FUTURE OF PAPUA

Otago Witness, Issue 3581, 31 October 1922, Page 27

FUTURE OF PAPUA

CONQUEST OF THE SUN LANDS. MISS GRIMSHAW AT THE COLONIAL INSTITUTE. (JTeom Odb Own GorbicspondeiitJ “In Papua, alone of all Pacific countries, you can get land, good land, in any quantity for practically nothing; you can find labour at .a moderate price; you can prospect for precious minerals and gems with a fair chance of success. You can explore, if you have the money and the constitution of a Shackleton or a Scott, trace rivers that no one has followed, find tribes unknown to man. You can start- new industries; discover resources unheard of. The timbers are not exploited; the minerals are barely scratched; there is a whole thermal district, with geysers, hot rivers, mineral springs, that has not even been mapped out; there are great areas- of potential sugar country almost uninhabited; there is more water-power in the way of falls and rapids, all unused, than in any country south of the equator.” This was a statement made by Miss Beatrice Grimshaw, lecturing on “Papua and the Western Pacific,” yesterday before the Roval Colonial Institute. Miss Grimshaw lias lived for 15 years in Papua, not because her duty keeps her there, but because she loves the country. “You can have adventure,” she continued, “in Papua; visit cannibal tribes and tribes that have been cannibal but yesterday; trade up and down the coasts and about the islands in your own schooner, with vour own native crew; you can see the most wonderful birds in the world, including the paradise family, shoot crocodiles, and pythons that are giants of their kind. You can travel through scenery that, even in the world of the Pacific, is unmatched for beauty. There are whole constellations of unconsidered coral islands lying about at the end of the country, many of them larger than famous Polynesian groups; larger, individually, some of them, than an English county. There are mountain ranges up to IB.tXXtft; rivers that turn the sea yellow and fresh far out of sight ol land.” In the twentieth century, and the years following the war, said the lecturer, one might take it that nothing worth having was left to lie loose about the world. The good things of the Western Pacific were not lying loose. But, such as they were, they were the onlv good things remaining m Oceania. What were these doors that shut away the rich free lands of Pa-pua, its minerals, its water-power. , its timbers, from the world outside? How was it that the white population to-day numbered no more thousand the" steamer service was conuned to one small boat leaving Sydney every four weeks, and the two settlements were not increasing in size? How was it that the hundreds Of people who washed to live in the “South Sea Island never contemplated Papua, with its marvellous scenery and ricli resources, as a possible home ? Fever was the principal bar. With Fiji the nonmaiarial countries ended. Cross the invisible dividing line that runs about the 165th parallel of latitude, and you came upon the lands where malarial fever was a part of daily life. WORLD’S BATTLES FOR THE SUN LANDS. “ Fever, in the AVestern Pacific, means a trouble that is more or less constant; that affects the health of various people m various degrees—passes over some altogether, visits others frequently, and kills not many, but a few. It is responsible for a good deal of bad health; but year Iby year this lessens as the questions of fever treatment and prevention are better understood. And the decrease will continue; for we are, as yet. only at the beginning of the great fight with malarial fever, which when won—as it will be won—will give us true empire over the tropics. I have seen men of 60 tramping over tropic mountain ranges as easily as boys; others, young and old, working in stores and offices, European hours, European ways, within nine degrees of the Equator, doing engineering work as many hours of the day a,s on the Clyde or the Tyne, in a shade temperature of 90; sailoring, planting, ranching, trading, with as much energy as anyone who lives in a place where fires have to be used in sitting rooms half the summer through, and breakfast eaten, during

half the year, in freezing, lamplit dark. I know many white women who are more energetic and industrious in hot countries than they were ever in their own, and who do not suffer by it. It is fortunate that an increasing number do settle permanently in the lands of their adoption; for the day is coming when the world’s battles will bo fought over the possession of the sun lands, | m a wider sense than that known as the > Great War.” I The Western Pacific, especially Papua, was | barred—though less heavily than was supposed, by malarial fever. But others and worse tilings were absent. Diphtheria, typhoid, typhus, scarlatina, did not exist. Smallpox had not touched the country within the memory of any living men. Cholera and bubonic plague had never been seen. After all, malarial fever was not such a bad exchange for those other terrors. BROWN RACES WILL SURVIVE. One might, fairly prophesy, said Miss Grimshaw, that the brown races ot Papua i were goin? to survive and to increase. This j meant that an intelligent people, with considerate strength of character and much i ability in a mechanical direction, were goin<* j *■?. U°. on hying, side by side with a graduj ally increasing population of whites. It ! meant, too, that the Papuan was going to have time and opportunity to develop* his possibilities, and become as competent a craftsman and as able a planter as he had it in him to be. He was essentially a creature of the Stone Age, dragged neck and heels into the twentieth century, and stili staggering to find his feet; he was thousands of years behind the brown and yellow races who had lived and developed in the stress* jpf Asiatic life. It would lie a long timo ! before he developed executive ability of any ! kind. But he was already a trader of no j small keenness, and his 'mechanical surprised everyone who has had to do with j him as a workman. He would—so far as ! one could see at present—prove himself an j able helper of the white man, when the latter | came, as he must come in time, to settle in j the country in larger numbers. AUSTRALIA’S MISTAKE, j " For the moment the country is in | trouble,” continued the speaker. “Plantai lions, rubber, copra, hemp are at a standj still; trading has diminished like a river in time of drought. Settlers are leaving by every boat, and few arc coming to take their place. The Government has been forced to .cut down expenses to the last penny. Thera is no employment for anyone. This, almost wholly, is the result of an unfortunate measure on the part of the Commonwealth Government — the extending of the Navigation Act to Papua, which means that Port Moresby and other ports of entry have become Australian ports for the purposes of the I Act. Only vessels which comply with tho Act, in reference to wages, accommodation I fox seamen, and so on, are allowed to carry freight and passengers to Australia. Now, as moat people know. Australian wages and accommodation for seamen are about tho highest in the world, and no company not having Australian headquarters can afford to pay them. The Act, therefore, cuts Papua off from sea traffic with any firm but tho one Australian firm that runs at long intervals to the principal ports; forces the connI try to ship all produce to Europe by a roundj about and most costly route, and obliges it |to buy ail its goods in the same way. It i cannot get into touch with Europe, save | by way of Australia, which is much a 3 if aj man. travelling from Yorkshire to London, i should be obliged to go round by way of j Cork. It is not too much to say that the Navigation Act, in this application, lias cut j the throat of the country.”