Interesting Experiment

Sheep For Ng

Highlands

Is Under Way

A WELL-KNOWN Sydney philanthro pist, Mr. E, J. Hallstrom, who is chairman of the Taronga Park Trust, has given the Australian Government £20,000, to be used in the establishment of a sheep-breeding industry in the high lands of Central New Guinea. The ex periment is already well under way. The Government has set up a trust for the . operation of the fund.

Mr. Hallstrom said that 500 acres had been set apart for an experimental station at Nondugal, 40 miles from Mt. Hagen in Central New Guinea, by the Department of External Territories at the request of the Administration of New Guinea.

Five hundred Romney Marsh sheep are being flown up to Nondugal by Guinea Air Traders in weekly lots.

Two plane-loads of 60 sheep had already been flown up by D.C.3 to an air-strip at Kerowagi, and walked about 8 miles to Nondugal.

Mr. Hallstrom said that the natives in the Nondugal area had entered into the scheme enthusiastically. “When the ex perimental station has been established, the natives are to be taught in classes how to shear, weave the wool, and make clothes for themselves,” he told Sydney newspapers. “At present the natives at Nondugal make their clothOs from op ossum fur and bark.”

Mr. Hallstrom said that sheep in New Guinea would have to be shorn twice a year. He had sent 50 sheep to Mt. Hagen about ten months ago. Their fleeces were now too heavy.

Editorial Note

THE area to which the sheep have been sent lies at an altitude of 4,000-5,000 feet: Central New Guinea has been called “a second Kenya.” There is no reason why certain types of sheep should not be acclimatised there, to become the basis of a pastoral industry. Sheep have been maintained successfully for years, on one of the southern islands of the New Hebrides, which has an altitude lower than Central New Guinea.

The experiment should be carried out by skilled European pastoralists, however.

The idea of converting the primitive gardeners of the Benna Benna-Ramu- Hagen highlands into sheep-farmers over night might be entertained in Canberra, but it does not make sense to people who know New Guinea. Maybe, in two or three generations, they will be eating mutton and wearing woollen pantaloons; but much must happen first in the way of training and adaptation.

The Mt. Hagen natives, at present, wear a few yards of hand-worked mesh as a sash and shell or bone ornaments. How soon they will take to hand-loomed woollen clothes remains to be seen.

Mr. Hallstrom is the manufacturer of the Silent Knight refrigerator (“The Peoples’ Refrigerator at the Peoples’

Price”). Since the war he has given a large amount of money to charities and public institutions—for cancer clinics, zoological specimens, etc. His latest dona tion to Taronga Park Zoo is a mouth organ-playing she-elephant from Durban.

He also offered £25 for Sydney’s elusive sea-leopard which has made the harbour its home. This offer was subsequently withdrawn and the money given instead to a group of University students who impersonated the sea-leopard in Martin Place and were charged with disturbing the peace.