ROUND THE ISLANDS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 225, 23 September 1941, Page 5

ROUND THE ISLANDS

AWAY FROM WORRIES "WORLD BRIGHT AGAIN" (By MARC T. GREENE) Just at this time there Is no more delightful fortnight's outing than a trip up through some of the South Sea islands by the boat that has been on that route for three or four years. You leave Auckland and in a couple of days the balmy airs of the famed Pacific fairylands are fanning you. And though you may be more or less "blackedout" at night and that sort of thing, you soon forget all about present wars and the imminence of others. The good old South Seas do that for you. Cares and worries are dissipated by their perfumed breezes, apprehensions are lulled, and the world looks bright again.

Moreover, the islands are surprisingly calm and unperturbed. Not long ago an American novelist went up to Tahiti and thereabouts and wrote an article that was much publicised in America, called "Terror Grips the South Seas." I don't know why Americans should like to read that sort of stuff, except maybe those who have always wanted to get to the islands and couldn't and so now find a grim sort of solace in being told they are no longer happy. But it is rubbish. The islands are not in the "grip of terror" and never have been at any time. Tahiti, truly enough, got a little excited when France surrendered and the Government headed by M. Gery decided that they must stay by Vichy. But the citizens soon got together and quietly invited Gery and his colleagues to depart for elsewhere, which they did by the next boat. Lately there appear to have been other complications. There is, I 1 learn, some lack in Tahiti of imported articles, and clearly the large! variety of drinkable liquors once available has been markedly diminished.

But Fiji, whose lively capital, Suva, is now more animated than ever with New Zealand lads in training round about, shows little other evidence of war than the many uniforms. Its shops still have a good deal of imported stuff. You can buy English-made cigarettes, and I hear that there has been a great run on silk stockings to send down to New Zealand to deck shapely limbn unaccustomed to cotton. This has long been known as Britain's most prosperous Crown Colony and with the expanding gold industry that prosperity shows no signs of diminishing. One of the Theodore properties pays such dividends that the investor gets all his capital back in a couple of years. Or did, for of course the stock is no longer purchasable at any price. In a very few! years Fiji has become one of the important gold-producing lands of the world, and no one knows how far the industry may yet be expanded.

After a little time here you proceed on to Western Samoa, which is now quiet and, out of its banana and cocoa-bean production, fairly prosperous. The general position there I shall discuss in another article. The steamer commonly remains 48 hours or so, loading many cases of fruit which has to be brought off in lighters, because there is no steamer wharf. The stay is a delight, for the weather at this season is perfect, warm balmy days and cool nights. A few hundred miles south-east brings you to the strange island of Niue, which, according to scientists, has sunk beneath the sea and emerged again several times through its long geologic history. Here the administrator is Captain Bell, efficient and well-liked by the natives. The medical officer, Dr. Hunt, was long in charge at Apia. When he retired not long ago h found living in a cold climate was not to his liking, so ha took the job on remote Niue, where he is happy and popular.

The Niue natives are a sturdy and intelligent lot and somewhat more inclined to physical endeavour than other South Sea islanders. Their chief export is a kind of ground vegetable known as "kumero," plaintain - like affair. Niue's soil is thin and not very productive, being merely a coating over

the coral "envelope" formed when the island was under the sea. Through this "envelope" here and there you find the rock of the mountain foundation itself protruding. Also Niue is famed for remarkable formations along the coast. A Lost Trade Across to the westward is the Tonga group and Vavau is the first port you make. Here you immediately encounter a well known South Seas figure, Dr. Dawson, who has served on a number of islands and is still going strong at upwards of seventy. He appears to be as enduring as certain other good Scots products.

Beyond Vavau Is tne delightful little town of Nukualofa, capital of the Tongan "kingdom." Tranquil enough, its former prosperity has, I however, mostly vanished through I the slump in the market for copra which was the economic staple of [the Tonga islands. The situation is really somewhat serious and other crops are being tried, one of them being groundnuts, or "peanuts." These grow well and can be made into a profitable industry. The chief difficulty, you find, is that the Tonga children won't let them come to a crop. They gather them even before they ripen, like kids assailing a cherry tree as soon as the fruit begins to turn colour. There is in Nukualofa a branch of the Auckland Japanese firm of Banno Brothers. This has had many shops in the Tongan Group and used to own a schooner that connected up with those in the outlying islands.. But everything except the main store in Nukualofa has now been closed and the boat sold. Moreover, the very day I was there a notice was posted that the assets and credit of the firm had been "frozen." I asked the manager what he expected to do in the face of this. "Can do nothing," he shrugged, "can only wait and see what happen."

These things are about the only signs of anything abnormal that you find in the islands, and there is no indication either of want or of restiveness among the natives. They get plenty of wireless news of the course of events elsewhere, but they Ido not seem much interested. CerI tainly there is not, either among them or among tha Europeans in the islands generally, any indication whatever of "terror" or any serious apprehension that the war will, in its physical aspects* ever reach them.