Territories Talk-Talk
pp. 31-35 · Read in the full issue
By Tolala
“Ring Around Rabaul” was the title on a TV programme >n one of the Sydney Channels early this month, and I looked orward to seeing some old familiar scenes. But I was doomed o disappointment.
[E story purported to be the encirclement of the Jap main force at their Rabaul base by ;d (mostly Yankee) airmen, but shots of the bombing squadrons >ping their eggs could have been inhere. Let’s hope Posterity may i records of a more local setting ime goes by, preferably by an >ie camera. a half-hour screening one saw ling but Jap troops leaving in for their southward thrust; ;le fighting (which could have i anywhere—but certainly not md Rabaul) and flight after ;t of US bombers and fighters. )t a sign of an Aussie —not even r uzzy Wuzzy Angel”. No Coast hers or AIB. The Macarthurisa of Rabaul was an epic feature :he Pacific War, but not as m on that TV programme.
Is For |ress ie aristocrats of the Pacific — Tongans, Samoans and Fijians e proud of their sulus, mal and lava. How much more appro ve and dignified do the wearers ar as compared to the “dressed spectacle of the Papuan in s! ke a look at the cover photo be March PIM, and the mem of the Fiji Military Forces. j would have lost much of their ral dignity if they had been ■ing the shorts so much ured by the P-NG Forces, rely the goal of the western le, disseminating the advan -5 of civilisation, is attained if lical hygiene and mental edu ►n is inculcated to the “under leged”. Is it so essential that sociological attainments as ern dress should also be forced i them? this synthetic age we are too y impressed by outward ap ances and that does not mean Ing them into pants and petti 5.
Pacific
i Spots
>ee where Publisher Robson got self into the Letters to the >r page of the SMH on 19/3 58
pushing a worthwhile barrow for Fiji-Australian good relationship.
Australia’s casualness as regards outside countries who have a natural tendency to trade with her, is widely known But now in these days of high pressure salesmanship other tactics have to be adopted. For many years (and I think it still prevails) the High Commissioner for the Western Pacific has been represented in Sydney by its agents the old firm of BP & Coy in Bridge Street, and this arrangement has worked out well for many a year, despite the fact it is a survival of the wind jammer days. Now one hears (whether or not prompted by the Robson spur to activity one can only surmise) that Qantas Airways are to become Australian Trade Agents in various hitherto “blind spots,” including Fiji.
One wonders who in the P-NG Services acts as guardian for Aus tralian trade interests other than the Customs Tariff. That will be something to watch in the future years unless I am much mistaken.
"The Ships That
Linked . .
Toagoba’s story of the old BP copra catchers and Island liners (PIM, March, p. 82) was good to read.
An item which might be of interest concerning the old Moresby (the first regular steamer on the NG run) is the fact she was the last BP steamer to call at a German NG port when the Nord Deutscher Lloyd shipping firm received the monopoly for shipping services in the old German colony, and was the first BP steamer to call at Rabaul after the occupation by the Australian troops in the First War.
Shipping Justice, I suppose you would call it.
It was the idea of W. H. Lucas, Island Inspector for BP at the time.
And that same gent years before had been supercargo on the old Titus, a BP trading vessel through the Solomons and the Hebrides.
Toagoba might have heard that tale of Mr. Lucas and the Titus and a passing skipper of a rival firm.
I should like to hear from Toagoba on his reminiscences of
some of the old skippers who were as picturesque and as interesting as their floating homes. Such men as Mortimer, Voy, Mclnnes, Donaldson, Williams (Taffy and Cyril), Rothery and many another. All men who did pioneer work, not only for the Old Firm, but for the islanders.
A Bougainville
Poet I always get a kick out of Noelle Mason’s verse, and I am not the only one. She has the happy faculty of picturing by words what most of us have (or have had) to put up with amid our tropic surroundings.
A poet, says the dictionary, is “one possessing high powers of im agination, expression etc.” and those are the powers with which a dis criminating God has endowed her.
It would be nice to be able to buy a volume of her verse one of these days. Let’s look forward to that day.
Incidentally, Inus must have something that puts its residents in the limelight. (And I’m not thinking of Paul, whose war record is world famous) I am thinking of “Wee Bobbie” Scott who lived there once and w r as a regular contributor years ago to Sydney’s Bulletin.
The Dangers of
Centralisation
“Something has gone wrong,” says Dudley Jones, MLC for NG Islands electorate, according to a report in the PIM of March, when he aired a long-standing grievance of huge expenditure of revenue on Port Moresby and Papuan interests in comparison with expenditure to the old Trustee Territory. According to his figures, Papua’s European population was only half of NG’s and the native population only about one-third: ye I finance for building was 52.4 per cent, for Papua and 47.6 for NG, and of a grant of £1.3 million for NG a mere £1,500 had been al located to Bougainville.
Whacko the UNO critics safe guarding the Trust Territory!
This is the sort of thing that causes civil rebellion—the main source of trouble which has brought about the present “Indonesian” in cident where Java, the seat of gov ernment, was spending all the monies received from the produc tive areas of Sumatra and Celebes.
This sort of thing won’t work out indefinitely, and Canberra pooh bahs must realise this, too. Isn’t it time the Konedobu shrine was decentralised a bit?
What gives when native inde pendence comes around?
Are They Outworn
Customs?
Reading John Gunther’s remarks about NG Culture (PIM, March, p.
one is mainly impressed with cynicism about native cultures, ;ir arts, crafts and what-have j. I think the worthy Doctor must re Jrad his tongue in his cheek en dictating that address, tnyway, it doesn’t reflect much dit on him as an Assistant Ad listrator of a Territory which is posed to maintain its old tradi is et al providing they do not flict with law and order, ohn Gunther appears to have ; any sympathy, since becoming [ Ack, which he previously main led with native tradition and y of Life. I would hate to think has become just another Yes i of the deified Department ch pushes its pawns about on P-NG chess board, nd talking of arts and crafts: s hope that the move for the tolishment of a Territorial jeum to house arts and crafts of ive Life is a success. If Keith Earthy is given his head he ild be able to show results if one can. hope he can dig out some of genuine old-time pieces of ve craftmanship like the white, le-bone, mother-of-pearl en ited walking sticks from Aua ad, or the old-time Buka money inely-mounted flying-fox teeth; line King Spears from Buin or e of the phallic symbols of the Tolais around Rabaul. ) doubt German and American sums are well stocked with these ve antiquities, but we should ; them in the land of their i. Antique-collecting, like ity, should begin at home.
te Wings
Sea ith the sinking of coastal vessel uria last month off Long Island, her long-remembered name will truck off the register, but pos to be entered later with the ching of yet another Nuguria. ie original vessel of that name one of Queen Emma’s fleet and itened after that plum of her erties the Feads. Another of fleet was Irene. th had beautiful lines and were vn to Islanders from Vanimo asmans, carrying supplies, pick up copra and recruiting labour, and sailing craft were a sure to look on in those days • e the Speed Age. No mildewed long unfurled because the en was so much easier and cer. pt. Komine—Rabaul’s Japanese iul and the original owner of talai in Manus ran the anuia, carrying a top-sail and fastest thing in NG sail. It was remodelled, after his death, re-named Asakaze. en there was the three-masted Da > belonging to the DHPG,
skippered by the black-bearded Captain Peters, recruiting NG labourers for the company’s plantations in Samoa. And many others whose names I have forgotten . . .
Come again Nuguria, if only to keep old memories alive.
A Ministerial
Look-See look aee Senator Spooner, Minister for National Development, spent a few days in P-NG at the beginning of this month. The projected cessation of oil searching was a suitable excuse, though one wonders what he could do about it exactly. Other matters of a geological nature to occupy his mind were extensive search for nickel deposits and the
matter of declining phosphate ex ports from Nauru and Ocean Island, The closing down of oil prospec ting and/or drilling in the Terri tory will certainly eliminate a few milch cows which have been supply ing material benefits for the Ad ministration for a considerable period.
But 15 not be y° nd powers Q f possibility that some mug com pany may come to light with the payable fluid within coo-ee of where old bores have been put down. (As a rough tip I would plug for the Matapau area which I mentioned last month).
Perhaps the worthy Senator on his ten days’ tour has been in formed of other potential natural mineral resources which, in the
5t have created erstwhile interest, ; which now, with modern mech sation and know-how, could be ae assets to the Territory and F Commonwealth. ’o quote a few previously dis ded ventures: t Tin and other minerals not far Sant from the Kupei goldfields, severed by German explorers, i Iron ore in the Bainings. i Sulphur from Lolabau Island the NB coast.
Brown coal deposits in New find.
Phosphates in the Purdy Island a?- Iways providing, presumably, t such developments would not ersely affect Australian primary ►rests. Otherwise: No dice. In se days a country’s development 5 not necessarily depend upon natural resources, but whether se natural resources, if de ped, will affect existing panels, els and other interests. And ; is just where P-NG may find bit uphill.
[ Long
issed away to a well-earned rest Ifred John (Jack) Long, a well vn identity who had a host of ids in TNG dating from the y ’2o’s, and one who made life h easier for many a New leaite of every colour. >r many years Jack had been [edical Assistant with the Ad istration and was untiring in good work of healing. He was icularly well known in Rabaul down in Buka. Before joining PHD he had service with the •oboard on various plantations ughout the Territory. For some s he had been in indifferent th. He died at the Repat. Hos at Concord, NSW on Febvu -21, aged 65. He left a widow to rn his loss.
First esman ie current Territory Apprent ice- Scheme has turned out its fully-trained apprentice, who ved his trade certificate from inistrator Cleland last month, is Boe Arua, a letter-press linist in the Government Print office, Moresby. His father (ap ntly without any organised ap ticeship scheme) had worked the Government Printery at ssby for 41 years, e printing trade seems to be vourite vocation for apprentic natives. One of the first ap tices turned out by the German rnment in NG at Rabaul in t 1911 was a Caroline Islander, is Eluel, who was still going ig when I visited Rabaul in worked in both the German
and Australian Government print eries and later with the RdbauL Times up to the Jap invasion. Sev eral Matupi natives were also ap prenticed to the Rabaul printery in the 1920’5. I remember Wesley and Torimu —both later Luluais of Matupi and both excellent comps; the latter was also a very fine book binder.
Other natives apprenticed in those days took up plumbing and tank making with none other than genial Gilbert (“How’re yer Mate”) Renton. The apprenticeship business is not such an innovation in NG as some people would have us be lieve.
Bits and Pieces Passed on: Desmond Maurice Max O’Connor on March 29, of Kincumber, formerly of Papua.
Aged 66 years . . . Mary Stella Mil bcurne Marsh on March 13, of Mittagong, mother of David (Port Moresby).
Married: Noreen Waller, of Sea forth, to Keith Joseph, of Madang, in Sydney on March 29.
Engaged: Meryl Ann, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. H. C. I. Woolcott, of Wahroonga, to Philip Lloyd Harry, of Belmore . . . Valmai McConnell to Dennis Anderson of Finschhafen.