Coir Industry in New

Guinea Bags and Mats from Coconut Husks

Letter to the Editor.

IN the latest issue of the “New Guinea Agricultural Gazette” there appears an article by Mr. G. H. Murray, Direc tor of Agriculture, on Coir Fibre as an industry for Mandated New Guinea.

Such an article was about due. Ten years ago I concluded research into coir fibre as an industry for New Guinea.

Eleven years ago, under the specious encouragement of the then Prime Min ister (Mr. Bruce) and the Common wealth Economic Adviser (Mr. Wilkin son) I brought here a most elaborate plant for large-scale testing of the New Guinea coconut husk.

After a great deal of work I managed to secure some interesting data regard ing the possibilities of this industry, in view of the great demand in Australia for cheap wheat bags and wool bales.

About this time I got in touch with a Dutch investigator, Mr. Van der Jagt, of the Hague, who was the patentee of a most ingenious mechanical method of softening, bleaching, spinning and weav ing coconut husks into fabric superior in many ways to that produced from jute. After a close study of my proto cols, Mr. Van der Jagt agreed with me that the only way in which coir could successfully be produced in Mandated New Guinea would be by large-scale co operative or Government-aided effort.

Small plants would be foredoomed to

failure for a great number of reasons.

It is perhaps unnecessary to detail the battle, year in and year out, that then ensued in order to drive the idea into the heads of the Administration and the Federal Government, and also into the heads of the local plantation-holders.

The senior officials were able to persuade the Commonwealth Government not to aid the establishment of a coir industry here. This, of course, exemplified the truth of a remark made to me by Brigadier-General Wisdom when on my first arrival here I visited him and told him I wished to carry out certain re search work into coconut products. He said that “that kind of thing was de cidedly not encouraged by the Admin istration”. It took me years to discover not only the truth of this pronounce ment, but also the reason for it.

Mr. Murray now advocates that coir extraction become a village industry in place of native copra drying. Mr.

Murray is not only ignorant of coir pro duction, but also of local village condi tions. Some time ago we started here the village drying of copra. Immedi ately, a terroristic campaign was launched against those natives with the temerity to pioneer the movement. I complained dozens of times to the Ad ministrator of the methods being adopted by his officials. Perhaps in explanation of this conduct he was kind enough to send me a pamphlet by Mr. Murray, in which the latter proved, at least to his own satisfaction, that New Guinea natives were too primitive to dry their own copra. At this period natives using the small kilns designed by myself, and built entirely by themselves, were turn ing out a grade of Rabaul Hot-air copra

that was distinctly in advance of the f.a.q. plantation product. Nevertheless the Administration did its utmost to strangle this industry at its birth. If this statement is disputed I shall be pleased to supply my full reasons for making it.

As it is, the original concept that natives should not only dry and market their own product, but should carry out a further detailed campaign for the planting-up of waste land and the im provement of sanitary and social con ditions in their villages, has been stopped. The threat was made by Ad ministration officers that natives band ing themselves together for the co operative furtherance of this project would be sent to imprisonment up the Sepik River—equivalent to a death sen tence to any native. I am cynical to believe that certain vested interests saw in the movement the ultimate destruc tion of the cheap labour supply.

The first requirement of any coir maker is an abundance of fresh water for the retting of the husks. The lack of water in the villages here is a serious matter, as the natives find it difficult in most villages to secure enough for cooking and drinking purposes. In many places, the women have to carry water for miles in bamboo pipes. How then, under his present scheme, would Mr.

Murray have the husks retted ? An alternative might possibly be the build ing of concrete retting-pits in the vil lages. The rainfall would be insufficient to keep these filled even with stagnant water, so a daily task would have to be the carrying of water for these pits,

perhaps for miles. The stench given off from rotting husks would be enough to make the village uninhabitable.

My tests on New Guinea husks lead me to believe that at least six to nine months soaking in cold water would be necessary to render the husks pliable enough to be disintegrated by a power driven machine. In a previous state ment, Mr. Murray has laid down that the local natives are much too primitive to understand even the simplest machinery. When the High Chief Tin gai wished to purchase a machine for cleaning his home-grown rice, this was the reply given him. The fact that many natives here are motor-mechanics, schooner-engineers, printers, typesetters and book-binders has apparently as yet not impressed itself upon the Admin istrative consciousness. The only other method then, apart from the use of machinery, would be the beating out of the coir fibre with sticks, after 12 to 18 months’ soaking, as is done on parts of the Malabar Coast. Viewed as a matter of £ s. d. the return to the individual native under the Murray scheme would at the most be a few shillngs a year.

Yet Mr. Murray publicly brings this forward as a substitute for the native copra-drying movement.

Coir here is demonstrably a business for big capital, close co-operation, and the most modern methods. One would have thought that an expensive Agri cultural Department would long ago have realised this. Even this “village industry” idea seems to be a re-hash of a suggestion of my own, put forward many years ago. New Guinea natives

have remarkable manual dexterity, and I suggested that they be provided with coir yarns and that a mat and carpet weaving industry, carried out on cheap hand looms, be inaugurated.

Australia, at the present time, is im porting for cable and pipe-wrapping purposes a great deal of coir-cloth pro duced in France under the Van de Jagt process. Husks are imported into France from the West Indies and exported to Australia as a finished product.

I am, etc.,

Thomas V. Wallace.

Walaur, Rabaul, March 12, 1938.

Mr. C. H. Honson, managing director of Honson Ltd. and Jang, King, Loong and Co. Ltd., of Suva, sailed from Syd ney for Fiji by the “Aorangi” on March 17, after a brief visit to Australia.

Dr. and Mrs. B. A. Sinclair, of Sala maua, New Guinea, reached Australia on three months’ furlough by the April “Montoro”.

Mr. D. Bellamy, of Islands Explora tions Co’s staff in New Guinea, has been transferred to Western Papua to assist in the oil-seeking activities there.

Mr. C. J. J. T. Barton, of Suva, has been appointed President of the newly formed Fiji Society, which has been established to create an interest in Fijian history, botany, anthropology, marine biology, geology, etc. Vice- Presidents are: Rev. W. R. Steadman, and Messrs. Barker and Ward; and the Secretary is Mr. C. R. Turbett.