[?]Ort Moresby's
p. 37 · Read in the full issue
[?]or, Mixed-Up Kids"
[?]He Dilemma Of
[?]O-Bathing Sign
(By a Special Writer)
liere are a lot of Poor, Mixed- Kids in the Territory of >ua-New Guinea at the present e. and they aren’t all natives. [E current hullabaloo over Euro peans Only in the old swimming hole at Port Moresby is a symp ie story is that the agitation lave the Ela Beach signboard ich indicates the European iming area) taken down began i the visit a year or so back the Methodist evangelist, the Alan Walker. The sign was, it said, an affront to the natives; ms as bad as South African theid. le storm blew up again recently though the heart-burning is coming from Europeans on be of natives rather than from natives themselves. » doubt there are some amongst newly-enlightened native intel itsia who, if the direct question i put, would find the sign an nt, but the ordinary Port Bsby native never gives it a ght and never would unless the t atmosphere were not so as msly prepared for him by well ling Europeans.
PM residents searched their i they might agree that, ethi r, that sign should come down, why stop there? There are a a things that could move over make room for this New Phil hy which the Territory (ad stration and residents) sub es to with one hand and takes with the other. ere is this business of female e. All old residents will warn ■chum females: Never wear shorts —legs excite r e men beyond endurance.
Never wear low, revealing tops our dresses (which seems an prohibition in a community ■e the native misses—whose s are usually far more ex g than the average European ewife’s —wear just no tops at Back to Neck-to-Knee , if they are to do away with :gated bathing in Port Moresby, must suppose that European s, in order to have a foot in camps, must go back to the -to-knee blue serge bathing
costumes of our Victorian grand mothers.
Then there is, of course, the busi ness of segregated movies which not only prohibit natives from at tending the same movie-theatres as Europeans, but through censorship, commit them to a dull diet of news reels, Mickey Mouses, and cowboy pictures, while their European counterparts can revel in the lusts of the flesh through the medium of Hollywood celluloid.
Is this fair to the natives? There probably are a lot of people who could prove that it was not.
So, all-in-all, this appears to be the Moment of Great Confusion in P-NG thinking: A time when old iambus left over from those dread ful days of Colonialism brush roughly against the New Thought when the indigene is to be elevated to our side—but fast—and all un fortunately complicated by the clumsy paternalism of the P-NG Administration.
This mass muddled thinking is reflected at all levels.
From the Administration in its half-baked new native labour regu lations which have not yet got through the Legislative Council.
Down through the European resi dent who does not know whether his women should clothe them selves wholly against the gaze of the natives or whether he should tear down the Europeans Only signboards.
Tasks Too "Menial"
To the natives themselves: the 10th grade clerks who fancy physi cal toil degrading; the stiffly starched Girl Guides who won’t scrub out their own club house because the task is “menial”; or Rarua Rarua, MLC, who in perfect English can read a speech in favour of the proposed new requirements for native labour quarters (“the natives want so much to have
houses like Europeans . . .”).
It is hard to see where P-NG is heading out of this Point of No Return. Maybe one solution would be to take a page out of the French colonial book—make all natives full Australian citizens, remove all re strictions, and let nature take its course.
Many would get hurt—but it would remove forever this terrible will-we-or-won’t-we that is now tearing Moresby citizens to pieces —and might even convince the natives that “houses just like Euro peans” do not really come from the bloke who is running the local Cargo Cult.