PERSONAL AND SOCIAL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25135, 28 January 1943, Page 6

PERSONAL AND SOCIAL

Miss Margaret Young returned yesterday from a holiday in the north. Dr and Mrs R. Lawson have returned from a visit to Wanaka. Mrs T. Nevill, of St. Clair, has returned from* a holiday in Timaru. Mrs Leslie Fisher will leave to-day to visit her parents, Mr and Mrs Ivan Logan, of Napier. Mrs Theo Walker, of Nelson, is the guest of Mrs Norman Buchanan, of St. Leonards. Mrs J. E. Macassey, of St. Clair, who is visiting Wellington, is the guest of Mrs Martin Lukie. Miss Dorothy Tamblyn left Waimate on Thursday to take up an appointment on the staff of the Wanganui East School. Wcraen of Rarotonga are constantly knitting and sending comforts to New Zealand for men of the forces, states Mrs Rio Love, queen or paramount chieftainess of the island, and wife of the late Lieutenant-colonel E. T. W. Love, commander of the Maori Battalion in the Middle East. Mrs Love has just returned to Wellington after 14 months in Rarotonga. Among her activities there was the organisation of a canteen group of young girls who nightly serve supper to the troops. She Is now arranging in Wellington camp concert parties of Rarotongan girls. Mrs E. Sprott, widow of a nephew of the late Bishop Sprott, of Wellington, has arrived in Wellington from the Solomon Islands. She was the last woman to be evacuated from the island of Santa Isabel, in the Solomons. For 24 years Mrs Sprott was in sole charge of the Melanesian Mission station on the island, and her work comprised" the teaching and training of young natives, who, in their turn, became teachers at the schools established In the various villages. Although the Japanese, after invading the Solomons, did not come to Mrs Sprott’s locality for some time, the danger had become so great by April that it was deemed wise to leave the coast as soon as possible. The natives took Mrs Sprott into the interior of the jungle, and there for over 10 months she remained hidden, fleeing from one place to another as danger approached. She speaks warmly of the courage, ingenuity, loyalty, and devotion of the natives, who built a small hut for her. Food supplies ran out in June and after that Mrs Sprott lived entirely on native food. "But I did -manage to make my precious tea last out,” she says. " I rationed myself to one cup a day.”