Where Did Shark-Eye Park

Get His Name?

By R. A. Vivian

IT is difficult to say to-day how the Papuan prospector, Bill Park, the discoverer of the Morobe goldfield, earned the sobriquet of “Shark-eye.”

Bill Park had kindly brown eyes, while those of sharks are slate-coloured, as a rule. Perhaps it was because he had a lean, hungry look—although actually a most bashful chap.

Billy was slightly built, about 10i stone in weight and 5 feet 8 inches tall. If possible, he preferred to move about with unlaced, heavy boots. In the bush he was also no light dancer—certainly no Red Indian.

He was in his glory with the use of the great Australian adjective. It crop ped up in nearly every one of his sen tences. On one occasion, when he was introduced to a Sydney magnate and was asked by him how he was, Billy said he felt fine; then added cheerfully, “How’s your b self?”

It has been remarked how light in weight these old-time miners were, in spite of several of them being big-framed men. It is to be doubted whether Matt Crowe, 6 feet 4 inches in height, weighed even 12 stone; he being all big bones and gristle. The Pryke brothers were more stockily built, and looked their weights of 12 stone.

Anfong the smaller type of digger, figured Bill Ivory and Arthur Darling, the latter being a Canadian, and being wall-eyed, which made him a wonderful rifle shot.

It was Darling who made the first valiant attempt to locate what after wards became the Morobe goldfield, by surreptitiously entering German territory and, in 1908, went up the Markham River in a whaleboat. But at a certain point on the river he was attacked by natives and speared. He had to retreat, despite the fact that his native crew also were armed with shotguns.

From the time (1903) when penny weight slugs of gold were found in Fish Creek, it was realised definitely that on the head-waters of the Waria River, and beyond, was an El Dorado. It was left for Bill Park, about 15 years later, to place it on the map.