Magazine Section

Territories' Talk-Talk

By "Tolala"

THE post-war production lag in copra, up New Guinea way, has always been enough to make one spit chips; but now, with Britain’s crisis threatening our Motherland’s very existence, the lag be comes positively inhuman.

To excuse the official apathy by saying that transport is not available is only side-stepping the issue. Britain will find the bottoms, if we find the produce.

Lord Addison (at present in Canberra) tells us, and now Creech Jones. Britain’s Colonial Minister, suggests that official dom and industrial tycoons get into a huddle to see what can be done. This sounds like common-sense at a time when a united front is needed to face the issue. One can easily imagine the anti-lag effect of concerted action by the Big Firms, plus the Edwardian coterie in New Guinea, to follow out Minister Creech Jones’ suggestion.

A national crisis is no time to be dabbling in social experiments among a primitive people. ■ ■ ■ OPPOSITION Leader Menzies drew some logical conclusions recently concerning Australian trade-union policy on the NEI disturbance. “If,” said “Ming,” “the Dutch have no right in In donesia, when is Australia walking out of the Islands (New Guinea)?”

More than one person since the war has envisaged—in the years to come—a situation, similar to that in the NEI, aris ing in New Guinea. One such visionary said to me the other day; “Change ‘ln donesians” to ‘New Guinea natives’ and ‘Dutch’ to ‘Australians’ in the daily press reports and you have a picture of our northern dependencies in a few years’ time.”

Adolescents, collectively or individually, are ever thus. ■ ■ ■ RESEARCH chemists, proceeding to the Northern Territory to study local medicinal herbs, were recently in the news. A wonder they don’t go farther north, into New Guinea, and co opt some of the native medicine-men to assist them in collating data. The jungle there is a veritable chemist’s shop, from the lowly sweet potato leaf for cleansing ulcers, and pandanus-root soup for black water fever, to the various forms of abortion medicines, widely-known for their efficacious qualities.

During the Jap occupation of New Britain, Nippon chemists and botanists tagged thousands of trees and bushes on the Gazelle Peninsula, setting forth their medicinal properties and threatening death to anyone damaging the trees.

Ambonese prisoners-of-war in Rabaul supplied themselves with an efficient quinine substitute from a tree-bark grow ing in the local jungle; and a well-known European diabetic, during the Jap regime received successful treatment from a jungle medicine.

Perhaps this is a job the now some what mythical South Pacific Regional commission can encourage. ■ ■ ■ SOMEONE with control of exports to New Guinea must have a “snout” on . P9°r, old, struggling Rabaul. An intending settler, filling his own ship with essential cargo, applied for a few cases

of beer. Nothing doing, because his destination was Rabaul. Any other New Guinea port was O.K.

Are they protecting the local “plonk” market in Rabaul —or what? ■ ■ ■ MET an old NG hand just returned from Java. This is his report on the set-up there —for what it is worth: • Six hundred white Australian wives of Javanese living in the interior. • Fifty thousand Jap soldiers fighting with the Javanese rebels, or “Republi cans,” as they are termed here, politely. • Rebel arms consist chiefly of Jap anese weapons and munitions. • Some rebel troops are commanded by Australian officers. ■ ■ ■ ONE of those little birds, that fly down regularly from the North, whispered to me the other day of impeding changes amongst officers of heavy ton nage in our Experimental Territory. Time will tell. ■ ■ ■ SORROWFUL News: A Suva message, commenting upon unrest in the Solomon Islands, quotes a Colonial Office statement: “Mr. Noel (Resident Commissioner for the Solomons) says that rumours of a declaration of war probably arose from a meeting at Malaita on June 30, when 7,000 labourers from the island’s copra plantations met to discuss possible strike action. This huge gathering might have been interpreted from the air as a sign of trouble.”

Tut, tut! What would it have been in terpreted as from the ground? ■ ■ ■ 11THICH reminds me of the implementa ▼ ? tion (if there be such a word) of Britain’s austerity programme in the far-flung comers of the Empire, as indicated recently bv the freighter “Admiral Chase,” which sailed for the BSI with a goodly assortment of stores, consigned to the government, the like ot which—so reports have it—has seldom been seen before. There were thousands of drums of dieselene for the fleet of small ships, now under Government control, and many luxury lines, which hard-bitten Sorrowful Islanders contend are purely non-essential in these times. Perhaps they were for distribution amongst the labour malcontents.

Perhaps, again, this was the result of Britain’s £lO million per annum produc tion programme for the colonies. ■ ■ ■ AUSTRALIA is going all colour conscious these days, from Javanese to abos. Michael Sawtell. a member of the Aboriginal Welfare Board, is re ported to have said: “The policy of the Board was to encourage the native to work for himself, but results would discour age sentimentalists who did not under stand the coloured Australian. They (natives) come back to the station with £lO or £l5 . . . and stay in town until they have spent their last penny. . .”

He could have been referring to the New Guinea lad and the temptations which beset the “finish-timer” in the Chum-towns of the various ports.

Incidentally, is there anything more paradoxical than the White Australian policy and the current coloured senti

mentality?

SAID Eddie Ward in N’ York: “Australia would become independent of India for tea and South America for coffee . . . Industries to be fostered in dependent territories (what a truism) where those which did not compete with Australian production.”

Why not foster the copra and cocoa industries, then? ■ ■ ■ SOUTH AFRICA has notified UNO that it would not submit a trusteeship agreement of South-West Africa, but would administer it in the spirit of the League of Nations mandate and sub mit reports to UNO.

A lead that Australia could easily have followed in regard to TNG. At least, there was some control under the man date system; none, under the present set-up. ■ ■ ■ BITS and Pieces: Sir Raphael Cilento made a “flying” visit to Sydney from New York last month on his way to attend a social welfare conference at Singapore . . .Kenneth Roberts (Papuan geologist) was married to Valerie Reed, at Summer Hill, on August 19. They will fly to Port Moresby this month . . . Eric Granter has become Mine Host at a caravanserai between Albury and Mel bourne . . . Judy Street, writing from the isle of Jersey, in late August, tells of good times and gay parties in the Channel Islands. She expects to return this month . . . Old-time Papuan. Alec Mitchell, of the BP firm, is in Australia on holidays.