Air Drop For

Purari Patrol

Port Moresby, April 30.

AWAY up in the grim forebidding limestone ranges above Hathor Gorge in the Purari River country of Papua, two District Services Officers.

A.D.O. Hicks and Patrol Officer Chester, are slogging along to contact bow-and arrow gentry who harmlessly (fortun ately) nicked a bit of scalp from another patrol officer, H. E. Clarke, a few weeks back.

The idea of the present patrol is to initiate the long, slow business of getting this thankless area under Government control. The two men with native police and carriers left the coast on April 5 by launch up the Purari, then paddled along in canoes for a spell and finally finished the trip to Lake Tebera, 70 miles north east of Kikori, on foot.

It had been hoped that a Catalina, could land on the lake to unload patrol supplies, but the water level proved so low that the “lake” was a patchwork mass of swamp and mud-channels. So, instead, an air-drop was made from a Catalina on April 27, and this fine piece of flying was accomplished by Captain C. G. Fox of Qantas who just had space enough and no more to swing his craft on the narrow circuit over the lake.

The lake is cupped in a hollow be tween thousand-foot ridges enclosing an area about five miles long and li miles wide. The only possible dropping site was a tiny ridge of land in the middle of the lake about 200 yards long and 60 yards wide, and to make this drop the plane did 16 runs on a flight a mile and a half long and three-quarters of a mile wide.

Not a bag or bale missed the narrow target.

The Administrator, Colonel Murray, who went along to see the drop, watched a fine demonstration of skilful low-flying, quick mavouevring and sure-fire target aiming. Another Government man aboard, District Services Director Ivan Champion, got in some fine physical exercise heaving boxes and sacks out of the blister.

Working non-stop with the Qantas crew and three police sergeants, every thing was safely overboard in three quarters of an hour.

The most interested spectators were Messrs. Hicks and Chester, who watched from another patch of island near the dropping site where they had rigged up an improvised radio station to maintain contact with the plane. Crowded around them were the native police and carriers, plus, no doubt, a few local inhabitants.

Now the patrol will move up into even rougher country on the other side of the Purari, and will be in that general area for about three months.