Magazine Section

Territories Talk-Talk

By "Tolala"

THE staff correspondent of a leading Sydney morning paper, writing from the SP Conference at Suva said: “A name freely mentioned here as an ideal choice for an Australian Commissioner is Mr. H. L. Murray.” The conference will not have been in vain if it accomplishes nothing more than to bring this able and practical executive out of hiding and into harness.

AS a remarkable example of bad taste in publicity it would be difficult to beat the front page story and photo graph appearing in a leading Sydney Sun day paper at the end of last month, concerning an elderly spinster and a Papuan native missionary, who has been domiciled in Australia for nearly fifty years. The affair is one that concerns only the contracting parties, and one hesitates to comment, but the flagrant publicity it received will undoubtedly cause a few eyebrows to be raised—to say the least of it—in the Territories.

EDITOR ROBSON in his Side Lights on the SP Conference (May PIM), mentioned the Tongans and Samoans wearing their national dress “but all the other delegates are in Euro pean clothes.” What a pity that the Melanesian and Papuan natives, in their contact with the West, feel the necessity for exchanging the comfortable lava-lava for a pair of pants. They probably feel that it gives them a lift in the social scale above their less-educated countrymen.

Authority might encourage the reten tion of the lava-lava amongst its pupils who partake of Western learning, in stead of allowing this incongruous apeing of the European to continue.

The more clothes the less morals has been my experience of natives in TNG, when I hark back to the time—some forty years ago—in the German Solomons, when the older men wore nothing and the women but a bit of string and a small purr-purr (a sporran-like arrangement of native fibre). Their social morals were above reproach, and that is more than can be said in these days.

What a wonderful civilisation would be established amongst the Pacific races if we could pass on to those people only the best of our western knowledge and keep them uncontaminated from our vices, our pettinesses and our atom-age methods of relaxation.

I had a grin at a report in one Sydney paper of the SP Conference’s success: The soon-to-come period when the ignorant Pacific races will absorb our great Wes tern culture, become civilised (1950 brand) and educated. I turned a few pages of the paper and read a popular “strip.” A vocal balloon from the character’s mouth said: “What was all them crowds? Shore never seen traffic like that. . . . Guess I’ll take a I’il ole exercise. I’ll try fer time. . . .”

It often seems to me we should start our civilising nearer home.

I OFTEN wonder what these politicians and self-opinionated committees from UNO really mean when they use that over-worked cliche, “self-government,” for native races. How do they envisage

its establishment, say, in Papua and New Guinea with its many varied tribes and cultures distributed amongst its million or so inhabitants in such a comparatively small area? How is unity of purpose to be attained amongst so many people of many varied tongues? For we must not forget that the cultures and household gods mean as much—if not more —to them as do our own creeds and traditions to us.

Self-government must surely be a very lopg-range policy, and longer still if it is -to be successful, judging by the com plications arising in SE Asian countries which have secured for themselves “self government.” Even the Philippines are finding independence has its head-aches.

TO politicians and others who are in terested in the matter of self government for primitive peoples I commend a most worthy address given last December to a London audience by a Dutch journalist, J. H. Huizinga, who had been studying conditions in Africa.

It appeared in the Royal Empire Society’s United Empire for March-April, and cer tainly gives one food for thought.

IT is good to hear that Authority is alive to the potentialities of Com munist sabotage in Australia’s northern bastions in NG. The go-slow tempo amongst the workers is already a fait accompli, but imagine the position if intensified by the introduction of the systematic spreading of pests and diseases amongst coconuts and cocoa. Blue Allan recently sounded a timely note of warn ing concerning the dangers facing New Guinea, and he is a man who keeps his ear well to the ground. Besides his re ferences to the dangers of the infiltration of Chinese Communists to NG he raised another important fact when he referred to “many white people employed by Com monwealth departments since the war’” not being very satisfactory types “accord ing to the accepted standards for white people in the Territory.”

There are accepted standards even these days and the Administration should see that potential residents of the Terri tory are adequately “screened” not only as regards their political or ideological standards, but their suitability to be resi dents in a black country with credit to their fellow Europeans. This should be a point not t,o be forgotten if, and when, land is made available to ex-Servicemen.

The Digger, who settled in NG after the First War, proved himself, on the whole, to be a fine type.

THE latest importation from NG to Australia, so I hear, is to be native ritual rhythms which, so it is said, “will sweep the jazz world.” NG art seems to be infiltrating to Australia if one can judge by Dobel’s enthusiasms for Mount Hagen craftsmanship—and now the pro posed introduction of native music to re place Africo-American jazz.

MORE complexities of western civilisa tion: A writer in a Sydney paper points out that bride payments amongst NG natives have reached the stupendous sum of from £2OO to £3OO ex torted from young men as marriage pay ments by grasping parents,” replacing the old pigs’ tusks and arm-shells.

What with war damage and advancing Western civilisation what can you expect?

Father probably wants to pay off his jeep and radio set, and has ideas of a gal vanised iron roofed domicile. What’s the Prices Commissioner doing, anyway?

I notice he is reported as having no control over primary produce at the local market in Rabaul (PIM, May, p. 15). In pre-war days this was a job carried out by the District Officer, and should be re introduced. Natives must learn to take the bitter with the sweet; they can’t expect to have all the privileges and none of the responsibilities.

THE talk of establishing a secondary school at Wau (PIM, May, p. 22) is a step in the right direction, and the suggestion of a hill station an even better suggestion. “An amenity that all but the stubborn Australian would have established years ago.” Truly the Aussie likes to live the hard way, and too often looks upon the finer amenities of life as being “sissy.” In the German time the government had a fine health hostel at Toma, in the hill country behind Kokopo, for the New Britain Europeans. Over on the mainland of NG the mission station at Sattelberg was a popular place for short holidays and convalescing.

REPORTS state that the War Graves Commission is doing a good job of work caring for the graves in the Port Moresby, Lae and Bitapaka cemeteries, also tenders are being called this month for war memorials. I hope the graves of the AN & MEF, the men who helped win NG for us in the First War, have not been forgotten in the old Rabaul cemetery where they formed such an his torical landmark.

BITS AND PIECES: At the big Empire Day pageant in Sydney at the Town Hall, the central figure—Britannia — was none other than a young New Guinea lass, Miss Gill Hemming, who spent her childhood on a New Ireland plantation and came out with her mother in the general exodus in December, ’4l. Gill is now on the Inky Way in Sydney, and is doing very well. . . . Tom Iredale has written an interesting book on “Birds of Paradise and Bower Birds.” It is illus trated by Lilian Medland and gives some trite facts about BOP. . . . The old firm of BP showed a record profit of over £300,000 last year. Dividend 12 i per cent. . . Retail price of coffee in Australia towards the end of May was 7/9 a lb. and yet reports stated New Caledonia cof fee was rotting on the ground. It is not popular in Australia, so importers say.

Mr. A. L. Cook, an old resident of Mel bourne, was in Sydney recently. He is the man who gave his name to Cook’s Crossing, on the railway line between Ba and Lautoka, Fiji. Mr. Cook is an old railwayman—he was in Fiji, building lines for the CSR Co., Ltd., in 1896. He built railways also in China, the Philip pines and other places in the East. He built the original railway line for the gold miners on Misima Island* eastward of Papua.

Mr. Stan E. Mabus, who formerly was Native Labour Overseer for Steamships Trading Co., Ltd., at Samarai, Papua, now is residing at The Chalet, Mount Buffalo National Park, Victoria.