Among the thousands of European refugees who arrived in Australia between 1947 and 1954 as immigrants assisted by the Australian Government were many highly qualified professionals. These included a number of doctors, whose fate is the subject of this book. Misled by information given them in Europe, the majority of these men and women arrived expecting to continue their careers.

No immigrant of any age finds easy the process of assimilation to a new homeland. The children of immigrants face the same problems as their parents: the often conflicting forces of the cultures of their adopted land and of their native land, but for the children the conflict is greater. Often they wish to become fully assimilated, but their parents insist on their ethnic culture being maintained. Dr Johnston studied three ethnic groups in Perth- Polish, German, and British, with an Australian control group- to see how the immigrant children reacted to these conflicting cultural values.

Rivers going underground, great springs emerging from the ground, independent hollows and basins instead of connecting valleys, deep potholes and vast caves, isolated towerlike hills reminiscent of the unbelievably steep peaks depicted in Chinese paintings - these are some of the distinctive features of karst, the name given to the kinds of country that owe their special characteristics to the unusual degree of solubility of their component rocks in natural waters.

1

The Fijian People reviews social, economic, administrative and political change in Fijian society in the years before and after independence. These changes have been accepted, but modifications have had to be worked out within the continuing cultural values of Fijian society. As Dr Lasaqa points out the Fijian people face a number of handicaps in terms of economic development and population numbers, but they are managing to hold their own in a difficult and delicate situation.

"People without a leader are like logs in the current of the sea; they don't know where to go." Neli Lifuka is totally candid and colorful as he describes his conventional childhood on Vaitupu in the Territory of Tuvalu (until 1975 the Ellice Island Group), his early education and travels, his first job as an engine-room hand on a phosphate cargo ship, his experiences with American marines in World War II, and his crucial role in the unprecedented purchase of Kioa Island (just off Fiji) in 1946. Klaus-Friedrich Koch visited Kioa for the first time 20 years later.