ISLANDS AND ISLANDERS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 512, 14 April 1949, Page 5

ISLANDS AND ISLANDERS

Sir,-G,. M. Wilson is suffering from that form of nostalgia which leads to distortion of facts. In his article on Norfolk Island he declares that it was the imposition of mainland ways of living which made the islands difficult for the mainlander and the islanders, the implication being that the islanders were just "nature’s children" before we invaded their paradise, This is nonsense. Long’ before the mainlander arrived in numbers, the islanders sent their children abroad to be educated: Scots College, Sydney, and Kings, Auckland, could muster a good Old Boys’ Association on the island. Also the stores in

Mr. Wilson’s time had been selling pate de foie gras, caviare, and other- rare groceries, all brought through Vila, dutyfree, from France. The island girls could ‘wear dresses. made of handprinted French crepe-de-chine, their fathers could drink French brandies and liqueurs, and did (once a fortnight, as the liquor law allowed), they wore riding kit tailored by Poole, London, and had their boots made in Oxford Street. All these civilised amenities were available for those who could afford them. And those who cared to market their produce always could. What blew the islands into the doldrums was not the example of the mainlanders, but the imposition of a fruit embargo by the then New Zealand Government as a body blow for the em--bargo Australia placed on New Zealand

potatoes. The embargo on the selling of our produce in New Zealand de‘stroyed our only sure market, no ships came to us from this country, and while the Australian market was open to us it was already swamped with the kind of goods we produced. The islands have always been over-romanticised. When we tell the truth about them they emerge as a delightful place to live in and a better place to die in. You take a long time to die in that salubrious climate, and when vou do. you are

buried free.

JUDITH

TERRY

(Avondale).