As we said in the first edition, geography alone is the reason for grouping inhabitants of the Pacific Islands together under one chapter heading. Ethnically, there are such dissimilar physical types as Australian Aborigines, Polynesians, Melanesians, Micronesians, Negritos and probably mixtures of at least the last four. The Australian Aborigines always have presented classification problems for anthropologists (Montagu, 1960, pp. 440–3).

The growth studies

In Chapter 3 we considered the European populations of Australia and New Zealand; in this chapter we discuss the aboriginal inhabitants of those areas (Table 8). There have been new studies of the growth and nutritional status of Australian Aborigines in the Kimberley region of Western Australia by a group of reseachers in Perth (Gracey et al., 1983, 1984; Gracey & Sullivan, 1988; Hitchcock et al., 1987). The authors state that the people live in a wide range of conditions, from remote, partly tribal communities to partly urbanized groups outside of country towns. All school-age children are enrolled in school although absenteeism is very common. The group of infants included some nontraditional Aborigines living in towns. There also are some data from two aboriginal settlements in eastern Australia: Cherbourg, near Brisbane, and Palm Island in Queensland (Fysh et al., 1977).

From New Guinea we have new data on the Bundi (Zemel & Jenkins, 1988) which form part of a larger survey of health and nutrition in villages and urban areas by the Papua New Guinea Institute of Medical Research. We also have new data from Pere village on the island of Manus (J. Schall, unpubl.).