Papua

IDLY I stood beside the muddly inlet, the small pools which the tide had left behind, and I watched the little lung fish hopping along the edge. Surely, I had seen these fish hopping there before.

I looked away inland to the tall coconut trees, throwing intermittent shadows on the grass and the wooded hills, beyond where cleared patches and spirals of smoke showed gardens in the making. The native woman, trudging homeward; slung from her brow the kiapa of garden pro duce and topping it the heavy bundle of faggots. The cool breeze, which came in from the sea. The canoes, going out to fish on the reefs. The feel and smell of it all, the enchantment. Were not all these familiar, and of a life before?

But these were figments of the imagina tion. perhaps a dream. The figures, loom ing through the mist of bygone days, tall and commanding figures, the figures of the giants of endeavour, were but ethereal phantoms of fancy. And the voices com ing out of a seeming past—voices with the lilt of hope and strong in selfless purpose —were but the soughing of the palm trees.

Newly come, one may tread upon a stair with a feeling of excitement that there he has been before. The feeling fades with sober thought, for it was born of foolish fancy.

No, I had not lingered here before. How could it be? There was no past—for it began in 1945. It was just that I had trod upon a stair—G.

Probably the first European baby to be borne in Papua since the Jap invasion appeared at Samarai on August I—a son. for Mr. and Mrs. Robert Bunting. Both doing well.