Days in Papua

Memories of Pioneer Days in Papua

Letter to the Editor I WAS much interested in Mr. D. H.

Osborne’s articles on the early days in Eastern Papua, in your October issue. In one of the articles, he men tioned Captain Inman going to New Guinea with his wife, and putting in at one of the Louisades, and mentioned Mrs.

Inman and the son, Jim. I knew the family very well, and I turned up my photographic records. On the first page I have a copy of a picture with Jimmy Inman sitting in front of the group. I took this picture over 30 years ago, and although it has faded somewhat, it is still quite good.

Included in the same group is another man, mentioned in the same issue—Mr.

Holland, who is a missionary, and is now Reverend; also Reverend Arthur Kent Chignell, who wrote the book, “Outpost in Papua.”

Chignell was located at Wanigela, and had as an assistant missionary a man from New South Wales whose family name was Money. Money was the photo grapher who made himself famous by the picture, “Man the Protector; Woman the Slave”; and this depicted a tall Orakiva, with the proverbial wasp waist, carrying an enormous spear. Behind him was his wife, with a net-bag full of garden pro duce and, seated on the top of it, one of their offspring. The total weight which the woman was carrying was in excess of 120 pounds. When I was staying with Chignell I tested the weights of a number of similar loads, and found every one over 100 pounds, and some as high as 150.

In another article by Mr. Osborne I noticed that he mentions the Buna- Kokoda Road, and also my old friend, Mat Crowe. Here, again, I have a photo graph of one of the expeditions made by Mat, and although it is very faded, the features of all the men with him are quite clear.

Mr. C. A. W. Monckton is the same man who has written two very good books on the Doriri country, and did quite a lot of good work around the divi sion. He was resident magistrate over there. In those days civil service was more or less controlled by Downing Street, and the personnel were very important.

Monckton and Griffen were two men who could use language to make even the most hardened gold-miner stand to attention, and Mat Crowe had a lot of affection for both of them.

I am, etc.,

J. Nixon Westwood.

GPO Box 957.

Wellington, NZ.

November 19, 1942.