Rabaul’S Toads And

Snails

And Other Pests

From Judy Tudor

KABAUL smells these days, in fact as well as metaphorically. Of squashed giant toads and giant •snails toasting in the sun, and of Jlavatories. No septic tank exists in :the whole area, maybe because IRabaul has so lately given up being “‘temporary”—maybe through some whim of local health department authorities.

The sanitary arrangements are therefore of the type you usually Ifind stuck half a mile down the back yard in Australian country towns. But for some reason, Rabaul has brought the contrivances right inside the houses with them. This may save many a long damp trek; but no one need imagine they don’t nake their presence felt —especially during periods of prolonged wet (as recently) when all smells are in tensified.

The toads—which range in size from that of a puppy-dog to that or an ordinary frog—were intro iuced just before the war, and have spread all over the Gazelle Pen nsula, maybe further. They were Drought in to catch insect pests— is were those in Queensland and Fiji—but in NG they still remain, is yet, giant. They come out in ;housands at night and hop about nside the houses, in the garden or lown the roads where the wheels of eeps and cars and trucks explode hem with a loud pop. In the next lay’s sun their mangled corpses lend forth a fine stench.

Much the same effect can be got rom squashed giant snails, which ilso swarm across the roads in the light, or when there is sufficient lamp to attract them. Any car ourney is accompanied by the con inuous scrunch of snails.

It has been said, for several years low, that the giant snails intro luced by the Japs are far less of - nuisance than immediately after he war. But they are less of a pest »nly in degree. They still eat the oung cocoa plantings at Kerevat nd are a menace to domestic ardens. They can be kept at bay nth commercial snail-bait; but his is expensive when the snails re large and in millions, and the •ait can be washed away by heavy ain.

' They are still spreading in the Jazelle Peninsula; and, as no effort 3 made to stop them, it is im tossible to say how far they will :o, eventually.

Anything likely to introduce the nails is tabu in the Highlands of he mainland.

Gathering In The Dogs

On the main road in Rabaul any vening you are likely to meet a

procession of police-boys, one trundling a mesh box on small pneumatic tyres, with sundry help ers in the van, and flanked by a couple of other PB’s with stout, long-handled nets.

They are off, they will tell you, to the other end of the town where “planty too much dog he stop.”

They are the town’s dog-catching outfit.

There is a dog tax, but plenty of stray dogs, still. Imported labourers usually acquire one or more dogs while working in the area. When due for return to their villages, they bring the dogs with them to the transit camps and tether them there by the dozen. As virtually all labour is transported by air these

days, embarkation day is literally D-Day for the unfortunate pooches.

A few, by some means, are got on board; but generally the air com panies refuse to carry these dogs.

They are loosed on the town —hence the dog-cart and the dog-netters.

If Mrs. Lucy Brodie, an old resident of New Guinea, left for Europe on May 29 on the MV Australia. She plans to reside indefinitely in Eng land. Three of her children are in New Guinea —Mrs. Marjorie Shields, of Madang (whose husband died last year); Mr. Ken Brodie, who is in the Army, and stationed near Wewak; and Mrs. Joan Wilmott, of Rabaul.