The Other Side of the Papua-N

Papua-N. Guinea Picture

THE pages of your journal have car ried many articles dealing with the formation of ANGAU, and what it did.

It is very easy to pick out the bad points; but, if ANGAU had not been formed, the position would have been a lot worse. There was a lot of room for improvement, but the policy had to be suited to wartime conditions and to an area where the Army was operating.

Practically all the old residents of New Guinea, both Government and com mercial. were in it. The field staff was about 50 per cent ex-residents, and a lot were on H.Q.

It would be interesting to know which type of ex-resident is making the most noise about the terrible iniquities of

Angau.

When the Army was handing over to the Civilian Government, the natives, some of whom had been working for years for the Army, had to be returned to their homes and then re-engaged under the old terms of contract. A lot of the natives’ homes had been destroyed, and the gardens were almost non-existent.

The shortage of labour is the result, and is the cause of a lot of the present con fusion.

It may be hard to explain why so much money is being spent by so few for so little result on the grandiose schemes for the native. When all is said and done, a country is like a business and Australia is not rich enough to stand the financial drain at the present rate unless some return is in sight.

The old order has gone and the new one has not yet become crystallised.

Let’s hope it is a sane one. So far, no one has been hurt badly by anything other than the inevitable results of war — labour shortage, shortage of supplies, and increased costs. We still have places to come back to and compensation to collect for damages, so we are not too badly off.

The supplies which were destroyed by the Americans in Milne Bay represent great waste, but if any officer had signed for them he would have been held re sponsible for the value of the goods in American dollars. As the Common wealth Government is finding it hard to find enough dollars to pay for petrol and other urgently needed supplies now, I think that any man increasing the dollar debt would have been kicked in the pants. The Yankees had to leave the areas in a reasonably clean state.

Some of the stuff was given away and some “frozen” by the Government. No doubt this “frozen” stuff wiil be used later. However, it was a crime to des troy so much when there is such a short age.

Our own Australians destroyed a lot, too, and there was no dollar credit to worry about.

Undoubtedly, many people could have done better jobs; but some constructive criticism would be better than destruc tive these days.—JDW.

Mr. J. N. Nicholson, manager of Koke bagu Plantation, Papua, is now in Epworth Hospital, Richmond Melbourne, making a good recovery after the accidental loss of his foot, in a cultivator accident in Papua. The report that the cultivator was inadvertently started by a visitor was not correct. Mr. Nicholson says the accident was his own fault—he stepped off the new cultivator on the wrong side, and his leg was caught in the still-revolv ing blades of the machine.