Is News

N. Guinea Now

What the Japs Have Done For Us

By Judy Tudor

ARE war correspondents human?

Could be!—as the Yanks say, Geoffrey Tebbutt, war correspondent, in a recent, reflective article in “Mel bourne Herald’’ (published elsewhere in this issue) entitled “New Guinea More Than a Battlefield,’’ makes us feel that they might even develop a New Guinea slant on things in general—given time.

It should be made clear that no news paper correspondent could have hoped to please Territories people—at the outset, anyway. In the days of peace, all visit ing writers of books, gathering “Pacific atmosphere,” were subject to the same brand of acute suspicion that mainland Australians reserve exclusively for politi cians; and furloughing Territories’ resi dents who unwittingly allowed southern reporters to drag a few reluctant remarks from them (which were later embroidered into a column interview, besprinkled with “ head - hunters,” cannibals, ferocious pythons, and violent fevers) returned to the Territories under a dark cloud.

Conditims in New Guinea (Papua or the Mandated Territory) are such that you either hate it—and get out quickly; or develop a perverse love for it—and thereafter know no content elsewhere.

But the mere act of loving is not enough —that does not make you acceptable to those with “experience,” who live on a higher plane.

Therefore, your initial struggles with raw labour and the language are your affair, and it is traditional that—although presumably you will “arrive” ultimately, if you have not given up the ghost by the side of the thorny path—your transi tion period, between “mug” and “experi enced,” is regarded as a horrible thing, best done in private. In other words — until you have been several years in the country it is as well to have no opinions about anything.

Consequently, when Tojo shattered our Pacific complacency, and New Guinea villages of two-lapoon, three-mary, and several mangy-dog size, became places of strategic importance, mis-pronounced by every broadcaster on every world-wide hook-up, and famous newspaper corres pondents converged madly upon it, dash ing into print as soon as their feet touched New Guinea soil, there were bound to be repercussions.

Even if they had written sense—and few did—no New Guineaite would have liked what they wrote. It is necessary, from the Territorian’s point of view, to learn the place from its mud and leeches up, before writing a word. And by this time the individual himself usually has

an adequate idea of what he will never know, and finds little to say.

ON my first period in the “big bush” I did my due share of “knowledge through absorption,” realising that I had the additional disadvantage of hav ing been born into the wrong sex for that man’s country. A year or so later when I had reached the sulphur-yellow stage, through fever and atebrin, I was sent south on leave. No one in Australia noticed my advent except a girl in a beauty parlour, who offered to sell me a jar of cream to remove my sun-tan.

By the time my second leave-period came round I had absorbed more local knowledge—especially the fact that news hounds are about the lowest form of Australian fauna—to such an extent that it had become a complex.

Five minutes after the ship had tied up in Sydney, the cabin-steward appeared and said: — “Bloke from the ‘Sun’ to see you.

Reporter.”

“What!” I said, flabbergasted. “Send him away—l don’t want him.” But it was too late —the curse was upon me!

There were two of them; the second had a camera.

This was before I had any reportorial urge myself, so that, even as a species of human, they did not interest me. No. 1 got out a note-book, while I, with a wild, glazed look in my eye, supported myself against the wash-basin, and prepared to do battle for my New Guinea honour.

“Now.” he said, with a flickering smile that had been running up and down his

face like a blind ever since he had got inside the door —evidently with the object of quietening my look of fixed horror. “You have been up where no other woman has been, haven’t you?”

The First White-Woman line, was it?

The most hideous offence! His pencil was poised ready. I gulped.

“Look,” I said, “I wish you would go away. I’m sure you have got hold of the wrong person. No one could know me.”

He consulted his little book. “It’s you I want to see, all right. Our readers would like to hear about your adven tures.”

“I bet they wouldn’t,” I said, belliger

ently.

Obviously he began to wonder whether I had gone what since has been described as “troppo,” or whether I were concealing a scoop that would rock Aus tralian newspapers to their foundations.

“Did you meet any head-hunters?” he asked, encouragingly.

(Continued on Page 30)

(Continued from Page 29) “No!”

“Did you see any BIG SNAKES?”

“No!”

“You must have had some adventures.”

He was getting desperate.

“No got!”

He brightened. “What was that?”

“Maski!” I said. “Forget it—please go away.”

“What kind of a language is that?”

I clung to the wash-basin more firmly and said nothing. The photographer, who had been hovering in the back ground like an uneasy wraith, approached and asked if he could take a picture.

The reporter, unasked, sat down on the bunk and mopped his head. “It’s like getting blood out of a stone,” he said plaintively. “I’m only doing my job:”

“Take anything,” I said, wildly, to the photographer. “But leave me alone.”

They somehow managed to urge me out onto the deck. I wedged myself between a derrick and a winch and hoped to heaven that no one could see me. They coaxed me out and sat me on the top of a hatch.

The photographer peered at me through the view-finder of his camera, until I became aware suddenly that my clothes were a good two years out of date, and that I had not seen a hair dresser for the same length of time.

It was too much. I leaped off the hatch, flew across the deck as though all the hounds of hell were after me, and down to my cabin. The steward was gathering up my luggage. “Come on.” I said, “I’ve got to get out of here,” My look of desperation must have been enough—he didn’t argue.

I spent an uncomfortable half-hour in the Customs shed before I escaped in a

taxi —even then by no means sure that I hadn’t been trapped into making some statements that could be construed into the usual half-column of nonsense.

BUT time moves on inexorably. For good or ill, New Guinea is on the map. The Japs have put it there as we never could, or cared to do. Gone are the days when “first white women” or big snakes or head-hunters, were news. The news-hounds have been there to see for themselves —and it is to our advantage that they see the country as Tebbutt does.

Whether New Guinea folk like it or not —and many with reason do not—it will be, as he says: “the long steel matted airfields in the valleys of Moresby’s red hills have been hewn out to meet the Jap threat, but some day they will serve to open New Guinea . . .”