Canada to Noumea, Suva and Lautoka.
Details from Sofrana Unilines BP 1602, Noumea (27-51-91), Tlx NMO4B; Carpenters Shipping, Harbour Centre Building, Ist Floor, 100 Thomson Street, Suva (312-244), Tlx FJ2199; Trans-Austral Shipping Pty. Ltd., P.O. Box R 232, Royal Exchange, 2000 (231-8411), Tlx AA21204.
Us Tahiti Samoa
Polynesia Line operates container and general cargo service from US west coast ports to Papeete and Pago Pago.
Details from Polynesia Shipping Services Inc., P.O. Box 1478, Pago Pago 96799. 64 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
All The News
In A Flash
The South Sea Digest
See insert for Subscription details deaths Charles Dunford Rowley In Canberra on August 18, aged 79.
Professor Rowley was the founding professor of political studies at the University of Papua New Guinea.
Professor Jim Griffin, formerly of UPNG, said Rowley’s study, The New Guinea Villager (1965), was still “the most sensitive and thoughtful introduction” to Papua New Guinean society written by a European.
“Professor Rowley had intended to follow this up one day with a sequel, The Papua New Guinean Citizen, which would portray both villagers and urban dwellers coming to terms with their own independent nation state,” he said.
“But this was never written because Rowley turned his attention to the Aboriginals, who had been even more unhappily colonised by the white Australians. ”
Before his UPNG appointment, Rowley had been principal of the Australian School of Pacific Administration (ASPOA) in Sydney.
He received many honors for a monumental trilogy, The Destruction of Aboriginal Society, Outcasts in White Society, and The Remote Aboriginals.
“However, he did not lose interest in Papua New Guinea, and visited Port Moresby last November to sum up at the colonial centenary history seminar,” said Mr Griffin.
“He did his work with an appropriately scathing but calm view of white Australian racism both at home and on its Melanesian frontier.”
One of Professor Rowley’s early students, Paulias Matane, who is now PNG’s secretary for foreign affairs and trade, said he was deeply saddened by his death.
“He was one of the best expatriates ever to work in Papua New Guinea.
“He was selfless, dedicated and a very level-headed person.
“My family and I are saddened by the death of this man who did so much for Papua New Guineans and the Aboriginals,” Mr Matane said.
Professor Rowley died within a week of being told informally that the University of PNG had decided to award him an honorary doctorate of philosophy.
Edwin H. Bryan Jr.
In Honolulu on July 24, aged 87.
Edwin H. Bryan Jr. was one of Hawaii’s outstanding scientists, and a fixture at the Bishop Museum since 1919.
The Honolulu Advertiser said in an editorial tribute: “Edwin H. Bryan Jr. sometimes complained that his mind was used as a library by those who wanted to know about the geography and natural history of the Pacific. Yet he was always glad to answer the questions of anyone from leading scientists to students with school assignments.
“What he could not instantly recall from his encyclopedic memory of the Pacific Islands he could probably find in the books he wrote and the notebooks of original manuscripts of his over 2000 published articles and shorter works which he kept near his desk at the Bishop Museum.
“Bryan was associated with the museum for almost his entire career. In 1960 he established the museum’s Pacific Scientific Information Center. In 1968 he was named the first Brigham Fellow after the museum’s first director.
“During World War 11, however, Bryan left his job as curator of the museum’s collections to serve in the U.S.
Army. His intimate knowledge of the islands of the Pacific, gained during numerous field trips and constant study, was an invaluable resource for American forces.
“Today, he is best known for Bryan’s Sectional Maps of Oahu which has been the standard street guide reference for years. The royalties from that book, and at times Bryan’s own pension, have often gone to support the Bishop Museum in hard financial times.
“Edwin Bryan was a unique figure, a real museum ‘old timer’ with a computer-like mind that collected data in a variety of disciplines and an all-round ability to do the things that needed doing. His contribution to the world’s knowledge of the Pacific is immeasurable. ”
John Bell Kerr Taylor At Kaiata, New Zealand, on August 6, aged 90.
Colonel John Bell Kerr Taylor was the commander of the Ist Battalion, Fiji Infantry Regiment in World War II and coach of the Fiji rugby team which toured New Zealand without loss in 1939.
Colonel Taylor, known familiarly as JBK, has been given much of the credit for establishing the skill of Fiji soldiers as jungle fighters and the reputation of Fiji in international rugby.
In June 1940 Colonel Taylor was seconded to the army and later was placed in command of the First Battalion.
The battalion trained at Natabua, near Lautoka, and Colonel Taylor’s reputation as a disciplinarian is reflected in a battalion song “Natabua that’s where the Colonel broke us in”.
Johnny Halafihi In Yorkshire, United Kingdom, recently, aged 52.
Described by Wellington Evening Post sports writer Nicolaas Venter as “arguably the best boxer to come out of the Pacific Islands”, Johnny Halafihi, a short, muscular Tongan, fought most of the world’s top light heavyweights in a professional career which began in 1950 and ended in Europe in the early 19605.
Venter wrote; “New Zealand fans remember him as a skilful, exciting boxer who knocked out many of his opponents. He fought here from 1953-56, winning the New Zealand title from Charlie Beaton in Wellington, and then headed for Europe.
“There he beat Jamaican Yolande Pompey on a foul, drew twice with the world number five Mike Holt, and lost to Empire champion Chick Calderwood.
“In 1961 he returned to New Zealand, and a record Auckland crowd of 15,500 people saw him lose on points to top American Eddie Cotton.
“Mr Halafihi returned to Europe after fighting Cotton.
He married an English girl and settled in the UK, continuing to fight all over Europe.
“In all he had 58 professional fights, winning 37, drawing six, and losing 15.”
Su’a Fritz Thomsen In Western Samoa on September 11, aged 60.
One of Western Samoa’s leading magistrates, Su’a Fritz Thomsen had a long and distinguished career in his country’s public service.
He was secretary for justice before his appointment as a magistrate in 1977.
In 1953 he took the title of Sua Leituposa, from Salelavalu in Savaii. He was accordingly best known to his countrymen as Sua Leitupose Thomsen.
Taraariki Pitomaki On Rarotonga, Cook Islands, on September 15, aged 57.
A former school teacher, the Rev Taraariki Pitomaki was ordained as a minister of the Cook Islands Christian Church in 1958 and became its general secretary in 1976, having a hand in the drafting of the church’s new constitution.
He preached his last sermon at Nikao, Rarotonga, on the day he died.
The Cook Islands News said in a tribute: “He was a most outstanding minister of the church, a man who had faith in his own people, who had confidence in the ability of Cook Islands ministers of the church, and who, during his days as general secretary, strongly advocated that the church be governed by local ministers.” 65 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
Service Page
ADVERTISING Aggie Grey 66 Air New Zealand 68 AIWA 11 British Aerospace 55 Citizen Watches 38 Collins Olympic 36 Columbus Line 58 Dept of Trade 4 Fisher & Paykel 20 J.L. Harrison-Smith 61 Henry Cumines 50 Hitachi ...2 Kyowa Shipping 64 Macquarie Corp 50 Matsushita Electric 6 Papua Hotel 66 Pioneer Electric 32 P & O Cruises 27 Polish Shipping 63 Polynesian Shipping Lines 62 Sheaffer Pen-Textron 15 Toyota Motor 34,35,67 Trio-Kenwood 48 Tutt Bryant..... 44 KfUMr® jmMjtmr AUSTRALIA: Distribution: The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd., 44-74 Flinders St., Melbourne, Vic., 3000. Advertising Rsps Brisbane D. Wood, Anday Agency, CCA Centre, Dayboro Road. Closebum 4520; Box 1918, GPO Brisbane, 4001; telephone (07) 289-4128 Adelaide Hastwell Williamson Rouse Pty Ltd., PO Box 419, Norwood, SA. 5067; 59 Kensington Road. Norwood; telephone (08) 332-3322, telex 87113; Perth Allen 4 Associates, Suite 2. 284 Stirling St., Perth, WA. 6000, telephone (09) 328-9593 or (09) 328-9363 FIJI: Distribution and subscriptions Desai Bookshops. P.O. Box 160, Suva, Fiji, telephone Suva 23036.
Advertising Fiji Times 4 Herald Ltd., 20 Gordon St..
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Stay at Aggie Grey’s . . . the South Pacific’s legendary hotel.
Situated right in the heart of Western Samoa - . F.njoy Polynesian style friendliness and setvire. in cool surroundings, superb enteriainmeni and food.
Magnificent white sand beac hes only a shott drive away. Airconditioned looms, swimming |K)ol and lull bar facilities.
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The South Sea Digest
66 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY NOVEMBER, 1985
Toyota Presents
THE “MORE” MACHINE.
Toyota believe in giving you more for your money. And that’s just what our new three-wheeled electric forklift does. Look it over closely. Compare. You’ll see that no matter how you measure it, the new Toyota electric forklift challenges the very best of its class. And best of all, it offers you world-famous Toyota reliability. We build more quality in, so you get more value out. 66 kW (all 48V models)
More Load Handling
POWER A powerful 6.6 kW load handling motor takes on the biggest jobs with ease something that can’t be said for most electrics. 320 /sec (2FBEIO 48V model) MOR EFFICIENCY-
Quicker Lift Speed
Wasted time is wasted money. So Toyota help you get the job done.
Fast. Its 320 mm/sec. lift speed is among the quickest in this class. mm /s ■ TOYOTACI I ■* 1350 mm (minimum turning radius, 2FBEIO model)
Mori Manoeuvrability
With a remarkably small 1350 mm turning radius, and rugged, compact body, this new Toyota is at home in cramped quarters.
Three-Wheeler
(2FBEIO 48V model with cushion tyres)
More Drive Speed
You can zip from one work area to another at a brisk 12.5 km/h top speed among the best in this class. kW.,, 48V models) MORE DRIVE POWER Twin 2.7 kW drive motors deliver torque and power that rival even engine-powered forklifts. And overpower most other electrics in this class. %(tano) (5-minute ratings, 2FBEIO 48V model)
More Gradeability
With front-wheel drive traction and powerful twin drive motors, it can haul a full load up the steepest of inclines even up to 18% tano!
More Operating Ease
All controls, including power steering, are designed to help the operator do his job quickly and easily.
MORE ECONOMY Toyota build in the kind of reliability and durability that result in long-term economy. • A Toyota forklift. See for yourself one day soon. • Options and standard features differ according to region. • Specifications are subject to change without notice.
TOYOTA ■ AMERICAN SAMOA: BURNS PHILP (S.S.) CO., LTD. TEL: 633-4281 ■ AUSTRALIA: THIESS TOYOTA PTY, LTD. TEL: 526-0333 ■ FIJI: AUTOMOTIVE SUPPLIES CO., A DIVISION OF BURNS PHILP (S.S.) CO., LTD. TEL; 383444 ■ GUAM: ATKINS, KROLL, INC. TEL; 646-1876 ■ NEW CALEDONIA: SERVICE IMPORTATION AUTOMOBILE DU PACIFIQUE TEL; 27-41-44 ■ NEW ZEALAND: ANDREWS & BEAVEN INDUSTRIAL EQUIPMENT LTD. TEL; 2780940 ■ PAPUA NEW GUINEA: ELA MOTORS, BURNS PHILP (P.N.G.), LTD. AUTOMOTIVE DIVISION TEL: 217036 ■ VANUATU/VANUATU MOTORS, A DIVISION OF BURNS PHILP (VANUATU) LTD.
TEL: VILA 2341 ■ WESTERN SAMOA: BURNS PHILP (S.S.) CO., LTD. TEL: 22611 And distributors around the world.
Surprising New Zealand T :r *5? £ \ 4m. * ■:’■ 13 £ N - Stay on a farm or go skiing, big game fishing, jet-boating, or enjoy ski-plane flights.
See more, save more More to do. more to see m Now you can plan a wonderful holiday in New Zealand with the Air New Zealand "Holiday Planner’ with over 173 different activities from which to choose. It’s available from any Air New Zealand travel office or travel agent.
Travel around, or stay put There are city coach tours, self-drive freewheeling holidays in both the North Island and South Island, and Maui Campervan holidays By planning and booking in advance you can enjoy price advantages on many of these activities.
Call into Air New Zealand or your travel agent for a free copy of the Air New Zealand "Holiday Planner".
Once you’ve seen it, you won’t be able to wait to see New Zealand. air new zeaLann W The Pacific’s Number One