George Chester

Has a “Rest Cure” and Returns

To N.G.

By R. W. Robson

A LONG, lean man, with grizzled hair, a bright blue eye and a ready grin, came in to see me.

“My name is George Chester,” said he.

“Chester!” I repeated, vaguely. “From New Guinea, I think?”

“Not lately,” he said. “I’m just out of gaol.”

Then I remembered. Two years’ penal servitude for causing the death of a native labourer. Chester had been working a small claim somewhere in the Ramu district, when the thing happened.

I examined my visitor with interest. He was a picture of robust health—and I never saw a human being who less resembled a criminal.

“Well,” I said, “if you are a fair product of the prison system, I can name about fifty men in New Guinea who ought to be put in gaol at once!”

He laughed. “I was unfortunate, in one way,” he said. “What happened to me might have happened to any employer of native labour. It is a weakness of the system. I prided myself on being a good employer—and what I did I had to do, in order to maintain reasonable discipline. I had no intention of injuring the native. I was sent away for two years, and I served 16 months.

“But I am really the gainer. I was not put in an ordinary prison—they sent me to an afforestation camp, in the high country, near Tumbarumba. It was a clean and healthy life, and I’ve got every bit of tropical fever out of my system, and I feel as if I’d had a rest cure. I put in 16 months in gaol, and added 8 or 10 years to my life.”

Mr. Chester is going straight back to New Guinea, where he will join his old mate, Mr. Bernard, and resume his search for gold in the Ramu-Purari region. He was one of the pioneers there, and is held in high regard by all the

“old hands.” He has been mining most of his life. Before he went to New Guinea, he was connected with the Laloki copper industry, in Papua.

Mr. Chester spoke with deep feeling of the help and friendship he had received, all through his recent troubles, from a woman who was a complete stranger to him, and whom he has never met—Mrs.

O. Levy, of Melbourne, sister of Captain Bernard McGrath, who was murdered by natives in the Ramu country early in 1934.

Chester and McGrath were friends; and, because of that, Mrs. Levy did everything she could to assist Mr. Chester wrote cheery letters to him in gaol, secured from the Federal authorities permission for him to return to New Guinea, and even offered to supply him with funds, in case he needed money.

“An experience like that gives a man renewed faith in human nature,” said Mr. Chester.