Reporters Diary

Press, 1 June 1977, Page 2

Reporters Diary

Collaborators THE reason that the South Moluccans fled to the Netherlands with their former colonial masters after Indonesian independence was that they were well-known as collaborators. Stephen Hoadley, Auckland University’s expert on Indonesia, savs that when the Dutch mobilised a colonial army they recruited the outer islanders because of their long association with Europeans, dating back to Portuguese contacts. They were a kind of Gurkha army for . the Dutch, and were promised their own state within a proposed Indonesian federation. But the federation collapsed when sovereignty went to the Indonesians, and the South Moluccans — or Ambonese — made it clear that they could not stay there under the Javanese. A republic of the South Moluccas was declared in 1950, but the Javanese invaded the islands and put paid to that. Stephen Hoadley thinks the South Moluccans in the Netherlands have no show of getting their islands back. The best' they can hope for, he says, is a better deal in the Netherlands He adds that the Indonesian Government has repatriated several hundreds of them and subsidised them to break in new lands. Those parcels MRS SYBIL WOODS, of Purau, has been thinking about the mystery of her s 1 o w-travelling parcels from Britain, and has come up with a theory. Three of her parcels had been posted in Britain on January 19, February 9. and March 17, but they arrived in reverse order at two-day intervals after journeys of up to 18 weeks. “I can only conclude,” she writes, "that they had all come in the same container and that

the one posted on January 19 had sat at the bottom of a container for 55 days somewhere in England, to be joined at intervals by others, including the ones posted on February 9 and March 17. The latter, being on top of the container, reached me first. Is it impossible for surface mail to be forwarded in canvas bags on the first ship available rather than wait for a whole container to be filled?” 'Not unuseful 9 IT IS A relief to learn that it is not only the layman who cannot always follow the language of the legal profession. Neither can lawyers, according to Mr N. H. Buchanan, of Christchurch who has written a letter on the subject to the “New Zealand Law Journal.” “I suspect,” he says, “that we all have a style of speaking to each other which hints broadly to the listening layman that he is an outsider and that the subtleties of our thought are beyond his understanding.” Mr Buchanan finds the lawyer’s double negative particularly irritating. “Why say "‘I am not unmindful of the fact that . . .’ when “I agree . . .’ or T recognise . . would do as well?” he asks. He quotes . an offender from a previous issue of the Journal. Professor P. R. H. Webb had referred to another case as being “not unuseful,” and spoken of counsel submitting “not unattractively.” But perhaps this is not a legal habit at all, suggests Mr Buchanan, but “just the diffident Kiwi anxious not to commit himself to the positive.” Hasty departure? SHADES of the Marie ’Celeste — a dish of sugar and some biscuits were still on the dining table, unwashed dishes were scattered about, a loaf of bread

and a pot of stew remained uneaten. That was the sight that greeted Australian visitors to the long abandoned Oasis Station in the ice-free Bunger Hills when they dropped in at the end of this summer season in the Antarctic. The station was last used by a Polish expedition in 1966. Leaving half-eaten meals behind seems to be an Antarctic habit. When Mr R. B. Thomson led a 900-mile traverse in 1962 from Wilkes Station to Vostok — the coldest place on earth, with temperatures as low as minus 88.1 C recorded — they found a pan of frozen steak and onions waiting on the stove. They cooked the food and ate it. Some time later, Mr Thomson, who now heads the Antarctic Division of the D.5.1.R.. met the Russian who had left the meal behind. Shackleton’s party also left its lunch behind at Cape Royds. and when Scott’s men reached the same hut two years later they ate up the waiting gingerbread and partly -nibbled biscuits. .4 real Sweeney FOLLOWERS of the television series ’ called “The Sweeney” are by now well aware that the title applies to Scotland Yard’s Flying Squad, and that it comes from Cockney rhyming slang — flying squad/ Sweeney Todd. Sweeney Todd was the legendary demon barber of Fleet Street, who was said, to have cut his customers’ throats, tipped them into his cellar, and supplied their meat to a collaborator in the pork-pie business. But that is not how the Sweeney got its name at all, according to the "Sunday Times.” The original Sweeney was, in fact, Detective Inspector John Sweeney, who was the Yard’s undercover officer among Irish anarchists (forerunners of the 1.R.A.) and rose to become bodyguard to Queen Victoria. When he appeared to give evidence in court, defendants were heard to say “Here comes The Sweeney.” The real Flying

Squad was not formed until 1918, 16 years after Sweeney retired. It was Edgar Wallace, the thriller writer, who named it, because of the squad’s use of the first police cars — Wolseley Hornets. Long life IN GEORGIA, Caucasus, with a population of 5 million there are more than 14,000 people aged 90 or older. Almost 2000 are more than 100 years old. The brothers Kiyuty, Jan and Mamsyr, are 144 and 149 years old, and Razhden Gogoladze, a resident of the highland Shrom village, has turned 132. A book “Centenarians,” which was recently published in Tbilisi, notes that highland centenarians are in the main joyful people, with a well-balanced nervous system and good memory. Most of the centenarians of Georgia live in the western part of the republic, which has a moist subtropical climate, intensive solar radiation and the sea nearby. In the opinion of scientists, areas at an altitude from 500 m to 1500 m above sea level are the most favourable for longevity. Fijian on ice

THE coldest man in Antarctica this season must surely be Ulai Nagatalevu, a native of the tropical island of Fiji. He is a radio operator at Casey Station, an Australian base on the coast south-west of Australia. New Zealand has not had any Pacific Islanders at its Antarctic station, Scott Base, so far, but a Maori named Tuati was the first New Zealander in Antarctic waters. He came from the Bay of Islands and sailed south with the American explorer Charles Wilkes in 1939-40. He went by the name of John Sac and was the son of Captain William Stuart and his Maori wife. Tuati is the Maori form of Stuart. Almost a century later, another Maori, Dr Louis Potaka. spent the winter of 1934 at Little America on Byrd’s second Antarctic expedition.

—Garry Arthur