High Cost of Keeping Native

Servants

AT present in South Australia on leave is Mrs. W. L. MacGowan, wife of the Assistant Director of Works and Housing, in Papua-New Guinea.

Mrs. MacGowan has spent 23 years in the Territory—except for the war-evacuee years and before the war lived in Rabaul; the family now lives in Port Moresby.

In an interview with the Adelaide Advertiser, she said that the cost of living at Moresby is twice as high as it was at Rabaul before the war, and in spite of the “living allowance” which Government officials receive it is quite impossible to save.

In Rabaul she kept three native servants who were each paid 10/- a month and provided with food rations. In Moresby she has one servant who is paid £2 a week and keeps himself in food. He is provided with quarters away from the house, with his own septic system and a bathroom.

The natives, who are taught in Govern ment schools and trade classes, make very good mechanics and practically all the Government buses, which provide free transport, are driven by natives. On “boat days” the town is crowded with tourists who comprise at least 50 per cent, of the passengers on the now regular

shipping runs.

Government medical services in Papua are excellent. There is a very good hospital for the natives, with a white sister in charge. There is also a very good hospital for Europeans. The climate is so healthy, Mrs. MacGowan says, that there is very little malaria and the children in particular are “a lovely,

healthy lot.”

The Rev. R. de Voil, Vicar of Hwywood, Lancs., England, who was Rector of St.

George’s Church, Rabaul, New Guinea, and Archdeacon of Northern Melanesia, 1935-37 has been appointed to the charge of the Chinchilla Parochial District, Queensland, and arrived in Sydney on the New Australia in September. Mr. de Voil would welcome the opportunity of meeting any old New Guinea friends.