GOLD AND FIGHT— lewis Lett's New Book on Early Papua

rpHE exploits of the early gold-seekers X of Papua have been dwarfed by those of men who came a genera tion later and founded the Morobe field in the Mandated Territory during the 1920’5. There is reason, of sorts, for this, in that the old diggers who prospected in Papua during the 80’s and 90’s found mighty little reward for the risks they took; while Morobe yielded gold enough to provide many with fortunes.

Lewis Lett’s new book, “Papuan Gold,” tells for the first time the story of these old-time diggers of Papua, whom he describes as “hard-working, hard-living, open and honest, tolerant and law-abid ing . . . representing the best human value that Australia can produce” and their incredible struggle to find gold in the interior of Papua—mainly up the Mambare, the Gira and, later, the Yodda Valley.

The reviewers’ hackneyed catchword, “timely,” can with real meaning be applied to “Papuan Gold”: it is timely in this wartime spate of “new” literature on the subject of New Guinea and its future.

Lett’s book, apart from the fact that it tells an interesting story, should have a niche in Pacific history, because of the account it gives, of this earliest of Papuan

pioneering. The true story of Matt Crowe, Bill Ivory, Darling, “Sharkeye”

Park, the Elliotts and many more, would be lost in a coating of 20th century glamour if writers such as Lett, who have the necessary knowledge and ability, did not record it.

THE book makes a two-fold impression.

Firstly: The hardships these miners accepted, not in order to make for tunes, but, in most cases, scarcely to pay their way. Matt Crowe discovered gold on the Yodda about 1898. and the field lasted about 10 years in all. It has been estimated that the annual amount of gold won from the whole area was about 5,000 ounces per annum, which gave each miner at work on the field about £3OO per annum. And for what?

Prospecting began on the Mambare about 1895; but here, as in Papua gener ally, although many streams carried colours, rarely did early promise pay expected dividends. Conditions must have been tough in Australia in those years, to send men chasing so frantically after so few golden grains into a country of Papua’s unknown qualities. In 1896, when a party under a man named Simp son returned from a creek that flowed

into the upper Mambare with news that it carried payable gold, it caused a rush from Queensland and New South Wales.

This is how Lett describes it: “Gold-seekers came in hundreds to Port Moresby and Samarai. A few of them were more or less experienced miners properly equipped and accustomed to hard travel, if not in the trying tropical climate of Papua, at least in the less exacting conditions of Australia.

“But the great majority had no experi ence. Hundreds of them came to the country without money, without equip ment of any kind, without food or the means of procuring any. And they set out for the golden valley confident that their eagerness and physical strength would suffice to carry them to the field where they appeared to believe that for tunes were to be picked up.”

Dozens of these men died at Tamata (the Government station on the Mam bare) , of malaria and cfcysentry, which had been aggravated by poor food, the eternal wet of the jungle, the physical hardships they had to endure on the track and at the diggings, plus the fact that they lived “on their nerves” in the midst of hostile natives, whose chief entertainment came from picking off straggling ear ners—miners, too. if possible—who were forced frequently to return to the coast, and, later on, Tamata. for supplies.

Continually, they had to contend with this matter of transportation of supplies: and the further inland they penetrated the more acute this problem became.

Native carriers were unwilling, and few of the miners had the means to employ them. It was grim, hard toil with little reward, yet the majority of these men stuck it out. As Lett puts it—they either got some measure of order into their lives —or died.

SECONDLY— “Papuan Gold” impresses upon the reader a picture of the Papuan native as he is with the thin veneer of semi-civilisation removed.

The fighting natives of the Mambare - Yodda killed, not because of European interference—there seems to have been remarkably little of that —but because they were by nature treacherous, and murdered and massacred for the pure love of blood-spilling. It is the grand sons of such people—who practised all manner of grisly horrors —who are caus ing heart-pangs to many would-be reformers to-lay.

An hour or two with “Papuan Gold” might cause those who advocate such rarified products of civilisation as trade unionism for the Fuzzy-wuzzy Angels to consider that a bare half-century has nassed since such conditions prevailed in Papua. Even since the Pacific War.' cer tain natives of this same north-eastern area have shown that same treachery in their character Tn “PTM” of June, 1943 it was reported that they had murdered or handed over to the Japs Allied service men and European women missionaries.

Few of the breed of Europeans whose story is told in Lett’s book survive to-day. «nl as the author says, Papua is poorer for their passing.

The Military Cross has been awarded to Maior J>. C. C. Trench, of the Solo mon Islands Defence Force, for “p-allant and distinguished services in the South west Pacific.”

Mr. Leo Austen, formerly a senior official in the Administration of Papua, and who has served over two years in ANGAU (latterly with the rank of Major), has retired from military service.

He has joined the New South Wales Pro tection of Aborigines Department, as a welfare officer, and will be stationed at Casino, NSW.