Papua

Time Marches On in Papua Milestones Built by Hubert Murray Are Etched by Lewis Lett

Mhe Papuan Achievement, By

1 Lewis Lett (published by Melbourne University Press, price 10/6). The history of an ideal, conceived when Australia was still young enough to have the ideals of youth, and carried to fruition by strong men of single purpose, who accepted the Royal Proclamation — couched in the gracious, generous but usually meaningless language of such things—in its literal sense.

The Australian aim to show how a primitive race should be governed and an embryo colony developed, when ex pressed to an amused world at the time Whitehall relinquished partial control of Papua, was attained only in the face of severe criticism and, often, active opposi tion. “To the religionist,” says Lett, “the conversion of a pagan race to Christianity was the only wholly worthy aim. The man of commerce could see in a savage population a cheap and con venient solution of many developmental problems. Politicians were debarred from positive expression by the warring claims of trading interests and the voting power of evangelising sects. Anthropologists

cried aloud for the preservation of tribal life and barbaric custom as a matter of academic interest; and the disinterested public could not free its mind from the easy belief of the lady who “ even thinks that up in Heaven Her class lies late and snores While poor black cherubs rise at seven To do celestial chores.”

FROM 1884, when a Protectorate was declared over what we now call Papua, until November, 1905, when it became an Australian territory, little progress was made, either in commerce or native advancement. The fact was that the funds reluctantly provided by the Australian States and Britain, were inadequate for the task of pacification.

Sir William MacGregor, the first Adminis trator, was a man of astounding energy— but even energy would not compensate for the deficiency in cash. In the first 16 days which he spent in Port Moresby, he formed a Legislative and an Executive Council, framed and passed the first laws relating to arms and liquor prohibition, security of native lands, freedom of trade, applied the laws of Queensland to Papua as far as was possible and passed suit able Customs acts. He then left on a visit to out-stations and outports.

This is a fair example of the tireless endeavour that characterised his ten years’ administration. Yet an Australian paper of the time complained, with reason, that “British New Guinea is the

rankest commercial failure south of the line,” and it was alleged in many quarters that trading was prohibited.

Trading was not prohibited; but without legislation to regulate trading, and with neither the money nor the machinery to protect commercial enterprises, it was not exactly encouraged as part of administra tion policy. Nevertheless, traders per sisted, often, in their isolation, dispensing home-brewed law and many added to the burdens of the administration by event ually losing their lives at the hands of dissatisfied or avaricious native cus tomers, Queensland miners, who first came to work the gold in the Louisaides, later penetrated the interior fastnesses of main land New Guinea: to the Owen Stanley Mountains, the Yodda Valley, the Mam bare, the Gira—and a great proportion of these men also paid with their lives for their temerity in tackling this vast land of impenetrable jungle and rugged peaks —either through illness, starvation, privation or at the hands of the fierce unquellable tribes whose predominant in stinct was to fight and kill.

IN 1891, the Native Armed Constabulary was inaugurated. Through the Fijian Government, twelve Solomon Islanders and two Fijians were recruited as the nucleus of the force and, during the first year, 13 Papuan recruits were added.

Government influence grew in the isolated districts where Government stations were established; but, away from them, jungle law of blood-feud and raid, sorcery and cannibalism, flourished as it had flourished from unrecorded time.

Altogether, it was an era of rough, pioneering courage: on the part of the all-too-few administrative officers, whose chief business was to protect a handful of Europeans, dispersed among scores of thousands of primitive savages; on the part of the miners and traders, who undertook incredible hardships and pitted their physical and mental strength against all the cruelties that Nature could devise; on the part of the patient, tireless mis sionaries; and on the part of the primitive savages themselves, who must have seen these white men as invaders of their country and profaners of their own social and tribal customs.

It was also an era of bloodshed, in which the Administration’s only answer to murder was the “punitive expedition” —that is, the indiscriminate slaughter of the whole of the native community in the vicinity of the “murder,” the burning of houses and the destroying of gardens —wherein the innocent suffer and the guilty, more often than not, escaped to hatch out further devilment. It was rough justice, of a sort, in tune with the times, but it did not root out from the mind of the inexplicable Papuan the European concepts of evil, nor turn his faltering footsteps towards our form of civilisation.

Lett gives yet another version of the perennial “Chalmer’s murder-Robinson persecution” incidents, of which we have heard over-much of late.

IN 1905, (nearly 40 years ago!) the Papua Act brought the Australian Territory of Papua into being, and it was ushered in in the time honoured fashion of Australia—i.e., with a Royal Commission —which sat for three months in principal centres of population in Papua and took evidence from every white inhabitant of the Territory who wished to give it. Many of the recom mendations which the Commission made subsequently were of great practical value, although others were misplaced, owing to the Commissioners’ slight know ledge of the country. Their three essen tial recommendations and comments were as follows:

1. European settlement, neglected in the past, must be encouraged. 2. The native population must be protected, not only from physical aggression, but from moral deterioration. 3. The whole of the administrative system must be purged and set upon a sound progressive basis.

To these ends, they recommended that future Administrators should put behind them all Crown Colony traditions; that natives should be taxed in cash or by work; that there should be a preferential tariff in Australia for Papuan goods, and statutory loans free of interest to the administration, and individual loans to bona fide settlers.

The Commonwealth Government, in the full flush of colonising zeal, adopted the report and the recommendations of the Commission with enthusiasm. They liked the idea of civilisation without injury, and agreed that white settlement would provide the best way of achieving it. They were in complete accord over the proposed vigorous roads programme, and the establishment of a sanatorium in the mountains beyond Port Moresby where tropically-tired settlers and their families could recuperate their strength.

“But,” says Lett, “at the suggestion of a LOAN, Ministerial enthusiasm waned, and the revolutionary proposal for a preferential tariff . . . filled them with shocked surprise and glacial disapproval.

An edifice must be erected that would bring financial profit to Australia and her rulers, but exactly how this was to be done was a problem that was to be left to the future Administrators of Papua.”

And that, briefly, was how it was done: the colonising ideals of Australian parlia-

mentarians (who would not, however, back their ideals with hard cash) were moulded into a practical “Papuan Achievement” by the will and indomitable purpose of one man. mHE story of the achievement is the X story of the 32 years of continuous administration of Sir Hubert Murray, who, as Mr. Justice Murray, was appointed first as Acting Administrator in 1907, and died in harness, as Lieutenant-Governor, in Samarai, Papua, in 1940. It outlines the problems of estabfishing European settlement in a stoneage country, of creating a market for Australian goods in Papua, and Papuan goods in Australia; of spreading civilisation and education; and of making native welfare paramount over other considerations. And of the thousands of subsidiary problems of taming an untouched. cruel, demanding, tropical region, peopled by individuals with relatively the same social standards as our own ancestors of several thousand years ago.

Results speak for themselves—results, and the fact that the now defunct League of Nations considered Papua to be the shining example of native administration.

The native is presented, not as an impossible black devil from whom nothing good can be expected but exploitation, nor as a “fuzzy-wuzzy” angel—a brand to be plucked from the burning— not as a zoological specimen solely for the use of anthropologists—but as he is, an inexplicable, primitive man, no macter how thick the veneer of civilisation, but a man with adaptability, keen intelligence, courage and the wit to see which side of his bread is buttered: the pro-

duct of his environment, seeped deep in native beliefs—in sorcery, the power of evil spirits, and the spirit of “pay-back” which a half-century’s contact with civi lisation has not eradicated.

The Papuan administration, under Sir Hubert Murray, by its peaceful penetra tion and “slow prudence” methods, has accomplished what few other native administrations had been able to do that is, it guided the stone-age people towards the twentieth century without turning them, in their transition period, into a community of purposeless degene rates. mUTO . , . , , . A TP HI ® book 15 strongly recommended to -L the notice of brass-hatted military officers and war correspondents, who nave hone a considerable amount of “dis covery ’ in Papua during the last year, an h wino have advanced a variety of half-baked and ill-informed schemes for the advancement of the Papuan after the war. They will have difficulty in finding a better foundation for a policy than that which existed before Papua became a theatre of war.

We b °P e - with the author, that upon this foundation, laid with care over more than 30 years, “a monument will Pf ls P. to P r 9 ve once again, that true idealism, realism and logic, not only may, . mus L work together towards the attainment of the highest aim.”—J.T.

Mrs. A. C. Turnbull, wife of the Aet ing Administrator, has returned to Samoa after a prolonged holiday in New Zealand.

Mr. W. F. D. Hay has received a com mission as a temporary Lieutenant in the Fiji Naval Volunteer Force.