Mountain

Missionaries Go Over The

Road Building at 10,000 Feet

By Renata Cochrane

There has been much publicity given to roadmaking in Papua-New Guinea in recent issues of PIM.

But this story tells of a private enterprise, unpublicised effort.

FEE French Fathers of the Mission of the Sacred Heart, Yule Island, have just completed i road across the massive range of ;he Owen Stanley Mountains of Papua. Very few people know of ihe effort that has gone into this Temendous undertaking. Very few jeople, in fact, know that the build ng of this newest section of road s the culmination of 600 miles of •oad-building.

After penetrating into the in credibly rugged mountain country >ehind the Mekeo plain, the mission tries, dependent on their head luarters at Yule Island for essential upplies, were obliged to build a net vork of roads where before only jack-breaking native tracks had existed. During the last 30 years, he roads have been extended to ink together six main mission itations and seventy secondary stations. The roads are well graded

and wide enough to take a fully laden pack-horse.

Soon after his appointment as Bishop, in 1947, the Most Reverend Andre Sorin, MSC, decided that the Mission should extend its activities to the Chirima valley on the other side of the Owen Stanley Mountains.

This meant that a road had to be surveyed and pegged across the heights of the dividing range.

The Bishop chose Father Dubuy, ace road-maker of the Mission, for this tremendous task. He had founded Ononge Station, in the Goilala Sub-district, in 1913, and had remained in the mountains every since, combining his mis sionary activities with a prodigi ous programme of building, which included the magnificent church at Ononge, schools, dispensaries, and many miles of expertly graded roads.

When Father Dubuy set out to survey the new road, he was already over 60. He took with him 50 natives from Ononge and the Chirima Valley. In the six months it took him to complete the survey, he lived under canvas in the dripping, cheerless rain-forest of the high

mountains. He found that the road would have to cross the Owen Stanleys at the very foot of the three peaks of Mount Albert Edward at an altitude of 10,000 feet.

Qn the other side of the range, he was confronted with a wilderness of cliffs and overhanging precipices 400-500 feet deep. Across this night marish country he had to peg the

road so that it would gradually descend to 5,600 feet. He used red paint to mark the places where ex plosives would later blast the track.

Many of the places were in accessible on foot.

Nothing daunted, Father Dubuy had himself dangled over the edges of precipices with ropes of lawyer vine.

IN 1948, he was able to write to Bishop Sorin;—"The pegging of the road is completed. It will be a tremendous work, especially from Murray Pass to Jongai (in the Chirima Valley). In my long ex perience of road-making, I have not yet found such dangerous cliffs as the ones through which this road will have to be blasted.”

From his own experience, the Bishop knew what such an under taking meant for his missionaries.

In 1935, while working on a road, he himself had been caught in a landslide and severely injured, and his companion, Father Garreau, had been killed. Yet he decided to go ahead.

He notified the Administrator of his intention to open up the new road and asked for financial support. A total sum of £2,444 was granted as part-payment for the new section of road which was to link Urun in the Vanapa Valley with Jongai in the Chirima Valley.

Father Dubuy set to work with natives who had volunteered from nearly every village of the Vanapa

Valley. The first step was the planting of huge gardens to pro vide food for the workers. Father Dubuy appointed Brother Hilaire, MSC, another veteran roadmaker, to help him, and within two years the road was completed up to its highest point. Thereafter, he had the enthusiastic help of three young priests, Fathers Bel, Cadoux

and Barthe who had insf hppn appointed to’ evangelise the Chirima District g It was at this point that all sorts

of difficultiesWduJ

work could be started on the north eastern slopes new gardens had to be planted. In the meantime a tribal war had broken out between the Uruna people and the Chirima

people. It led to several payback murders which at times made the work of the three young Fathers very hazardous.

Another holdup occurred when an officer on patrol reminded the natives that, being free Papuans, they were under no obligation to work for the Mission. The people took this to mean that the Admin istration did not wish the road to be built.

When work was finally resumed, Father Cadoux nearly lost his life while blasting a cliff. In another place the road, which was being built on solid rock, slid down the precipice no less than six times, until finally it was firmly estab lished by Brother Hilaire over a vertical chasm of 300 feet. In spite of everything, the young Fathers pushed on with the road, with the result that it was finally opened in April, 1953.

IT is now possible to ride on horse back from the Papuan coast at a point across from Yule Island, to the Government Station and air strip at Tapini, in the Goilala Sub district, and to cross the Owen Stanleys into New Guinea as far as the village of Jongai, three days’ walk from Kokoda. It is hoped, be fore long, to continue the road as far as the Government Station there. The journey on horseback, from the coast to Jongai, given good conditions, takes a minimum of 11 days.

The only other road ever to be built over the Owen Stanleys was the wartime road from Bulldog to Wau, built by Australian Army Engineers. That was a tremendous feat. But the achievement of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart is all the more astonishing when one remembers that for tools they had only picks and shovels, crowbars and dynamite.

Father Dubuy did not live to see the completion of his last and most difficult road-building task. He was killed in a landslide near his own station of Ononge on August 16, 1952.

There still, from time to time, appear a few irresponsible people who assert that the Territory of Papua and New Guinea would do much better if it were not for the presence of missionaries. They should go and make a survey of the Kairuku and Goilala Sub- Districts, and see for themselves how the Fathers are not solely con cerned with the teaching of Christianity. The work of the French Missionaries of the Sacred Heart should be better known, as it reflects this spirit of unselfishness which is not discouraged by any difficulty and which has maintained unabated the enthusiasm of the old pioneers.

If Mrs. J. Hodgkinson, of Pymble, recently left Sydney with her two small daughters to join her hus band at Lautoka, Fiji.