New Guinea Offers
p. 85 · Read in the full issue
Few Chances For The Small Man
Letter to the Editor WITH all our swarms of officials, the Wau road has never been worse, the wharf at Milford Haven holds up by some miracle, the bitumen roads left by US Forces are getting full of holes. The Bitibum bridge will be a worlds wonder if it survives another heavy flood. Nearly all the bridges on the Nadzab road have temporary planking on them; water flows over the road after rain. There is no good wharf at Vico for a small boat to tie up or load at.
Most of the men employed as workers by the Department of Works and Hous ing will work; but all tools, supplies, etc., have to be indented, and as a rule the result is nil or unsuitable. The office staff is not impressive.
I stayed up here with the idea that, while working and putting a bit aside, I would be able to look round, find some thing that suited me and settle down.
But what do I find? A disturbed land, with the majority of the whites just up here to make a few pounds fast, and get out.
A lot of these whites can’t work native labourers, and make disparaging remarks about them, in their hearing. The boys are not fools, and probably understand most of these remarks. Then these people, stripped to the waist, unable to speak Pidgin, push the boys aside and do the job themselves. Naturally, the boys let them.
The wharf at Madang is rotten, and yet
there is only one man to work on it. ■nschhafen, Longneck and Dreger all need wharf and bridge repairs, and there are no wharf men there. Lae has seven wharf-and-bridge men. What can they do?
All I want now, after long years of war service, is the knowledge that I can in vest my small savings in either a small boat, for cargo carrying and trading, or something that I can make a decent living out of.
But all round is Government control, like a London fog, blotting out progress, trade and prosperity. Yet this Island frontier ought to attract young men to go places and do things. But, apparently, Government-sponsored security has killed the old spirit of adventure.
To put it in a nutshell. I’ve had it, and these pinheaded, bossing little Hitlers! —I am, etc.,
Ex-Aif.
Lae, 6/5/48.