Kukukukus Fight.

Oil Searchers In Conflict With Wild Mountain People.

Prom Our Own Correspondent.

Port Moresby, March 1.

WHILE prospecting for oil, a geo logical survey party of the Oriomo Oil Co., Ltd., under Mr. B. Warren Carey, and escorted by Patrol-Officer Timperly and nine members of the Armed Native Constabulary, met some, opposition from the Kukukuku people, in the mountainous district between the Vailala and Tauri Rivers, near the border of New Guinea, in December.

It is understood that, as a result, two of the natives employed by the Oriomo Oil Co. are dead and one Kukukuku man was killed; and that 14 carriers from the Gulf and Delta country subse quently deserted the party.

Patrol-Officer Timperly, after re provisioning his police, returned to the district, and, it is understood, has established a Police camp there, with the object of tracing the missing men.

The Kukukukus (a derisive name given to the mountain people, between the Lakekamu to the Vailala, by the coastal tribes of the Papuan Gulf) live in small scattered villages at a height of 6,000 to 7,000 feet, and they always have resented any intrusion by strangers, white or black. They are superior marksmen with their bows and arrows, and are held in superstitious dread by the coastal people.

Miss Olive Green has been appointed by the Methodist Mission to be Chair man’s Assistant in the Fiji District in place of Miss J. C. Leslie, who is re turning to her work with the Victorian Mission office.

Mr. R. Stevens has been accepted as a clerk in the Papuan Public Service. He has taken up duties in the Government Stores Department.

Hon. Alport Barker, Mayor of Suva and member of the Fiji Legislative Council, returned to Suva after a visit to New Zealand by the “Niagara”, at the end of February.

Typical Kukukuku men of the tribes inhab iting the mountainous country near the Papua- New Guinea border. These three handcuffed natives were arrested in the interior by Dis trict Officer Feldt, of the N.G. Service, and taken into Wau, in connection with the mur der of Hcllmuth Baum, a German prospector, in 1931. They are wearing the distinctive garb of diminutive Kukukukus —a peculiar hood, for protection from both sun and rain, and a small sporran-like garment made of reeds.