Papuan Gold

Newspapers Make A

Mystery

“Joseph Conrad” in Search of Papuan Gold

4 FEW days after the sailing ship Joseph Conrad put out from Melbourne in January for an “unknown desination” in the Pacific, it was announced in the Vic torian newspapers that she was bound for Samarai, Papua, via Auckland, and that the four mining experts who accompanied the ship were Messrs. T. J, Shepherd, H.

Slocombe, E. White, and F. Herbert. The vessel was under charter to Oceanic Gold Explorations, NX.

Just before the Conrad departed, the Sydney newspaper Smith's Weekly, on January 25, announced that it had un ravelled the mystery surrounding the ship’s expedition and discovered that Australian Mineral Development Co. had chartered her to go to Sideia, or Basilisk Island, south-eastwards of Samarai. Smith's said that Australian Mineral Development and another syndicate, headed by W. Cam eron, of Cameron Brothers, Melbourne, were racing for the gold, which had been found by Australian prospectors 40 years ago. The Cameron group claimed to have

possession of prospectors’ maps and papers and “they only needed to get a party to the island to make big money.”

It now turns out that the Joseph Conrad, with all sails set, is “racing” to Papua— but via New Zealand, some 1200 miles out of the course —and that Australian Min eral Development has relinquished the charter in favour of Oceanic Gold Ex plorations. Meanwhile, presumably, the Cameron group is squatting morosely in a dingy Melbourne office, chewing pencils in an endeavour to calculate whether a whaleboat could beat the Conrad to Papua.

The one man who really could explain the tangle and unravel the position is the dour Captain Alan Villiers, owner-master of the sailing ship and a director of Oceanic Gold Explorations NX. He, alas, is somewhere on the blue expanse of the Tasman Sea keeping one eye on the belly ing topsails and the other on the cabin boy “Stormalong,” who is industriously working out how to spend the fortune that is waiting to be picked up at Sideia!

Mrs. Bartlett, wife of Rev. H. K. Bart lett, L.Th., of Misima Island, Papua, reached Sydney by the Macdhui on January 24. She went on to South Aus tralia, where she will be joined later in the year by her husband, who has charge of the Methodist Mission station in Eas tern Papua.