Fascinating Discoveries in NC
p. 55 · Read in the full issue
Acting Territories Minister Makes Fascinating Discoveries in NC
SOME discoveries which stirred Old Territorians were announced on January 25 by Australian Minister Chambers, who is in charge of New Guinea and Papuan affairs during the preoccupation elsewhere of Mr. E. J.
Ward. Mr. Chambers had just completed what the newspapers called “a compre hensive tour” of the Territories.
Mr. Chambers announced that “with proper development” New Guinea could suoply cocoa, tea, coffee, rice and jute; and he actually was told by an agricul tural officer at Keravat “that cocoa could be produced in many parts of the Terri tories.” 1 It is a pity the political gentleman did not look up the records of his own de partment. He would have found that, just before the Japs invaded, 1,033 hec tares (2,500 acres) were under cocoa in New Britain, New Guinea, and Manus, and that more than that area was under coffee. New Guinea had a substantial cocoa-growing industry 25 years ago; about £7,000 worth of cocoa was exported in 1925.
The Minister told astounded reporters that coffee now was being grown on the central highlands, and “indications were that the industry could be developed as a payable proposition.” When the Japs came in in 1942 over 1,000 acres in New Britain and 500 acres in Manus actually were producing coffee. Three substantial coffee-growing companies were operating in New Guinea in 1938, apart from Mr.
C. C. Wilde’s flourishing plantation in the Bulolo Valley, just outside Wau. (Mr,
Chambers is reported to have served with the AIF in New Guinea: did he never hear of how the Aussies. dropped by plane on the Wau drome in that critical Bulolo Valley battle in 1942, caught the Japs’ jungle column in Wilde’s coffee plantation, and cleaned them up?) Direc tor of Agriculture George Murray (lost on the Montevideo Maru in 1942) actu ally introduced coffee-growing to New Guinea in the Depression (1931-2) to pro vide planters with some alternative to the very sick copra industry.
It really is remarkable to see, in all walks of life, how the sedulous wielder of the new broom ignores the old broom’s record.