A Letter And A Tribute From

Mrs. Flora S. Stewart

America

Jfrs. Flora Shaw Stewart,

H who after over 50 years in Papua and New Guinea is robably the Territory’s best-known isident, was surprised recently hen she received this letter from merica. ar Mrs. Stewart: It was rather startling to see an article in r evening paper "The New Haven Register" out Mrs. Shaw Stewart. I am sure that we j not related but my grandmother's name is Phoebe Shaw before she married my grand er, Alexander Stewart. Grandmother was ucated in England (Birmingham), and grand her was a Scotsman whose parents settled Nova Scotia, Canada. This makes it quite coincidence, don't you think?

I am enclosing the article which my husband i I found most interesting. We hope that u continue to have a full life and much >piness.

She was probably even more rprised by the letterhead Mrs. >rton used. It said;

Classified Abstract Archive Of

The Alcohol Literature.

Maintained by the Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol Editorial office: Laboratory of Applied Biodynamics, Yale University, 52 Hillhouse Ave., Yale Station, New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.A.

With the letter was a clipping of article, some of which follows, me of the article can be written to art, but there is a fair lount of truth in it. The gold tiers “with pockets crammed with itled dust” are conspicuously ;ent from the Hotel Cecil (and STG generally) these days; and rry Gofton was certainly not ed in France in World War 11. may have been a World War I ualty, but the impression is that died in Papua. t is true that Mrs. Stewart set business again after the war in AW AS barracks, near Lae, but re was not much segregation of sexes when I stayed there in S. I know I occupied a cubicle arated by a piece of sisalkraft n Mr. S., an ex-Wewak miner.

S. slept, but I didn’t. The ht was punctuated by my howls anguish: “Turn over, Mr. S. n over. You’re snoring!” travelling Bishop, in the end icle of the same house, also red. But although I hadn’t any ipunction about telling my ing friend of his nocturnal its, respect for the Cloth made hestitate with the Bishop, tunately, he moved on before J overcame inhibitions and I

found myself howling through his

partition.— JT.

This is how a North American Newspaper Alliance writer saw it: —

Salute to a N. Guinea

Pioneer

Tvirs. Flora Shaw Stewart, known as “Ma” to generations of gold miners, anthropologists, pilots, geologists, gamblers, crocodile shooters and beachcombing drunks, has sold her “pub”, the Hotel Cecil, after 51 years in the islands in the hotel business.

The “pub” is a wondrous place, an establishment where guests order by number, because the barefoot black waiters in laplaps do not speak English.

At any given moment, Ma Stewart’s place is apt to house gold miners with pockets crammed with bottled dust, a United Nations delegation, an ornithologist from New York, a crocodile hunter on his way south to Sydney for vacation, a Government patrol officer freshly back from contacting stone agers who have never seen whites before, and a missionary bishop sternly disapproving of the enthusiastic collective consumption of high powered Australian beer he views.

Lae, the principal centre of New Guinea’s north coast, still retains a bit of the frontier.

The Bloke from the Bush

It hasn’t been too long since a visiting Sydney zoologist, who issued a call for live New Guinea snakes, got better service than he bargained for.

A “bloke from the bush” wandered into the “pub”, opened his shirt and dumped a squirming and poisonous mass of taipans on the bed.

Since she arrived in Samarai in eastern Papua, a dark-eyed Scots lassie of 20 in 1906, Mrs. Stewart has collected butterflies, birds, bad debts and racehorses. She came to the islands originally because her father was considering investing in a hotel and sent her to inspect the place. She found both a career and a husband.

She was married to Harry Gofton, who promoted the first island horse race meeting in 1910-11, three years after her arrival in the islands.

Gofton was killed in France during World War I. Their only son, Moresby Gofton, died in Europe also, flying with the Royal Air Force.

Mrs. Stewart and her sister ran a hotel at Samarai until 1929, when

she married James Stewart —not Hollywood’s—and both moved into the mountainous heart of New Guinea to establish the first hotel serving the hundreds of miners drawn by the fabulously wealthy Edie Creek gold rush.

Gold Field Days The Hotel Bulolo at Wau was a plaited bamboo place, which provided accommodation for 32 guests and a glass of air-freighted beer for the prospectors when they came in from the wilderness.

Mrs. Stewart and her husband — who was killed in an auto accident in Wau in 1937 —promoted one of the most unusual race tracks in the world.

They shipped horses from Aus tralia to Lae, then loaded them iboard big corrugated Junkers ilanes to fly them into the rugged nterior. Bookies, parimutuel board, ockeys complete with racing colours vere flown in, too —and a full iedged race track with saddling taddocks and grandstand appeared vhere primitive savages had been earring a short time before.

Racing ended abruptly in 1934, phen investigation showed that— iven in the heart of New Guinea -horses had been doped and ockeys had held back mounts to irevent them from winning.

In those gold rush days, Mrs. itewart was often the community ianker, keeping tobacco tins of gold nder her bed for miners who did lot know that the hotel had no afe.

She was a community banker in nother way as well. Before World yar 11, she had nearly £12,000 out 2 grub stakes, loans or accommoda ion or food to miners down on heir luck. None of that sum has ince been repaid.

The war arrived at Lae at several undred miles an hour on the lorning of January 17, 1942. When apanese planes swept in from the iismarck Sea, Mrs. Stewart, along ith other Australian women, had een evacuated south. But her ub was open and the fighters lachine-gunned it after attacking le airstrip.

Bar patrons returned to their eer when the planes flew away, eading up the Markham River alley.

The Wau horses and hotel and hotel in Lae were destroyed uring the war.

Back to Business Mrs. Stewart returned to Lae in 146, one of the first civilian women ) come back, to attempt to enter asiness again.

“There wasn’t thrupence of my Id hotel to be found,” she says. [ was the only woman in the

territory who would have attempted to return to business under the circumstances —but I did.”

She acquired a barracks area recently vacated by Australian Army WACs and went into business in a place that is still legendary in New Guinea.

Guests were housed in cubicles separating them from their neigh bours only with thin and narrow sisalkraft walls which extended neither to the ceiling nor to the floor.

There weren’t any complaints about ventilation but there wasn’t any privacy either.

Guests were segregated by st into separate buildings.

Conditions were crude, but M Stewart is still proud of a pub th£ was for five years “the only plat you could buy a cup of tea in th Territory of New Guinea,”

By June of 1951, however, Mr Stewart was able to obtain materia: to build the present Hotel Cecil, large two-storey wooden place the is an island institution.

It has 40 rooms, an Olympic-siz swimming pool named for her sor two large bats, a grill room, dining room, and a patronage tha extends from visiting ambassador to derelicts cadging free drinks.