Vari-Vari Islands

The Mysterious Fish of the Vari-Vari Islands

By H. Dexter

IN 1901, I was bound from Port Moresby to the Aroa River. The vessel of which I was in charge was a small steam launch. Butler, second engineer of the Bentinck, was with me.

Astern, we had a large ship’s boat, in which we were towing a party of about 25 Goaribari recruits. Five of them had served a sentence of five years for being concerned in the killing, and eating, of the well-known missionaries, Chalmers and Tomkins.

There had been delay in getting away from Port Moresby, and, as it would be dark ere we reached the bar of the Aroa River, I decided to land the Goaribaris on the Vari-Vari Islands for the night, and go on in daylight.

Early next morning, my crew went ashore and brought off the recruits. We made the boat fast, and got under way again.

After we had run a mile or two, Ken, a Vabakori boy, who was at the wheel, called my attention to a big fish that was right ahead. As we approached it, I rang off the engines. We slowly passed it, at a distance of a few feet —in fact, so close that the Goaribaris threw pieces of dun nage on to its back.

About thirty feet of it could be seen above the water. In colour it was yellow and brown mottled. Its head and tail were not visible. It had no dorsal fin. Its back stood about three feet out of the W'ater.

On my return to Port Moresby I was told that this fish had been seen at dif

ferent times by the Lieutenant-Governor, Rev. Mr. Dauncey, Mr. J. Fowler, Capt.

Kunson, Messrs. Archie McAlpine, Mac kenzie, and others. None of them had been able to identify it.

During 1911-1914, I was continually tra velling these waters, but in spite of a good look-out, the fish was not seen again.

While on my recent visit to Papua (1935) I heard of its being seen last year by Louis Clunn; and a year before he saw it it was spotted from a ’plane, the occupants of which were interested enough to fly close to it.

Now, in 1896, three pearlers were fish ing the water immediately east of Red scar. All was going well, and shell was plentiful. Suddenly the life-line and air tube of one of the Japanese divers was cut as if with a knife; another diver was sent down, but the man had disappeared.

The next day exactly the same thing happened.

The thought that springs to the mind is that the men had been caught by the foot in the shell of a giant clam. But this is overruled by the fact that there was no struggle, and by the absence of bodies.

Was this mysterious fish the cause of the double tragedy?

I passed the spot in 1925, The late Mr.

Dauncey was a fellow-passenger and I told him of my experience. “And you, too, saw that fish!” said the reverend gentle man.

He then told me that on one occasion he and the two missionaries, Chalmers and Tomkins, were beating up from Yule Island to Port Moresby in a small cutter when the fish came up astern of them, head on. “It really looked as if it would take us, cutter and all, into its mouth,” he said.