On The Track In New
p. 34 · Read in the full issue
Guinea
TOUGH babies, these gold-mining men of New Guinea.
Here is the case of Sid Ashton, of the Morobe goldfield. He was a veteran of World War I; but, when the trouble com menced in 1939, he enlisted as a private in the AIF, and went right through the Tobruk siege.
He came back to Australia with the AIF. He was given leave amounting to one whole week; and then he was bustled off to New Guinea with the other seasoned troops.
A former Sydney man met him on the track, in the bush at the back of Lae recently. He had been 15 months soldier ing in New Guinea, doing the roughest kind of jungle work, “and he looks as fit as a fiddle and as hard as nails.”
' . And he is only one of scores of hard bitten, middle-aged New Guinea men who are joyously helping the Jap along the homewards trail.
Mr. Eugene Paul, the well-known tourist agent, garage owner and picture theatre operator of Apia, Samoa, was the success ful tenderer for the Administration 3year stevedoring contract.