Making N. Guinea
p. 136 · Read in the full issue
Dca And
The Dc3 Ban
Making N. Guinea Too Safe For Pioneers
IT is still anyone’s guess as I whether residents of the Westeie Highlands area of New Guintx are to continue to enjoy DC3 ail services or not.
Following a visit to the area witi his successor, Mr. V. A. Rule, tic retiring P-NG Director of Civi Aviation, Mr. John Arthur, said thr the Department’s policy regard* DC operations in the Highlands hsi not altered. Later he qualified thi statement by saying that whei Highlands strips were in an unsatii; factory condition DC3 aircraft wouu not land; when they were safe I all respects, DOS’s would land.
This seems to leave residents of tld Western Highland just about whee they were.
People living in the Mt. Hagq area had expected the axe to fas with regard to DC3 operations, o March 1; Mr. Arthur said this ww not so—the date was “deferred Someone else now puts the date ] March 31.
The DCA scheme is to use Do< aircraft to operate into Minj, froo where light aircraft will carry gooc and passengers to other local strifiJ Settlers point out that" this w» mean double handling of everythin! and thus much greater cost. Thee is also greater risk of loss throug; damage, pilfering and delay. 3 addition, settlers are denied tl right to charter large aircraft f the cheaper backloading of th©j produce to the coast.
Mr. Danny Leahy, who was ok of the original discoverers of tl Highlands, says that the air serviii to Mt. Hagen was better 20 yeae ago than it is to-day, and in thr he is no doubt right.
There was no DCA 20 years a@ The first thing any pioneer in N©' Guinea did, be he prospector ' patrol officer, was to put in th roughest of air strips and withe hours some airman, without bavin to ask permission of anyone, hn landed a plane on it.
There probably is something to 1 said for the present method of cok trols—but it sometimes goes ill will rugged pioneering.
If the Department of Civil Aviatici had been running affairs in 1930, , is unlikely that there would ev/ have been a great gold-dredgiii enterprise in the Bulolo Valley.
One cannot somehow imagine the Mr. Arthur would ever have allowtv anyone to land on the Bulolo stn: as it was in those days, with a three engined Junkers carrying a capacii: load of a three-tons dredge tumbles shaft.