Papuans Claim £4,450 For

Aerodrome Site

From Our Own Correspondent

Port Moresby, July 1.

AN interesting case will come before Mr. Justice Gore in the Central Court on July 9, when native land owners will present claims for compen sation of land resumed by the Govern ment for Kila Kila aerodrome. It is believed this is the first occasion on which a native land case has come before Papuan courts.

In 1937 the Administration obtained the site of the Kila Kila aerodrome from the native owners on a 10-years’ lease. In 1939, the Lands (Kila Kila Aerodrome) Acquisition Ordinance was passed, authorising the Lieut.-Governor to resume that and other lands, and

formal resumption notice was issued last January. The native owners there upon claimed f5O per acre as compensa . tion for the 89 acres and damages for severance. The Administration has

offered f 3 per acre '

■— ■ Interest was aroused in Wau, T.N.G., re cently when Mr. Stan. Johnson arrived there in a Fox Moth aeroplane, which he had purc hased in Adelaide. It was ship ped to Port Moresby and re-assembled there and Mr j oh nson flew from Port Moresby to Wau, accompanied by a Mr.

Brooke. Mr. Johnson was formerly a pilot of the Mission plane at Alexishafen, on the north coast of New Guinea. The two men left in the Fox Moth for Lae, and it is reported that they flew on to Madang, where the plane is to be oper ated in the interest's of a small group of planters.

Friendly young men of the Central Pacific. The man on the left is Samoan, and the one on the right is a New Hebridean. Snapshot in Mapuna, Epi, New Hebrides.