Vale, "Tommy" Hough!

again for Leron to escort other natives said to have been implicated in the affray.

Vale, “Tommy” Hough!

By W.C.G.

EARLY in 1933, while I was doing ethnographic work at Tatau, in the Tabar Islands group of the Mandated Territory of New Guinea, I received a letter from a young teacher in Queensland.

A recent graduate of the Teachers’

College at Brisbane, the lad told me of his ambition to take up life amongst the natives of New Guinea, and enquired of me (because of some articles of mine which he had recently read) how he might set about preparing himself for a possible opportunity.

The characteristic note of the letter was one of sincerity, and I pictured the lad as a clean-minded, decent fellow prepared to work earnestly and assiduously towards furthering his ambitions.

The letter bore the signature “T. A.

Hough.”

I lost no time in sending him a wellconsidered reply, advising him to seek an administrative cadetship when applications were again called, and suggesting certain literature dealing with the Territory and its people which he might immediately read. Subsequent occasional correspondence with the lad showed his interest in the native to be ever widening, and I was not surprised to learn of his being one of the 1200 applicants for cadetships in 1933.

Twelve were selected, and Hough, being placed about number 18 on the list, was disappointed. But not for long! For my next letter from him, received while I was camped at Buki, near Finschhafen, told me of his success.

Soon after his arrival in the Territory with Cadet T. Aitchison, he called at Buki in the Government schooner Wandera about the middle of 1934, to find me away down the coast. My “boy” told me about the visit of this “long fella master, ’e young fella Kiap; good fella man too much.”

I was not to meet “Tommy” Hough until May, 1936, when the cadet group was present at some lectures I gave to the anthropology course at Sydney University. And I was not disappointed at meeting him. He turned out to be a clean-cut, tall, keen young gentleman, a fine type of the Australian secondaryschool product.

We spent an hour or two together in my room, while he told me of his interesting experiences around the Morobe hinterland, and showed me some of his excellent photographs of native life.

When I came away, to return to Melbourne he was at the train to see me off, and I could not but feel then that Thomas Hough would always prove worthy of the high standard and fine tradition that characterises the New Guinea service of to-day.

He returned to the Territory in August —straight to the hinterland from the lights of Sydney. And now comes the stark announcement of his death from a treacherous native arrow within a few short months of our parting.