All In Their Little Woolly Di rovers!

By Judy Tudor

This Bobby Gibbes, of whom we read a good deal these days in Southern papers, must be a man of parts. Last week he was buying new planes to use as air taxis for the convenience of Sepik district natives when they wished to hop in to Wewak and buy their weekly groceries. This week (according to the papers) he is doing a Hallstrom and is taking sheep back to the Wawat plateau, 20 miles from Wewak.

He and a few of the natives from those parts are going into the sheep business.

The natives are going to tend the sheep and watch them breed, and Bobby Gibbes (according to these excited newspapers) is going to show the natives how to shear and spin the wool.

I don’t know a whole lot about the Wawat plateau in fact, I’ve never heard of it—but I do remember talking to a Veterinary Officer of the Fiji Department of Agriculture regarding pastoral pursuits in that country. “Sheep should do well here,” said he, “BUT who ever had ’em would need to be a very good, and qualified, vet. Foot-rot, you know—and half a dozen other diseases.

Climate.”

In comparison with New Guinea, Fiji’s climate is almost temperate. They even have something that is a dim re lation to winter. And they have dry zones. I can’t think of anywhere within 20 miles of Wewak that has either a dry zone, a dim relation of winter, or any where it is not humid, wet and hot. But then, no one ever told me about the Wawat plateau (1,500 feet up) while I was there. I daresay it was something the Army discovered, And. again, it is possible Mr. Gibbes is also a qualified

veterinary surgeon.

Now I CAN imagine the local gentry being fired with the idea of sheep on the hoof, nonetheless. Maski this fella pig' 'lm he something belong bush-kanaka tha’s all! Who’sat ’e like ’im this fella haricot chop?

It seems to me I’ve been too long away from the Sepik. The darned place has changed. Now in My Day—in those far, far-off days before War, Ward and Wool growers—there was a country! Tough as they come. Fit only for miners, goats and wild white women (in that order); where the natives were lowly and meek and padded the hoof. (No air taxis).

And if the wild white women were few, the goats were fewer. My mind goes back, further still, to a Christmas at Maprik when Tommy Ellis and the young patrol officer entertained the whole district— maybe 200 white men. six white women and 3,000 natives.

The natives ate pig and sago and bananas; and, for the Europeans, the piece de resistence was baked goat—a savoury change from the everlasting can.

Tempus has done a considerable amount of fugiting since then, and values have changed. Maybe the European of the hinterland still eats his goat; but for the native in his little woolly under drawers (hand loomed) it is a cut off the joint and two vegs., then heigh-ho! for an air-taxi and whoopee in Wewak.

Yeah—either things have changed, or I’m one of these new-fangled reaction aries.

Mr. C. R. Turbet, Senior Veterinary Officer, Department of Agriculture, has returned to Fiji after three years’ ser vice in Ceylon on secondment.