Another Skymaster For P-Ng

But Hotel Bottleneck Not So Easy to Solve

INTRODUCTION of an extra Skymaster, by Qantas, on the Sydney-New Guinea service should end the transportation bottle neck that has irritated Territorians for months.

The plane is additional to the regular Skymaster services which leave Sydney each Wednesday and Sunday and return the following day. The new service will leave Sydney each Thursday and provide up to 48 additional seats per week.

First flight left Sydney July 1.

Sandringham services will continue to run from Sydney through to Rabaul each week, leaving Sydney on Sunday evening. There will be the usual Sandringham service to Port Moresby leaving Sydney altern ate Wednesdays.

The new arrangement should now make it possible to get seat bookings at short notice.

More Irritation In

Moresby

PASSENGER tempers were frayed on June 22 when a Qantas Sandringham was delayed a day iu Po S Mor esby at the direction of the Regional Director of Civil Aviation. Passengers allege that they were actually seated in the plane waiting to take off for Rabaul

when they were told to disembark.

The plane was grounded to allow an inquiry into crew complaints on rest periods—under Civil Aviation regulations plane crews must have

a specified rest period while on active flying duty. It appears that crew members had to sleep in a Port Moresby mess because no beds were available in either of the town’s two hotels.

This seems unusual; we under stand that rooms are permanently engaged for Qantas crew members at the Papua Hotel. However, at the same time, the hotel position

in Port Moresby is satisfactory for neither guests, transients, the pro prietors, staff nor, obviously, for air craft crews.

The Papua Hotel provides all Qantas accommodation, including crew accommodation, and regular overnight passenger accommodation for the Sandringham which arrives in Port Moresby from Sydney each Monday and goes on to Rabaul each Tuesday. In addition, the crew of the Sandringham which arrives in Moresby alternate Thursdays is also accommodated for several days; there is the normal flow of travellers coming in to Moresby to await aircraft for Australia; or alternately, arriving from Australia to await transport to other parts of the Territory.

Finally, there are the travellers within the Territory seeking accom modation.

The Case For Another

Hotel

The accommodation available in the town at present is frequently inadequate for the demands put upon it. The managers of the hotels, there fore, either have to turn guests away, knowing that there is no other place for them to go; or they put extra mattresses into two-bedded rooms and earn the curses of guests already in residence.

Moresby needs another hotel, or alternately, a Qantas establishment on the lines of the passenger and crew accommodation provided so admirably at Lae.

In a number of the air services provided in New Guinea it is still necessary for the crew to arise at some ungodly, small hour of the morning. When the crew is accom modated in a hotel, that means that the rest of the guests also are awakened, which in turn, means that said guests get about four hours sleep on that night.

It is usually completely useless to try to go to bed in most of New Guinea’s hotels until midnight. The bars do not close until 10, or later on the New Guinea side, and it re quires those two extra hours for stragglers to get to their beds. Even then, it is not unusual for some people with little regard for the comfort of others, to make wassail for hours outside the bedroom doors of other guests.

THIS state of affairs is not the fault of the hotel proprietors or their staffs. It is the fashion in P-NG to make noise when, how and where the fancy takes you, re

gardless.

And added to this is the fact that in all h ?‘ el i et th f„ blem arises of how to let m wic maximum amount of the same time, not let in the maxi mum amount of noise.

Builders of hotels in P-NG have

solved the problem, for the most part, by letting in the air and allowmg the noise take care of itself.

When the Papua Hotel was designed and built before the war— to cater for the wants of residents and travellers of a town of 300 or 400 residents—it was admirable for the purpose. Even to-day, under hopelessly crowded conditions, it has some features which cannot be bettered by hotels anywhere. But the European population of Moresby is now about 10 times that figure and there is much more travelling per capita of population done in the Territory now than there ever was before the war when the bulk of people went by ship and so took

their accommodation with them, Nowhere else in the world but P-NG is it taken so matter-of-factly that one should share a room with a perfect stranger; and this un civilised custom alone, is respon sible for a great deal of the noise in Territory pubs: One person cannot make very much noise; but put two people together and they can keep their neighbours up half the night, Drag in a mattress and require a third party to sleep on it, on the floor, and the best hotel room begins to look like a camp and the three occupants can put on a party that will keep the whole hotel awake.

Little wonder if plane crews can

not get adequate rest in P-NG hotels; but, by the same token, plane crews add to the unrest of other travellers. A mess in Port Moresby, on the lines provided in Lae by Qantas for their transient passengers, with separate quarters for crew, would be a blessing.

Indefinitely prolonged, the present system of shared rooms and over crowding, could turn the best hotel into a doss-house.

The only other alternative to

additional hotel accommodation seems to be to supply managers with double-strength sleeping-pills, to be issued to guests, as required, II Miss Barbara Furness, of the Aus tralian Broadcasting Commission’s executive’s office, flew from Adelaide to Port Moresby On June 6. She will stay there for 21 months as secretary to the ABC manager for Papua and NG, Mr. H. S. Sibary.

Tenders by W. A. Purchase for the erection of three “L” type re sidences with native quarters at Lae have been accepted by the Depart ment of Works of the P-NG Ad ministration. The cost of the resid ences will be £4,940 each. Two are to be completed in 20 weeks, one in 16 weeks.