Rabaul Jottings
pp. 57-58 · Read in the full issue
Too Much Port Moresby Centralisation
Prom Our Own Correspondent
Rabaul, May 1
DIFFICULTY is being experienced here and elsewhere in the Territories in obtaining recruiting licences.
Planters are told that their applications must be referred to Port Moresby.- One planter has been in Rabaul, await ing the result of his application for three weeks. In the interim, the native workers whom he had hoped to engage, got so fed up that they returned to their villages, and are not now available.
Despite assurances to the contrary, the Production Control Board (Rabaul branch) has still to send copra scaling dockets, etc., to the Production Control Board at Port Moresby. Planters desirous of obtaining settlement of their accounts are still subjected to a delay of anything between two and three weeks. Thank God for our weekly air service—otherwise it would take months!
It looks as if we cannot do a thing outside Port Moresby unless it is first re ferred to headquarters for approval. Ad ministration headquarters must have as much confidence in its deputies as the rest of New Guinea has in administration headquarters. ♦ ♦ ♦ AUSTRALIA, at a very great expen diture in money, brains and aero plane travel, is conducting War Criminal Trials at Rabaul and inqu'ring into the ill-treatment of Chinese and Indian prisoners by the Japanese Army.
Meanwhile, the local Chinese army, 500 strong, formed of released prisoners of war, is whiling away its time on illicit stills.
A disturbance occurred last Sunday in the Chinese camp, among Chinese, Euro peans and native police, and Customs officials. Two stills were found outside the Chinese camp and one in the kitchen.
This disturbance is only one of many that is worrying the authorities. A Chinese Corporal was recently murdered. ♦ * * ACCORDING to Australian press re ports, the natives of Bougainville are starving. These Solomon Islanders must be slipping. Since hos tilities ceased they have had ample time in which to rehabilitate their gardens, while scores—perhaps hundreds—of mis sionaries have been returned to the Islands. Who was it said that “mission
aries are a God-sent institution for starv ing cannibals?” * * * SOME of the features of our New Order do not please us very much. Some of the marriages that have taken place, for instance.
An Australian lad has married a native woman from the native village of Hanu
abada, in Papua. Two other marriages reported are between young Australians and (1) a half-caste woman and (2)* a Chinese girl. All these are recent mar riages.
Judging by the number of Australian men and Chinese girls now seen driving around Rabaul in jeeps some further mixed marriages may be anticipated. One
reason for this state of affairs is probably the restrictions placed by the Australian Government upon the entry to the ter ritory, of either men or women. * * * fIIHE bright outlook on life and breezy JL good-nature of our Mr. Richards, of the War Damage Commission, re ceived a rude set-back this morning.
He insists that the early bird catches the best worms. Quite early, he sent his good and faithful servant to the Boong (local market), with 24 sticks of tobacco, to purchase eggs. Servant re turned with a number of karramups (small packages). These, on examination, contained each a number of small stones.
There was a hullabaloo, and a search for the Boong merchant, but he had fled.
Our Mr. Richards has lost some of his faith in human nature. * * * fIIHE Production Control Board has JL fixed the price of copra to the planters at £2B per ton, while the free market price is over £7O per ton. Yet our planters are compelled to purchase very poor quality Australian mud-coloured rice, at the highest Sydney price, and to pay the Commonwealth Government, for the privilege of importing it, an ex port tax of £l3 per ton.