Salamaua

Memories of the “Rush” Days of New Guinea

By M.G.

BEFORE Burns, Philp’s ships made Salamaua a port of call it was a diffi cult place to reach. It was necessary to charter a schooner in Rabaul, at great ex pense, and the 440 miles ocean journey was anything but a joy in those small vessels, which were often leaky and poorly engined. As charters were usually by the day rate—£2 to £lo—the delay caused by engine trouble did not worry the owners.

Five knots was the average speed when the engines were working.

When I went across we struck a very bad sou’-east blow and our journey lasted six weeks. A week was spent recruiting, and during the balance of the turns we were being blown about or had to beach the boat to prevent her sinking. A burnt out bearing, a sprung mizzen, and the stern post carried away were a few of our troubles. We were blown down the coast almost to Madang, and the swift current passing through Dampier Strait held us back for weeks on end until the weather abated.

By the time we reached Salamaua the charter had taken all our spare cash, half of our three months’ supply of rations had been consumed, the balance was damaged by salt water, and most of the boys’ issues had been swept overboard. To make mat ters worse there were no Government officials there to indenture our labourers which necessitated going to Morobe, another 90 miles, for this purpose.

Salamaua, an isthmus joining Parsee Cape to the mainland, is merely a narrow sand bar. It had been planted with coco nuts by the old German New Guinea Com pany, and used by them as a trading station, bird of paradise and recruiting depot. At the time of which I write, Sala maua consisted of the “Blood House,” Bill Money’s packing shed and a very small rest house (for passing Patrol Officers), all built of native material, and perhaps half a dozen tents along the foreshore.

The “Blood House”

The “Blood House” —why thus named, and by whom I could never discover —was a ramshackle two-storied structure owned by the late Burleigh Gorman, and used as a boarding-house. The upper story was the common bedroom for all guests. One simply spread his own blankets somewhere on the pit-sawn plank floor and rested there. As most of us were Returned Men the hard beds were a mere detail. Some earlier arrivals had managed to rig up can vas bunks against the walls on “Heath Robinson” constructions of saplings and bush rope.

The dining room had two long rough sawn boards as a table with a form each side. One supplied his own plate, pannikin and cutlery. A number of tins of warmed canned-meat, soda bread, or cabin biscuits, and a dixie of stewed tea were piled on the table with a tin opener, and one helped himself —tariff: 18/- per day. The table talk was all of the road in, the field, the gold and the natives. We new hands mostly sat and listened for tips from the initiated.

Money’s packing shed, also owned by Gorman, was a long, low shed divided into small compartments each lined with shelves. The miners paid him £5 per month for the use of a compartment for storing their goods and for loading the boys when sent to the Beach for fresh supplies.

Everyone was very excited and in a great

hurry to move off. All day long the pack ing shed was a hive of industry. Every one had at least one partner and there was continual discussions as to what could, and could not, be taken in on the first trip. It was a matter of cutting one’s requirements to the boys’ carrying capacity. The longer the line the better one fared.

Trials Of Packing

Hearty cursing would be heard from some part of the shed. Someone had finished packing loads for all his boys only to discover that he had forgotten to include meat, or picks, or medicines, or some other necessity, and it meant pulling every load to pieces to discard something to include the missed essential. Packing and repack ing, weighing and reweighing—it is sur prising how difficult it is to take, say, 800 lbs. of miner’s gear and divide it into 1G equal packs. It was always necessary to distribute things, especially food-stuff, so that should one or more boys desert the party could still carry on.

Each day more schooners arrived, and even in the few days we were there the canvas town had noticeably grown. Many new arrivals had no boys and had come to Salamaua with the hope of buying boys there, or recruiting them locally. The few professional recruiters about found great

difficulty in persuading boys to indenture for work on the field and therefore their charges rose—£2s being the average re cruiting fee. The local kanakas weie reaping a rich harvest. Carrying suPP II^ 8 into Wee Baining they earned from 15/- to £1 per day. To conserve supplies miners willingly paid exorbitant prices for native foods, thus no local boy would indenture.

Eventually many men left Salamaua to return to their previous occupations, whilst

others spent up to 12 months trying to recruit or buy boys.

Six months later Salamaua was a dif ferent place. Two lines of huts built of bamboo and sac-sac (sago leaf) stretched almost to the ’Frisco River. A galvanised iron hotel served warm drinks at high prices, and B.P.’s were building a store.

A District Office and Hospital, rough but useful, had been erected, and buildings were springing up over night.

Major Skeets, as District Officer, dis pensed justice—perhaps a little hard, but suited for the period—without fear or favour, whilst Dr. lan T. Dickson—a name that will never be forgotten on the gold fields —grappled with vast problems of hygiene and isolation in connection with the dreadful dysentry epidemic then rag ing. Parsee Cape was divided into isolation areas for natives, and Dr. Dickson with

Mr. A. C. Windham, his assistant, worked unceasingly travelling from one improvised hospital to another, besides making occa sional patrols of both the Gadagadu and Buang roads.

The “Blood House” was relegated to a store room, and Clem Hendry had a kia kia house with proper frames for rigging canvas beds and a better cook than Gor man, although there was not much im provement in the menu. More miners were arriving by each Montoro, but the peak of the “rush” was passed.

Christmas In 1926

Xmas on the Beach in ’26 was fairly hectic. The “pub” rang with laughter and song. Some new songs were invented —one could hardly say composed. Jim Pontyn lead his own specialty:— Tram car! Tram car! Why do your wheels go round ?

Tram car! Tram car! Gliding along the ground Your Daddy lives over the ocean, ever so far away.

Why do your bright lights twinkle? Tram car! Tram car!

How grown men could chant such twaddle for hours on end seems incom prehensible, but we did. Wally Darby parodied the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah. It was very clever and screamingly funny. Darby sang the verse and the whole crowd took up the “Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” substituting “Koomeatum! Koomeatum!” “House Sac sac! House Sac-sac!” and so on for each stage of the road in. By midnight things would become rather mixed, some singers would be on the first stage of the track, others nearly to Wau, the result ing din was terrific and arguments as to where the song actually had arrived at on the road often led to brawls.

Strings of champagne corks hung from the roof each labelled with the owner’s name. Some men on good gold competed in lengthening their line of corks. Clad in grey flannel singlets, khaki shorts, woollen socks and heavy hob-nailed boots (as we all wore in those days) and seated at a beer case for a table in a galvanised shed called an hotel, it was hardly the atmo sphere for champagne, but they enjoyed themselves.

Xmas morning natives visited each hut carrying a large enamel bucket of cham pagne and armed with a pannikin. “Masta Darby talk one fella cup along one fella Masta, thas all,” repeated the natives as they dished us out a mug of “bubbly.”

That was Darby’s Xmas “shout” to the mob.

A trade store attached to the “pub” did a roaring trade. Miners on good gold were generous to their boys. Some instructed “Mclsaac,” who was in charge of the store, to allow the boys to remain there for ten minutes, and book up all they chose in that time. Being long thinkers, like all natives, they did not debit their Masters with nearly as much as one would expect.

A “Two-Gun” Man

Outside the hotel a “two-up school” saw many ounces change hands, whilst under the Calafuleums, groups of men lay shoot ing at bottles thrown into the sea, the pool being doubled each round of shots. Calvin, a “two-gun” American, put it well over one pool I was in. A bottle which had evaded many shots still bobbed about whilst the pool mounted. Calvin passing by was chipped about bringing his two guns along. Daring us to double the pool he weighed in and, pitting his revolvers against our .32 rifle, took the pool first shot. Regarding it as a fluke we doubled the stakes; this time, his second shot, a left-hander, took our money.

In those days the field knew not gold thieves and everyone was pretty casual with their gold—as much as 1,000 ozs. com ing down from Edie Creek in charge of a boss boy. One day a crowd were sitting yarning on the roadway outside Clem Hendry’s place. One chap shifted a pack he was sitting on and found it very heavy.

On examining it he discovered it was his own gold—Boo ozs.! Arriving dead-beat two days previously he had gone straight to Hendry’s, assuming the boy following him would take the gold to B.P.’s. Also dead-beat, the boy, however, had dumped the pack in front of the shack where he knew his Master was staying, and there it had lain in the road-way for two days.

Nowadays Salamaua has motor cars, and freezers, a real hotel, and “talkies,” but, of course, it’s the township of Salamaua now, not just the “Beach.”

Mr. and Mrs. H. G. Simpson, of Thurs day Island, arrived in Sydney by the Marella in December.