A New Guinea

Friend

From Brian Stein, of the “PIM” staff —now a Lieutenant in the AIF BY the way, I met a New Guinea friend the other evening. I was bowling along the road with my convoy on a particularly hot day and a utility pulled alongside and asked permission to pass.

As the vehicle passed, I noticed a man m the back whose face seemed familiar I pondered, but could not strike the cor rect chord in the old memory. The luncheon stop was in a little tin shed and as I looked at my “bully” a voice at my elbow asked whether I would like “a stick or two of celery.” Would I I’ll say!

The good Samaritan turned out to be the lad whose name escaped me. One thing led to another, and he told me he was an “R. McEwan”—Lieut. R. McEwan Hah, I knew who he was, then—the managing director of the Bulolo Bakery!

If I remember correctly you took a photograph of his bakery at Salamaua on one of your visits to the Mandated Territory prior to the war, and we pub lished it in the “PIM.” I think he had a bakery in Rabaul, one at Salamaua and another at Wau.

Lieut. McEwan (or “Jock” as he is more

familiarly known in these parts) was in Rabaul when the Japs came into the show; and was one of the last to fly out with Dick Mant, of Carpenter Airways.

Jock winged his way over to Salamaua, and when the isthmus was bombed he walked across the ranges to Wau. Here he joined the NGVR; but soon saw that a job could be done in supplying the people congregated there with bread.

With this end in view he tackled the job in his Wau bakery, and continued with this work for some months. 111-health overtook him eventually, and the doughty Scot left Wau by plane for Port Moresby.

As the plane neared Papua’s capital, it could be seen that things were not as peaceful as they could have been—a force of Jap planes was raiding the town! Undisturbed, Jock’s nlane side stepped the affray and continued' on to the Australian mainland.

Jock was admitted to hospital in Aus tralia, but after a few weeks he decided that it was near time he got back into the war. Next we hear of him as an officer in the baking section of the Army, testing youthful aspirants to the trough and peel. This was in the south, and it was not long before he was on the move again—this time to the far north. It was there that I found him, busy inspecting the bakeries of the unit to which he belongs.

Jock McEwan is one of the most popu lar officers in the particular branch of the Service to which he belongs. Though not a young man, he has seen a good deal of the work of the little “Sons of Heaven.”

One might imagine that he would be content to sit back and take things easy until the Japs were driven from the Mandated Territory. Not Jock. Though he has a plentiful supply of grey hairs, he is as fit as a fiddle and as keen as mustard to get a bit closer to the Japs— but more than anything, he is looking forward to the time when he can return to his own show in New Guinea.

WE talked awhile about the future of the Pacific Territories. He agreed that nothing short of the present war could have created the intense inter est now prevailing in Australia on the future of the Mandate and the Papuan Territory. Of course, the tripe being printed in yards about “exploitation,” etc., of the “poor” natiyes, by unscrupu lous planters and businessmen, was bound to come; but I wonder whether any tangible and sustaining changes will be made?

The whole thing rests, I think, on whether the Australian public will forget about the Solomons, New Guinea, Papua, etc., as they apparently have forgotten about Greece, Crete, and (until recently) the Dutch islands to the north, as the spotlight of events moves away.

It might be that, if the vulnerability of Australia without that screen of islands can be made to stick in the people’s minds —as surely it must have done in the dark days of 1942-43 —the people, and the Government, will do something about re-orienting their Pacifiic Territories policy.

Lieut.-Col. the Hon. Camilla H. Wedg wood, while she was in Papua, recently, was the guest of the Rev. Harold Short, of the LMS, for a fortnight. She took intense interest in the school and church life of the Papuans in that centre, and gave an address at one of the services, and visited several out-stations.

Miss Florence Vio Walcot, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. H. D. Walcot, of Suva, Fiji, was married at Holy Trinity Pro-Cathe dral, Suva, on April 28, to Warrant-Offi cer G. A. Robertson, of Palmerston North, NZ.