Noise!

From P-NG’s 972 Jeeps and 1,732 Trucks

ALTHOUGH residents of Papua- New Guinea would have us believe that that Territory is a haven of peace (compared with the wild rush, din and general madness of, say, Sydney), in this writer’s humble opinion they have some of the noisest towns in the world.

As far as Port Moresby is con cerned, I’ll say all that again— doubled.

This is partially explained by the figures recently issued: of the 4,000 motor vehicles in the Territory, a quarter of them are jeeps and there are 1,732 trucks. (The rest include 344 motor cycles and 21 buses).

Add to these facts the following: % Jeep owner-drivers have only one method of starting their vehicles: —get the engine turning then push the accelerator flat on the floor. This produces a most satisfactory noise, particularly if the vehicle happens to he outside a hotel in the small hours of the night. That these mis-used buggies don’t take off vertically is not the fault of the person at the punish ing end of the accelerator. % The 1,732 trucks are almost in variably driven by natives to whom all noise is glorious and an end in itself. Few, if any, of the trucks appear to have mufflers hut all of them seem to have 57 different gears: there is always fust another one to which the dusky fiend at the wheel can shift in order to grind his juggernaut over the not very formidable hills of Moresby.

The new offices that Burns Philp have built in Musgrave Street, in Moresby, are the most modern and elegant in the Territory. But in May their owners were frantically lining them with acoustic material m an endeavour to minimise the noise that rises continually from huge trucks grinding and whining their way up the hill.

In the meantime, when you wish to speak privately to an inhabitant of one of the offices, he carefully gets up and closes all the louvres onto the street so that you can make conversation without scream ing.

I have my doubts about the efficacy of acoustic material—a form of wallboard used in Australia to line phone booths. It is peppered with small holes which are supposed to absorb the noise and it works very well in the heart of noisy Svd ney. But the ANZ bank in Moresby has these anti-noise devices, and yet within that building, too, the noise of passing heavy traffic is still excruciating. . Tt f e f, ms to me that when Terri tory folk gave the driving of semi

trailers, 10-ton trucks, diesel engines and other abominations into the hands of natives, they paved the way for stretched ear-drums, high blood pressure, frayed nerves and stomach ulcers to become endemic

diseases.

J.T.