Territories Talk-Talk

By Tolala

Finance is becoming merely a matter of perspective, and exactly where that will end, only goodness knows. Federal grant for the coming year has been stepped up another £1 million, bringing the total to nearly £ 12.5 m for Papua and the Trust Territory.

EVEN so, those to benefit by Aus tralia’s generosity will not be the natives so much as the Public Servants, already established for the purpose of administering these “backward peoples”, and the pending appointment of another 200-odd in this bureaucratic barrage.

What remains for actual “native welfare”, after the Public Servants have had their cut, is anybody’s guess.

By next year Public Servants will number about 3,000 and that repre sents a fair number of chips when homes, transport and other mod. cons, are taken into consideration.

Canberra legislators look upon the P-NG grant as a necessity for ‘native welfare” and therefore, not to lose face, it cannot be trimmed

down.

Native welfare! What deeds are committed in thy name!

Rodents Ahoy!

Calling all specialists and experts!

What about the influx of rats on certain islands in the Territory?

Rumour has it these rodents are becoming a pest to coconut planters and have been increasing during the past years. . . . Reminds me of the time when Jack Thurston went a-searching through Rabaul for all the cats he could lay his hands on to transport them to the Carterets, where a rat plague existed for many a year.

Talk Place

In the South Pacific Post (21/8/58) Rev. Percy Chatterton has written to the editor suggesting that “clashes between Europeans and indigenes generally originate in a failure on the part of the Euro peans to understand the thoughts and feeling of the indigenes”, and rice versa, emphasising that pidgin or Police Motu “are inadequate to bridge the gaps in mental under standing.”

Apart from the fact that he makes some capital out of the Navunaram incident, the reverend gentleman certainly has something in his re marks, and I often wonder why the Administration, with all its plans and blue-prints, has never evolved

some system for its field officers at least to learn one or more native language in order to be able to “think native” and create a greater understanding between the two races. 3 doubt whether there is one other sovereign country in the world so language-lazy as Australia.

Knowledge of a native language is a “must” in the Colonial services of other countries. The excuse put forward in NG is the great diverg encies of dialects, plus the fact that no guarantee of an officer returning to a district once he has left.

But this latter difficulty is not insurmountable and some effort could be made for field officers, when once posted to a district, to remain there amongst natives whom they know, and who know them; for with knowledge is born trust and understanding.

It is difficult to imagine the Navunaram incident arising during the German regime. The Governor of that time—Dr. Hahl—spoke the Blanche Bay dialect fluently, with the result that he had the confid ence of the native people and could reason with them.

That is where the missionary has the edge on the official in these days; that little bit of understand ing, the possession of which the official so often resents and envies and too often refers to as “mumbo jumbo”.

This is a monetary age and I should say an officer with know ledge of a native dialect is worth £l,OOO a year more to an Adminis tration than one who flounders around in pidgin.

Old Time Methods

Mention of German officials in NG takes me back along Memory Lane. I know comparisons are odious and, actually, it is not really a matter of using the German methods as a yard-stick to measure present-day efficiency. But when one thinks of the economies practised by the Kaiser’s govern ment as compared with the lavish expenditure in these Years of Grace it is surprising the Teutons accom plished as much as they did.

European staff was kept at a minimum on outstations particularly.

There was no three months leave

after 21 months, despite the fact that malaria was rampant and modern prophylactic drugs un known.

I recall the time when the Kiap of the Kieta District (Capt.

Doellinger) went on leave after some years of service; his relief was the local Medical Officer (Dr. Kroening) who carried on in a capital manner with both jobs.

The rest of the European staff consisted of a police master and a marine engineer. The mode of gov ernment transport was in the small wooden steamer Buka (a sister ship of the Nusa, which was attached to the New Ireland district).

Doellinger, an ex-Master Mariner was the skipper; its fuel consisted mainly of firewood which natives along the coast supplied for a re muneration, and they looked upon it as privilege to supply the Kiap’s “sitima” with good com bustible fuel, requiring the Kiap to call at their village for “bunkering”.

This same system of economic transport was operating in New Ireland at that time with the famed Bulominski as Kiap. Although a stern and strict disciplinarian, the native people held him in the highest regard.

There’s no doubt but that, work ing on a shoe-string, the Germans accomplished a lot, due greatly to the personal efforts of the officials and the interest they had in their job. But then, of course, that was in the days before the 40-hour week and Mammon was not the god it has become in these more modern times.

The Wat Tyler Incident

Last month, when I wrote on tne Navunaram deadlock over taxes, it had not reached the shooting stage. When the first news of the armed clash was published in Syd ney papers it made grim reading.

One inference that could be drawn was that tax-gathering amongst these natives had only been recently introduced.

Actually taxes were first col lected amongst the Tolais back in 1907 when a 5 Mark head-tax was levied by the Government.

And in our own time it is not uninteresting to note that NG natives paid £20,000 head-tax in 1937-38, which was increased to £21,000 the following year.

Critics of the Administration action writing in the daily Press were naturally legion; each riding his own particular hobby-horse. A somewhat candid screed in The Sydney Morning Herald from the General-Secretary of the Methodist Overseas Mission—a one-time Tongan missionary—had a touch of irony (or so it appeared to me) when he decried the inappropriate ness of the Administration “getting tough”.

My thoughts went back to the “bad old days” when the founder of

the Methodist Mission in New Guinea—that sterling old realist, Dr. George Brown —led an expedi tion against the Tolais, who had killed four of his Polynesian teachers.

History records the killing of “a large number” of these people, but that life and property was safer thereafter. He later stood his trial on a British man-of-war on a charge of manslaughter, but was acquitted.

This is no apologia for the Navunaram deaths. Conditions do change after eighty years. But get ting tough may often have its com pensations in obviating the other party getting tougher.

Incidentally, the 67-year-old one time Methodist teacher, Manoa, the present chief of the offending village, at least had an appropriate name.

The word Manoa in the Blanche Bay dialect means Sore, or an ulcer, which no doubt he was in the minds of officialdom—until he made the beau geste and paid up.

I don’t think we’re quite out of the wood yet. There’s a bit of bush country down Buka way that might gill give us a pain-in-the-neck. The Bukas are more stubborn and tactiturn than the Tolais—or they used to be, anyway.

Moans From Up Yonder

Over the past few months I have received numerous moans and groans from folk, not usually addicted to such outbursts, telling of pin-pricking, arrogant attitudes of some of the minor junior mem bers of the Administration field staff and it is getting under the skin of planters of long experience. n °t be inappropriate for the top level gentlemen in Can berra to recall Winston Churchill’s

remark: “Beware the day when a Civil Servant ceases to he civil and is no longer a servant”

A Golden Jubilee

It is good to see that a movement is already afoot in the Rabaul dis trict to celebrate the town’s golden jubilee in 1960. If ever a town were deserving a fiftieth birthday it is Rabaul, for it’s been pretty sick at times during that half-century.

Three times has it been abandoned; three times has it staged a come-back after Nature's and man’s devastating work: In 1937, following the eruption; in 1942 abandoned by the Australians when the Japs came in and made it Nippon’s headquarters, and then again in 1944 abandoned by the Japs when Allied bombers had razed the town and the Japs went to earth in their hillside tunnels. And then, despite the long delay and projected removal of the town site Rabaul rose again bigger and brighter than ever.

September would be an appropri ate month for a Back-to-Rabaul celebration. It marks the Australian occupation in 1914 and also the month when the Australian troops re-occupied the town in 1945.

The 13th of that month has been a red-letter day. In 1914, the Aus tralian flag was raised in Rabaul; also in 1945 it was the day when Aussie troops first made contact with the imprisoned European civilians in the Ramale Valley. It was also the day in 1934 when Sir Walter McNicoll became Adminis trator.

There are few present European residents of TNG who were in the colony when Rabaul was born. Off hand, I can think of only one— George Yanke, whose father took up land in the Bainings in the early 1900’s.

Here’s wishing good luck to the Jubilee organisers. May they have the co-operation of all. Let’s hope that by 1960 international snarls may have died down, for much could happen in two years in this atomic age. We’ll keep our fingers crossed.

An Auto Club

In the South Pacific Post I notice a report where the Australian Auto mobile Association may open a club in P-NG. (See Editors’ Mailbag, this issue).

An excellent idea, and I am sur prised it has not been done before.

In pre-war days we had quite a live organisation in Rabaul (as I have often mentioned) and as its hon, sec. I know something of the advantages to Territorian motorists when they go south.

Affiliation with other clubs; in surance and guarantees arranged when you take your car to Australia, and so on. I have been told that Mrs. MacGowan, in Moresby, still has one of the old Automobile Club of New Guinea badges, designed by

her husband, Bill. And a very neat job, too.

There was also a small credit balance with one of the Rabaul banks. It should still be tucked away somewhere there.

Enter the Army Gazing into my crystal I see where the Senior Service at Manus may eall it a day and make room for the Army, including some “gingerbeer” units. The military brass will come in for some com fortable bungalows, if nothing else.

A Worthwhile Tour Whoever thought up the scheme for Tolai cocoa-growers to obtain an insight into the marketing and manufacture of cocoa deserves a pat on the back. It shows a realistic outlook and the six Tolais must re turn home with a greater apprecia tion of the white man’s economy.

It is to be hoped they are not side tracked by any extreme unionists desirous of inoculating them with propaganda inappropriate of being applied in Tolai-land.

There is always the danger, when semi-sophisticates come to Sydney, that their tranquil minds may be upset by enthusiastic trade union busy-bodies, who look upon hem as fertile ground in which t/ sow seeds of dissension. P-NG s not yet ripe for this sort of cuh .vation amongst the indigenes. It Las even caused some headaches amongst some of the white brothers. [See Pacific Report.] Tail Piece Too good to miss. Jim Macdougall in the Sydney Daily Telegraph quotes Tom Payne, a Brisbane Public Servant, telling a story against the Service; A public servant asked at a marriage bureau for the photos of all eligible women.

He picked a blonde. “Sorry,” said the man in charge, “you’ll have to take this elderly, stringy-looking old duck —she has seniority.”