50 Years a Pioneer in P-N[?]
p. 88 · Read in the full issue
MRS. FLORA STEWART, of the Hotel I at Lae, is so well known in the TI tory of Papua and New Guinea that she nr no introduction to residents, or to visitors have passed through that centre.
She was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, reached Papua from Australia in 1906. first became Mrs. Gofton, and had children, a son Moresby, who was killed Germany in 1940, and a daughter Ela, is now married and living at Lae.
By her second husband, Mrs. Stewart hii daughter Flora, who is married and lives Port Moresby.
From a hotel at Wau on the Morobe < field, in 1935 they built another hotes Lae, the Hotel Cecil, of which nothing left in 1945.
Mrs. Stewart was the first civilian w<m to return to Lae after the war in 1946,, she spent three years fighting the Adminii tion and Town-Planners who wanted hes move the proposed new hotel to the reside area on the plateau.
Here she was offered a smaller piece of so she clung to her old site, which hr permanent water supply. The present was built in 1952, with two stories, accommodation for 127 people, besides spas public rooms, a fern courtyard and witW Huon Gulf just across the road.
There is a dance hall adjacent to the tl and a lot of other buildings which air part of the property, in the grounds a> metre swimming pool has been built.
Mrs. Stewart has done some travellim the last few years, once to England fori British Festival and again for the Coroiui Her last trip was to China and Japan,, she is currently on a tour of other par 1 ! the. Pacific—New Zealand to Hawaii.
While the site of the new hotel was debated, Mrs. Stewart set up a tempq hotel in a disused AWAS camp in the ju Any person who stayed there will neven the memory of those brown-paper wallse rusty tin roofs, and the barest minimon privacy. Most of the walls protectedb inmate, like the old swimming costumes, , neck to knee, unless the observer outsidel interested enough to go to trouble to t better view.
The conditions were so far removed normal standards that a visitor felt th»i was part of history and tradition ini making, like a prisoner in the Towers London.
Post-war in devastated New Guinea i tough. Hard to believe now that thee New Guinea is only about seven yearn