TO EXPLORE PAPUA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18218, 11 October 1922, Page 9

TO EXPLORE PAPUA.

I AN AMBITIOUS PROJECT. EXPEDITION TO NUMBER 32. LONDON, Sect. 28. The advance party of a Papuan exploratory expedition, directed by Australians, will leave London shortly to endeavour to obtain the Commonwealth Government's official recognition. It already has Sir Joseph Cook's blessing. Mr. N. McNeil, of Melbourne, the leader, and Mr. L. Conolly, of Goonabil station, Corowa, deputy leader, will accompany the advance party. After seeing Mr. Hughes they will select bases on the Papuan coast for the main expedition, which will leave a year later. It will consist of 32 Europeans, including a naturalist, an entomologist, a meteorologist, an anthropologist, an archaeologist, a doctor, a chemist, an agriculturist, and topographers. The expedition will be assisted by 400 natives, and will travel 500 miles in a line parallel with the Dutch boundary, surveying a strip of country 150 miles wide, and traversing and mapping two-thirds of th-3 eastern half of the island. Mr. Conolly states that the expedition will be largest in expenditure and personnel yet undertaken, and the most ambitious in scope ever sent out by any country, not excluding Scott's and ShackleThe advance party will take 3000 ft. of film fo r release throughout the world. It is hoped partly to finance the mam expedition with tlie profits and to enlist public interest and support. Mr. Conolly wtta formerly a horsebreaker in the artillery.