Another Tea Tale From New Guinea

Pre-War Effort to Establish Tea in the Territory

J-JERE is an interesting addition to the tea saga of New Guinea. In our February issue we told how Mr.

E. J. Hallstrom hopes to establish the industry at Nondugl in the Central Highlands, and how the Common wealth Tea Controller had smuggled tea-seed out of India in 1946 and how the plants were subsequently lost.

Although experts agree that good

tea can be grown in New Guinea, it is quite another thing to get the tea seed with which to start plantations.

Most tea producing countries guard their tea-seeds jealously.

The following story of how tea was got from British West Borneo and established in New Guinea before the war is told by that well-known Terri torian, Mr. G. Rio. It would be interesting to know how his young

seedling trees fared through the war

years and if they are still alive.

Although Mr. Rio does not know where they were planted it seems

likely that Mr. George Murray, then

Director of Agriculture of New Guinea,

would have had them planted in the Central Highlands, somewhere in the

vicinity of the cinchona plantations,

which he established at Aiyura just before the war.

I CAN add something to the article, Tea from Nondugl, in February issue of

Pim.

Years ago in the 1930’s I met Mr. G.

Murray, then Director of Agriculture in Papua. Both of us had got stuck in a dirty, wet and tiny rest-house some miles from Kokoda. It was some time after this that both Mr. Murray and I migrated to the Mandated Territory, he to become Director of Agriculture in that Territory.

I was on the mainland but whenever I was in Rabaul I called on him. At that time I used to go on shooting and bug hunting expeditions about every three years, and it was after Mr. Murray’s tour of Burma and Ceylon, etc., that I learned of his interest in black-tea seeds.

During his tour he had asked the heads of tea companies for black tea seeds to start some planting in New Guinea but without success. I asked him then if I could get some from the East for him, because at that time I was going to Borneo, Japan and Mongolia (the Mon golian trip did not come off—the Japs who were running the show then would let me go only on a “conducted tour” if I hired a military escort of 22 Japs at £5 per day.

“Bandits” was the reason they gave!) When I mentioned black tea seeds, Murray laughed at me. “If I couldn’t get them, what chance have you?” he asked. I thought, however, that I would give it a go.

In Yokohama and Tokio I visited all the tea seed merchants and could locats plenty of green tea seeds but no black tea —this was during the period the Japs had kept me waiting for permission to go to Mongolia, and after six weeks, when they told me of the army I was supposed to support, I took the old Chitral and headed for Saigon.

I had friends there in Indo-China and they told me that on the Langbian Table lands there were some gardens with some areas under black tea. Unfortunately, however, it was off-season and there were no seeds to be got there—not even green tea.

My next hope was in Sandakan, British North Borneo, and there I stayed with a friend on his rubber plantation. By this time the idea of getting tea seeds for Mr.

Murray had become something of an ob session. My friend, an old resident of BNB, knew everyone and everything. He made a few discreet inquiries and dis covered that there was a patch of black tea seed growing at the Governmental Experimental Station about six miles from Sandakan.

IHAD two letters of introduction to Officialdom, to assist me in collecting specimens of natural history for British and Australian museums, stress ing the fact that I did this in a strictly honorary capacity (I don’t do it now!) and paid my own way. One of the letters was from the late Harold Page, then Government Secretary, Mandated Terri tory; the other from Mr. Murray. At first I had a mind to ask outright of the Con servator of Forests, British North Borneo, for some seeds—they had already been very good to me in the way of allowing me to collect protected birds and animals.

But caution prevailed and I decided to work from the bottom up. The man in

car out to the station. The Filipino was

friendly and eager to show me the place— perhaps the cigars helped a little, they were very good. And soon I found myself

walking under a plantation of black tea trees—they were 15 or 16 feet high, un pruned and full of seeds.

“May I have some?” I asked.

“Take as much as you like,” I was told and I filled my pockets. In the same generous spirit he also gave me some special tobacco seeds and bundles and cuttings of other plants.

On our way out who should we meet but the Conservator of Forests himself and he gave me some interesting infor mation about the bundles of plants, etc., that he could see I was carrying. By this time I was feeling pretty mean about the tea seeds so I simply told him about them

and asked if 1 could take them back to New Guinea.

“Certainly,” he said, “we will pack them for you in some loose dry soil —they don’t keep very well.”

And that is how Mr. Murray got his black tea seeds from British North Borneo.

WHEN I got back to the Territory I went to the goldfields and a week or so after I reached there I had a letter from Murray telling me that an agricultural officer, on a specially char tered plane had gone forth to plant the seeds—l forget the name of the place where they were planted. But from then on he would write me at intervals, giving me progress reports of the young seed lings and then the young trees. The last letter I had from him said, "Your seeds are 500 small trees, now,” and soon after he left for Sydney on his last trip. (Mr.

Murray returned to Rabaul by plane only a day or so before the Japanese invasion of 1942. He was lost with the other victims of Montevideo Maru.) I still have Mr. Murray’s letters with my shooting and gun permits and other papers from Burma, Malaya, Borneo and Indo-China.

Since the war I have tried to get more tea seeds, this time from the Langbian Tablelands in Indo-China —but have not succeeded. There is a war on there still and I can get neither seeds nor a visa.

As far as the experimental station in Sandakan is concerned, my rubber plant ing friend tells me that the Japs made a POW camp in the middle of it. My friend spent his war years there and tells me that there is not a single plant left in the place.