How Late George Murray Established Quinine

in New Guinea

By R. W. Robson

WHENEVER I saw the late George Murray, New Guinea Director of Agriculture, between 1932 and 1941 — and that must have been on scores of occasions—he cried out at mo about the possibility of establishing new and profit able crops on the plateaus of Central New Guinea. Especially did he talk to me about tea and quinine.

He was a remarkable little man, was George Murray. His profession (tropical agriculture) was with him a ruling passion. Although partially crippled by an accident when he was in the service of Papua, back in the twenties, he was most active and enterprising. He literally bubbled with energy and with new ideas; he dreamed great dreams of New Guinea’s agricultural future; and he spent all his leave, and much of his own money, in personally investigating tropi cal agriculture all over the world.

Put George Murray was nearly driven mad in the thirties by the lethargy and \ndifference of the new Guinea Adminis tration. He and his very able officers (he had a really distinguished staff) wanted to do so much; but they seemed to get few, if any, of their recommenda tions past the “higher-ups.”

He sent one of his favourites—“young Brechin,” he always called him —to start a small experimental station on the Ramu Tableland;and he told me that, because all else had failed, he had done it in flat defiance of certain high officials in Rabaul. To realise how well that choice was justified, you are invited to read the following article by Pastor Campbell.

ONE day, in Sydney, about 1936, Mur ray came to me in high excitement.

By most devious—and, I am afraid, questionable—means he had got posses sion of a small quantity of the seed of the cinchona plant, source of quinine. As

most people know, quinine was for a very long time the absolute monopoly of the Netherlands Indies Dutch. They held and exploited the world market, and they guarded the seeds of their East Indies plants as if they were pearls. But George Murray had a friend in Batavia — and he loved to tell the story of how that packet of seed was smuggled out to him.

He took it in triumph to “young Bre chin”; and the way in which Murray and Brechin tenderly cherished those cinchona plants and yearned over them is a story in itself. It is all told in my letter-tiles—Murray wrote me regularly.

It was he—and no one else—who insisted that Central New Guinea could grow the cinchona—he who visualised the possi bilities of a quinine industry there. These old letters prove it.

Cinchona and tea—those were the burden of his many letters. But, as the years passed, he despaired. High official dom would not help him —in fact, every thing he recommended seemed to be knocked back. Finally, he decided to tight, by an Australian newspaper attack upon his lethargic chiefs. It was I who persuaded him against that course.

“I could help you in publicity,” I said.

“But what would you achieve? You would gain the bitter and active hostility of high officials, and New Guinea agricul ture, which is all that matters, would make no progress. Be patient. Austra lian public opinion does not care a damn about the Territories; but perhaps, one day, we shall get a Minister with vision, who will insist on something being done.”

Murray grumbled, and cursed, but re mained patient. He was still being pati ent in January, 1942, when he caught a plane back to Rabaul —and walked straight into the Jap invasion, wherein he, and hundreds of other civilians, vic

tims of Australian officialdom's unforgiv able muddling, lost their lives.

But his Central New Guinea planta tion flourished, and his cinchona plants kept on increasing.

And now I observe that Mr. Eddie Ward, Australia’s Minister for External Territories, in an announcement on Sep tember 25, has decided that selected areas in New Guinea will be used for the production of tea, quinine and coffee.

The next step, I suppose, will be a claim that the Ward regime is responsible for the establishment of those industries in New Guinea.

The old letters reposing in my letter files, dated round about 1936-37, and signed “George Murray,” can give the lie to that. (See Further Article, Next Page)

Mr. G. Greathead’s house at Mt. Hagen Station. It is made of pit-sawn timber, cut locally, and chief feature of the living room is an out-size in fire-places. It becomes bitterly cold at night at Hagen.

The thin air of the highlands produces tremendous appetites, and here one day in late September Mr. Greathead played host to the “PIM” representative and about a dozen men who that day happened to converge on the isolated station. Most of the food had been produced around the station.