Romance Of Salamaua

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 35, 11 February 1939, Page 2 (Supplement)

Romance Of Salamaua

/CAPITALS have been changed before in the Pacific—Suva many years ago replaced Levuka j S lCr f apita ' °* Fiji—but it is doubtful whether any administration has ever made so long a migration as that which the Mandated Territory of New Guinea has made when it exchanged Kabaul for Salamaua, following the Federal Government's adoption of Mr. W. M. Hughes' recommendation to remove the administrative seat to the mainland.

A good 400 miles, as the aeroplane flies, separates Kabaul, on the island of New Britain, from Salamaua, on the mainland. By sea the distance is even greater. But the long flight has been rendered imperative by the disastrous earthquake and volcanic eruption which overwhelmed Rabaul township. Salamaua, although not free from the threat of seismic disturbances—a disturbance occurred there only a few months ago is considered relatively safe from serious upheavals.

Whatever the economic effects of the move, and they may well be far-reach-ing in some directions, It will bring the administrative capital nearer to the centre of the Territory than is Rabaul, situated on the extreme north-eastern point of New Britain. Salamaua will also be in close touch with Wau, to which it is to be linked by a new £150,000 road through the bush. Wau is the centre of the important Territory goldfields.

Back in 1924, when there were barely a dozen white men hanging on desperately to the Wau workings, and the track through the dense country to the coast sometimes proved fetal to $ose who took it, Salamaua consisted of little more than the store-depot built of sago-palm for Captain Will Money.

That store, as lon Idriess. says in his book, "Gold Dust and Ashes," was to become "the centre of * prosperous Salamaua, with its stores, its modern hotel, its refrigerators, its electricity." But none of its half dpzen or so white inhabitants dreamed of it then. Still less would they have dreamed that it would become the capital of the Territory in the fullness of time.

But there was gold "in them thaf hills" all right. One day a man arrived at Salamaua from the back country with 3000 ounces of the precious metal. Then a mild sort of rush set it. To quote Mr. Idriess: "Odd men came drifting along to Salamaua in any old craft; some came in canoes, some by cntter and lugger. Several had made venturesome voyages of considerably over 1000 miles, dodging uncharted reef and sandbank, nosing their way among a maze of islands. . . . Two venturesome voyages were made by whaleboat for 700 miles.™ One of the whaleboat adventurers afterwards sold a piece of land for £700. Its value a little later was to rise to £40.000. In 1923 the Marsina called;'for the first time at Salamaua. The. cluster of primitive buildings on the beach had gained the status of a port. Then eanie the Edie Creek find. During 1926--7 three and a third tons of gold were taken out of this small but fabulously rich field. A rush began in and one day the Marsina landed a regular goldfield crowd at Salamaua. The little town's prosperity had begun in proper style.

Only the law forbidding anyone leaving Australia for the Territory fields without at least £550 capital prevented Salamaua from becoming a Ballarat or a Bendigo almost overnight. Big companies were formed. Large sums were invested. Salamaua became a thriving gold capital some years before time, and the legacy of a fractious earth crust off the coast of New Britain decreed that it should become the capital in fact of the whole Territorv. i '

A prosperous town to-day, Salamaui has risen on a remote New Guinea beacii in a little more than a decade. Now it faces a new era in its romantic history as capital of the Mandated Territory.