Discourse on Bugs
p. 20 · Read in the full issue
TO prove to you my vagrant muse .
Will sometimes trip a lightsome toe, (Though that may be but ill, as news!) Whil’st you are kneading damper dough, I will discourse to you on —bugs!
“No need,” you cry. Their loathly smell Is ever present in my nose: One touch—a veritable hell Of stench arises to disclose The presence of a filthy bug!
They ramble round the bamboo floor And scramble o’er the table top: There are no walls, there is no door.
To stay their wanderings, or stop Th’ intrusion of those filthy bugs!
A crawling thing upon your back You brush away with cautious hand; And then, compelled to give a smack At something on your collar band, You guess, too late, a filthy bug!
The odours wrung from bone manure Are sweet beside the scent of these, Which make the atmosphere impure When, all unknowingly, you squeeze, Oh! pooh! another filthy bug!
This tropic life is far from full Of what fair maidens term “Romance.”
New Guinea’s lure would fail to pull You here, if you but once, perchance, Could smell these filthy, stinking bugs!
E. W. Leggatt.
Lower Watut River, New Guinea.
Miss Christine Woods, sister at the Melanesian Mission hospital on Malaita, Solomon Islands, since 1934, is spending short furlough at Stanthorpe, Queens land. On her return to Sydney, Miss Woods will join the mission vessel Southern Cross VII. in order to deal with cases at the various outports in the Solomons.
Mr. lan H. Grabowsky, manager of Guinea Airways Limited, Lae, New Guinea, left Sydney with his wife for Papua by the last Macdhui. At Port Moresby he joined Guinea Airways Ford ’plane and flew across to the N.G. gold fields.
Hon. J. G. (“Gus”) Nelsson, Member of the Legislative Council of Papua, who has been holidaying in Australia, returned to Eastern Papua at the end of January by the Macdhui. Besides controlling exten sive planting and trading interests in the Territory, he is a director of Gold Mines of Papua Limited.