The Death of Richard

Gore

Contributed by “Thyrsis”

THE life of Richard Gore, the only son of Mr. Justice R. T. Gore and Mrs.

Gore, of Papua, was crammed with activity. We had watched him grow from a child to splendid manhood: and when he died at the age of 28, in Port Moresby, on December 17, it left those of us who knew him well with a brooding sense of the injustice of circumstances.

I think of him as he was twenty years ago, when I saw him climbing a hill near Ela Beach, in Port Moresby. He was then a tall, slim, good-looking lad of eight, in knickerbockers. That picture slips, and others take its place, revealing Richard Gore as a soldier, deep-sea fisherman, navigator and contractor.

He loved navigation best, not naviga tion by guess, but as a science: he studied it assiduously, and wireless as well. Unon his discharge from the AIF, early in 1946, he went to Ceduna. in South Australia, and there engaged in deep-sea fishing, on one occasion commanding a sailing ship on a voyage across the Great Australian Bight; and in 1947 he brought the small ship “Rouna Falls” from Sydney to Port Moresby, with a scanty crew of in experienced men.

Some time afterwards, circumstances and the desperate need for houses in Port Moresby encouraged him to enter the field as a contractor. To assist him in this new venture he gathered around him some of the most reliable native carpen ters in the area—men who had known him since he was a boy and who had a real personal affection for him.

These men were not Richard Gore’s employees; they were his partners, shar ing with him the labour of each long, difficult day, and the trials inseparable from building operations in Port Moresby.

Both he and his mates were doing well; and then the blow came with all the sud denness of a thunderbolt out of a clear skv. A mere slip from some scaffolding, a fall of not more than two or three feet, and Richard Gore was fighting for his life. He took the blow straight and he took it striking, game as ever to the end.

The authorities chose a spot for him next to the grave of that grand old man.

Sir Hubert Murray, and, as was always the custom, detailed some native prisoners to dig his grave. But they had reckoned without the people of Hanuabada. A body of old men appeared on the scene.

They brushed the prisoners aside, saying: “You go back. He belonged to us, and we shall dig his grave.”

Afterwards they filled in the grave, and each one laid a wreath upon it. Of the scores of wreaths placed near the grave that day not a petal was left on the ground: each one was picked up by these “primitive” men and carefully deposited in its appropriate place—a manifestation of affection that was truly moving to behold.

What affected some of us even more deeply than this was the sight of other “primitive” men—his working partners— who stood, silent, in the background, and whose thoughts could not find expression save in tears. Utterly bewildered by the event, their youthful leader gone, all their nlans awry, they were a forlorn-looking lot; and I know that I for one turned away from their grief as one turns away a trail of thought that closes in a dream of death.

Mr. A. M. Gurau, of Apia, Western Samoa, returned to the Territory by plane in January, after two months’ holi day in New Zealand.