Tropicalitils

THEY do have their pipe-dreams. At the end of November, Mr. J. T.

Lang announced in the NSW Par liament that he was in favour of tap ping the unused water of New Guinea and bringing it to Australia to relieve drought— particularly in the inland. Mr.

Lang left the sordid details of how this was to be accomplished to the imagina tion of his colleagues and fellow-citizens, but a Central Australian pastoralist, Mr, A. E. Davis, of Lake Eyre, weighed in, in the same week, with the same plan, but complete with estimates and some details. The cost, he estimates will be £2,000,000 per mile —or £180,000,000 to cross Torres Strait, or £2,500,000,000 to bring water right to Lake Eyre.

He said the water could be carried across Torres Strait by rubber pipes or through a tunnel.

Six hundred million acres of country in Central Australia could be made to pro duce annual crops worth £2O an acre.

Lake Eyre could be filled from the Sepik River in 48 hours, and 'by means of a lock at Port Augusta, ocean-going steam ers could be brought inland to the lake to take away the produce of the area.

He visualised Australia, with his scheme, carrying a population of 600,000,000 people, with one of the biggest towns on the shores of Lake Eyre.

The normal Australian citizen wonders why both gentlemen insist upon going to New Guinea for water. Several practical schemes for diverting the northern rivers of Australia, which pour millions of gal lons of good water into the sea daily, have been discussed lately, and it is probable that something of this sort will be done in the post-war period. * mELEGRAPHIC communications be- X tween New Caledonia and France were resumed in November, after four years’ silence. One of the first mes sages to come through was to a Noumea motor car agency. It was from the Cit roen Company of Paris —and it said that as their works were all in one piece they would be happy to resume business rela tions with New Caledonia forthwith.

PERHAPS it is not a bad idea to bring some Pidgin-poetry to the readers of “PIM.” It may bring memories to some Territorians; and others perhaps are not aware that Pidgin-English can express every feeling of the human heart.

The feeling of the natives towards the Europeans who were chased out by the Japs can be guessed by the following verses which I picked up from my boys during my evacuation trip. I can remem ber only a few lines, and it is impossible to express the native melody and rhythm, but here it is; What name fashion—what name fashion . . . come up Rabaul, come up Madang. (What is this that has happened to Rabaul and Madang?) Sunday Japan balus, Sunday Japan balus —bomb’im, bomb’im. bomb’im place. (On Sunday Jap planes bombed the place.) Sorry, master, sorry master—sorry Kong kong, sorry Kongkong, (Sorry master —sorry Chinaman.) Me too, you too, you too, me too . . . enough onetime, ’e go onetime, Walkabout onetime ... die onetime. (You and I share the same things, go together, die together.)

“Pat.”

ONE of the young and earnest anthro pologists, who are being foisted on unfortunate New Guinea for its sins,

was talking to a boy—pardon, a native— and was trying to “get into his mind” in an attempt to see how far the native had deteriorated mentally through horrible exploitation by low whites, etc.

He asked the boy—pardon, again!— what he thought of the war, and was surprised to find how much the native knew. Then he asked him what he thought of Hitler, and the boy replied; “Gibe, me savi Hitler! ’E No. 1 bastard, all the same ANGAU! ” —A.W. * WELL-KNOWN in New Guinea when he was a member of AW A staff there, Mr. E. B. Bishton writes as follows: “In the November issue of the ‘PIM’

Mrs. Innes states that Mrs. Booth was the first white woman on Edie Creek (or Kaindi). I think it will be found that Mrs. Muller, who came in with Mick Lehey’s party some time in October or November, 1926, was on Edie Creek a few weeks before Mrs. Booth visited the place, although Mrs. Booth had already lived a couple of years on the Bulolo River at a spot only two days’ march from Edie Creek. Mrs. Muller was after wards running the mess for Levien’s Guinea Gold Co., on the Koranga. where Mr. Muller was working. Mr. Muller had a fall while on this job and eventually died in hospital at Wau.” * THE Rev. C. W. Whonsbon-Aston, now Chaplain in Western Samoa, on qualities needed in intending mis sionaries : One needs practical sense—initiative On a mission station miles off the beaten track it is not possible to ring up the plumber or 1 the carpenter or the engineer.

Some men will immediately begin to rea son: “Well, I’m afraid that leaves me out, for I know nothing about these things.”

The Rev. Wilfred Light, when at Boia nai, decided to build a church of concrete.

It looked a problem, for he was entirely inexperienced in that sort of thing. It stands to-day—about as big as St.

James’, Sydney.

In my district in Papua one had to be boarding-house keeper (for school board ers), poultry and turkey keeper, goal factor, lighthouse keeper, house builder and repairer, district medico (up to 60 patients a day at times), schoolmaster, bread baker, cook and housekeeper—all additional to one’s primary purpose as priest. This is typical. It leaves no time for morbid fancifying. The days pass al too quickly.

Then, a sense of order. A Canon approached me with: “There is one man who might suit the mission field. The only thing that is wrong with him is that he is untidy in his attire, and his parish ioners dislike it.”

There were two points to answer. First, the mission field is not the proper place for cranks and eccentrics or folks that have “something wrong with them.”

Moreover, a person who has no sense of order or personal cleanliness is a menace. * THE arrival of my October “PIM”, con taining a tribute to a former resi dent of Edie Creek, whose informal tea-parties form an oasis in the desert of everyday Noumea life, coincided with a paragraph by gossip-writer Preston Charles, in the “Daily News” —a mimeo graphed news-sheet for the American Forces. Here it is: “Not that we want to tell the Austra lians what to do, but they might well

pick a woman for Prime Minister. Our choice is ‘Mom’ Bowring, a Sydney girl who made good in New Caledonia with the Red Cross. With an enviable war record behind her, ‘Mom’ would be a sure vote-getter among ex-Servicemen. Being the motherly type also, she’d get the support of people who think the woman’s place is in the home and girls should come home early from their dates. ‘Mom’ has already had considerable experience as

Australia’s goodwill-ambassador-at-large,

and relations with other Allied nations would then continue to be excellent, of course.

“We assume the Aussies are satisfied with their present Government, but if they ever decide to make a change, here’s an idea that we feel sure will bring resounding applause from a lot of Ameri can Servicemen.”

H.E.L.P.

LORD MOYNE’S tragic death in Cairo —he was British Minister in the Middle East and he was assassinated —will remind “PIM” readers of the con troversy about New Guinea’s pygmies which Lord Moyne claimed to have found on the Upper Ramu.

In 1935-36 Lord Mdyne, with a cross section of British aristocracy as his guests, made a world cruise in his 700tons luxury yacht, “Rosaura.” In the course of it he, and some of his party, went up the Ramu River, in the Mandated Territory, and subsequently published stories which indicated that Lord Moyne and party had been responsible for dis covering a tribe of pygmies there.

As far back as 1896-1901, the old Ger man New Guinea Company had expedi tions out in that district under a Dr.

Lauterback, a man called Tappenbeck, and others. They made astronomical observations, prospected and surveyed some of the district and charted the Ramu River. Some of these parties claim to have reached the Bismarck and Hagen Ranges and reports of their expeditions appeared in German magazines. If they did really penetrate this country, it is probable that they came into contact with the “pygmies”—l have a vague idea that I hav x e seen pictures of these “pygmies” near Atemble in a magazine published in 1902.

There is still divided opinion among the anthropologists about these natives — whether they should be called “pygmies” or whether they are only “pygmoids.”

It is believed that two members of these early expeditions, Klink and Rodatz, although they appear to have German names, were Australians. I wonder if there is any record of them or their work in Australian publications?

However, whoever it was who first saw the pygmies it certainly was not Lord Moyne and party. And whatever the early expeditions may have learned of them, the late Father Kirschbaum seems to have been the first European to study them and their langauge.

“Pat.”