The Great Fire Of Moresby

Like London, Port Moresby also has a Monument to its Great Fire —but Moresby’s is no useless plinth. It is a fire-proof rest room for the women toilers in the Crown Law Office —and other departments at Konedobu.

The fire-proof rest-rooms occur in the basement portion of the new Crown Law Office along side the strong room which will accommodate records with the safety they did not have when the old Crown Law Office was mysteriously gutted by fire at the end of last year.

The new Crown Law Office was completed in April, in 14 weeks, at a cost of £30,000.

On the same November night that the Crown Law Office burnt down, the Supreme Court building was also damaged by fire. Police investigated the possibility of arson but the how and the why of the fires were never revealed.

But even more mysterious than the fires themselves were the number of files that are alleged to have perished therein.

Ask any public servant, in any department in that great spraw'ling mass of fibro buildings that constitute Konedobu, the seat of Administration, for any information on any given subject, and it is a guinea to a gooseberry that he will answer: “I’m sorry I can’t give you that. We did have it, but you see our files were all destroyed in The Fire.”