Wewak Returns!

New Guinea's Sepik Metropolis Has Mod. Cons.—But No Pigs

WEWAK is fast returning to normal, and in some ways is better than pre-war. The station and all the homes are supplied with electric light and running water. The District Officer has ideas of making a garden township, on what was a few months ago a mass of bomb-craters and shell-holes, without the slightest vestige of trees or growing thing. He will have a difficult task, as Wewak is so far from the seat of Govern ment at Moresby that we will probably be forgotten when it comes to assistance.

Our civilian population is growing fast.

Already, two European ladies have arrived and taken up residence. Mrs. Niall ar rived last month, and a few days later Mrs. Jones (the wife of the skipper of the local district schooner) arrived. Mrs.

Erskine and her three children will soon be joining our popular medical assistant here. There are lots of rumours that soon we can expect a Sister to start a European hospital, and a typiste for the District Office, and the local bachelors are eagerly awaiting this big event. Mrs.

Cyril Helton is also expected as soon as Canberra will give her permission to join her husband.

Mr, Cyril Helton has returned to his old haunts, and is busily trying to re cruit labourers for the Morobe goldmining companies, but the local natives no longer seem interested in employment.

Probably the main reason is that they have no means of spending the increased wages they have earned, or are likely to earn, as there are no trade stores operating yet in the Sepik District. rpHE Commonwealth Disposals Com- JL mission agents are now in Wewak, hoping to sell some of the aban doned Army equipment. Only two out side buyers have arrived and they seem to have first choice, though both are of Italian nationality, and it is believed that one or both of them were interned at the outbreak of the war.

Many New Guinea men who served in the Army throughout the war in New Guinea are apparently not yet allowed by Canberra to return. It would be in teresting to learn who is responsible for allowing Italians to return, and have first choice of purchasing Army equipment, whilst ex-soldiers cannot be allowed back in the Territory.

Mr. Niall, our District Officer, is com fortably installed on the original station site, and the Sepik District seems to be the most efficiently organised in the Ter ritory.

Local residents are wondering why the Commonwealth Government is spending £llB,OOO to rebuild Hanuabada village at Moresby, when our native hospital, for the biggest district in New Guinea, is a hurriedly-constructed affair of native material, built by the efforts of Harry Erskine, medical assistant, in his spare time, whilst attending to 300 patients.

TVSTRICT Officer Horrie Niall is deeply intrigued by pigs at present. He talks continuously about the lack of meat diet for the natives in his dis trict. The Japs ate every pig belonging to the natives, and nobody at Moresby or Canberra apparently has ever thought of what will eventually happen to the race. The natives of this district were the mainstay of New Guinea, as labour for the plantations and mines was sup plied by the Sepiks and Aitapes.

Mandated Airlines have started a weekly service to Wewak, from Lae. This regular service will make Wewak less a Siberia than it was during the early months of Civil Administration.

About 80 troops are still here in Wewak, and are still cursing the place and its climate. The Army seems to have for gotten them, and they get no amenities— not even .any beer, which their more fortunate comrades do in Rabaul. But it was ever thus; the man outside, who is doing a real job, is always forgotten by those in comfort at headquarters.

Two Mission Fathers have returned to Wewak, and it is expected that soon many other missionaries will be back here and re-establishing their stations which have all been completely destroyed by air raids and the Japanese.