PAPUA

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 64, Issue 4562, 20 April 1942, Page 3

PAPUA

AUSTRALIA’S GUARDIAN

BARREN PORT MORESBY

E.T.)

(By

Saavedra in 1527 sailed close to New Guinea and called it Papuasia—a word that, in his native tongue, indicated a “ bushy-haired ” people. The twentieth century Papuan carries on the tradition, and, unlike his closecropped cousins in neighbouring territories, his golliwog hair style is his most noticeable characteristic.

His land consists of two townships —Port Moresby and Samarai—a vast hinterland where white men are few and scattered, and many outlying islands romantically named —• Sudest, the Trobiands, Misima, Yule, the Louisade Archipelago.

Port Moresby is Hie gateway—barren, quite unlovely, and placed by a whim of nature outside the rain belt. It bears not the slightest resemblance to the tropic isle of fiction or even of fact, but. it is approached through a maze pf reefs that on a sunny day shine beneath the water in all the blues and greens of the turquoise. From the sea the township is a cluster of red roofs in . a brown setting, and high on the mountain behind is a huge galvanised “ roof ” which in the brief wet season catches water to eke out supplies during the “ dry.”

A cross-section of the whole community comes to meet each ship—natives wjth their foot-high mops of hair, dyed every colour from platinum blonde through the reds to near-pur-ple; native girls in tiers of grass skirts which they sell to the last modest layer; vendors of model lakatois—those trading canoes with the crab-claw sails; half-castes, Malays, labour lines to work the ship—supplied by the only Australian woman to run a stevedoring business; native constabulary in their navy blue uniforms; customs clerks, shipping officials, a sprinkling of white people, and, latterly, military men from the garrison.

It was here that ships on the regular New Gpinea-Australia run got down to serious business and unloaded tons of groceries, beer, petrol, meat, girders, machinery, and timber, and took on board copra, desiccated coconut, rubber, and trochus. Many people disembarked for Wau and Salamaua, a matter of two hours by air, but a further six days by sea.

The business section of the township lies between the headland and a mountain, its streets are treeless and dusty, and there are no tourist attractions. But with persistence it was possible to track down the only hirable car—vintage 1910—and drive to Hanuabada, a village of long-legged houses and drawn-up canoes. There brown babies, dogs, and fowls indiscriminately grubbed in the sand, small children in minute grass skirts or lap-laps came and went from school with a couple of exercise books under their arms, and stolid adults carried on with their own business undaunted by the gaze of the sightseers. THE TROPICAL ISLAND Samarai, the direct antithesis of Port Moresby, is, by ship, 15 hours’ sail south-east. It is a tiny isle at the extremity of the long tail of land which forms the mainland, and one of those “ gems of the Pacific ” beloved of novelists—the small South Sea Island of romance come true. It is completely encircled by coconuts leaning out over the sea at the correct angle, and a path which can be walked around in twenty minutes. The homes of the seventy-odd residents were built mostly on the central hill and half-hidden behind banks of tropical shrubs and flowers, vividly-coloured crotons, hibiscus, pink and white frangipani, and masses of • bougainvillea. Small palm-encrusted satellite islands are scattered here and there, and white schooners rode at anchor. Across a narrow strip of sea is the mainland dark, mysterious mountains rising from the water’s edge and practically untouched by civilisation.

It is said that Samarai has six months’ rain before the wet season commences. But the dampness detracts nothing from the beauty of the place. In the sunshine the blues of reef, sky, and sea combine with the brilliant colours of the palms and the flowers to make a dazzling tropical picture. In the rain it Jias the blurred outlines of an exquisitely-done pastel. Commercially it is the shipping port for most of Papua’s copra and the jumpingjoff place for the goldfields of Misima and Woodlark and the sea products of the Outre islands. Tales of the Yodda goldfields and patrols and adventures in Papua’s hinterland have become history, and fill many books; but the greater part is still unexplored, and prospectors, recruiters, and, in later years, oil seekers, are the natives’ only white contacts. Papua is Australia’s greatest hope for a private petroleum source, and in three years over £1,000,000 was spent on exploration work and drilling. During the first twelve months 28,000 square miles of country, most of it uncontrolled territory, were air-surveyed, and then from the photographs maps were made enabling selected geologists to examine the more likely areas on foot. In the

beginning of 1940 the site for the first test well was selected dn the Vailala River, 75 miles from the Gulf of Papua. In 1941 drilling began, and it was hoped that the well would be completed by the middle of this year.

In the past Papua has seen a procession of adventurers, prospectors,’ traders, and pearlers, Empire builders, missionaries, and explorers. Fifty years ago it was the most isolated outpost of the British Commonwealth, a schooner via Queensland ports its only communication with the world. To-day it is fulfilling its obligations to the Empire; its capital has become a fortress where Australian soldiers stand to arms, denying to the enemy an open north-eastern' doorway to the Queensland coast.