Racecourse
p. 60 · Read in the full issue
Ng Natives On Sydney
Letter to the Editor ON page 48 of your April issue you publish a photograph of New Guinea natives on a Sydney racecourse, and say they are from the mission vessel “Hotamara.” Actually, the vessel was the “Hotu Maru,” running in the service of W. R. Carpenter & Co., Ltd., and those were not mission boys.
The native crew were getting £5 a month and all found (Australian tucker, too), one of the crew told me when I saw him in Madang on his return.
He was strutting around in the clothes he wore in Sydney and he certainly looked big-headed. He wanted to go back to Sydney to work, and eat our food—no more rice for him. Later on, that morn ing, I noticed him at the Bung, and he was dressed in a red lap-lap, and carrying his little coconut palm-leaf basket.
I am, etc.,
T. K. Slatter.
Editor’s Note: The article referred to was taken, verbatim, out of one of the Sydney newspapers.