Morobe Goldfield
p. 26 · Read in the full issue
Hotel
Sold to Sydney Interests
THE Hotel Bulolo, at Wau, New Guinea, has been sold by Mrs. Stewart to a company, which was registered at Can berra, entitled New Guinea Hotels Ltd, The new Co.’s nominal capital is £25,000.
The directors are: Messrs. A. J. McLach lan, solicitor, Sydney; T. R. McCulloch, company director, Sydney; A. G. M. Pitt, barrister, Sydney. Shares in the new Company have been offered for sale in Sydney, at a substantial premium.
A report from Wau states that the sale has not yet taken place; but we were in formed by a representative of the Co. that it is completed and that, while Mrs. Stewart is still in charge of the Bulolo Hotel, she intends to retire, and the directors propose to appoint a mana ger, in her place.
Mrs. Stewart has been identified with the Morobe goldfield, from its beginning.
She established a very small accommoda tion house, in the primitive jungle, as soon as the gold industry began to de velop; and under her capable direction, the hotel grew in size and importance.
The front verandahs of the present large establishment extend along the top boundary of the aerodrome—which is to Wau what the central railway station is to any other town. Mrs. Stewart is widely known and esteemed. She is a very com petent manager; and she can handle a cheeky native servant, or a recalcitrant “drunk” in a most efficient manner. But what the “hard-boiled” men of the Mo
robe goldfield especially admire are her womanly sympathy and practical kind ness. She never has been known to turn a deaf ear to an appeal for help—many are the down-and-out miners who have to thank her for a second chance, and many also are they who have been car ried off from their fever-stricken shelters, and nursed back to health at the Bulolo Hotel.
Working by her side in those strenuous years, though usually on separate enter prises, was her husband, Mr. James Stew art, also popular and highly respected.
Not one man on the goldfield, who knows “the Stewarts,” will envy them the for tune they have earned by hard work in a primitive country, and the leisured ease to which they so generously are entitled.
But —to the old-timers at any rate—the Bulolo Hotel without Mr. and Mrs. Stew art will seem a queer place indeed.