Honest, it wasn't a fix. But Miss Samoa won again

You don't often see policemen wearing skirts, or police brass bands belting out Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in 30C-plus heat and high humidity, but this was the start of the Miss South Pacific parade.

In white, London-bobby-style helmets and traditional lavalava wraparounds, which the uninitiated might presume were glorified dresses, the Samoa Police Band struck up their seasonal favourites and marched the 12 floats along the scenic tropical harbour side.

It was our first chance to see the girls, who were escorted by a phalanx of muscular Samoan warriors in grass skirts adorned with spectacular tattoos and waving fearsome-looking weapons.

The Miss World contest might have only just come back to life, but this pageant has been going from strength to strength for more than 10 years as the Micronesians, Melanesians and Polynesians vie for the esteemed regional title.

I was there as a palagi, the hopefully polite Samoan name for an outsider, 4,000 km from home in Sydney to pass unbiased judgment on the beauties, with particular reference to their floats, traditional outfits and their coconuts. Of which more later.

In fact, of the eight judges five were Caucasian, while two were from Samoa and one from Fiji. One of the imports was even from Ireland. Ms Ger Hatton is working on a water project for the European Union in Samoa and seemed as surprised as I was to be offered the job.

But it was, as they say, an offer you couldn't refuse. The rationale in having us around was to douse unpleasant allegations that the whole thing is rigged, especially since Samoans, either from these islands, American Samoa, New Zealand or Hawaii have dominated the pageant in recent years.

The past two winners were Miss Samoas, and despite the islanders' legendary beauty and charms, which have caused anthropologists to scurry here for years, the word was that it could be mighty suspicious should they win again.

So we started work at 6.30 p.m. on Saturday in an outdoors event that was shifted from Fiji at the last moment because the Fijians couldn't come up with the prize money. And with garlands of flowers around our necks we were led to the booze-free judges' tables like lambs to the slaughter.

At 6.58, after a day of threatening clouds, there was some passing light rain. And the massive clock counting down to the millennium, in a country close to the dateline, showed there were just 391 days, five hours, one minute and 35 seconds before 2000.

Then, after the hosts announced that the pageant was all about raising the profile of the Pacific's living culture and the friendliness of its people, the girls made their first appearances in national costumes.

They were decked out in an array of outfits made up of pandanus leaves, oyster shells and the dyed bark of paper mulberry tree. Some are even decorated with the likes of pigs' tusks and woven coconut fibres. Miss Papua New Guinea, Lisa Elizabeth Linibi, a secretary aged 20 who inexplicably got on the McDonald's family restaurant float instead of her own in the parade, wore an exotic kit from the highlands which included feathers from the bird of paradise.

But as the girls went on you realised how few conformed to the sort of sultry dusky stereotype of Pacific womanhood engendered by everything from Mutiny on the Bounty to Hawaii Five O.

Some like Miss New Zealand, known by the Maori name of Miss Aotearoa, were so fair-skinned they could easily have come from Portsmouth instead of the Pacific.

The girls appeared next in their one-piece sarongs, which had to draped around them in a style so as to be handy for swimming.

It's a good job none of the creations was road-tested by throwing the contestants into Apia Harbour, as some of the flowing garments would have dragged them to the bottom.

But Miss Hawaiian Islands, dancer Katheryn Kilihune Lopes, who I may now reveal was my favourite for the top job, had the crowd of some thousands gasping with her revealing sarong outfit of bikini top, slit skirt and panties made from just one piece of fabric.

The rain held off as the contestants made their third appearance with their coconuts for all to see. The so-called Tree of Life is as vital to the Pacific as the spud is to Ireland, and the girls had to decorate and design a coconut as imaginatively as possible.

Miss Tonga, another suspiciously European-looking entrant, had fashioned hers into a communications satellite. Miss Samoa's was a fruit bat, and Miss PNG's a witch doctor. But some of the other coconuts were pretty forgettable.

The girls did some "talent presentations" in the form of dance, song and story-telling and then the judges whittled them down to five. The survivors went on to answer some fairly inane questions, including: "How would you make the world a better place?", and the answers told the judges all they needed to know to pick the winner.

Miss Hawaii wasn't in it. Miss Fiji was a contender, but as they read out the runners-up in reverse order the partisan crowds of locals went wild when it became obvious that yet again their local Miss Samoa had won - making it three in a row.

I know it wasn't a fix, but I wonder how sure the other Pacific islands might be given the continued dominance of the Samoans for yet another year.

However, 19-year-old Cheri Robinson who works for the Samoan Visitors Bureau was a deserving winner, and as part of her international jet-about to promote the Pacific she could soon be appearing at a shopping centre near you.

As for the rest of us judges, Ger Hatton and I rushed for the nearest cold beer as the locals swarmed around congratulating our decision with what appeared to be more than just an innocent wink in their eye. Perhaps they knew something we didn't.

The clock announced we were just three hours closer to the millennium as a tropical downpour began. I sat in a circle with some soggy, celebrating Samoans, and we all laughed out loud. It's that sort of place. Next year it's Tonga, but the judges are likely to be changed.