But Not Canberra-Inspired Garden Suburbs

P. Moresby Needs New Native Villages

POSSIBLY nothing of recent months has stirred Territorians so much as the plan of the Australian External Territories Department to build a “model village” outside Port Moresby—a village, it is alleged, which will have sewerage and electric light.

Territorians have not been al<Vie in their protests, on this occasion. A home hungry Australian public has moved Mr.

Fadden, leader of the Federal Country Party, to make this statement: Although I have the greatest admiration for the part played by the Fuzzy-Wuzzies in the war, the Minister for External Territories, Mr.

Ward, would be well advised to start nearer home instead of spending £llB,OOO almost im mediately on 500 model houses for natives near Port Moresby.

The housing shortage in Queensland is so acute that men just discharged from the Services are trying to erect houses with their own hands, while others are living in tents and even dis used fowl-houses. A similar state of affairs is universal throughout Australia.

This is the same Minister who in Parliament advocated the abandonment of New Guinea to its fate in the event of war.

It will be recalled that a somewhat similar attempt was made some years ago in Queens land, and the natives immediately left the model houses and built their own gunyahs outside. In the light of the Queensland experience, with its native population, what assurance has Mr. Ward that the New Guinea natives will live in these model houses once they are built, instead of in their own natural habitat?

If Mr. Ward goes on with his plan—and, apparently, they have the blessing of the Acting Treasurer, Mr. Dedman, because it is expected Treasury consent will be given at any moment— the construction of urgently needed homes in the several States of the Commonwealth will be still further retarded by this quixotic example of Ministerial lack of judgment.

No details have been, as yet, forth coming from the External Territories Department on the type of house con templated—but at £230 odd per house it is evident that something more elaborate than the conventional native dwelling is planned.

There is no lack of examples of New Guinea natives preferring native houses, as did Mr. Fadden’s aborigines. One Territorian tells us of an attempt he made to Europeanise the labour-houses of his boys. He built a double row of neat little houses, with iron roofs and timber floors and plenty of ventilation.

He installed his line and then was away for a few weeks.

On his return only a couple of boys lingered on in the model houses; the rest had made leaf houses for themselves and were living there.

Their explanation was that in their own houses they had no cross venti lation; they lit a fire in the middle of the floor, the smoke rose into the top part of the dwelling, where it formed a mosquito-slaying layer, under whch they slept comfortably in the clearer air close to the floor.

And they liked it that way. The model houses, on the other hand, had none of these insect-repelling virtues.

If left to himself, the New Guinea native will certainly build the kind of house that his forefathers built —and these vary in desgn from the “long houses” of the Papuan delta country to the “houses on stilts,” found in the moun tains behind Wewak. Village tradition and culture are bound up in the design of the houses, and it will take more than the Australian Department of External Territories and all its minions to wean true “bush-kanakas” away from them.

THE more sophisticated natives of Port Moresby and Rabaul are prob ably a different proposition. It should be remembered that house-boys attached to Rabaul bungalows lived — apparently quite happily—in small huts of fibre, corrugated iron and cement, usually situated at the bottom of the garden. The Government labour-houses in the same town were unlovely, great barracks of galvanised iron, with con crete floors.

In both types of Rabaul boys’ house, the natives either slept on the concrete floor on mats and blankets, or on bunks they had made themselves, or bought.

Presumably the Health Department did not. consider that their health suffered thf refrom.

HOWEVER, while Territorians look askance at the grandiose schemes of Canberra, it is evident that some sort of improved accommodation for the Port Moresby natives is necessary. In the March issue of “PIM” we published an article dealing with the alarming in cidence of TB among natives in the town. This was based on a communi cation from the late Dr. ,G. H. Vernon, who was of the opinion that 50 per cent, of the inhabitants of Hanuabada village should be TB suspects.

He described the village as a “plague spot.” The old village, he said, had been destroyed by bombs in 1942 and the natives evacuated, but when conditions improved these natives had been per mitted to return and to build again with total lack of supervision the “worst kind of tropical slum —the breeding-ground for every germ from tuberculosis to typhus and dysentery.”

Dr. Vernon had the greatest respect for native land rights and customs, but he said that the land belonging to Hanuabada village had been subdivided by death legacies so many times that there was a claimant for every 10'yards of it —and that nothing short of burning the whole place down and starting afresh, somewhere else, would provide a solu tion.

THE proposed expenditure of £llB,OOO is fantastic, however. The Australian Government would be better em ployed in instructing the natives to build better houses of their own material, than in presenting them with ready-made garden suburbs at the expense of Aus tralian taxpayers. Australia could, too, learn something from the other partner to the Anzac Agreement, in which the present Government takes such pride.

For the past 30 years, high officials of the Cook Islands Administration have been advocating the abolition of the old European-type houses which enthusiastic Cook Islands Maoris, in trying to ape white methods, built at the end of last century. These, falling into disrepair and neglected, have been the breeding place of tuberculosis, which is the curse of the Group.

Officials, with the welfare of the natives at heart, have urged that these old houses be replaced with well-built dwellings of native type.

In Western Samoa and Fiji, even the most influential chiefs, who have been educated abroad and who can take their place beside the most cultured of Euro peans, cling to their native-type houses which, although built sometimes on pala tial lines, are still most suitable for the climate and the customs of the countries of which they are part.

It may be a desirable thing for the

proposed model Port Moresby village to be sewered; it would be even more desir able if it were intended to sewer the town ship of Port Moresby—or for that matter, the suburban districts of the city of Bris bane.

No Territorian begrudges any scheme for assisting the natives of any Port Moresby village to better standards of life. Most of these Territorians, how ever, are themselves returning to blasted plantations and “kunai” houses. It could scarcely be expected that Mr. Ward’s sudden—and so far unamplified—an nouncement that it is proposed to build £llB,OOO worth of native village would be greeted with enthusiasm.

The best materials for New Guinea building are limbohm palm, bamboo, sago and coconut fronds for thatching. All these things can be obtained from the bush. Why import building material from Australia when Australia needs every brick, every foot of timber and every sheet of iron?

The answer is—Canberra!