Biggest Tourist Rush Ever To The South Seas Is Predicted

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 250, 22 October 1945, Page 4

Biggest Tourist Rush Ever To The South Seas Is Predicted

When Transport is Available Again . -.

Special to the Auckland Star . By MARC T. GREENE APIA, Oct. 15. EVERYTHING indicates the biggest *-* tourist rush to the South Seas in their history as soon as transportation is available. The romantic isles have taken on an added lustre in the graphic tales of a hundred thousand i returned servicemen, and what the war has done in altering the social and economic life of the islands forms no part of thest tales. Glamour is the high motif, and so in many lands, but particularly in America, the ancient call of the South Sea is finding ready response, and every tourist agency is being queried a hundred times daily as to when, where and how. Nobody can answer such questions, but lack of information only whets the travel appetite of those who would follow in the trail of Cook and Wallis, of Loti and Stevenson, of "Freddie" O'Brien and Beatrice Grimshaw. One gathers that, in the United States thousands are "all set to go" now that the war is over and, with pockets full of the necessary, only await the word of the transportation companies to leap, full-panoplied, from the starting line with destination Papeete, Noumea, Port Vila or Apia. Romance in Chunks Never mind about material concernments. For is it not the age-old tradition of the South Seas to ignore such? Who talks of to-morrow on a palm-fringed beach? We will eat taro and bananas, aye, and catch our own fish, if worst comes to worst, and live a jug-of-wine-ancT-thou— especially "thou"—life in a.thatched hut, thereby accumulating romance in large chunks. The war is over, praises be, and away with concern over the morrow, once you can jam yourself aboard a boat that will land you in Rarotonga or Nukualofa, the latter being Tongan for "city of love" T -and wellnamed. Like the Balkan immigrant of yesterday with his conviction that, once in storied America, all problems would automatically solve themselves, the moderr. seeker after tropical adventure asks but to set foot upon some "fertile golden island set in a silver sea," and let the future hold what it may. The chances are that it will hold disappointment, maybe deep and abiding: Take Tahiti, where, in that historic August of 1939. wassail and joie de vie reached a climax that gave you to feel that this was the end of a party, to a life that had almost seemed one unending party. And now, with a magnificent final flourish and fitting, the party ended. Will there ever again be another? Aye, that is the question.

No Questions Asked For, mark you, in the Tahiti of the endless party you lived, and lived sufficiently, for. a dozen pounds a month; in luxury accompanied by all the glamour of the story books for twice that. As if from a sure conviction that the curtain was about to fall on the old life, the last months before the war found everybody, natives and Europeans alike, giving themselves to merrymaking and to a live-to-day carelessness that climaxed in the .Bastille Day celebration. What of to-day? I have just been talking, here in Apia, with a man lately from Papeete. He tells me, alas, that in the little hotel on the

waterfront, where there used to be<s found in abundance all the hospitality for which Tahiti was once renowned, and where you paid the equivalent of four shillings for lodging—with no questions asked or answered —and fruit and coffee for breakfast, there is now demanded of you three and four dollars for lodging alone, and in American currency at that. Shocking and sad, for it symbolises a change from a life gloriously free of material concernments and the things of the world. It-marks a transition period, or, rather, the end of a transition period, and the beginning of another life and state of things in the "classic of the South Seas." And as I ponder it lam something saddened, thinking upon the delights of the past when you drank 1934 Chambertain at a dollar the bottle and "threw" a party, with details and embellishments in the old tradition, for a couple of quid. Well Run Hotels Is it now all over and done with? I very much fear so, and if that is really the case we must content ourselves henceforth with the matchless sunsets over Moorea, "the still lagoon at nightfall," and the perfect climate. Even American transportation companies and their prospective grand hotels cannot destroy those things. And how, then, is it here in Samoa, in which New Zealand is most interested and where—to be serious for a moment—the trustee- , ship section of the World Security Organisation is going to have do some close and careful investigating ; into conditions highly unsatisfac- , tory? The effect, social and economic, of the presence of thousands of American servicemen, and the continued weekly "invasion"—for reasons inscrutable — of "liberty" groups from Pagopago, is still felt, ' and may continue to be for a long . time to come, maybe permanently. j But economically Apia is probably . the cheapest place for cost of living of any of the British Pacific possessions, in as much as at any one of , the three small hotels you may live ! in reasonable comfort, and are well led, for only £12 10/ a month. Where else can you do this? Two of these lodging places—Government property—are conducted by a competent woman, who is about the best ■ at her job in the Islands.

Permanent Residents But these Apia hostelries together offer accommodation to only about four score persons, half of whom are permanent residents, minor officials, traders and so forth. And the housing problem generally is pretty much as acute as it is in Auckland, with no attempt of any sort to deal with it. Laissez-faire existence is still the rule in Western Samoa, but it is mainly on the part of officialdom. If you are a European householder ycu don't indulge much in it You are too busy scratching together to-morrow's sustenance—and keeping thieves out of your house by night, sometimes also by day. Samoan life and people are, and always have been, a fair second to those of Tahiti. Perhaps some people would reverse the order. Maybe it is a matter of personal taste. But there are things about Samoa that you don't find elsewhere. Granted that the natives are proud, sensitive and arrogant, the history of their contact with the white man—past and present—furnishes a good deal of excuse for it. Apart from that they are the finest

>physical specimens in the Pacific. If they have developed in recent years a distinct acquisitiveness, who started them along such a path? Who but the white man—also past and present? They live in an environment of cleanliness and neatness, in their fales and villages, found nowhere else. In construction and peculiar charm these fales are unmatched. A cluster of them among the palms, the South Seas moon turning the swaying fronds to silver, is a touch of fairyland, as sharp a contrast to the tin-roofed, often half-dilapidated, frame houses of a Tahitian .village as the matchless teeth of Samoan women—the world's tops in dental perfection—are to the dental frailty of Tahiti. Proposal for Hotel It is certain that Samoa, like Tahiti, is going to be a high objective of post-war tourists, and an American company is already seeking not only to land here but to put up a big hotel. The New Zealand Government will be well advised to bear in mind what has happened to once joyous Hawaii. If Western Samoa can be kept free of American tourists it will be well, but it will be better still if the Wellington Government can be moved to a thorough overhauling of conditions here. This can easily be made the queen of the Pacific, perhaps replacing a disenthroned Tahiti.

It can be, and it ought to be, but that will .necessitate an entirely different official policy toward the natives, a final end to the ridiculous "colour" distinction, some restriction on trade profiteering, a beginning in the long overdue expansion of land development and economic utilisation of Samoa's great production potential, a thorough overhauling, inci'ease and improvement in efficiency of the Police Department, and, finally, settlement of the Chinese "problem" by legalising Chinese-Samoan marriages and ending talk of deportation of the Chinese here now. There should also be an inquiry into what has been done with the large sum collected from the Chinese for the supposed costs of such repatriation, and careful consideration should be given to Samoan demands for a larger measure of self-government.