GOLDFIELDS HEROINE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3818, 17 May 1927, Page 50

GOLDFIELDS HEROINE.

MINE LESSEE AND NURSE.

ROYAL COMMISSION HEARS STORY.

SYDNEY, May 5. To the Royal Commission which is inquirihg into the conditions of mining’ leases on the Edie Creek (New Guinea) goldfields, the only woman who dared the trials and tribulations of the rough existence of the field told in sworn evidence her epic of brave and noble endeavour. This heroine, for the modesty of her own words did not prevent the members of the commission realising the g-allantry of her deeds and actions, was Airs Doris Retina Booth.

Iler story was one of the heroism and self-sacrifice of a fragile white woman in the face of dangers and difficulties that might well have daunted any man. With lofty courage she started with her husband on a five-weeks trek over mountains, through swamps, and hostile cannibal country to Edie Creek. Then when the race for claims set in, she urged him to go ahead and secure a claim when she followed alone.

Finding themselves with little capital in Rabaul, capital of the mandated territory of New Guinea, in 1924, Airs Booth and her husband resolved to put everything to the hazard and try for gold in the unknown interior. Booth, a strong, powerful man, and his wife, small and wiry, but with the heart of a lion, left Rabaul in Alay, 1924, in an auxiliary lugger. The engine broke down, and for six weeks they drifted about through storms and calms, being blown on off coasts, till they were cast up at Salamoa Bay, now the port of the new goldfields. They were six weeks on the beach waiting to secure carriers, and then they started on that terrible five weeks’ march. Learning that gold had been struck on the Bulolo, Mrs Both urged her husband to push on, and she followed alone with native carriers, through hostile cannibal country, helping them when sick, and ignoring hostile displays. When Mrs Booth arrived at the goldfields, there were 11 miners there. Mrs Booth secured a lease of 30 acres at the junction of Edie Creek and the Bulolo River, and the miners showed her how to work her claim. She planted a garden and grew vegetables for the miners. S" ness broke out among the natives. She nursed them, and then white men fell sick. She took them into her own house, and volunteered to run a hospital till the Government sent aid. Using her experience as a nurse in Brisbane. Mrs Booth tended 150 patients, most of whom suffered from tropical dysentry, and of them only one white man and two natives died. Rain fell incessantly for weeks at a stretch. It was a hard place to live in. But Mrs Booth’s house, sick bay as it was, was a touch of civilisation that these men, drawn from all ranks of life, had left behind to search feverishly for gold. Through all this humanitarian work, Mrs Booth worked her claim, and she and her husband won quite a large amount of gold. She told the commission that her mine was now under offer for £40,000. Miners giving evidence before the com* mission supported Mrs Booth’s own story. When the commission Lad heard the latter, the chairman said to Mrs Booth:’ “We are filled with admiration for the courage and nobleness displayed by you That you could have accomplished so much to the benefit of your fellow beings, irrespective of who and what they were, and done it out of an unselfish desire to help others, is beyond praise.”