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. The First National Bank of Chicago
Gaylord A. Freeman, Jr.
This is the last letter
of thi s series.
I hope that you
�Moor ea
The Society Islands
May 4, 1967
Dear Homer:
11
Welcome to Paradise.
11
It didn't seem an exaggeration whe n the slender, hairychested young man in the dirty shorts jumped from the dock and shook
hands with the arriving tourists and returning Mooreans.
would have seemed an understatement.
Anything else
But, unfortunately, it wasn 1t
our stop.
We had left Auckland at midnight and, once a loft, had cock-·tails and an e laborat e dinner which lasted until 2:00 a. m. ,,, We then set
our watches ahead to 4 : 00 a. m. , Tahitian time, and, after a two and a
half hour rest, we r e awakened to see the first rays of the sun pinking
the clouds atop Mount Orohena and slowly lig ht up the ridges and finally
the coastal fringe of Tahiti.
For almost a year Mrs, Freeman has searched for, and found,
articles on all aspects of Tahiti, the larg est of the Society Islands, its
~:~
Though a bit late for dinner, I was delighted,for, hav ing spent all of
the morning wr i.ting my letter from New Zealand, dictating it to a
Maori girl whose English was poor and American terrible , and,
revising it at the stenographer's office, I hadn't gotten back to the
hotel until time to leave and, hence, had not eaten all day.
�-2-
history, its art, its role in literature.
It has be en desc ribed in rapture
by both palette and pen - - but seen in the early dawn it was more beautiful
than I b e lieved possible .
11
colos sal,
11
In an age when the mediocre is described as
it is a surprise to find something lovelier than it has been
describ ed -- but our first glimpse of Tahiti more than justified Captain
Bligh's description as the "finest island in the world.
11
By seven we had landed, were through customs, read the sign
that says there is no tipping in Tahiti, and were driving into t he island's
only town through the morning traffic, already quite heavy, for offices are
open from 7 : 30 until 11: 00 and from 2:00 to 5 :00 .
There is only one road
whic h circles the figure 8-shaped, 47-mile long island, and there were
hundreds of cars and perhaps thousands o f two-wheeled bicycles, one-lunged
Solexes and more elabo rate scooters, all headed one way -- to the pleasant,
small, wat erfront town (population 20,302) of Papeete (pronounced Pappy-ate-tay),
which was accurately described in a recent article as looking
beaten Mexican border town.
11
like a weather-
11
We first saw Honolulu in 1934, but even then it was at least
thir1 y years ahead of today I s Papeete, which has no building over "two-thirds
the height of a c o conut tree.
.,,
-,·
....,.......,..
,. . .. ..
11
I suppose Europeans w ho came here years ago
In 1787 Captain William Bligh sailed into Matavai Bay with his small
ship, the 11 Bo11nty, 11 sent by King GPorge III, to find breadfruit trees
and take them to the We st Inclie s .
Tahiti, 11 HOLIDAY (February, 1967), which went on to say: ' 1There
ct.re parks with 1nagnificent trees, two-story wooden buildings, a
cathedral, and plenty of debris and garbage in the streets . 11
11
�-3-
feel that Tahiti was ruined when the airstrip was opened in 1960 and
further destroyed in 1962 when the French decided to build an atomic
testing site on the Tuamotu-Gamber island group several hundred miles
away and supply it from Tahiti.
tourists a year.
B efore the airstrip, Tahiti had only 500
Now they must have 18,000, but I don't believe that we
saw one in the two hours that we sat in the sidewalk cafe and walked along
the waterfront embankment where lovely yachts from Los Angeles and
small inter-is l and schooners lay side by side, their sterns tied to old
cannons half sunk in the quay, or as we waited for our 9: 30 boat to Moorea,
I feel confident that in a dozen more years there will be at least ten times
as many tourists, for this is a lovely part of the world.
I must not sound as though we had discovered Tahiti.
George
Robertson, sailing the British frigate "Dolphin," did so just 200 years ago
next month.
Unlike the European captains who discovered New Zealand
only to be repulsed with the killing of several sailors, Captain Robertson
found "all sorts of refreshments 11 on his arrival.
sole complaint of successive captains.
Indeed, that became the
With such verdant valleys, such
ampl e breadfruit, bananas, coconuts and fish, ,:, with the girls so inviting
,:,
As James Morrison, one of those who mutinied c1gai11st Captain Bligh
and stayed on Tahiti, said: 1 1Every part of the Is l and produces food
without the he l p of man, it may of this Country be said that the Curse
of Eden has not reached it, no man having his bread to get by the
Sweat of his Brow, ... "
�-4-
and the climate so salubrious -- it proved difficult to reassemble a crew
to sail away.
Captain Cook came later and named this part of Polynesia the
Society Islands out of respect for the British Royal Society which had
financed his trip to study the transit of Venus.
Though the British were
the first ones here, the French took over the government about 100 years
ago and maintain it today, with the result that French is the western
language of the islands.
It was rediscovered by Paul Gauguin who, forsaking his wife
and family and stock brokerage business in Paris, came here in 1891 to
become known to the Tahitians as
11
the man who makes human beings.
11
In his own words:
''All the joys -- animal and human -- of a
free life are mine. I have escaped everything
that is artificial, conventional, customary.
I am entering into the truth, into nature. 11
Though he died without either fortune or fame, the latter came to both
Gaugin and the Tahiti which he painted with such love.
Robert Louis Stevenson was here late in the last century and
"heard the pulse of the besieging sea throb away all night. ... heard the
wind fly crying and convulse tumultuous palms.
11
::~
Rupert Brooke, whose Greek-god appearance
had captured the
Tahitian I s love of beauty in the intervals between his bacchanalian celebrations
::~
In London he was referred to as the "Golde n Apollo.
11
�-5-
in
11
Pupure's Grove,
and "Retrospect,
11
11
had written "The Great Lover,
11
11
Tiare, Tahiti,"
and sung with pleasure:
"Crown the hair, and come away,
Hear the calling of the moon
And the whispering scents that stray
About the idle warm lagoon. 11
Three years later Somerset Maugham, coming by Brooke's
route (which we had unknowingly followed) from New Zealand, discovered
the overwhelming sensual beauty of Tahiti and stayed to write "The Moon
and Sixpence.
11
It must have given that quiet man great pleasure to write
about Gauguin, for, after an unhappy youth (which he recorded in "Of Human
Bondage"), he, too, had fled his profession, medicine, to pursue an artistic
career as a writer -- and like Gauguin, almost starved in the process -- but
-~
,,,
was rewarded by his enjoyment of Tahiti's beauty .
,:,
"Tahiti is a lofty green island, with deep folds of a darker green, in
which you divine silent valleys; there is mystery in their sombre depths,
down which murmur and plash cool streams, and you feel that in those
umbrageous places life from immemorial tirrB s has been led according
to immemorial ways. Even here is something sad and terrible. But
the impression is fleeting, and serves only to give a greater acuteness
to the enjoyment of the moment . It is like the sadness which you may
see in the jester's eyes when a merry company is laughing at his sallies ;
his lips smile and his jokes are gayer because in the communion of
laughter he finds hims elf more intolerably alone. For Tahiti is smiling
and friendly; it is like a lovely woman graciously prodigal of her charm
and beauty; and nothing can be more conciliatory than the entrance into
the harbour at Papeete. The schooners moored to the quay are trim and
neat, the little town along the bay is white and urbane, and the flamboyants,
scarlet against the blue sky, flaunt their colour like a cry of passion. They
are sensual with an unashamed violence that leaves you breathless. And
the crowd that throngs the wharf as the steamer draws alongside is gay
and debonair; it is a noisy, cheerful, gesticulating crowd. It is a sea of
brown faces. You have an impression of coloured movement against the
flaming blue of the sky, Everything is done with a great deal of bustle, the
unloading of the baggage, the examination of the customs; and everyone
seems to smile at you. It is very hot. The colour dazzles you. 11
W. Somerset Maugham, "The Moon and Sixpence" (Bantam Books, 1963),
pages 142-143.
�-6-
Tahiti was discovered some time later by the team of Charles
Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, who brought fortune to themselves and
more fame to these islands with their trilogy,
11
Mutiny on the Bounty
11
and
,,,
,,,
the two companion books
based on the adventures of Captain Bligh and
thos e who mutinied against him.
Ours, then, wasn't the original discovery, but, exhausted as we
were and after another night without sleep, it was an enchanting introduction
to a way of life which I did not think could still exist.
There is no hurry,
no racial tension, no winter , no income tax, and almost no tabus -cent of the parents of newborn children aren 1t married.
11
70 per
11
By nine o'clock, with both the humidity and the temperature
already in the high nineties, an incongruous fat banker in suit, vest and
hard felt hat, and his neatly-girdl ed wife, perspiring freely, walked
through the little groups of barefoot native boys in shorts and their girls
in pareus, to seek the shade of the yacht's canopy and the slight breeze
of the waterfront.
S eated facing the quay, we had a continuous theater as the boys
loaded the ship and the passengers of all colors and costumes, including a
stout, unkempt woman in green who was constantly eating potato chips or
something out of a bag and looked a bit cross , and a nice coupl e who conversed in French but spoke a greeting to us in English and introduced
:::<
,:<>:,
11
Men Against the Sea II and '' Pitcairn's Island.
HOLIDAY (February, 1967).
11
�-7-
Thus, we were entertained until we
themselves as Mr. and Mrs . Ri e.
sailed for Moor ea, which we could see
only a dozen miles from Tahiti.
It appeared, as Maugham had said, "like some high fastness of th e Holy
Grail, guarded its mystery .... like the unsubstantial fabric of a magic
wand.
11
;:,*:
It was, indeed, beautiful and the cloud-shrouded canyons,
cut into the old volcano cones, did present the mystery of the kind that
allows one to imag ine beautiful little coconut groves with dancing waterfalls
or whatever your fancy suggests.
To celebrate the beauty or something, the
proprietoress of the boat served us ice cold beer.
We rounded Moorea,
came t h rough a break in the coral reef against which the surf pounds day
and night, into the still lagoon and up to the dock.
were greeted with the
11
We lcome to Paradise.
11
It was there that we
Actually, it was the Bali Hai
Hotel, the name of which awaken ed in my mind a half-remembered story of
three Los Angeles bach elors who had come here .
But that was not our stop.
the mile-long, narrow Cook Inlet,
11
We went on another few minutes to
the best anchorage in the i slands,"
running in between two volcanic cones and there to another dock where stood
the Hotel
11
X
11
,
,:,
Mr. Rie was in this country during the war. His business of importing shells for buttons having been discontinued, he worked for awhile
as a plastic engineer at Sampsell Time Control and later at Sears here
in Chicago. The two men here he remembered the best were Dick
Burke and Bob Quayle, two of our dear friends.
,:o:,
''The Moon and Sixpence" (Bantam Books, 1963) , page 142 .
�-8-
Sometimes things just seem to go wrong.
organization at the dock .
place else.
There was no
Nobody welcomed us to Paradise or to any
I went into the hotel ("into" is hardly the word, for nothing
is closed, but I went under the largest thatched roof) and sought to register,
but had to wait for the manager who, it turned out, was the woman in
green!
If she had not made a favorable impression on us, I fear that we
had been even less successful with her,
for two nights but no more.
She said that she would take us
When I explained (pleasantly, I thought) that
we had a confirmed reservation, she demanded to see it, though it was
packed in the luggage not yet off the dock.
She requested that we furnish
her with a coupon, but I said that we had none.
"Impossible.
How could you not have a coupon?
whom could I have trusted?
11
11
If you had not come,
The logic of that assault threw me for awhile,
but I pointed out that we were in fact truly here.
but only for two days.
She was indignant.
11
That is the trouble --
I felt that Dale Carnegie would not have given her
a passing grade and we trudged on down the sandy path, past several groups
of dark-skinned people who didn't respond to our greetings or even look up
as we passed.
Paradise,
Somehow, this fell a little short of how I had imagined
But our cottage was clean and cool and, after a swim, a drink,
a delightful lunch, a very pleasant visit with the Ries , and a much needed
nap, life looked up.
The rum punches were good, the dinner excellent.
�-9We were in Paradise.
Every view was sensuous, the water
warm, soft and full of bright-colored fish .
But we were s t rangers m
this Paradise -- the only Americans and, as such,t olerated but perhaps
not wholly welcome.
Another oddity was that we were both of the same
race ,
From the first sailors to arrive two centuries ago until t h is
morning's jet, the visiting male has found the girls here welcoming.
read much about this - - somewhat skepti cally - - but it is true.
I had
At a
d istance this sounds exciting and I am sure it could be at first hand -- but
without becoming missionar ies we could see all around us the disadvantages
that such lia i sons create.
As we sat on the lawn for cocktails, a young man in his late
thirties joined us, at his s u ggestion.
A resident of the other side of the
island, he had come t o the hotel for companionship -- and endless beers
wh ile his wife visited her children in boarding school in Papeet e .
A
Middl ewesterner, raised a good Catholic, educated through high school ,
successful as an accountant, he came to Tahiti five years ago en rou te to
Australia -- and never got beyond.
After six months he went back to the
States, arranged his affairs (he has a moderate income) and returned to
Moor e a, fell in love with a girl from Bora Bora, went through a formal
marriage ceremony, and lives with her.
How had it worked out?
Was he happy?
�-10-
"Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by happy.
"What do you do ?
11
11
"Well, often there is something around the hous e to fix and I
do that .
Here, I have a l ist of the things to do today.
brother, a priest, in the States.
pump up a soft tire .
First, write my
Second, fix a leaky faucet and, third,
I get up a list of things like that every day.
Some-
times I write a letter -- I've kept copies of all of the letters that I have
ever written from here.
Maybe some day I'll write a book.
"Has the marriage worked out well?
"Well, you know how it is,
11
I'd like to go back to the States
for three or four months but my wife is very dark.
I've told her how it is
in the States and she cried, but I think she understands.
in Hawaii.
11
We have friends
I could leave her there for awhile."
"Is she happy?
11
"Well, I guess she would be if it weren't for the kids.
You
may not like me for saying this, but though I have tried I can't really like
th e kids,
I pretend they're mine, but, of course, they aren't.
She had
them b efo r e I came and it just doesn't seem fair to me to have to support
them,
It isn ' t as if s he is promiscuous,
She knows who the fathers are
and both of them ought to help support their own kids,
so and I guess that's what bugs us -- it's thos e kids."
Anyway, I think
�-11-
Others here consider him foolish, not for having married
a native girl (each of the five hotel managers I've met here are "married"
to local girls who, at 40, are grossly overweight, for here, as in so many
primitive societies, a fat wife is prized as a symbol of prosperity and
dignity, and their many cute children dot th e hot e l grounds) , but his mistake
in the eye s of the other white men here is that he is "married-married.
11
If you live with a girl for any period you are "married" and, despite the
virtual certainty of children, the liaison has no legal sanction and lasts
only as long as both desire.
they are "married-married,
But a few go through the formal legal ceremony
11
or legally married.
As I wrote this part of the notes sitting in the shade of the
palms, I could watch the couple next door as they lay on the beach, both
young and aliv e , he French, she from the islands with a touch of Chines e .
They are a happy young couple, but I gather that it is a rare Westerner who
can come here as an adult and find c ontinued companionship with a thickening
woman who can neither read nor write nor work and has no interest in anything she has not knoV'/11 before.
As I was sensing this from the answers to
,,,
,,,
my questions,
Mrs. Freeman read me the end of a story about a French-
man, Z ola, who, sens itive to the artificialities and constraints of modern
wester n society, had come here and settled down w ith a lov ely Polynesian
girl, Toma.
,:,
At this point in the story Toma has made a flower arrangement;
Some day some one may take a punch at that nose which I poke into
their affairs.
�-12-
Zola has separated the flowers and asked her to arrange them differently:
111
Can you do any other arrangements?' Zola asked
Toma without looking at her.
'"No, this is the only arrangement I make, 1 she said.
She smiled. 'They taught us this when we were children.
Mai-tai ! eh. 1
'"Mai-tai,
1
I replied.
11 1
Mai-tai, and every girl on the island can do this
single arrangement, and the girls of the island have been
making this arrangement and no other for over four hundred
years, 1 Zola said. His voic e was empty.
''Zola's face was held in a tight little smile, but his
eyes were suddenly deep and black with a strange expression.
I sensed that he had looked over the edge of the chasm. Between
us hung the knowledge that Toma could make only one flower
arrangement, could cook poa only one way, cook fish only one
way, make l ove in only one way, sing in only one pattern of
songs, dance one kind of dance. Anything outside of the simple
patterns did not interest her. A nd years ago Zola had come
to know all of them.
"Zola and I did not discuss this during the rema1nmg days
I was on his atoll. We walked and talked constantly; but he
never referred to himself. When the PBY returned I rowed the
old rubber boat out to it after saying good-by to Zola and Toma.
The sweat was pouring into my eyes by the time I reached .the
plane . I was tired. Just as I sh ipped my oars and looked again
at Zola's house the salty drops of sweat fogged my vision. Zola
seemed shrunken, small, hunched, almost bleached. He had
stopped waving. Toma seemed life- s iz ed and natural.
"He was a prisoner not of a dream, but of those faded years
in France that had instilled into his nerves and brain and soul
an int erest in questions beyond himself and beyond the day in which
he existed. He had escaped only the real presence of European
life; twisted through his mind like a maze of black jets were a
set of condition ings and experience s that had burned into his
youthful mind. From these he could never escape.
�-13-
"Zola is typical of a whole breed of men, of white
men that live in the South Seas. Sensitive to the rawness
of their native society, they flee to the apparent tranquility
of the South Pacific. But by then the damage has been done.
"To every white man in the South Seas this dread knowledge of thinness, sameness, an endless unrolling of identical
acts, the haunting absence of distinct personality, must some
day be faced , For many it is too much to face. This is one
reason why so many of the white men of the Pacific are the
most quietly desperate alcoholics in the world. They have
burned all their bridges ; there is no path back to Paris or
Dubuque or London. They must, because of pride and sometimes sloth and sometimes poverty, stay in the South Seas .
But the original vision has been cauterized over with the scars
of experience. So they must be sustained by alcohol or gambling or opium or driving economic activity or, as in the case
of Zola, by a frantic search for the fullest knowledge of a
culture that he did not really value.
"There is a lesson . If you want to live in the South Seas
start early. Early, very early, our nerves become civilized,
It is not easy to then slough off the coatings of civilization; they
are more durable and tough than the softer stuff of primitive
.f
II >:,
l1 e .
I would not write of this aspect of life so fully, but at the
Hotel
11
X 11 the managers and all of the guests (except the Ri es and ourselves)
were mixed couples and I felt in large part the strangeness that we felt was
but a reflection of the resultant malaise which affected our hosts and fellow
guests.
It affected the Mooreans who, usually joyous, were, for some
reason, quite withdrawn and unresponsive.
We drove around most of the island and were intrigued.
is only one rough winding dirt road.
>'i<
There
Uncluttered with vehicles, it is an
Eugene Burdick, 11 The Black and the White,
(Corgi Books, 1966), pages 139-140,
11
Best South Sea Stories
�-14-
intimate part of almost every house and yard,
for there is no town in Moor ea .
It goes through no towns
There is no air strip.
except those on the sides of the streams,
There are no banks
There are several schools,
several stores run by Chinese, but these are not clustered in any settlement, just set along the 5 0-mile road that circles the island on the narrow
shelf of palm-covered land between the mountains and the sea.
The peopl e reflect their Eden-like surroundings.
The young
men are lithe, coordinated and, though full of fun amongst themsel.ves, are
fair l y low-voiced and quiet.
They are well muscled with strong, broad
feet and seem to have considerable strength, though they seldom expend it.
The older men, some of whom, when their hair turns white, are quite
patrician, tend to be far too fat - - and have no clothes to hide it, for a
pair of shorts and perhaps a pair of sandals are a complete wardrobe.
The girls are slender, graceful, soft-spoken, and openly friendly, but
few have faces that we would consider beautiful.
They wear the pareu,
a sheet of printed cotton which they may tie around their necks and wrap
around their body, or just wrap it quite tightly around their breasts (perhaps they tuck it into a strapless bra) and let it hang from mid-breast to
mid -thigh.
It is colorful and clean, but
11
doe sn 't do anything for the figure. "
Indeed, hanging straight down in front, it looks a bit like a maternity outfit
but with their love of children this is not an objectionable appearance,
�-15-
Their voices are quite musical, whether they are speaking
Tahitian, French or a few words of English.
I understand their language
contains virtually no words representing intangible concepts.
They are not
contemplative or speculative by nature, but the language contains many
words for a single object .
I think there are twenty for the coconut tree
in different stages or shapes.
Their music is vocal.
accompaniment.
The guitar or ukulele me rely provides
Their voices are pleasant but I could detect only one
part -- there was no harmony.
Occasionally one voice would ring out with
a challenge as in some of our Negro spirituals.
Those that have and keep regular jobs do their assigned chores
with dignity and, if you thank them, with a smile, but without any obvious
enthusiasm.
to do.
And if there is a minute 1 s lull, they do not seek something else
They sit down, strum a guitar or sing or gossip.
the moment 1 s need, is unnecessary.
Work, except for
Planning is incomprehensible.
Coconuts fall from the trees and,though some are occasionally
gathered by the side of the road to wait the copra buyer who must stop and
load them, they lie where they fall.
and grapefruit.
There are bananas, papayas, pineapples
They are gathered for today 1 s food but few are cultivated,
There are cows, but they are not milked.
and why else would one work?
They do not need to work to live
Life is to be lived for pleasure.
The
�-16-
Calvinistic appreciation of discipline is absolute! y incomprehensible.
~:,
On Sunday, sitting by the shore, writing these notes, I could
see, 100 yards down the beach, ten young men alternately playing guitars,
singing and dancing, and kicking a little ball in an informal soccer game ,
Further on were two young, beautifully-formed girls lying on the beach
waiting to be noticed,
Beyond, sitting heavily in the sand were the wives
of the two managers watching their brood, stark naked, swimming and
playing on the beach .
Last night as we sat in the dusk having a pre-dinner
drink, those children were playing in front of us, when a thought seized them
and a little boy, about 5, played a drum in pantomime, and the two girls,
perhaps 4 and 7, danced the hip- swinging dance of the islands.
>:<
Again let me quote from Eugene Burdick. You may remember him for
his "The Ugly American 11 and "Fail-Safe. 11 An Iowa-born Stanford
graduate and Rhodes scholar, he spent part of each year here on
Moorea (until his death two years ago) and knew the people. In the
story that I quote from above, he described the Tahitian girl:
11
I think I understand Toma and through her, the Polynesian personality. She lives literally in the moment. She
loves tiare and her eyes will light up when she sees them,
but she will not plant them. She has started vegetable gardens
five times at my insistence, but each time has allowed the
gardens to wither. She loves radishes, but not e nough to grow
and fertilize and water them. Three times she has agreed to
hire workers to build an outdoor privy next to the bathhouse.
But each time the money has gone for calico or tobacco,
Flowers, radishes, a privy .•. all of these are things of the
future and Toma does not think of the future, Polynes ians
do not know how to calculate future pleasures. I do not know
why this should exasperate me but it does. 11 (page 13 7)
�-17-
To dance and sing and to make love, those are the point of
living.
don't.
The French understand this but (the Mooreans feel) the Americans
They come and want to change everything and make work.
should go home.
They
If it is necessary to let them come to bring their money ,
perhaps we can put up with it, but don't let them stay.
And they don 1t ! The smart Chinese, realizing that an islande·r
would sell anything for enough rum to give a party, were acquiring land
so rapidly that in 1934 the French government felt compelled to pr·ohibit
the purchase of any more land by foreigners (except from foreigners) .
To grant an exception, it is nec essar y for the local administration to get
approval from Paris and that is very rare.
This means that there is little
for sale and, because of its scarcity, that is at very high prices.
I was
told t hat land is sold in strips from the sea to the mountaintop and, as in
most places, there is only about a quarter of a mile nearest the beach
which is level enough to have any utilitarian value.
This makes such land
more expensive than any present use could justify.
On the other hand, the
Tahitians can lease their land and thus some are assured of income in
perpetuity.
After the week end at Hotel
11
X 11 , we moved to Bali Hai for three
days of rest and writing (these notes and a speech for the A. I. B. ).
recollection had been correct.
Don Mc Callum.
My
The young man in the dirty shorts was
A manufacturer's representative in Los Angeles, he,
�-18-
Hugh Kelley (a lawyer with Shera, Mallory and Kelley ), and Jay Carlisle,
a floor trader on the Pacific Coast Exchange, all bachelors and either
bored or discouraged with their lives, had d ec ided in 1960 to chuck it all
and go to Tahiti.
Here on Moorea they bought a vanilla plantation which ,
''<
unfortunately, like most of the plantations here, was a bus t. ·,
So was the Bali Hai Hotel which had not yet had a guest.
So
the three bought the hotel and, after eighteen months of French red tape,
they owned it and received their first guests in June of 1962 .
In the inter -
vening five years they have worked harder to build up the buildings and the
clientele than they ever had in Los Angeles .
They have been successful.
The grounds, right on the ocean, are beautifully kept up.
The
lawns are deeply green around the very comfortable, airy thatch-roofed
cottages set amid the palms, which Maugham described as coming
down to the water's edge, not in rows, but
spaced out with an ordered formality. They
were like a ballet of spinsters, elderly but
flippant, standing in affected attitudes 11
11
looking at their reflections.
the guests American.
:::~
The food is good, the operation organized, and
The three bacheior s have now spread out and have a
In the first place, it is a lot of work. As you may know, vanilla is a
form of orchid, the seed pod of which is used to produce the flavoring
extract. Each plant has to be pollinated individually. Thus, it is hard
work. Secondly, the bugs get it. Thirdly, it isn't the best vanilla, and,
lastly, Madagascar not only produces better vanilla, it produces all that
is really needed . They are now trying to convert the land to pasture
and are bringing in some Charolais cattle.
�-19-
second Bali Hai on Raia tea, about 100 miles west of here, a smaller,
more remote and even more beautiful island -- thus like this but more so.
Nothing is perfect.
The swimming is poor (because of coral)
and when, our first day here, a group of perhaps 100 from the Matson
cruise ship, the "Mariposa," came here for the day to enjoy the "biggest
show in all of Polynesia,
11
we felt momentarily transported to North Miami
Beach -- but that occurs only once each three weeks and by eight o ' clock
the day's guests had gone.
This is a beautiful spot, gaily cheerful, staffed with local girls
who never pass you without a pat.
the guitar or find another and sing .
If one has a free minute, she will play
We have not had to learn the name of
any other guest, but when v::e pass and say good morning, they not only
realize that it isn't an insult, they respond in kind.
If you were in the area, this would be a lovely place to vacation
but you might need to bring some project with you.
For one who needed it,
it would be a great place to rest and recuperate.
The warm humid air at best relaxes and at worst debilitates.
But it can unwind the most tense and I was deeply grateful for that.
The
constant beauty, the lack of exertion by anyone else quiets one 1s temptation
to help or suggest.
With any cooperation on your part, a week here more
than any place I know will
11
knit the raveled sleeve of care ... .
11
�-20-
But it is not a place for you or me to live, not only because
of the humidity or the inaccessibility or the bugs, but because we have
lost our innocenc e.
In one of the articles Mrs . Freeman brought , the author
described his stay -"The days were the summer afternoons
of childhood, 11
and so I hope they were for him .
But for most of us people of the West,
particularly we whose businesses require so much of us, escape is not a
matter of location -- the water can be cool or tepid, but that counts only
for an instant.
A magnificent view can be observed but does not compel
constant observation.
we seek the shade.
The sun can be bright and we are grateful even as
It may still be true as Morrison said in writing of
these islands :
Their Inhabitants . . .. are without doubt the
Happiest on the Face of the Globe."
11
And the islands offer us some of this same beneficence, a completely
salubrious climate without, for the moment, any need of punctuality,
formality or concern.
But for us it is just "for the moment . "
For us,
over fifty years of discipline have closed the door forever on "the summer
days of childhood.
11
Moorea or Tahiti can offer decompression more equable than
Florida and free of retired friends or ambitious borrowers to interrupt
your dreams.
�-21-
The constant rumble of a thousand waves against the coral
reef sounds like distant diesel locomotives to which, were we home, we
would close our ears.
In wondrous clouds which always build up on the
horizon, you see full sailing galleons, castles or a mountain range -- but
the only images you see are those you brought with you.
tests, those billowed shapes do not create.
to what you carry deep inside ,
Like Rorschach
They only open up the door
The thoughts of business and family, of
church and civic responsibilities that have woven strand by strand into our
lives - - like the threads that bound Gulliver to the ground, they by their
number restrain us.
We come too late to Tahiti.
Happiness is no longer for us a
matter of geography -- it is a matter of action, of problems, of decision,
and occasional victory.
I have no envy of the Tahitian 's freedom (a man is
free or enjoys liberty in proportion to which his life is governed by his own
choice).
11
Freedom is not doing as one pleases but doing as one chooses.
11
Our whole education and training is to choose wisely; the Tahitian 1s is to allow hims elf to be pleased.
the Tahitian.
Our concepts are quite foreign to
If we but substitute intellect or even curiosity in place of
soul, we can accept Maugham 1s observation,
11
A soul is a troublesome
passes sion and when man developed it, he lost the Garden of Eden ,
,1,
,,,
11
Ralph Barton Perry, "When is Education Liberal? 11 (Toward the
Liber ally Educated Executive), edited by Robert A. Goldwin and
Charles A. Nelson, The Fund for Adult Education, White Plains,
New York, 1959, page 37-.
,:,
�-22-
We lost our innocence a long time ago.
We don't want to
live in the Garden of Eden - - it has no inside pl um bing and one can't be
certain that a fifty-year -old Eve would look good in slacks.
I am corny enough to love the United States,
I even like to work on its problems.
I love its people.
But I am intensely appreciative of
the chance to see other lands and observe their people.
And so, with that bit of sentimentality, I will end these notes
and pack my bags, for we leave at midnight for a long trip that arrives in
Chicago the following midnight,
Thus, I will close this, the fifth series
of letters from foreign travels.
As we have had the good fortune to see
most parts of the world except Africa and Central America, this may be
the last for some time,
I end with more than thanks -- a deep gratitude to you who,
over the years, have made it possible for us to see the world -- and to
Caterpillar for this particular trip.
Though of limited perception , I have
been grateful for the chance to observe the institutions, the interests and
the aspirations of so many peoples.
I don't know that I will be a better
banker, but I should be a wiser man.
i
With deep respect· arid affection,
c}aLz_
�
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Letter to Homer J. Livingston from Gaylord "Gale" A. Freeman Jr. about his travels in Mo'orea, the Society Islands
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4 May 1967
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Freeman, Gaylord A
Livingston, Homer J
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Suffolk University Faculty and Alumni Manuscript Collection, (MS102), 1903-2013
Series 4: Gaylord A. Freeman, Jr. Far East and Oceania Letters Collection, 1967
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Oceania
Moorea (French Polynesia)
--Civilization--20th century.
Moorea (French Polynesia)
--Commerce--United States.
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Asia
Far East Letters
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Text
,,
Auckland, New Zealand
April 28, 1967
Dear Homer:
Mr. Mowbray, General Manager of the National Bank of
New Zealand, summed up his comments with ''We in New Zealand have
only two assets, rain and sunshine." For the first forty-eight hours of
our stay we saw only the first.
Located at the southern end of North Island, Wellington is a
port city on Cook Strait which separates the two main islands (we didn 1t
have time to visit the South Island, with its snow-covered Alps and majestic
fjords).
The almost constant wind and frequent rain which characterize
that city were in full force when our propeller-driven plane completed its
four-hour flight from Sydney and came down on a runway, too short for
jets, almost in the center of town with its two-story control tower surrounded by private homes.
Another characteristic was also apparent.
Australian gag goes,
11
11
An over-worked
! spent the week end in New Zealand.
I don't know, it was closed.
arrival New Zealand was
11
11
11
11
How was it?
11
Never really jumping, on the day of our
clos ed'' for ANZ AC Day and, as a consequence,
there were no porters to help with our six bags from plane to cab (interrupted
�-2-
by a detailed examination of the soles of our packed shoes, because we
had truthfully said
11
ye s
II
when asked if we had been on a farm or ranch in
the past three weeks).
For the moment we were uncertain whether it was worth while
to visit that windy, wet town of 256,000 people.
But, after a night's rest,
in a stout raincoat, with one hand on hat, I set forth to make five bank calls
and was warmed by the very pleasant men who head these banks,
New Zealanders are said (by the Australians) to be more reserved,
Our personal experiences -- and we have had many in the last three days -indicate that the New Zealanders are much friendlier and, indeed, as helpful
as any people we have ever met,
This includes the bankers .
Wellington is only about half as large as Auckland but is the
capital city and each of the l ocal banks has its head office there.
Three
months ago the bankers were primarily concerned with the possibility of
devaluation, but today that threat is deemed to be quite remote and they have
returned to the continuing underlying probl ems of their country.
New Zealand is a primary producer.
and its second dairy products .
Its main product is wool
The export of these is the principal source
There are one, two or three "local II banks, depending on who defines
"local. 11 The Bank of New Zealand, owned 100 per cent by the government, is local but not private. The National Bank of New Zealand is
private, but last year 100 per cent of its stock was acquired by Lloyd's
Bank (in London). The Australia and New Zealand Bank has been here
the longest but its stock is more heavily owned in England and Australia.
The branch of the Bank of New South Wales can't claim to be local -but is very aggressive .
�-3-
of the foreign exchange needed to buy manufactured products from abroad.
But the prices of its wool and butter fluctuate widely and they are down at
the moment.
A cross between the Merino and Lincoln sheep (with some other
blood thrown in), the New Zealand Corriedale is an excellent producer of
wool and a good quality of me at as well.
The country I s beautiful green
pastures (which carry about three sheep to the acre) produce a great quantity
of wool.
This was in great demand during the war and a Wool Commission
was created by statute to market the nation I s crop at that time.
Some of the
large proceeds were withheld, and these funds (which at a later date could
not be distributed because some of the original producers could not be found)
became the Commission's original capital.
Now each year this Commission sets a price floor at which it
will buy all tendered wool.
If, as in 1958, the world price falls below that
level, the Commission buys great quantities.
After the 1958 purchase, wool
pr ices rose steadily and the Commission acquired much more capital.
This
year the world price for coarser grades has fallen below the Commission's
floor price, and again the Commission has acquired a great deal of wool
(about 30 to 40 per cent of the output), some 300,000 bales at a cost of
50 to 60 million dollars.
This may or may not work out well for the growers,
but it has a very unfortunate impact on the country's balance of payments
because it provides the growers with purchasing power with which they can
�-4-
buy imported goods , but, since the Commission is unwilling to sell the
wool on the world market at present prices, the crop is not exported and,
hence, it produces no foreign exchange.
There is a similar problem with butter.
There is a government-
sponsored "Dairy Board" which serves as the sole purchaser and marketing
organization for butt er, cheese, and other dairy products, exc ept whole milk.
Here also there is a "guaranteed" price, presently 3 35 pounds sterling per
ton, but as the world market (in London) is 300 pounds sterling, this product,
too, is being held off the market and stored in New Zealand.
Here, again,
money is going into the hands of farmers for expenditure (for imports as well
as domestic goods) without the necessary foreign exchange being brought into
the country.
Devaluation would not cure this situation for more than a brief
time.
Wages would go up and the farmers would demand higher wool and
butter pr ices; thus, the only gain would be temporary, and the discouragement of foreign investment (which would result from devaluation) would make it
a poor bargain.
Attracting necessary foreign investment is already a troublesome problem.
The Governor of the Reserve Bank thinks the country needs
an inflow of about 5 million
,:,
pounds each year.
'~
They ar e not getting it,
The New Zealand pound is on a parity with the English pound, but later
this year (July) the country will adopt a decimal coinage with the dollar
worth ten shillings ($1 . 40 U.S.) -- "The dearest dollar and the weakest
currency in the world. "
�-5-
however, for the balance of payments problem of England and the United
States (with the consequent "voluntary program" and the Interest Equalization Tax in our case) has cut down this important source of foreign exchange.
In fact, last year, although New Zealand had a trade surplus, there was such
an outflow of capital (excluding reinvestment of local earnings) that the
balance of payments resulted in a net deficit.
So what to do?
The government apparently understands the problem and has
made a great to-do about cutting back its expenses (which, as in every
democracy, only means cutting back from where it might have gone, not
actually cutting back below where it had been) and, as of February, it took off
the subsidy on butter which had kept the local retail price down to two shillings
a pound (about 28~) as against a free-market price of two shillings .six pence
(35~) where it now sells.
It also removed the subsidy on flour and bread,
which thereupon doubled in price.
The government has also cut down on
construction - - a government permit must be obtained before building any
structure costing over 30, 000 pounds.
It also has imposed import controls.
Except for certain necessities (chemicals, petroleum, etc. , which may
amount to about one-third of total imports), it is necessary to obtain a
government license to import goods, and the amount of licenses to be granted
after this coming July will be cut another 20 per cent.
These measures may help, but, when I asked a very important
man m the government what he would do if he were the Chief of State, he
�-6-
said he would eliminate all subsidies and all floor prices (as on wool and
butt e r) and point out to the people that, just as they have to buy imports
at world prices, so must they sell their exports at world prices,
They
could not expect the government to maintain artificially high prices for
goods that have to be sold abroad.
But the government will not do just that.
In fact, this morning's
paper reports that New Zealand is considering pulling out of the
11
Kennedy
Round" of trade talks, now nearing its end, because it cannot get adequately
favorable terms .
There is some feeling that it might do better by negotiating
individual deals with each country separately.
This may be illusory.
North
and South America and continental Europe produce plenty of butter and butter
substitutes,
England has been a great purchaser, but, if it enters the Common
Market, then Dutch butter will be available without trade barriers.
It is said
that New Zealand can produce it at lower cost than other countries, but, if
New Zealand is not willing to meet world prices, it is not going to sell its
butter .
But all is not black.
Pr eduction is increasing and, for the past
three years, growth has averaged between 8 and 9 per cent in real terms.
Consumer prices have been rising only about 2 to 2-1/2 per cent pe r year
(which Governor Wilson of the Reserve Bank considers "a very
good record 11 ) .
�-7-
Prices may rise a bit more this year, in part because of the
removal of the domestic subsidies on flour, br ead and butter, and in part
because of substantial wage demands,
Here , as in Australia, although labor
unions are quite strong, wages are not negotiated between employers and
unions.
If either the Employers Federation or the Federation of Labor asks
for a "general wage order, " a hearing is held and a federal judge sets the
basic or "award" wage.
Last year labor asked for an 8 or 9 per cent
increase, but the judge (who had recently been appointed) held the increase
to a mere 2-1 /2 per cent.
This surprised everyone and infuriated labor
which will make a strenuous effort for a greater increase this year.
A banker is tempted to explain New Zealand 1 s problems as being
the direct result of a "welfare state," It is true that, even prior to this
century, New Zealand I s Parliament enacted labor relations laws to protect
unions and establish minimum wages; it subdivided large properties, financed
the acquisition of small tracts by individual farmers, and passed the first oldage pension act (at l east the first in any English-speaking country).
These
earlier laws were expanded and much other social legislation was enacted
during the depression, and extensive health and medical p lans were undertaken
so that today "the State has become the foster father of all the nation I s people
and a partner of many of its farmers and businessmen.
11
,:,
If they have gone
too far in that direction, they are not very likely to change -- short of some
See LIFE I s World Library, "Australia and New Zealand" ( 1966) page 79.
�-8-
catastrophic experience.
Perhaps the crux of the problem is that on these friendly,
pastoral islands life is so pleasant, so productive and so remote that the
people have lived and continue to want to live well fed, simply, and unconcerned about foreign problems.
But they can't.
They would expect the
United States to help them if their independence were ever threatened,
and they have troops fighting alongside ours in Vietnam and others training
now in Malacca,
Much more significant, they want automobiles which must be
purchased abroad (although B. M. C. , Ford and G. M. now have assembly
plants here); they want gasoline which (despite a very small amount produced
here and a new exploratory lease recently granted by the government to Esso
and others) has to be purchased abroad.
,:c,:c
They want television, radios,
electric razors and towels (those in our hotel bathroom are from Fieldcrest),
etc., all of which have to be purchased abroad.
If they didn't want these things,
,:,
I asked a cab driver if he thought there was too much government ownership and regulation. "Indeed there is. Our cabs are private enterprise.
We have to hustle to make a profit, but the buses are operated by the
government at a great loss which has to be made up in higher taxes on
us working men. The government is weak. It lets people raise prices.
Custard is up 25 per cent in the last two months, and my wife says
everything else is, too. The government should fix prices and not let
that happen." Like far too many of us, without realizing it, he wants freedom for himself but controls on others!
,:o:,
They are, however, building a steel mill to process iron ore sands from
the western shore of North Island.
�-9they could produce whatever products they wanted and sell them back and
forth within the islands at any price which they (or the government) wanted,
But the hard lesson that they (and all of the rest of us) must learn is that,
if you want to buy any goods or services outside your nation, then you must
sell outside your nation -- and sell at the price which outsiders are willing
to pay.
New Zealanders, so comfortable at home, have not yet faced up to
that hard less on,
Is it worth while to come to New Zealand as a tourist?
Yes,
indeed!
First, you can see a variety of the whole world's scenery.
In a 1,500 mile trip from south to north, you can visit Antarctic
glaciers, Norwegian fjords, Swiss Alps, English sheep-covered parks,
the dun hills of California, the vineyards of Italy, the farmlands of central
Unit ed States, and on up to the sub-tropical climate and Polynesian culture
of the extreme North,
Not being a lyricist,
I cannot describe the country except to
say that every direction in w hich you look i s like a beautifully composed
and colored painting .
In the immediate foreground there is a neat fence,
Just beyond, hundreds of large w hit e sheep graze on almost blue-green
pasture that looks as if it had been recently c ut .
B ehind this, the gentle
:::,
When I said to Mrs . Freeman that the distant sheep looked like
"maggots on a mound- of moss, 11 she observed that I was quite
unlikely to win the poetry prize with that imagery.
,:o:<
Good sheep-tight fence with s ix or seven strands of smooth wire
with five to seven substantial stays between posts.
�-10-
hills rise to a cloud-covered mountain in the background.
By the cottage
on the left is a hedge of hydrangeas, bigger than we have ever seen before,
and to the right in the valley a cluster of poplars whose autumn gold reflects
>'<
the sunshine.
Everywhere that you look you see sheep' -- sometimes you see
them grazing in the same field with cattle (as an avid reader of
11
Westerns,
11
I thought some one had to be shot when that occurred).
This country is far more mountainous and far more beautiful
than Australia (which is surprisingly flat), with the result that it has many
fast-flowing rivers that provide substantial hydroelectric power,
Another
source of power which intrigued us was the volcanic faults in the Wairakei
Valley where steam roars out of the ground and sweeps across the highway.
Engineers have now drilled deep in the source and develop e d power to drive
turbines to generate electricity.
Second, the country is unspoiled by tourists .
We were told that New Zealand has more automobiles in relation
to its population than any country other than the United States.
are kept in the garage.
If so, they
Driving from Wellington to Wairakei, we sought in
vain for another car going in the same direction in order that we might follow
its lights, for the road is one constant series of curves.
.,.
J,
The next morning,
Fast shearing of sheep (each grower wants his shorn at the same time)
is so important that Godfrey Bowen, who established the world's
record by shearing 463 in one day, is a national hero.
�-11-
driving from Wairakei to Waitomo, on one stretch of about sixty miles
>
:<
of grave l road we did not pass a car .
If w e were retired and in good health, I would love to take a
month or two to drive leisurely through both islands,
Third, the people are very pleasant.
This is an English- speaking country (it is much easier for an
American to understand and be understood here than in Australia) with a
very pleasant, helpful people.
The Australians had said that we would find
the New Zealanders quite reserved.
much more helpful and warmhearted.
On the contrary, they have proved to be
Our unfortunately inadequate rental
car had among its defects the inability to start.
Thus, each time the engine
died we had to spend at least half an hour in feverish effort, in pushing and
in prayer ,
Each time everyone within hearing distance of the Cortina I s
whining starter dro p ped his own work to come and help -- actively, either
by g e tting in t he seat and sharing the frustration or by gett i ng out and pushing .
In addition to these European New Zealanders, there is an
e arlier race, perhaps descendants of the Polynesian, Kupe, who came here by
canoe over one thousand years ago and returned with sufficiently precise
sailing instructions (by sun and stars) for hundreds of his people to follow
him some 400 years later, in 1350,
These are the Maoris, who, in 1840,
agreed to cede the government to the British Crown.
,:,
These pleasant,
This was all right with me, for, though I understand the concept of
driving on the left, in moments of crisis I swing back to the r i ght and
invariably move the turn indicator when I want to shift gears !
�-12 -
golden-skinned people declined from about a quarter million down to
only 40,000, but have now increased t o about 170,000.
They are no longer
a race apart, but are becoming fully assimilated and are engaged in all
activities and professions .
Fourth , you would see some unusual bird and animal life.
I gather that New Zealand was cut off from other land masses at
a very early date.
but the bat.
Until the Polynesians came, there was no mammal here
T he great bird, the moa, now extinct, stood twelve feet tall.
(I walked right into a replica of one on the stairway of the Central Bank
and got quite a shock.) The odd-looking, flightless kiwi, with its long beak ,
has given New Zealanders their nickname.
Tramping through the jungle -
like growth, it is a comfort to know that New Zealand has no snakes - - indeed,
the only reptile is the iguanalike tuatara, said to be the world's most archaic.
We went considerably out of our way through magnificent forests
to visit the Waitomo Glowworm Grotto where, in a boat, we moved silently
through vaulted caves to see the millions bf tiny lights of the "glowworms,11 *~'
a larva which clings to the ceiling in a sort of hammock and drops 15 to 20
"fishing lines II a foot or more in length which, with a stickiness, catch and,
with acid nodules, paralyze any mosquito or fly that becomes ensnared.
larva then pulls up the line into its mouth and digests the fly.
The
Having no
excretory organs, the larva consumes the fly by a chemical process which
,:,
Virtually all place, county and town names are Maori. We drove
from Lake Taupo to Wairakei, to Atiamuri, to Mangakino on to
Te Kuiti and Waitomo.
Arachnocampa Luminosa
1n case you wondered.
�-13-
creates a substance called "luciferin" that gives off a steady, cold light .
There are also many natural wonders, like the geysers and mud
pools of Wairakei reminiscent of an undeveloped Yellowstone Park.
Fifth, if you have time, you can fish for trout that almost snap
at the end of your fly rod.
They are magnificent in size and great in number.
Sixth, accommodations are quite satisfactory.
There is nothing here to compare with Sydney's Wentworth Hotel,
but the inns which we visited (owned and operated by the government -natch!) provide courteous service, free of guile, and are clean and comfortable.
The food is plentiful, but, in a land which produces great quantities of fruit
and vegetables, there are few of these served (presumably because they
would be too expensive for the small prices charged).
In New Zealand, the
world's greatest producer of lamb, there is little of it offered on the menu
(presumably because the local tourists are fed up with it at home).
cater to the local citizens.
Hotels
Of course, t~ey should, for there are as yet few
~ (
foreign visitors.
In time they will be more sophisticated and offer the
foreigner a better selection, at the higher prices that he is willing to pay,
but the present arrangement is inexpensive, and, after the first day, you
learn to stop at roadside stands to buy fruit and vegetables to be eaten en
route.
As a result, you can tour this part of the world quite inexpensive ly
and, at the same time, comfortably.
>:<
An estimated 20,000 Americans last year.
�-14-
Would this be a good country in which to settle down?
That is a different question .
It might be for an older couple
of mode st means, for the country offers great security and moderate living
costs.
The country is hardly moving forward fast enough to attract
an ambitious United States city man, but it might prove a great place for a
farmer with some capital who liked the quiet, outdoor life.
pick his climate .
He could literally
Here in Auckland, the lowest average temperature is
in July at 54°, the highest in February at 67° {for the North it is warmer,
for the South cooler).
He would virtually be assured of adequate rainfall
and would live in constant beauty.
But he would do well to develop crops
new to this country (not rely on sheep and dairy cows) and would have to be
willing to put up with the all-pervasive government.
Furthermore, he might have a hard time getting in.
New Zealand
has a population of only about 2-1 /2 million (about the same as Sydney) or
about 24 people to the square mile.
The country could support 20 million
but is not expected to reach even 5 million until the end of the century.
There is no program for immigration and the present quotas are small.
Some English and some Dutch come each year but few Americans.,~,:<
>:<
I had to have a tooth filled in Wellington and went to a dental surgeon
re commended by one of the banks . I expected a bill of at least ten or
fifteen dollars . It was 5 shillings, that is, 70 cents.
,:,,:,
Quite a few American Marines stayed here after the end of World War II,
but they married New Zealand girls and have been absorbed into the life
more as New Zealanders than as Americans . The United States Vice
Consul he.re in Auckland could only think of five Americans in this city
of over 500, 000.
�-15-
In my few days here I have seen no exciting business opportunities,
The manufacture of pulp and paper is a substantial activity.
In the depression the government (as its equivalent of our W. P.A.) put
men to work planting trees, having decided that California Monterey pine
would do well here.
It has grown as much in the intervening thirty years
as it does in fifty years in the States and is perhaps the third most
important crop, but I don 1t know whether pulp or paper can be exported
economically.
I believe that the government would be helpful, in the sense
that Prime Minister Holyoake would certainly want to encourage a new
industry (although unemployment is no problem ).
Labor may be a bit
cheaper than in Australia, but, unless the activity offered great promise,
the taxation and regulations might prove discouraging.
This would be the case in tre banking business.
The interest-
rate spread is reasonabl e -- 3 per cent on true savings, 4-1 /2 per cent
on investment accounts of one year.
The prime lending rate is 5- 1 /2 per cent,
but the government limits the maximum average rate to 6 per cent.
There
is considerable demand, and loans run 60 to 65 per cent of deposits, higher
at this time of year when corporate income tax payments increase demand.
But liquidity requirements change every week,
requirements vary from one to 30 per cent.
cent, presently they are one per cent.
On demand deposits reserve
Last year they reached 23. 3 per
To meet these reserves, the banks
have to borrow from the Central Bank at a 7 per cent rate (as against their
maximum average loan rate of 6 per cent).
�-16-
The real trouble experienced by the banks is a steady decline
in their share of the private sector financing, as "fringe banking,
11
finance
companies and inter -company lending take over a larger share of what they
think of as their rightful market,
As i s true 1n so many places, the country's
monetary authorities restrict only the banks, t hus diverting the profitable
opportunities to other types of financial institutions .
I doubt that many American banks will move into New Zealand,
and I doubt that many American business corporations will either, except
to avail themselves of the consumer market.
On the other hand, if one had to be an expatriate, it would be
hard to find a more pl easant place to live ,
Furthermore, despite the short-
range problems of this country, if, as seems likely, the wo rld's population
continues to increase and adequate food becomes the concern of the
11
have 11
as well as the "have - not II nations, New Zealand, able to produce tremendous
quantities of food at low cost, must some day c ome into its own.
I hope so, for, after even so short a visit, I feel real affection
for this b eautiful country.
Sincer elf.;
�Capital: Wellington
t'rlncipal language: English
Population (1965): 2,640,100
Principal religion: Protestantism
Density: 25 per square mile
Political divisions: 121 counties, 143 boroughs
Distribution: Urban: 64 percent
Rural : 36 percent
Currency unit: 1 New Zealand Pound
=
20
Shillings
Area: 103,736 square miles
Nation al holiday: February 6,
New Zealand Day
Elevation : Highest point: 12,349 feet
Lowest point: Sea level
National anthem: God Save the Queen
NEW ZEALAND
ECONOMY
SCALE
100 Miles
ECONOMY
-
HEAVY INDUSTRY
..a.L.
Tronsporto tion
Equipment
LIGHT INDUSTRY
I
•
!
0
~
•
T
OTHERS
Seo port
9
Fishing Areas
Chemicals
Clothing
Dairy Products
Food Processing
leather Products
lumber & Forest Products
Metal Products
mPulp
Wate r Power
Tourists & Resorts
Electrical & Electronic
Products
w,,
MINING
@
& Pape, Pro ducts
Rubber Products
Wool
~Li
lignite
~s
~G
Gold
~M"
Mcngonese
~Sn
Tin
~I
Iron Ore
~SG
Sand & Grovel
~T•
Tungsten
~c Coal
n
D
Silver
AGRICULTURE
General Farming
Seasonal Grazing, with
Spam: Agriculture
CJ
,--~
D
Non .Agrlcul!urol Areas
Posture land & Fodd~ r Crops
Forestry with some
Farming ond Posture
© ....~.. • : o.
Copyright by Rand McNally & Co.
and Reproduced with Thelr Permlaaion
�
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Suffolk University Faculty and Alumni Manuscript Collection, (MS102), 1903-2013
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1903-2013
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Letter to Homer J. Livingston from Gaylord "Gale" A. Freeman Jr. about his travels in New Zealand
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28 April 1967
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Freeman, Gaylord A
Livingston, Homer J
Description
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This is one letter from a series of letters, generally referred to as the “Far East Letters.” The letters were written by banking executive Gaylord A. Freeman Jr. (ca. 1910-1991) to then CEO and president of First National Bank Homer J. Livingston. Freeman, along with his wife, travelled to Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Australia, and Moorea from April 23 through May 4, 1967. Often only spending a few days in each location, Freeman described his observations of the economic and cultural climate. Some of the letters also include maps illustrating data such as population, geographical information, and economy. Multiple copies of these letters were forwarded to Freeman’s colleagues and friends. This collection includes the copies sent to John S. Moore.
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Suffolk University Faculty and Alumni Manuscript Collection, (MS102), 1903-2013
Gaylord A. Freeman, Jr. Far East and Oceania Letters Collection, 1967 (MS 102.04)
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English
Subject
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Oceania
New Zealand--Civilization--20th century.
New Zealand--Commerce--United States.
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Copyright is retained by the creators of items in this collection, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law. This item is made available for research and educational purposes by the Moakley Archive & Institute. Prior permission is required for any commercial use.
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Find out more about our collections on <a href="http://www.suffolk.edu/explore/24553.php">our website</a>.
Asia
Far East Letters
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/11079/archive/files/289960a319120e1eef66d04e4b239e16.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=j6yUgY7vwDZs68ueEF%7EZoy9PKV-oSIt3BKL21aVCKNKh7ItCnyGZUk-vWPxv%7E0tBaPiGWIiTlCvL9slCcj%7EiNcmF6d3dlMQQ4r37Qc7N3HgHF3lRupjpC9YtiNyQ5LWClDJInj3LPyZx7F%7E28X78ua2f%7E9LAzObbJAGp2WFn7R24GA78lOsUqQVo90EwSIo6Y-Zpes6Ip0c6Xw5pr-wkGmQBr4YgUcjsjNz3ksiaIN1mWlo3brCTP9IqwrEoMF4iULHOrIy28A5DsA8sg1n0fElD5aEaX8Ko5VISE8VKLH6boObFpP96Kt4V-hAQpbtvYPh0BF%7Eq7EbfdIcFnMmaxg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
68385818f726e89fceb19246d2e5be88
PDF Text
Text
Lake Nash, Camooweal
Queensland, Austr a lia
April 23, 1967
Dear Home r:
I shift e d, just half awake, and was about to slip back to sleep
when the cock crowed again and I realized that he was what had awakened
me.
It was still absolutely black outside, but I heard our host making
hims elf a spot of tea and knew that it was time to get up.
The night air
was cool enough for a jacket, the stars were still bright and the moon
almost full.
In a few minutes the e astern sky lightened and the great red
ball of a sun inched over the horizon a bit north of east, for we are just
above the Tropic of Capricorn and in mid-fall.
By s e ven we were dr e ssed and ass e mble d, our hostess, Jil
Paine, 24, had made coffee as well as t e a , arid one of the barefoot aborigines
had brought over from the unmarried men's mess the breakfast steaks and
bacon w hich, with toast and marmalade, was our very filling breakfast.
By eight we were off in the jeep station wagon to look over something I have
long wanted to see, a great Australian cattle ranch.
There are few greater ones than this, to which we flew north
and a little west from Sydney for seven hours -- about 1,100 miles.
Made
up of w hat were once three properties, this one ranch has over five and
a half million acres.
If it is hard for you to think of that many acr e s, imagine
�-2a farm two miles long (north and south} and as wide as from New York
to San Francisco -- a total of 7,600 square miles.
Actually it is roughly
rectangular, about 85 miles north and south and 140 miles wide.
One
paddock (pasture) is 1,000 square miles -- but no cow has to walk more
than five miles to water .
It is not only one of the largest ra~ches in the world, it is one of
the most efficiently operated.
Owned in equal halves by the King Ranch (of
Texas) and I nternational Packers (of Chicago), it is managed by Charles
Paine who has ranched this area all of his sixty-one years .
Quick, dee is ive,
knowledgeabl e, he is a hard dr ive r both of himself and his help -- and
he has consider able help.
There are three headquarters or home steads, of which this is
the main center, a l most a town in itself,
Besides Mr. Paine and his lovely
niece, Jil, an excellent horsewoman and experienced rancher, there are
three white assistants on the entire property, their wives and children, a
combination bookkeeper and storekeeper (the store handles food supplies,
canned goods, simple clothing and hardware -- and serves as a telegraph
and telephone office as well as keeping ranch records) and 145 aborigines.
In addition, because this is the only settlement for many miles, the State
of Northern Territory stations a policeman and his family he re .
There is
also a school teacher who celebrated (if visiting w ith us could be called
celebrating) her twenty-first birthday last evening.
There is a "nursing
�-3-
sister" (the wife of the bookkeeper) who holds a clinic for the aborigines
every morning and tends minor ailments (a doctor comes every five
weeks -- but will fly in if called),
Also here, though only temporary, are
two linguists sent by the State to study the language of the aborigines,
Thus, in the three homesteads (Berkeley Downs, Georgina and here at
Lake Nash) there are about 35 whites (including women and children)
and about 145 aborigines, or a total of 180 people in 7, 600 square miles,
This is a vast empty land .
We had realized this when our
plane, flying down across the Indian Ocean, approached the lights of
Perth, on the west coast of Australia, just a week ago this morning, at
about 2 :00 a, m,
As we waited in the airport for immigration proceedings
and the servicing of our Qantas Airways Boeing 707, I recalled Mrs. Freeman's
observation when we had left Singapore - -
11
! expect that the most noticeable
change will be the lack of pressing millions which so characterizes the
Orient.
11
Now looking down the runways to utter blackness beyond, not
just for a mile, but for 1,000 miles, I knew how right she was,
�-4-
To get a better idea of the size and location of Australia (which
extends about 2, 300 miles north and south and 2, 500 miles east and west)
E
Q U A T
O
R
I
I
1
I
I
I
I
'II
I
I
I
I
A U
S\ T
I
...
~
I
R A \L
I
A
------- ------\
I
I
\
I
\,. ________ ./''-~~'
I
I
t
I
I
t
I
I
it may be helpful to reverse its north and south, so we can see how it
would be if north of the equator:
AUSTRAL
A
(INV'!:RTED. REVERSED)
E Q U
- - - - -- - - ------ - - - -A ---- - - -- - - -- -- - - --T O R
�-5-
which shows us that its shape is not wholly unlike our country.
Ind ee d, they are ve r y similar as we can see if we super i mpose
the two maps:
t--------- -
~-,}
'
..
>
l
r
I
I
t
\
A
\
\
u S T R A L
(INVE RTED• REVERSED )
\
\I
... .....'>..•......,
~
.................
__
But Australia is clo ser to t h e equator:
E
and consequently much warmer.
Q
U
A
T
O
R
A
�-6-
you see Australia is not too unlike the United States in size and shape,
but is a bit closer to the equator, cons iderably warmer and much drier
(with an annual average of 16 . 5 i nches of rain compared to 26 inches for
North America and 53 inche s for South America) .
Sing a pore has about two and a half mi ll ion people in 224 square
miles, or something over 10, 000 people for each square mile.
Australia
has 11 ,5 00, 000 people in almost three million square miles, or less than
four peopl e to one square mile.
But this doesn't begin to tell the full s to ry,
for over half of thep)pulation are in the five State capital cities on the coast
and in Canberra, the national capital, and very few live inland in the great
interior or "outback" as it i s called .
As on this ranch, there is perhaps
less than one-tenth of one person for each square mile.
This is both an advantage and the source of constant concern.
Australia's first settlers were prisoners who were shipped here when our
Revolution prevented England shipping any more to America, but this was
so on supplemented by other immigrants, almost exclusively English, to the
point where the population is composed of almost pure Anglo-Saxon stock.
The people are more homogenous than I have ever seen, far more English in
appearance than are the people of London (with its admixture of Indians
and Caribbeans and, i ndeed, from all around the world).
,:,
Thei r natural good
Atthetimeofthe 1961 census, of the 10,500,000 Australians, 9,985,000
were ''British' ' and, of those, 8,730,000 were born in Australia.
�-7-
looks (by our standards} have been made better by their love of sport
which their California-like climate has encouraged,
The people on the
principal streets of both Melbourne and Sydney are well dressed; some of
the younger men in shorts and many of the girls in mini-skirts so short
that I have had problems avoiding the traffic.
But this great emptiness also poses a threat.
The great Asian
masses, whose lands reach down to within 500 miles of Australia, want to
relieve the pressure of their overflowing populations of more than one and
a half billion by sending some of their millions to this great "uninhabited"
continent,
At the moment there is no Asiatic nation which is prepared to
accomplish this by armed force, but there is already some diplomatic
pres sure and one can anticipate efforts within the United Nations to argue
Australia into opening its borders.
Recognizing this, and the fact that the
country does need additional peopl e to develop its great natural resources,
the nation has for some time been admitting a substantial number of
immigrants, last year 150,000, this year the quota is 165,000 (a total over
2,000,000 since the end of World War II), but they are virtually all white
European (perhaps 500 to 1, 000 Americans) with preference to the English,
Greeks, Germans and Italians.
This is not a tremendous inflow, but even this volume poses
problems of assimilation,
In Caterpillar Tractor's splendid plant just
outside Melbourne, production is handicapped by the fact that there are
�-8-
thirty-one nationalities among the workers, and it is necessary to conduct
daily classes in English in order that the workers can understand directions.
From the little that I have seen, I am impressed with the generally friendly
attitude which the Australians display for these newcomers whom they call
"the new Australians. " Whether this country should open its gates wider
and in more directions is not a simple question . ,:, The Australians are proud
of their homogeneity and the traditions and allegiances which are shared by
the whole population.
;~ :::::
recognize any.
They have no race problem -- or at least they do not
Under these circumstances, if they are not anxious to
,:,
When I asked Mr. Shir l ey, TIME I s Bureau Chief in Sydney, to read this
over for accuracy, he added : "It is a debatable point whether or not the
Asian hordes waht to migrate to Australia. There is no land suitable
for rice paddies and few agricultural or pastoral Asians would be able
to eke out an existence here. The sophisticated Asian knowledgeabl e
in restaurant and small store management does well, but experience
has shown that these people are not attuned for assimilation in the
industrial complex of this country. Any mass Asian immigration would
result in these people for the most part becoming laborers with little
future for at least a generation. The present Australian immigration
policy towards Asians is that they are welcome if they can contribute
in some tangible form to the country's cultural and economic advancement. Australia does not want mere laborers but skilled workers,
Once Asians are admitted, there is no racial discrimination whatsoever. For example, the Mayor of Darwin (who is also the President
of the Legislative Council) is Chinese. There are Asian professors
in the universities and topflight Asian businessmen in the capital
cities . "
*':~
There are 43, 000 full -blood aborigines who are really quite unknown
to the whit e population in the cities, some so untamed, so remote
from modern civilization as to not quite count as people. They pose
much less of a " race II problem than our much more advanced
American Indians.
�-9-
take on such a problem, we should be slow to criticize unless, having
examined ourselves critically, we would conclude that, given a _ ree choice,
f
we would today knowingly create one for ourselves by importing millions
of different color and background.
Furthermore, before we are too quick
to criticize, we should examine those vast reaches of emptiness and ask
whether the Asiatic hordes -- or indeed any immigrant hordes -- are going
to survive there .
Immigrants, wherever they come from, are almost certain
to settle in or adjacent to the principal cities .
Life in Australian cities is very pleasant.
Except for Canberra
(which, as the national capital, was placed more as a compromise than for
any geographic or economic reason inland between Melbourne and Sydney),
all of the significant cities are on the coast, most with fine beaches, many with
excellent harbors, and all (except perhaps those on the north coast) with
splendid weather, mild winters (virtually frost free) and reasonable summers.
All of the cities describe their weather as "just like California. " Sydney's
average temperature drops to 53° in July and climbs to 72° in January .
This
and an average rainfall of ten to fourteen days each month keep everything
beautifully green year round.
,:,
Food is plentiful and so is drink.
vegetables and very pleasant wines .
They produce excellent
The slower pace and the active social
life cause many Americans here on business to hope their employers will
forget them and leave them here forever.
,:,
The per capita consumption of beer is 24 gallons and of spirits .4 gallons.
�-10-
It is likely that more Americans will be sent here for the
great natural resources, which require capital for development plus exceptional political stability (only one change of government since 1945) and the
existence of similar institutions and practices has caused more and more
United States companies to open office s or plants her e.
Indeed, since the
late nineteen fifties, the United States has become a more important investor
than the United Kingdom.
As Caterpillar's Mr. Stranger pointed out, in 1965
the capital inflow of $3 36 million from the United States exc eeded the $280
million from the United Kingdom,
described as
11
The recent mineral discoveries have been
the most exciting industrial stor y of the sixties.
11
For eign sales
of iron, not exported at all prior to 1963, are expected to amount to more than
$220 million by 1970 and the recently discovered nickel deposits and gas reserves
are also exciting.
These are needed for the balance of payments is in a deficit
and reserves are not increasing .
The Gross National Product has almost doubled in the last
decade and is expected to move up considerably this year above the $23. 6 billion
of 1966.
Prices have risen about 2 . 5 per cent a year, but you hear little
complaint on that score, for the people are looking ahead more than they are
backward.
A1:1stralia needs foreign capital, but it would like to keep more
of the ownership in local hands .
To that end the federal government has recently
encouraged the l argerbanks to jointly create a Development Refinance Corporation to marshal domestic (and borrowed foreign) funds to use to finance the
�-11-
development of natural resources in order that they may not have to be
sold to foreign corporations.
But much United States capital will continue to
flow in, particularly after our own balance of payments restrictions are
ended.
With the capital will come more Americans.
Melbourne, our first stop, did not seem like a big city at first.
The streets are broad and the principal ones are lined with old trees, quite
reminiscent of Paris, but the people live in individual homes/' most of them
definitely Victorian in style, many with white-painted gingerbread scrollwork
of iron which, long ago, was brought from England as ballast in the ships
that came here empty to return with wool and meat.
But, if one drives from
one side of Melbourne to the other, the time is so great -- de spite the breakneck speed of the cars -- that one realizes it is a city of two and a quarter
million residents.
Sydney, with its tremendous harbor that takes up so much
of the central area, seems quite a bit bigger (though it is only slightly so - about two and a half million population) and with its many splendid new office
buildings appears much more modern.
Even more than by the architecture, the American is impressed
by the English origin which is evident in its busine ss and government leaders.
The chairmen of many of the larger Australian companies are titled
11
Sir
Henry this 11 or "Sir Robert that " who operate with the self-confidence and
superiority of the British originals whom the y emulate and are characterized
>::;
In 1961, of 10,500,000 Australians, about 9,000,000 lived in
private houses.
�-12-
by the same inability to ask a question lest they disclose a lack of knowledge
(and many have very little knowledge of the actual workings of the businesses
which they nominally head).
In contrast, most general managers have come
up through the ranks, usually without much formal education, but with considerable knowledge of their business.
Workers are much more loyal than
are their British counterparts, but not much more enthusiastic about being
pressed.
I was told that Americans often fail here because of their inability
to accurately gauge the pace at which one can drive an Australian organization.
The people don't work as hard here as in the States, and I believe that this
go es for most of the manage rs as well as for the factory hands.
It is really
a part of the over-all attitude of the people, another facet of which is the amount
of reliance on the government, pervasive of all segments of life.
Welfare
is much more important than in the United States and government controls
reach everywhere,
(Dictating to a public stenographer in Melbourne, who
had brought neither paper nor pencil, I received a call that she could not
be worked for over four hours without a break --
11
it is the law .
11
)
Organized labor is strong here, even the bank employees up
through the managers of smaller branches belong to a union, but wages are
not negotiated by the union and management.
Whenever a dispute arises the
government steps in to arbitrate and ultimately
becomes "the award rate.
11
11
awards II a wage scale which
This, however, merely serves as a base, and
most employers pay (in addition to a series of fringe benefits) a base wage
above the award rate.
There is a good deal of time off for
11
portal to portal 11
�-13-
and for tea breaks, etc.
I visited one large factory in Melbourne and
another in Sydney, both operated by United States corporations.
Despite
excellent management in each, efficiency is definitely lower than it is in
the United States plants. of those same companies (though it is pas sible that
because of a smaller volume of production, automation may not be quite as
complete here as in the States).
On the other hand, labor rates are lower,
yet the net effect is higher costs.
As I began to wonder when I contrasted Singapore with Malaysia,
I have wondered here, does possession of great natural resources cause a
people to place less emphasis on efficiency than in a country without such
natural ass ets? I don 1t know, but a quick appraisal of Australia causes me to
fear that it may be so,
Australia does have overwhelming resources.
Everyone knows
of the great exports of lamb, wool and beef, but in another three to four years
iron ore will be the most important export.
Mount Isa with its great copper deposits.
greatest exporter of lead.
This afternoon we flew over
Next to Russia, Australia is the world1 s
The pilot told us of "miles and miles II of bright red
bauxite deposits visible further north, and the iron ore deposits of almost
inexhaustible amounts lie in mountains of very rich content (I was told over
60 per cent), freE? of overburden and ready to be pushed onto trucks.
indeed, an extraordinarily rich country and quite undeveloped.
This is,
�-14-
Is it a place for young Americans to come to make their
fortune?
It frequently reminds one, especially in the interior, of what
our West must have been like about 1900.
As such it has great appeal.
There are, indeed, opportunities here -- but, as in our old West, they have
to be worked for, sometimes under less than ideal circumstances, and not
under nearly as free conditions as existed on our frontier.
more government regulation than we ever dreamed of.
Here there is
Unlike the Texas
frontiersman who, after driving his cattle to the railhead, would immediately
repair to the dance hall saloon for a day's diversion, the Australian cattleman
would have to sit down and fill out government forms for the first twenty-four
hours.
Australia needs good, ambitious men -- but mostly those with
special skills and capital.
Not all skills are in short supply.
My Caterpillar
friends in Melbourne feel that civil engineers and manufacturers might have
greater opportunity in the United States.
place for mining engineers.
On the other hand, this is a great
It should also offer advantages for men with
new skills, advertising, public relations, management consulting, etc. , that
have been further developed in the United States than here.
Unless he handi-
capped himself by being too abrasive, the American would find that, if he were
willing to continue to work as hard here as he had at home, he would have a
distinct advantage over his local competitors.
The greatest opportunity is for the careful man with capital who
is willing to work in a modest role for a while in order to learn the local
�-15-
attitudes and needs before he invests and manages.
Too many Americans
have been unwilling to wait and have placed their capital with men who,
de spite apparently impeccable connections, know nothing of the activities
in which they invest the American "sucker's" money.
The few businesses
about which I should know the most -- banking, Caterpillar dealerships,
and ranching - - look about as good as anything in sight, but all three require
a great deal of capital.
The banking business is modelled on the English, with only
>~
a dozen principal banks, each with hundreds of branches. '
The rate
structure offers a reasonable spread for they pay 3-1/2 per cent on savings,
4-1 / 2 per cent on six-months' deposits, and charge their best customers
6 per cent with other rates up to 7-1/2 per cent.
Still, it is not all "gravy,
11
for they are required (by convention) to maintain a liquidity ratio (largely
in cash and government securities) of 18 per cent and, in addition, the
eight nationally operated banks must maintain a reserve of 8. 9 per cent of
deposits on which they receive interest at 3/4 of one per cent) .
Furthermore,
though the gross income is great, the expense of such a widespread branch
system (even with modest salaries) is so great that, although net earnings
are good, they do not appear to be extraordinary -- or so I believe -- but,
here again, the Australians follow the British practice and report earnings
,;,
For instance, the Bank of New South Wales has 1,200 branches and
agencies.
�-16-
only after transfers to and from reserves so that their published reports
do not disclose true earnings.
Of course,
if a bank could come here with some funds and
attract some local corporate deposits without an expensive branch system,
it should have excellent earnings, for demand is unlimited and rates a .re
reasonably high.
I am sure that this thought has occurred to some of our
friends, for the Fir st National City Bank, Bank of America and Chase are
here, but the Reserve Bank will not welcome any more United States branches,
The government, though too extensive by our standards, is
excellently led by Harold Holt, the head of the Liberal Party which presently
operates through a coalition with the Country Party (headed by John McEwen),
The opposition Labor Party has been weakened largely by a strong Catholic
anti-communist splinter minority which has become the Democratic Labor
Party and supports the government on most is sues.
The Holt government
reflects the movement away from England which has taken place since the
end of World War II and places great reliance on the American alliance.
As
you know, Australia sent troops to help us in Vietnam in 1965 and there are
now 6,000 Australian troops fighting there.
brought home to Melbourne.
We saw a plane load of them
Mrs. Freeman had asked an older couple why
there were so many people waiting to me et the plane and was told by the lady,
with characteristic reserve, that they had come to meet their son but that he had
not returned,
�-17-
Although devoted to their American friends, to whom they
,•,
would have to look for assistance if they were ever attacked, · the
Australians , after having observed the recent problems in Korea, Malaysia
and now Vietnam, recognize the i dentity of their interests with those of
Asia, and Prime Minister Holt is sometimes referred to as
11
a man of Asia.
11
He is devoted to forging closer ties, both diplomatic and trade, with the
Asian countries which share this great West Pacific.
As a step in this direction, the Australians have just played
host to a Pan-Pacific Conference here in Sydney, which an Asiatic friend
of mine, who was present, felt was very useful in its discussion groups but
quite ineffective in its final conclusion merely to send a small delegation to
Indonesia.
These were the random thoughts in my confused mind as I
hurried from my last b ank appointment to pick up Mrs. Freeman and meet
Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Bassingthwaighte, the Managing Director of International
Packers, Limited, the Australian subsidiary of International Packers, to
whom its Chairman, Tom Taylor, had been good enough to introduce us .
It wa s they who brought us in the King Ranch plane to this great outback
,:, ,:,
station w here we arrived just at sundown.
,:,
,:0 :,
Next week the country celebrates the fifteenth anniversary of the battle
of the Coral Sea, by w hich the Japanese threat was ended . Darwin had
been bombed and Japanese submarines operated in Sydney harbor, but,
after the Coral Sea battle, Australia was safe.
We were lucky not to be an hour later, for all non -commercial planes
must fly VFR and must set down at dark.
�-18-
So back to where we started this letter, at breakfast at
the Lake Nash headquarters of this great ranch.
After we had eaten, the
Bass ingthwaighte s, the ranch manager, Charles Paine, and we set out to
"see a little of the property" and returned ten hours later -- dusty, tired,
and overwhelmed at what we had seen on a 250-mile drive around one
section of the ranch .
We drove across great downs of open grassy spaces,
maybe five or ten miles in diameter, then across a river with perhaps three
or four tree-lined channels, but completely dry, across miles of gravel
soil and stunted trees to other open areas of Mitchell grass (an excellent
form of two-foot tall bunch-grass with a seed head almost like oats) and
Flinders grass (short and red) and on to a dam which has backed up the
runoff from the summer rains for as much as half a mile .
Such sheets of
water (we saw at least a dozen) were surrounded by trees under which stood
herds of Santa Gertrudis cattle (or Santa Gertrudis crossed on Shorthorns),
In the trees were thousands of white corellas, a form of white cockatoo,
which would fly up at our approach and complain with crow - like voices until
we departed.
As we went through a succession of such varying types of
country, we would be constantly interested in the birds.
ground life.
There is very little
We saw no m i ce nor gophers nor rabbits (though I was told that
there are rabbits) .
We did come across several iguanas, two to four feet
long, and some black snakes.
There are also tiger snakes and deaf adders,
but we were most attracted by the birds ,
There were many galahs, a heavy
pigeon , grey on top and pink underneath .
We saw hundreds of budgerigars,
�-19-
apple green on top and lemon green underneath, which flew in formations
in which each bird changed direction simultaneously as though the whole
group was controlled by some inaudible radio.
In the water holes were cranes
and blue herons and ibis (both white and grey) which seem to come in great
numbers during the seasons when there are grasshoppers.
dead from overeating the insects.)
unlike our Thanksgiving dish,
(Many are found
We also saw plains turkeys -- quite
The strangest were the "native companions,
which, we were told, are the largest land birds to fly.
11
Perhaps five or six
feet tall, on long thin legs, they walk with the help of a wing movement that
appears to be a dance.
I can well imagine that a rancher or prospector,
camped alone on these e ndless plains, might well find them diverting
co mp anions.
Driving through a wooded, grassy area, we came across a
kangaroo, a male, at least six feet tall, which was almost as interested in us
as we were in him.
He would look at us with head tilted, then, quite erect,
hop along on his hind legs, each hop perhaps six feet, with his tail moving up
and down to help him keep his balance, the tail never quite touching the ground
(as does the tail of the wallaby).
I believe the kangaroo lives on vegetation and
does not attack other animals, but , when he is attacked by a dingo, he tries to
escape by running.
hour.
feet.
With ten or twelve-foot hops, he can go thirty miles an
If cornered, he fights with his arms and with a short kick with his hind
If near water, he goes into it up to his waist and, as the dingo swims
close, holds the dingo under water till it drowns.
We were told that the wallaby
�-20-
kills the dingo by grabbing it and squeezing it to death.
kangaroo's most deadly enemy is man .
Of course, the
Over 11, 000 were shot on one
section of this ranch.
As we drove by one group of cattle resting in the shade by a
dammed lake, Mr. Paine noticed one cow run a few steps and concluded
a dingo must be nearby.
a "wild dog,
11
We drove over and there, 100 yards away, was
taller and more erect than our coyote, with large wide-set
ears .
He retreated when he saw us, watched for a moment, and then slunk
away .
These are serious predators attacking calves and, instead of killing
them first and then eating, they merely charge the calf, take a larbe bite,
then withdraw to eat and return for another mouthful until the calf bleeds to
death .
We were distressed that Jil had not come with us, for she is an
excellent marksman and would have killed the dingo -- not for the bounty
which the State pays for its scalp, but to reduce the threat to the calves,
Calves are, of course, the business here, but not quite in the same
way they are in the United States, for here ranchers do not sell the calves for
roughing out and then corn fattening, but carry the steers (bullocks) to
"maturity,
11
which used to be four to five years.
The bulls are run with the
herd all year, only the bullocks are cut out (as they are building up their
herd and retain their heifers) and at two to three years of age, when they
weigh
1,000 to 1,100 pounds, the steers are shipped some 700 miles to
the abattoir for slaughtering.
�-21-
Fed only on grass, their beef is no match for United States
corn-fattened steers (whose steaks the Australians say are "mushy"}, but
it is plentiful and cheap, about half the price of ours delivered at the packing
plant (and in a downtown Sydney market T-bone steaks sell for 69~ a pound).~~
This is why our ranchers resent importation of Australian beef, largely in the
form of corned beef and hamburger.
The Australians who import so much
in the way of manufactured goods from the United States ($700,000,000 per
year) and have had so little to export to our country (about $265,000,000)
are affronted that we have cut down the amount of their beef which can be
brought into our country.
When I asked whether they would admit United
States beef into Australia (they don't), they felt the question quite irrelevant,
as perhaps it is, though I believe the better hotels might be able to sell some
of our mare expensive, but much more tender, steaks.
Our ranchers should
be grateful that Australia has so little country fit for raising corn.
If they
fattened their beef (a very little is fattened on barley), their competition
would pose an even more serious threat, for the quality of their beef, grassfed, is excellent.
*
The Australian dollar, a new currency,for they used to use pounds,
shillings and pence (and still quote many prices in pounds, w}:i.ich
equal two ·of the new dollars), is worth about $1. 12 U, S. Conversely,
when we cash a $100 traveler I s check, we get only $88 Australian.
�-22-
On this great ranch, the rainfall varies from area to area
and year to year but averages about 13 inches per year.
That is not very
much, less than most of Oklahoma and Texas and no more than vast semiarid areas in Arizona and New Mexico, but the cattle here are in the best
shape that I have ever seen grass-raised beef.
I think it may be due in part
to the soil but even more to the flatness of the land.
does not run off, but rather soaks in.
Here a mode st rain
A hard rain drains for miles (with a
slope of only one foot or two to the mile) into rivers which are easily dammed.
In most of our steeply mountainous southwest there is a gulley or an arroyo
every 100 yards or so and, hence, not nearly enough drainage area to collect
a substantial body of water even though the runoff is rapid.
other reasons.
There may be
It is hard for Mr. Paine, who (like me) is a Hereford man at
,:c
heart, to admit that it could be the Santa Gertrudis stock.
Many of my
rancher friends in our southwest consider the Santa Gertrudis unsatisfactory,
for, at eight months of age, when weaned and put into a feed lot, they continue
to grow bigger instead of just growing fatter.
But h ere, where cattle are kept
on grass until they are two to three years of age, that may be an advantage
instead of a liability .
,:,
Mr. Paine will only agree to wait and see.
As you know, the Santa Gertrudis breed was developed by the Ki:og Ranch
in Texas (three-eighths Brahma andfive -eighths Shorthorn) . Two hundred
bulls and five hundred cows were brought h ere in 1951; further importation has been prohibited since 1958.
�-23-
It is hard to compare land prices for most of Australia's
cattle country is owned by the state governments and not sol d, but rather
leased, on long terms (35 years in some states and 5 0 in others, and
generally renewed) ,
The nearest I could get to a land price is about $100 per
animal unit (the land needed to support one cow and her calf) .
This would
compare to $300 to $500 in our northern states (where hay farming is necessary to carry the cattle through the winter) to $1,000 in Arizona and New
Mexico for flat land and $2, 000 or more in the prettier parts of those states.
Thus, friends of mine in Arizona and New Mexico hear of this Australian
ranch land at a cost of 10 per cent or less of what they have to pay and
immediately imagine the unalloyed joy of having ten times as l arge a ranch
here as the spread they can afford in the States,
This is great cattle country.
easy to work, but there are drawbacks.
*~
It is cheap, it is flat, and it is
Mr. Bassingthwaighte mentioned
two, labor and drought.
Labor is scarce.
There is virtually no unemployment in
Australia (less than 2 per cent), and both industry and mining are looking
for men in the cities and the mining towns -- at good wages.
Who, then,
wants to work on a ranch, perhaps hundreds of miles from town, beyond
television coverage, with very few other white men -- or women -- and no
place of amusement?
There are some who come from the city, either
,:, There are about twice as many cattle here as people, 19,000, 000
(of which about 3,000,000 are dairy cows) to about 11,500,000 people.
�-24-
attracted by the romance of the "cowboy" life
not make the grade in the city.
,:c
or because they could
Mr, Paine quoted another experienced ranch
manager who said that only 3 per_ cent of these turned out to be satisfactory
hands,
There are, of course, some young men who were raised in the
ranch country~*but there are not many available,
Many ranchers here, as
in the United States, lost the too-small places or were forced out by drought,
and their children do not have sufficiently pleasant memories of ranch life
to want to go back.
Then there are the aborigines,
and only partially civilized people,
These are a black-skinned
At each station we visited there were
small tin houses provided, but none was occupied, for these essentially
nomadic people prefer to live in the open - - on the ground with occasionally
a piece of tin to keep off the sun or, more commonly, they sit, eat and sleep
just in the leeward side of a bush, against which they may have placed some
extra branches to serve as a windbreak,
At Lake Nash and Berkely Downs
there are 140, including perhaps 100 children and 16
(only 25 work for the ranch),
older ones 11 on relief
11
These employed hands used to be paid $10 a
week plus rations, but now the gove rnment requires that they be paid $24 per
,:c
There really isn't as much romance to the cattle work here -- all done
in land rovers rather than on horseback, or in the riding on the flat land
rather than ·in mountains.
,:c*
We met several such couples, handsome, gracious young people, modestly
paid in cash but living in a pleasant Wisconsin or Michigan summerresort-type frame house, with a · cook and sitter and all rations provided,
They could save much more than if they were paid five times as much in
the city.
�-25-
week without rations -- actually a reduction in their compensation.
The
school teacher here is terribly serious about her job, as she should be.
In her one-room school she has 41 aborigines and four white children {ages
6 to 14) who, upon arrival each morning, must take a shower and put on their
uniforms.
Classes are conducted until ten, at which time they are inspected
by the nursing sister (the bookkeeper-storekeeper's wife) and given milk.
Unfortunately, though the State provided a cup for each child, the State locked
up the cups and the key is now lost, so all 45 must be fed from three cups.
They
go back out into the field to their families at noon, then back to their State built school house (about as tight as a sieve, with no heat for winter and no
insulation against the summer heat) _
for the afternoon,
teacher has taught them to march and to sing.
The 21 - year-old
Her predecessor, a man,
taught a few of them to swim, but their "three R I s" are very rudimentary.
Once through school, the great majority :revert to their earlier state,
Perhaps
if they were sent away to boarding school near a city, where they might be
motivated to aspire to a city job, they might want to achieve a degree of
civilization, but very few seem to here on the station.
A few of the men are
good horsemen, some of the women are capable of babysitting or washing
clothes, but none is used for cooking here at Lake Nash.
Each day, year
after year, thei~ master or mistress (no matter how kind, sensitive and
helpful) must start as on the first day and give instructions on each step of
�-26-
the job,
>'<
Nothing is remembered. '
So there are some help problems,
The second difficulty is drought.
The average annual
rainfall may be 13 inches but, until the summer just ended, there had not
be en a normal year in the last three or four,
cattle, some lost their ranches ,
Many ranchers lost their
General retail and automobile sales
declined and Australian economy turned down.
But drought is always a
possibility in any ranch country (which, by economic definition,
is country
with too little regular rainfall to raise crops).
There are other conditions which Mr. Bassingthwaighte did
not mention, but which might bother some American ranchers.
alluded to) is the government.
One (already
During the two and one-half days here the
State airport inspectors came to inspect the landing strip at Georgina, where
they had to stay for two days because they had run out of fuel and whiled away
the time writing out a two-foot long list of things that had to be changed.
Yesterday they were here and made a similar list, although these are both
private strips (which are not regulated at all in the United States).
Ths phone
rang last night at midnight, again at three in the morning, agin at six and,
,:,
According to "Australia and New Zealand II of LIFE 1 s World Library,
"Thousands still live in conditions of a Stone Age culture, 11 However,
they no longer eat humans which is especially applauded by the Chinese,
who, because they lived on rice, were prized as the most tasty humans.
See THE REMARKABLE AUSTRALIANS by Frederick C, Folkard.
,:":'
Just since this summer I s rains, has business turned upward to where
the problem is now becoming one of too-rapid expansion,
�- 27-
indeed, every three hours day and night, year in and year out -- the
government calling to ask how the weather is here and reporting how it
,,,
,,,
is elsewhere .
The State has a linguist (actually two, for his wife is also
a professional) staying here, and yesterday was a gala day for them because
they discovered a new sound.
Peachy!
The policeman is being assigned to
a new post in Darwin and a new policeman with his wife and two children will
arrive here next month .
The bookkeeper - storekeeper also tends the
government-controlled telegraph and telephone .
The school teacher i s leav -
ing for a conference in Darwin, despite the fact that there have been so many
changes in this school that classes have been held only five weeks in the last
five months (but you could hardly begrudge her the trip as the nearest other
school teacher in this State is 300 miles away) .
If you want to listen to the
radio you have to have a Broadcast Listener 1 s License and to watch T. V. you
need a Television Viewer's License.
There is an excess of government.
It
is not all bad, of course, but the government plays a much more significant
role, even in this remote station, than would be the case at home.
Another consideration is the heat.
This twenty-third of April
is equivalent to the twenty-third of October i n the Northern Hemisphere, yet
the w eat her is like our late September Indian Summer, but much warmer - over 90 in the shade.
>:<
Melbourne, on the south coast, was too warm to permit
It pays ($900 a year) to the wife of one of the ranch employees to
take these calls .
�-28-
walking fast without perspiring.
central area is even hotter.
Sydney was warmer, and this great
In the summer it is 110° or higher in the
shade for weeks on end (and through vast areas of this country there is no
shade) .
Each summer takes its toll of those whose cars break down and
wl+o die of thirst before the next traveller comes by.
Lastly, one would have to be willing to put up with more (if
smaller) flies than we have ever seen any other place in the world.
Unless
one is very active (they call swatting the fly the "Australian salute 11 ) , he
will have not two or three but a dozen on his face at any one time .
Freeman photographed my back, and the re were hundreds.
Mrs.
They get in
yol\r nose, your mouth, and you soon give up trying to keep them off the
food (you just pretend you are eating raisin bread).
One could wear a
mosquito net over a broad-brimmed hat, but I did not see anyone who did
so.
More likely you would Just have to get used to them .
Mrs. Freeman
tried to convince herself that everything is so healthy in these vast reaches
tra t the flies could not possibly be carrying many germs (I am not that good
a Christian Scientist!).
To my surprise, they do not seem to bother the
cattle or the horses as much as our flies do.
I am not even sure that they
bite, but they would be a negative in the over-all equation.
To my American rancher friends who would like to come here,
I can only say that to get an economically viable property, to make the
necessary improvements, and to have the capital that would last through a
�-29-
year or two of drought might take upwards of one million dollars .
is cheaper here than at home, but so are cattle.
Land
A three-year-old steer
at 1, 100 pounds sells in a good year for about $100 compared to about
two and a half to three times that for a fat steer of the same weight in the
States,
In short, I don't believe that it is the "promised land'' for the
discouraged American rancher with modest capital.
The King Ranch, with almost unlimited capital and a willingness to wait ten years before taking out any dividends, is doing very well.
In this particular ranch they and International Packers have a very satisfactory
investment.
When they get it up to full production (which means 80, 000 to
100,000 head), they will sell each year 20,000 steers averaging 1,100 pounds
and net an excellent return on their investment.
But t}):;y bought the property
very well and have put a great deal of thought and planning as well as money
into their bores (wells with 30-foot diameter windmills), dozens of expensive
qams, earth tanks 25 feet deep and ''steel yards 11 (the most elaborately constructed corrals used for "mustering" fround-up] that I have ever seen).
They have undertaken a program of herd improvement, and that involves
hundreds of thousands of dollars.
They have excellent management, both on
the property and in the city, and they are willing to wait for years before
taking any money out of the project.
are prepared to do the same.
Not very many individual ranchers
�-30-
We leave early this afternoon for a short fl ight to Mount
Isa where we will get a four-hour commercial flight to Brisbane.
After
a short layover, we will have a two-hour flight to Sydney for a day in the
city before moving on to New Zealand -- which is
Australians,
to o remote.
.,,
-·-
11
who consider that it is
11
11
terra incognita 11 to the
too socialistic, too undeveloped and
I can imagine an American saying the same about Australia,
but he would be wrong on at least two counts.
We will leave Australia with some reluctance.
Its size,
its riches, the climate of its coastal cities, its handsome people and the
opportunities in the banking business make us hope that we may someday
return.
,:,
The pilot says he has been every place in the world except C zechos loval<.ia ,
Russia and New Zealand. Even our most travelled acquaintances have
never been there.
�Capital: Can berra
Area : 2,967,909 square miles
Percent of World Area : 5 p e rcent
Population (1965) : 11,359,500
Density: 4 p er square mile
Percent of World Population: 0.3 percent
Elevation Highest Point: Mt. Kosciusko (7,3 16 feet)
Lowest Point: Lake Eyre (39 fe et below sea level}
Coast Line: 12,446 statute miles includ ing Tasmania
Northernmost Point: Cape York
Southernmost Point: Southeast Cape
Easternmost Point: Cape Byron
Westernmost Point: Dirk Hartog
Political divisions
(contine ntal Australia): 6 states, p lus 2 territories
Natio na l Ho liday: January 26, Australia Day
National Anthem: God Save The Queen
ECON OMY
HEA INDUSTRY
VY
AUSTRALIA
Tronspo rtotion
~ Equipme nt Aircraft
Machinery
ECONOMY
Tronsport otion
Metal Processing ..a,. Equipment Automobile s
1•
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~
Processing
i~~i;~~~tt°~~ilrood
-....... Transportation Equipment Ship
LIGHT INDUSTRY
Ele ctrlcol &
I
lumber & Fo r~sl
Electronic Product s
•
Products
•
IJ
Chemicals
T Metal Producfs
Clothing
OJ
Pulp & Pop er
Products
0
Dairy Products
@
Rubber Products
~
Food Process ing
0
Stone Cloy &
Gloss Produc ts
~
Furniture
~ Te xtiles
w!J, Wool
OTHERS
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F
ishing
~
D
Seaport
Tou ri sts &
Resorts
fishing
Areas
MININ
G
¢Jc
¢;M Manganese
,
Cool
¢J,m
¢Js
~c. Copper
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¢;,
SCALE
¢Ju
200 Miles
Gold
¢;,,,
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¢Ju
Iron Ore
lead
lignite
~z
Pe troleum
Silve r
Tin
Tungsten
Uranium
Zinc
AGRICULTURE
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Plantation Agriculrure
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Forest wilh live st ock.
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General fa rming flrrigotedl
forestry with some Farming
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Collection of Tropical
Forest Producls
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Seasonal Gro zlog w ith Sparse
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Sea son al G ra zing with
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Non.Agricultural Areas
Cop y right b y Rand Mc Nally & C o .
and Re i;rod u ced with Their Permiaaion
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Suffolk University Faculty and Alumni Manuscript Collection, (MS102), 1903-2013
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1903-2013
Description
An account of the resource
This collection brings together materials donated by Suffolk University faculty, staff, alumni and friends that represent their individual academic pursuits, research, memorabilia, and other personal records. Some of them are small collections of personal papers or single items such as scrapbooks, objects or photo albums.
Relation
A related resource
Find out more about our collections on <a href="http://www.suffolk.edu/explore/24553.php">our website</a>.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Copyright is retained by the creators of items in this collection, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law. This item is made available for research and educational purposes by the Moakley Archive & Institute. Prior permission is required for any commercial use.
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ms102_04_02_01
Title
A name given to the resource
Letter to Homer J. Livingston from Gaylord "Gale" A. Freeman Jr. about his travels in Australia
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
23 April 1967
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Freeman, Gaylord A
Livingston, Homer J
Description
An account of the resource
This is one letter from a series of letters, generally referred to as the “Far East Letters.” The letters were written by banking executive Gaylord A. Freeman Jr. (ca. 1910-1991) to then CEO and president of First National Bank Homer J. Livingston. Freeman, along with his wife, travelled to Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Australia, and Moorea from April 23 through May 4, 1967. Often only spending a few days in each location, Freeman described his observations of the economic and cultural climate. Some of the letters also include maps illustrating data such as population, geographical information, and economy. Multiple copies of these letters were forwarded to Freeman’s colleagues and friends. This collection includes the copies sent to John S. Moore.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Suffolk University Faculty and Alumni Manuscript Collection, (MS102), 1903-2013
Series 4: Gaylord A. Freeman, Jr. Far East and Oceania Letters Collection, 1967
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Documents
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
PDF
Language
A language of the resource
English
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oceania
Australia--Civilization--20th century.
Australia--Commerce--United States.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Copyright is retained by the creators of items in this collection, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law. This item is made available for research and educational purposes by the Moakley Archive & Institute. Prior permission is required for any commercial use.
Relation
A related resource
Find out more about our collections on <a href="http://www.suffolk.edu/explore/24553.php">our website</a>.
Asia
Far East Letters