Honiara In the 1960s, Pijin became its principal language, and the mother tongue of a generation of young urban adults and children. Through Honiara the language spread and has since become the main language spoken in the islands. Rhys Richards, a New Zealand historian and former New Zealand High Commissioner of Solomon Islands, spent many years in Honiara. In 1979 Honiara was still a relatively small town in terms of population, especially for a capital city, with 18,346 people, of which 10,870 were men, and 7,476 were women. In July 1978, Honiara became the new capital of the independent Solomon Islands.
Honiara the 1960s and 1970s some two-thirds of the investment into economic development in the country went into developing the infrastructure of Honiara, despite the fact that at the time only some five percent of Solomon Islanders lived there. Like Tulagi, the town did not grow substantially as a result of industrialisation. As Trevor Sofield says, "The shops and businesses in these centers served the needs of the government officials and expatriate businessmen, planters, and traders. Honiara, like many other ex-colonial cities, still reflects the political, economic and cultural structure of its former metropolitan mentor much more than it does the