ISLAND PANORAMA

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 3, 3 July 1943, Page 5

ISLAND PANORAMA

LONDON, July'l. "Sailing from Tulagi and Guadalcanal to Rendova and New Georgia, you are neVer out of sight of land," said Mr. Trafford Smith, an Englishman, who journeyed through the new fighting areas of the South and Southwest Pacific in the early part of 1940. "As our ship left Tulagi," he said, "we could see Guadalcanal a\vay to the west, with the flat coastal strip on which Henderson airfield has been constructed lying between the shore and the mountains, which run down the centre of the island. As we moved on approximately north-eastward, the next land sighed was the Russell group, which was occupied by the United States forces recently. They are hilly, and, in the main, small. Then come the Dover Islands, close to New Georgia. They are steeply mountainous and volcanic. "New Georgia itself is also steeply mountainous, but there are coastal? strips which are flat and cultivated. One of these is at Murida, which is one of the Japanese principal bases. Rendova is not so steeply hilly. Woodlark Island and the Troand group are mountainous, and covered with dripping tropical verdure. There is one island in the Woodland group, however, which is reasonably flat, with sites which could, with modern appliances, be converted to ideal airfields."