GOLDFIELDS HEROINE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16339, 13 May 1927, Page 12

GOLDFIELDS HEROINE

MINE LESSEE AND NU.RBI

PRIVATIONS OF EDIE CREEK

To tho Royal Commission which is inquiring into the conditions of mining leases on the Edie Creek (New Guinea) goldfields, tho 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 endeavor. This heroine, for the modesty of her own words did not prevent the members of the commission realising the gallantry of her deeds and actions, was Mrs. Doris Regina Booth.

Mrs. Booties story was one of the heroism and self-sacrilico of a fragile white woman in the face of dangers and difficulties that might well have daunted any man. With a lofty courage, she started with her husband on a live-weeks’ trek over mountains, through swamps and hostile cannibal country to Edie Creek. Then, when the race for claims set in, she urged Mr. Booth to go ahead and secure a claim, while she followed alone. Finding themselves with little capital in Rabaul, capital of the mandated territory of New Guinea, in 14)24, Mrs. Booth and her husband resolved to put everything to the hazard and try for gold in the unknown interior. Mr. Booth, a strong, powerful man, and his wife, small and wiry, but with the heart of a lion, left Rabaul in May, '1924, in an auxiliary lugger. 'flic engine broke down, and for six weeks they drifted about through storms and calms, being blown on anu off coasts, till they were cast up at Salomon 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 fiveweeks’ march. Learning that gold had been struck on the Bulolo, Mrs. Booth urged her husband to push on, and she followed alone with native carriers, through hostile cannibal counand ignoring hostile displays. NURSING MINERS THROUGH SICKNESS When Mrs. Booth arrived at the goldfields there -were II miners there. She 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 tho miners. Sickness broke out, first among natives. She nursed them, and then white men fell sick. She took them into her own house and volunteered to run a hospital until .the Government sent aid. Using her experience as a nurse in Brisbane, Mrs. Booth tended 130 patients, most of whom suffered from tropical dysentery, 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 ip. But Mrs. Booth’s house, sick bay as it was, was a touch of civilisation that these men, drawn from all ranks in 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 commission supported Mrs. Booth’s own story.' When the commission had 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.’’