Moresby Memories

Papua's Capital is Still Having its Ups and Downs

By Judy Tudor

rpOWARDS the end of September, 1942, JL the Japs had crossed the Owen Stanley Range and were within 32 miles of Port Moresby—the nearest point they ever reached in their Moresby march.

In early October the Australians took loribaiwa Ridge and the Japs began their retreat.

Moresby’s period of alarams and excur sions was then on the wane: but the old township still continued to expand beyond the imagination of former residents, who knew only the brown, un-lovely place which had grown sprawlingly in the hol low between two humps of land during 70 years of varied peace. Territorian mem bers of the force were loud in their amazement of its expansion under war pressure: its roads, its far-flung aero dromes, the many troops who passed through the bottle-neck.

After Pearl Harbour the phrase-coiners went to work on Moresby. It became the “Tobruk of the Pacific”; a “springboard”; “a last line of defence”; “our first line of offence.” It was hurled at us as a threat, a curse or a promise by bellowing politicians, propaganda merchants and others bent on filling war-loans, or war factories, or whipping up our morale.

Scarcely an Australian family existed who did not have some member in the New Guinea forces and most of those fighting sons passed through Moresby. The old township saw manf representatives of American families as well. Doggerel was written about it; famous correspondents have lingered there; movie luminaries and radio wizards and famous musicians went there to strut their stuff. And the great outside world which never before

spared a passing thought for brown Port Moresby became Moresby-conscious.

To-day, two years after the Jap threat to Moresby was broken by the Austra lians on loribaiwa Ridge, another great change has come over the town. It is still busy; still given over wholly to mili tary concerns. But it has lost the stern reality of a forward area.

As the war receded north, after the retreating Japs, so did Moresby sink in the despond of a base-wallahs’ preserve.

It is militarily civilised: brass-hat offi cers, Servicewomen, nurses, staff cars, planes, and ships on the harbour. And not even an air-raid to disrupt proceed ings.

Only civilians are missing. The civi lians wait fretfully for the next phase, muttering bitterly: “How long, O Lord, how long?”

BEFORE the Japs made their South Seas’ excursion. Moresby was a sort of half-way house to the true tropics. It was somehow out of the ‘lslands world, having missed the rain belt: and apart from its woolly-haired natives and few tired coconut trees, it might have been any north-eastern Aus tralian township.

Yellow roads, bare brown hills, a few vintage cars, dazzling sunshine that bounced back off the blue sea with wilt ing force, mop-headed natives, grass skirted lasses, the old “Papuan Chief” tied up at the jetty ,a meander through “BP’s” and a long stop at the pub—those were the impressions left with most who passed through to greener fields. Moresby was distinguished by two things—latterly

it had an elegant pub that put all other Territory hostelries into dark eclipse; and there, also. BP vessels gave up their claim to being cruise-ships and got down to serious business—loading copra, rubber, desiccated coconut, gold and other island products and unloading tons of groceries, beer, meat, whisky, petrol, machinery— and everything else that keeps a com munity fed, clothed and more or less amused.

ON my first visit there I had been inter ested in the natives and the coco nut trees; on my second, I had a bout of fever and got no further than the wharf, where I bought a model lakatoi, and retired: on my third, we arrived in the wake of a 90-miles per hour cyclone that had originated off the Queensland coast; on later trips I did a town-crawl or was quarantined on “measle” ships.

But it was my third trip that flavours all memories of Moresby.

The “Macdhui” could not manoeuvre to the wharf in the gale, and anchored out (near the verv spot where her bones now are rotting, the result of Jap bombs in 1942). The Government pinnace, with the Port doctor, beat a slow wav towards us. They let down a rope ladder to the doctor, rotund and spectacled, and the sight of him hauling himself up that wriggling rope kindled a perverted desire to visit Port Moresby.

The “Mac” had wallowed in tremendous seas right up the Queensland coast, with a motion that the “Macdhui” alone could produce, and 90 per cent, of the passen gers had been sick. By exercising great willpower, I had been able to persuade myself that I had not; but the sight of good terra firma appearing fleetingly out of the. rain squalls, just half a mile off. was a tantalising prospect. The doctor’s pinnace was tied to the foot of the lad der. bobbing like a maddened cork on each wave, with six natives working like

fiends trying to keep it off the ship.

I turned to my companion: “Would you like to go ashore?”

“In that?” he asked. “Are you sure you want to?”

WITH the ship’s engines stopped and the ship hove-to, I was getting surer every minute. I heaved myself over the rail and started off down the twist ing, writhing devil-possessed ladder.

Ladder, ship and pinnace all heaved, but nothing synchronised; and, to cast off from the ladder and make the pinnace needed a nicety of judgment I simply did not possess, with my nose in constant danger of being ground off by the ship’s side.

At last, the pinnace came up past me in a sweeping rush and, as it fell away again into the nether regions, I threw caution to the winds and let go above.

The pinnace beat me all the way down by a good foot, and I fell heavily into the bottom of it and was fished out of the bilge-water by a couple of the boat’s crew.

My friend followed with more skill and, together, we crawled onto the top of the engine-house and held on for dear life.

The European tending the engine looked out at us in some surprise and yelled above the storm. We could not hear a word he said, but grinned and waved encouragingly. Whereupon he started up the engine and we gyrated towards the shore and, after some trouble, decanted onto the wharf.

“What time is the last pinnace back?” we asked the engineer.

“Last pinnace? You’ve just had it!” he said.

The “Macdhui,” it appeared, was going away to anchor behind* the point, com plete with doctor, and there ride out the storm.

“What are we going to do?” we wailed.

“What in Holy Blue Blazes did you come ashore for?” he demanded, with some justification. “I asked you out there —and all you did was to wave to the shore. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to come ashore at a time like this unless they had some damned good rea son for it. You had better see if they can put you up at the pub.”

BUT it was boat-day, the pubs were full, and no one was disposed to make any effort on behalf of two storm tossed wayfarers brought in by the tide.

We besieged the shipping-office. The shipping-clerk asked aloofly how we got off the ship. We told him. He said we were crazy, but as no one had seen fit to stop us he’d try to do something about it. * It was now evening and the wind still howled like a million angry dingoes and rain still rolled in at intervals, lashing the waterfront and the bent coconuts. We returned to the hotel lounge, and to a manageress in a black taffeta evening gown that rustled virtuously every time she came near me—we were still in khaki shorts and shirts, and likely to remain so. From her cubby-hole of an office she watched me with the frigid interest of a Sunday-school deacon at a fan-dancers’ convention. My legs seemed to stick through those shorts further than they ever had before.

Finally, she was persuaded to part with two bath-towels, and a boy was sent to prepare showers for us; and thus forti fied by a bath and a gin-squash, and a reluctantly-provided dinner, we were pre pared to overlook my partial bareness, even if others were not. rE night wore on. In our eleventh hour, as we dithered between the hotel lounge and the copra-shed, we were saved by the shipping-clerk. He rang to say that he had made splendid

arrangement for us in their own Bache lors’ Quarters, and he arrived hard on the heels of the message to accompany us there.

We trailed through a great deal of wet grass, preceded by a couple of boys carry ing a large mattress, two pillows and a mosquito net. The clerk had apparently become resigned to us. He made hos pitable noises and, as we trailed, said that he had a “nice, big, new mattress from the store” and that ne hoped we would be comfortable.

A terrible thought hit me straight between the eyes and I stopped dead in the path, and my partner in sin ran into me from behind. “What the dickens is wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I muttered, darkly. “I hope.

Tell you later.”

This suddenly seemed to be too much like one of Ben Traver's farces to be entirely healthy: one of those situations where you find yourself, as a result of a long chain of misunderstandings, and

quite without its being anyone’s fault, in bed with someone whom you had no intention of going to bed with. And cer tainly not in Burns Philp’s bachelors’ quarters, At the quarters—one of the most com fortable bachelor establishments I have ever seen—we met several of the inmates, who entertained us while, out of sight, our host fussed about. “Having a double bed made up,” I thought, gloomily. At last. I got my partner to myself and inquired anxiously: “You don’t think he imagines we are married or anything, do you?”

He looked at me in surprise, then threw back his head and howled with laughter, “No, you ass,” he said. Then, with some thing like a leer: “He asked me—but I said no, that we only travelled about together—you know!”

I was only partly convinced by this attempted humour and fidgeted about until mine host appeared, gave me a suit of pyjamas and showed me to a small

room furnished with a single bed. “You can sleep without any fear,” he said with unction. “Port Moresby natives are not like those in New Guinea. We don’t have any of that sort of trouble here.”

Natives forsooth! “Rabaul, Port Moresby or any other variety,” I thought, as I crawled onto my (thank heaven) lonely couch. “Small fry!”