Road Links For Ng

Highlands

May Open Up Large Area of Crown Lands

By Judy Tudor

IN maybe eighteen months’ time it will be possible to drive a jeep from Madang, on the New Guinea mainland coast, to Mt.

Hagen in the Western Highlands.

Two very determined people are working towards this Objective- District Commissioner I. F. G.

Downs, at Goroka, and ADO T. W.

Ellis, at Madang.

Madang and Highlands Districts have been able to rid themselves of the assistance of the Works and Housing Department (Common wealth Works, it is called now) and as a consequence have begun to make real progress with reading, employing local material and local talent which may not be up to civil engineering standard, but which seems to be able to produce, within the budget allowed, jeepable roads and fair bridges.

Except for a few places where bridges are being repaired or re placed, and one gap of about six miles where some rock-blasting is needed, it is now possible in the dry season to go by jeep from Mt. Hagen to Aiyura.

In addition, there are many feeder roads leading off this main route—in the Eastern Highlands district alone (and that excludes Mt. Hagen) there are now 353 miles of vehicular roads, over 170 of which have been added in the last twelve months. Maybe before this 1953 is out, this main route will have reached Gusap—and from Gusap to Madang the road is the responsibility of Madang District.!

To be sure, these Highland roads are no paved speedways. In the wet just ending, they closely re semble bottomless morasses of thick black mud, that has an oil-paint quality that sticks to everything and is almost impossible to remove.

But more and more surfacing is being done with river gravel and, in reasonable weather, they are roads that are adequate for present purposes.

Gogol River And European

Settlement

UNDER 90 miles separate Gusap and Madang—and the road from Madang already is formed 29 miles out in the right direction to the Gogol River.

The Gogol River now has no bridge, but it could have a ferry, and if it could have either it would give coastal access to the 25,000! acres of Crown land that lie on the other side of the river. This is reported to be , good alluvial soil

litable for cocoa growing, and robably for robusta coffee, for pea uts and for other agricultural and astoral purposes.

And, mark it well, this is Crown md—it has not to be “bought” ■om the natives—which should lort-circuit the usual long, weary usiness of acquiring land in that ay.

Little has been heard of this land atil recently, but it is understood lat a few men in the Madang dis ict have already made applica □n for large slices of it.

A.E-Highlands Or Madang

Highlands?

T is planned, of course, that Lae also will eventually be linked to the Highlands by road; but it ems at this stage that Madang ill complete its link first. The ute is far shorter; and in the Lae ea the concentration at the oment is on the completion of the arkham Point bridge and the neral improvement of the Lae au road.

Commonwealth Works is building e two or three miles of approach ad, from the main Markham Uley road to the Point, and Drnibrook Construction Co. will ke over from there and build the idge.

The approach road is through go swamps, and most of it is lilt up three or four feet on top of rduroy to get it above swamp

level. The estimated cost of the road is £14,000; but it looks more like a £40,000 job.

On one morning this mid-April, after Lae had had eight inches of rain in the previous night, the last mile of the bridge was impassable because of local flooding from storm-water —the Markham at that stage was not in flood. The road in this last mile will have to be raised another three or four feet to get it above this local storm-water.

This bridge at Markham Point is being built against the judgment of a number of local residents, who fought to have the Markham bridged

much higher up. They claimed that a bridge at a crossing several miles further west would not be subject to flooding and would, at the same time, allow easy access to the High lands.

The decision of Authority to build the bridge at Markham Point, willy-nilly, may ultimately be the deciding factor as to whether Madang or Lae becomes the natural outlet for Highlands produce.

It seems unlikely, however, that in the near future road transport will supplant air transport for Highland areas. At present the charter rate for air-freighting

works out at about 5d per pound from Lae to the Highlands. It will be a long time before there are roads to the sea coast capable of taking trucks large enough to com pete with this price.