Timber Scandal

Another Kind Of New Guinea

A Story of Incredible Waste and Maddening

Frustration

By R. W. Robson.

Pt. Moresby, Oct. 31

IN the days Before, if you were in the Bulolo Valley area of New Guinea, and met a couple of men, they sooner or later would lead you onto a hilltop, and point yearningly to the places where they permitted—could find good gold.

The Morobe world then turned on gold prospects. The common language was interlarded with references to penny weights and ounces and “coons” (the patient native labourers who carried and shovelled) and brightened with reflections upon New Guinea Goldfields Ltd., the big company which had leased so much of the likely country, and thus closed it to the fossickers.

That is all changed to-day. Now, the men you meet on the track don’t look down. They point upwards, up the valleys and across tthe mountain-tops; and their talk is all of pine—the famous Hoop and Klinki pine of the Morobe uplands. They visualise the fortunes that can be made, if only that beautiful timber can be cut down and transported to the hungry markets in New Guinea, and Australia, and overseas.

But that is about as far as it goes. In spite of all Liberal-Ministerial assurances, the Territory has not yet developed any comprehensible timber-getting policy. All the people in the Morobe district, and half the peoole elsewhere in the Terri tories. are eager to cut and use and market this timber; Canberra has given instruc tions that it shall, within reason, be cut and used: but still Port Moresby fiddles, and fumbles and footles: and no man knows who is to cut the timber, or how, or when.

My tour through the Territories has been attended by one long chorus of criticism of the Administration; but I think there was more virulence in the remarks relating to timber, than in all the rest.

One explanatory statement from Mores by might have silenced most of it; but Moresby says never a word. In relation to timber, as in most other matters, Moresby is silent, aloof and disdainful.

Therefore, one can only make an intel ligent guess concerning the cause of the present baffling situation.

The outstanding facts are: — • There is a large quantity of very good timber, and an almost incalculable amount of indifferent timber, in Papua and New Guinea. • Every Territories centre is clamouring for sawn timber, for countless construc tion projects. • Although there is an abundance of good to fair timber in the NG forests, imported timber is still pouring into the Territories. While I was there, the Admiral Chase discharged 500,000 feet of NSW timber in Port Moresby, at a landed price of 144/- per hundred super feet! • NG timber could be sold also to an apparently insatiable market overseas. • If the Territories’ present pie-crust economy is not to collapse, with dis astrous consequences, it is vital that the Territories’ resources be exploited, so that the Territories can do something more towards financing themselves.

THESE facts are apparent to everyone— including the Ministers who have been here. Why, then, are the timber resources of Papua and New Guinea not thrown open to exploitation by private enterprise?

The first reason, of course, is the reluctance of the Ward-Murray set-up

(still powerful here, despite the advent of a new Government) to let private pnternrise in on anything.

The second reason is a plan—worked out after the New Guinea timber-lease scandal—which provides that timber exploitation shall be carried out by big companies, in which half the shares shall be held by the Government.

And a third is the apparent reluctance of the Chief Forestry official, Mr. Me- Adam, to allow any of New Guinea’s trees

to be cut down for commercial purposes.

Mr. McAdam’s love of trees is almost fanatical, (See article on p. 103).

Everywhere I have been, I have found examples of the confusion and anger that exist, as a result of this inability of Canberra and Moresby to make up their minds.

Port Moresby, for example, is des perately short of timber; every stick that can be produced at Mr. Tom Flower’s sawmill, a few miles out along the aero drome road, is sold immediately at a handsome price.

There is not much really good timber in Papua, but there are plently of big trees— and, with the present demand, all is grist that comes to Tom’s mill. There, I saw stuff on the breaking-down bench from which most timber-men would turn in

disdain. But why worry—the resultant timber is eagerly bought and is solving some urgent problems in and around the Territory.

Tom Flower has produced a great deal of timber hereabouts in recent years—but generally in defiance of the Administra tion, who want to control his operations

rigidly and make him conform to a Plan.

How he has been able to get logs and keep going is, in the circumstances, one of the minor mysteries.

THE really worth-while timber of the Territories is on the highlands. The pine and cedar in and around the Bulolo Valley (Morobe) would rank high in any country. Its value long has been recognised. Old-time miner Yorkie Booth, 20 years ago, conceived a plan of floating this timber down the rivers to the sea, and clamoured for a lease.

But, as communication between the coast and the Bulolo was then entirely by air, no one could visualise a practicable proposition. Now, there is much heavy freighting along the road (built in war time between Lae and the Bulolo) and nothing to stop the Bulolo timber coming out.

Naturally, therefore, everyone in and around the Bulolo Valley is impatient to get on with the exploitation of these vast stands of pine, which surround the Bulolo and stretch away into the interior —5OO millions of super feet is believed to be the estimate.

The people of Wau insist that the ex ploitation of this timber is vital to them.

The gold industry is on the wane; it could be supplemented and partly replaced by timber; and, by the time that the timber also is worked out, a new economy might be established in the Upper Bulolo Valley, based partly on agriculture, and partly on the acceptance of that beautiful cool place as the natural health resort of the Territories.

But, so far, Moresby is deaf to all the appeals and objurgations of the lively and vocal community at Wau.

The only timber-getting lease granted so far in Morobe has gone to Bulolo Gold Dredging Ltd. Already, that powerful, well-managed company has established, right alongside the great organisation which operates its dredges, a new organisation, with fine equipment, which operates a sawmill, builds roads out into the timber country, and uses super machines to fell the pines, lift them out of the heavily-jungled gullies, and cart them to the mill.

From this timber, BGD are making pre fabricated houses for the Administration, and it is also engaged on a big contract under which the pine is being specially cut and shaped and sent to Australia as separators for storage batteries. BCD’s timber organisation and establishment are most impressive, and sure of success.

This development is well-known. It was formulated, as a special Plan, by Minister Ward before he left office.

WHAT is not so well-known is that the other big goldmining concern, New Guinea Goldfields Ltd., located at Wau, also has gone in for timber in a big way. It has a sawmill at Wau, a carpentry and joinery shop nearby, and it is produc ing good timber, much really excellent furniture, and it, too, has an Australian contract to supply, in pine, huge quan tities of those wooden separators for batteries Moresby did not give NGG a timber lease, or officially countenance its enter prise. NGG has big leases all over the place, and it has an area, called Ander son’s Lease, six or seven miles up the Valley towards the Waria, where there is a good stand of pine. It just went ahead and used that. This will keep NGG going for a while. The rest is on the knees of the political high gods.

PERHAPS a key to Moresby’s policy can be found in a modest establishment 'at Bulolo, between the township and the timber lease. Here, there is a Forestry Branch camp, in charge of Mr. Kavanagh, a high Forestry officer. An area of per haps 50 acres has been cleared, and thousands of little pine-trees, raised from;

seed, are flourishing in sheltered and tended beds.

The idea seems to be that, as BGD tears the big Hoop and Klinki pines out of the jungle, the jungle shall be cleared somewhat, and young pines planted in their place.

In comparison with the enormous size of New Guinea, the stands of pine are limited. I saw patches of pine half way across the highlands, towards Hagen and the Baiyer area; but the bulk of it seems to be in the Bulolo-Watut area. The idea of planting up new pine forests seems sound enough. But if it is intended to hold back the exploitation of NG timber resources until Forestry men can follow milling operations and plant a tree for every one cut out—then the scheme should be wiped out —along with all those other idealistic and quite impractical plans of the Ward-Murray regime.

The vital thing now is to get on with the exploitation of New Guinea’s timber resources, and let afforestation follow on behind, if and when New Guinea can afford it.

LAE, Madang, Goroka, Rabaul—every where I heard the same story: (a) a community literally crying aloud for sawn timber, wherewith to replace their now collapsing post-war buildings of cane and grass; and (b) an Adminis tration which stubbornly refuses to let the trees be taken out and cut up for timber.

At Goroka, for example, they are slowly acquiring BGD air-borne “prefabs,” into which the small European community is shifting from their grass houses. The prefabs are of excellent workmanship and material, but they are far too small for a family in that region—they would repre sent cramped quarters even in a Sydney suburb.

Appeals were made to Moresby for some arrangement under which sawn timber might be brought out of the jungled hills around Goroka. Moresby was not re sponsive. So that sturdy individualist, Jim Leahy who now runs a mixed farm at Goroka—had a Felton wheel and a sawmill flown in from South; he con structed in the ranges, over 6 or 7 miles, a suitable water-race to turn the Felton and drive the saws; and, the day I left Goroka, they were preparing to celebrate, as a national event, the appearance of the first power-sawn timber in that part of the Highlands.

The sour disapproval of high officialdom —which should itself have undertaken this enterprise long ago—could not hide the happiness of all the officials, from DO downwards, who at last see a chance of getting rid of their crumbling old shacks and sheds, and enlarging their newer houses.

The Administration —or its actual boss, the Works and Housing Branch—should have built some sort of road from that sawmill, so that the timber could be brought in to Goroka. But officialdom objected and argued about the route — which it wanted to make 16 miles long, instead of 7 or B—so Jim Leahy, with suitably flavoured phrases, sent his own labour out onto the ridges, to cut the sort of track he needed.

That is typical of NG under the present Administration.

In the shanty-town of Rabaul —where the unsuitability and dilapidation of buildings have to be seen to be believed (the result, of course, of officialdom's at tempt to persuade the community to build at Rapopo instead of in Rabaul)—the hunger for timber is something that is felt.

No one there wants timber more urgently and clamorously than Works and Housing. The Government’s sawmill at Kerawat has been idle for months—the result of someone’s failure to properly service the tractors and Mr. Jack

Chipper’s mill is in course of being shifted to a new site at Kokopo. So— believe it or not—Works and Housing are paying 25/- per hundred freight for the transport of sawn timber from the Colyer Watson mill at Cloudy Bay. • , ...

LATEST official announcements indicate that prefab houses from the Baltic countries, and aluminium houses from Britain, or elsewhere, are to be brought into this country at heavy cost.

Surely, the Moresby-Canberra clique have reached the apex of impractical dreaming and economic lunacy, in thus sending hundreds of thousands of abroad for something that could have been easily and cheaply manufactured in Papua-New Guinea itself.

Can anyone who knows the Territories see people settling down happily in verandah-less houses of metal construc tion? w£ g 0 to press there word of an administrative cataclysm in Moresby, where high officialdom is said to have at last fallen heavily upon certain gentlemen who have been stubbornly blocking all plans for the issuing of timber-cutting permits.

Even if this is so, the damage has been done. Years have been frittered away in “planning,” while huge sums have been and are being wasted in the importation of timber from Australia and New Zealand, and of these prefab things from Europe.