VICE-REGAL TOUR OF ISLANDS

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27369, 7 June 1954, Page 9

VICE-REGAL TOUR OF ISLANDS

Sir Willoughby Norrie At Rarotonga

(Special Correspondent NJZJP.AJ* (Rec. 10 p.m.) RAROTONGA, June 4. Rarotonga’s main port—the township of AvaruA—has echoed all the afternoon to the deafening drum beats of Rarotongan musicians who have thumped out hula rhythms with frenetic joy. Ehrly this afternoon, when Sir Willoughby Norrie, Lady Norrie, and Miss Rosemary Norrie were guests of Rarotonga’s chief woman tribal leader, the

Makea Nui Teremoana Ariki, at a feast in the grounds of Avarua Palace, Rarotongan hula dancers captured more Vice-Regal attention than the feast itself.

The swishing palm-frond skirts of hula girls and the deafening noise of hula rhythms beaten out on drums, petrol.tins and the pate—a hollowed log—seemed to have a tonic effect on the Vice-Regal guests,, who were tired after , a day and, night of travelling from Western Samoa to Aitutaki. More hula dancing was put on for the Vice-Regal Entourage during a garden party this afternoon at the Residency, Avarua. The Vice-Regal garden party was completely formal by local standards, but certainly not by New Zealand standards. Guests sipped tea to the beat of hula rhythms. Officials of the London Missionary Society—one of the leading religious denominations on the island—have objected to certain of the hula dances put on for the party at the feast. Officials claimed that two of the hulas danced there were "suggestive.”