RACE DAY IN THE ISLANDS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16497, 6 August 1921, Page 8

RACE DAY IN THE ISLANDS.

AND A PICTURE SHOW. (By TE PANA.) (Written for the ” Star.”) In the blessed isles of the South Seas, where the white man takes his daily exercise with a fly switch or shoots flying foxes by moonlight, race day ia something to really enthuse about. For weeks the little sun-burned town has been excited. On shndv verandahs, at kava-drinking parties, horse has monopolised the conversation; beche-de-mer and copra are forgotten. Race day is a public holiday. Gaygarbed natives flit about the “ beach*’” or dash past on bicycles, coloured 44 stilus ” streaming in the wind, and perspiration dripping from their skins. Blue-clothed grea-sv Chinamen slither riong ; fuzzy-haired Fijians. Solomon Island boys, men from the Rotumah guano pits, pearl-shell divers—all of them bitten with the race bug—fraternise and discuss the coming sport. The swelter of the sun is forgotten; the swarms of flies clustering about each little group are not a pest to-day ; the clouds of white limey dust cease to annoy. This is a day of days, a single blissful period in the lives of people dwelling in a land of alleged romance. The racecourse. . . . There are no fancy fittings. The track has been gouged out of the rank scrub, and in a w r eek will have returned again to a liana covered patch engulfed in the bush. The dusky jockeys weigh in under the shade of a piece of hark cloth. A flam buoyant tree all aflame with scarlet blooms shelters the officials, and the saddling paddock is a roped-off area sacred to club members brown and white. Grandstand seats are in the lofty crowns of coconut palms. The active native looks down on the people from his shaky perch and blesses the instinct winch taught him to walk up trees. There is nothing spectacular in the running of the races. Sometimes a native jockey will lose his sula ” loin cloth—on the passage and shoot down the straight, naked as the truth—a mere incident. The best horse always wins. There is no breeding here—the tropics kill it m man and beast. Til ere is no “ stud ” book, no calendar, no brother of a chap whose sister once knew tlie cousin of a crack jockey, to hand out “ tips.” There is a totalisa tor, a simple ‘‘ machine ” where a man writes numbers on a blackboard. Ho takes your cash and passes out a piece of paper. All so easy. The surge about the machine is always great, lou may strike a divvy ” oi from half a 1 sovereign upwards on your five shilling investment. ine language of the rabble is a joke. There is ouauoan, r ljian, Giiinese, i.’ reach, and ball a dozen Paciuc dialects. iDverybouy speaks aunieuody else s lingo, and n tney don t “ uecne-ue-mer jmgdsn ” —“ iiat name jou sa»ee me ado same long oosa ' a ill carry Him through. its only at tne liman ol me race, wnen tne judge is late with his announcement, and mi speak, at uu.e Uiai one ieeis like a mental patient at dome. Yv itii tne meeting over, the horses that have put up the day’s sport are aliened to veliiciCs and jog slowly back to tlie villages. The crowd still laugns and perspires. In Duc^.beams, youths with scarlet hibiscus blooms tucked behind their ears, strum oil banjos ant; sing softly some quamt island song. A happy outing is over. Its memory, \* ntten in empty tins and bottles by the wayside, will live for a week. . . .

To round off tlie day fittingly, everybody goes to the picture show.

An island kinerna is an education to those who know only the theatres of a white man’s country. Nominally, seating space is divided into two classes, white and brown; in reality there are three—the decent white residents of the town and their ladies, who sit in front; the indeterminate polyglot mass of white men who are found on the fringes of civilisation and who sit in the middle ; the coloured section, which includes anything from the Chinese coolie or Solomon Island boy and his missus, who occupy the back seats. The programme usually is anything from one to lour years old, but it is enjoyed vociferously by the back seats, whose enthusiasm knows no bounds w'hen there appears on the screen a vision of loveliness a la Annette Kellerman. Upon tlie middle seats the entertainment is more or less lost, as they have as n rule just left a kava party and are finding the darkness conducive to slumber. Their snores, in a deep bass, harmonise wonderfully with the tones of the tinkly piano which comprises the orchestra. In the front seats the men look on serenely in immaculate white ducks, and from the depths of their own lounge chairs are comfortable in the feeling of snperioritv over* the other two-thirds of tlie audience. Admission to the show Is easy. Cash to the front and middle portions but a string of a dozen coconuts is n~ar enough for the back benches. They have their picture “ fans ” in the islands, and wild Western drama and ” slapstick ” are the films that go to ’•"-.Ve for the gaietv of the peonle. Mr\st T v the nictures nre without beginning or end : sometimes tbev open as a enmedv and terminate in a shakv,

scattered trave T o"ne. When Max T Jrwlpv made bis s’Knt bow recentlv tbo “fnns” .Tnhn Rnnn v and FooDbo.jd and made pals with the now or median. One of days the “hiidnw of Tlied« Para tHU ho-™*- ir. tbg h]e«sod isles Then tbo-e should ho a revolution, for th rt c eas does love i bit o’ warm + b and sunshine.