BEATRICE GRIMSHAW AND HER CANNIBAL NEIGHBOURS.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17316, 30 November 1921, Page 2

BEATRICE GRIMSHAW AND HER CANNIBAL NEIGHBOURS.

(rSOM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.) SYDNEY, November 22. Miss Beatrice Grimshaw, a well-known authoress, who owns an islet off the Papuan coast, and has been living there since her arrival from England eight years ago, describes JNew Guinea as the larder o* the world. "Id is not alone a land flowing with milk and honey, but it can supply every other food neeatui to civilisation,'' ehe told an interviewer the other day. "i am sure it is tno oheapest place in the world in which to live, i know of one family, a planter and his wilo and several childreiij whose weekly expenses run to £l, and that "is spent on a few odd groceries. But they have a diiiiy menu of turkey, chicken, ham,-pork, fruit, vegetables, eggs, and custards, and the wlioie is raised on the plantation." Mentioning Port Moresby, , the capital of Papua, Miss Grimshaw confined herself to one sweeping phrase, "The sink of the Pacific."

"I asked a very "well-travelled man recently," she added, "if he knew a worse place, and he had to think t and then remembered another tropical town, which, however, shall be nameless." , Miss Gririiehaw is at present in Sydney on her way to England on a business visit.- She says she finds a ready market .for her island fiction, and, under oontract to a well-known publishing firm, turns out two books of adventure, life, and love. every year. She will return to Papua next year. Asked if she missed social intercourse and the clatter of the ten-cups, Miss Grimshaw laughed and said: "I live amid the tropical jungle because I want to. Naturally I meet many people, and dispense a simple hospitality, but to be in society—in and of the that has no charms for me. I much prefer my neighbours the cannibals. They are singularly honest as to intention and in outlook, and 'far from the> madding crowd' engenders a. wholesome fear of an over-cultivated _ modern civilisation. I think I am quite safe, in echoing a. song which has reached oven our latitudes—'This is the Life,' even though I have no trams nor trains, ana have to negotiate most of my jouraeyings to the nearest white settlements—Samurai—in my whaleboat with a- fuzzy-headed crew of men wiho are still cannibals."