Gold Prospectors

How New Guinea Government Treats

Letter to the Editor

I AM obliged to the “P.1.M.” for the publicity given to the treatment ac corded to Mr. R. W. Tebb and myself on our prospecting trip into the Middle Ramu River area of New Guinea. Mr. A.

E. Green, who brought the mafter up in Federal Parliament, appears to have done more for the small miner in N.G. than any ten previous visiting politi cians.

If such matters receive widespread publicity it may awaken the New Guinea Administration, and Canberra, to the fact that if the hinterland of N.G. is worth opening up at all, either for min erals or agriculture, some day it is going to be done. Certainly, a strict supervision should be kept on the type and capabili ties of the men allowed into the interior, but those who are allowed in should not be hindered in their work.

The kind of man who goes prospecting or recruiting in N.G. is not the man who will ask assistance from the Government, unless he has excellent reasons for do ing so.

Mr. Tebb and I had a well-found and well-armed outfit, and intended to re main at least six months prospecting in the foothills of the Aiome Mountains.

We were on excellent terms with the sur rounding natives and we knew that they were subjected to periodic raids from the mountain Kanakas. When we, too, were

molested, one of the local head-men came to us and suggested that we join with them and go and punish the raiders.

Of course, we could not consider such an offer. A sharp lesson would no doubt have saved us from any further trouble but we also knew that word of it would be sure to get out—we were only a day’s walk away from a mission station and Kanaka talk travels fast—and what the

Government could have done to us, had we been found mixing in native warfare would have been a shame.

We were in controlled country, so con sidered we were fully entitled to ask for a patrol. We were also in an interesting and thickly populated area, which is sure to be opened up sometime. It would have been as much to the Government’s ad vantage to assist in opening it up as it was to ours.

We were very surprised to get the Dis trict Officer’s orders to vacate our loca tion at once and the threat to include the area within the uncontrolled country.

This would have rendered us liable to the severe penalties of being there with out a permit; so we had no option but to obey. We were forced to abandon con

Pygmies of the Aiome Mountains, Middle Ramu District, New Guinea. They are both over 20 years of age and stand 4 ft. 1 in. and 4 ft. 2 ins.

Mr. R. W. Tebb is behind them. Photo is by H. W. Forrester.

There was much scientific discussion of these interesting pygmies a few years ago. Lord Moyne claimed to have discovered them; but his claim was successfully challenged by Father Kirschbaum.

siderable quantities of supplies, mining gear, etc., that we had had carried out there at high airfreight cost.

At that same time, the Government was spending £B,OOO to £lO,OOO of public money in conducting an expedition into the country beyond Mount Hagen. No mining men were included in this expedi tion. Beyond collecting reams of data for reports, and possibly material for a travel book, little value would appear to have come from it. When this party got into trouble with hostile natives, two Ford aeroplanes were at once chartered, and ample assistance was rushed to them within a few hours.

However, the gold prospector is a super optimist. He has to be, or he could not be a prospector. But even he is liable to stop and wonder when he knows that, after spending hundreds of pounds in money and weeks of time in preparation and months in the bush, he is liable to be bundled out with as scant ceremony as if he were a drunk from a pub. But, being what he is, he will probably come at it even then.

I am, etc..

H. W. Forrester.

Bulolo, T.N.G. 23/11/’3B.