One Saturday in Rabaul
p. 109 · Read in the full issue
OATURDAY’S dawn was fair enough to please any baseball fan. The catcher of the Red Sox (Chinese) team was out; but so also was New Guinea’s shortstop.
Business transactions were but inci dental to sporting prognostications. The lunchtime gathering at the New Guinea Club was bigger, brighter and more corporate than was usual with these bearers of the white man’s burden.
When, several schooners later, they entered the baseball arena, their Club’s banner proudly waved greetings and defiance: ’twas its first airing on a field of battle.
Wives, sweethearts, children and well wishers packed the grandstand. Cars, trucks and jeeps arrived until the play
ing field was ringed with » cheering jeering mass of humanity, voluble in either ecstasy or despair—a thousand self-appointed umpires!
So was the stage set for a mighty tussle between the undaunted New Guinea Club and the undefeated Red Sox. Three cases of Australian beer awaited the Club’s victorious return.
SCORES: 23-6 in favour of Red Sox.
ANTI-CLIMAX: The following Saturday, almost by accident. Cubs defeated Red Sox, 20-16.
Darwin will have deep-sea berth age at a sound timber wharf before the end of 1952. The port has been in a condition of decrepitude ever since it was bombed bv the Japs in 1942.