Ban Off Papuan

Region

Late Jack Hides's "Wonderland"

No Longer "Uncontrolled"

BY a proclamation dated May 15 the Lieutenant-Governor of Papua, an nounced that the area in Central Papua, described as “uncontrolled”, under the ordinance of 1936, has now been de clared free from the ordinance, and per sons may enter this region in the same way as other parts of Papua.

It was announced that officials, from the base camp at Lake Kutubu, have pa trolled the whole of the hitherto unknown mountain area in the central region of Papua, and estimated the total native population there at 20,000. They say that the country is fertile, in patches, but that there are no great opportunities for agricultural settlement.

This is the country that was describ ed by the late Mr. Jack Hides, after his famous patrol with Mr. O’Malley, in 1935, and named by him “The Papuan Wonderland”. His discoveries and ex ploits received an enormous amount of publicity throughout the world, with the result that all sorts and conditions of people tried to rush into the newly-dis covered region—gold-seekers, oil-seek ers, scientists and missionaries, in parti cular. As the nature of the country and character of the natives (wrongly esti mated by Mr. Hides as many scores of thousands) were unknown, the Govern ment, in 1936, declared it an uncontrolled area and thus closed it. Since then, notably valuable work has been done by Messrs. Ivan and Claude Champion and Adamson in examining the country, using as a base a police camp on Lake Ku tubu (which was maintained by seaplane communication from Kikori).

Practically the whole of Western and Central Papua, except this area, has been divided up among the oil companies, for purposes of searching for oil, and it will be interesting now to see who will get a concession over this area.

The gold-seeking expedition led by Jack Hides and David Lyall was working along the western side of the then “un controlled” area when there occurred the series of incidents which cost both young men their lives.