The Vicissitudes Of A
p. 51 · Read in the full issue
Car-Engine
■THE first motor-car in Papua was im * ported in 1915. It was a second hand car, bought cheaply, and was in tended to test the roads of Port Moresby for motor traffic. It was a great success.
By 1917, more cars came along and. ashamed of its shabbiness, its owner sold it to a merchant who converted it into a delivery truck. The body, built by a local carpenter, fell to pieces in a couple of years, and it was sold and used for heavy transport outside the town.
In 1923 it was again sold, and the engine was installed in a small launch.
Proving unsatisfactory to the exasper ated owner, it passed into the hands of a saw-miller, who installed it in a shed to drive machinery. Annoyed by its tan trums, he offered it for sale and engine left shortly for a plantation. It remained there for two years and was then bought by an amateur experiment ing in machinery.
Finally, after a few years of rest and neglect, it was taken over bv an ambitious prospector, and it is still in use pumping water reluctantly from a creek in some remote corner of the
Territory.—M.L.