An Hour in the Life of a NG Highlands Coffee-Planter

ONE sunny morning, early in August, Mr. James L. Leahy, owner and operator of the most profitable coffee plantation in the New Guinea Eastern Highlands— a few miles out of Goroka —took his Land Rover along the edge of his plantation, loading bags of newly-picked coffee beans.

The photograph (taken from the air recently by Mr. Keith Colyer) shows the Leahy plantation; and the track followed by Mr. Leahy (lower photo) is defined by the left-hand edge of the dark patch —which, of course, are the older coffee trees. As the photo shows, the plantation lies along a flat ridge, between two steep gulches.

Half way along the plantation, having got his load, the planter turned for home. Reversing on the narrow strip, he forgot that the gulch at that point runs in towards the plantation’s edge like a Bay of Biscay. He ought to have remembered—he personally created every square yard of that planta

tion. Anyway, he backed over, into the gulch. The arrow points to the spot.

Jim says that in the next few seconds he was rather too busy to count; but he thinks the truck bounced once, and turned over three times before it ended its fall, on its four wheels, at the bottom of the gulch, 20 or 30 feet down.

Mr. Leahy extricated himself, counted three bruises and a minor cut, climbed out of the gulch and sent for a couple more trucks, which dragged the Land Rover up the steep bank; and then he re loaded the vehicle and drove it to the fermenteries. Tough machine;

tough planter

R.W.R.

t A RNZAF Sunderland flying boat from Fiji flew over Rarotonga airfield on July 2 and dropped certain spare narts urgently re quired by HMNZS Pukaki, homeward bound from the British H-bomb tests in the Line Islands.