They Sailed Through The

NG Escape Story With Jock of the Gainings

They Sailed Through The Battle Of The Coral Sea

It was late in 1914, and Port Moresby had a German spy scare. Papua was very conscious of the fact that German terri tory lay just on the other side of the mountains.

A MAN, as weatherstained as his battered carriers, walked out of the Owen Stanley jungle. The toughness of his appearance was accentuated by a big black beard.

He booked in at Tom McCrann’s hotel, inquired about southwards ships, and headed straight for the general store, where he obtained soap, razor, and some decent clothes The girl in the store looked him over warily. She did not like his accent. “Excuse me,” she said.

“Have you been naturalised?”

The newcomer stared a moment, and then caught on. “Whisht!” he whispered. “No, I’ve no been naturalised. But it’s a’ richt —say nothing”.

She completed the order, but looked shaken.

As the bearded man left, he turned to her. “Dinna ye say a wur-rd about me,” he warned, “or I’ll blow up all yon ships out there.”

The “ships” were the little fleet which was taking the first Aus tralian expedition to German New Guinea, in 1914, and were lying in Moresby.

Cleansed, shaven and re-clothed, the stranger sat him down to wait for the ship South.

The Fella We Want He was deep in a poker game, in McCrann’s parlour, when a heavy hand fell on his shoulder.

“Ha,” said the voice of the law, “I think you’re the fella we’ve been looking for. Got rid o’ the whiskers, eh?”

The storekeeper’s daughter had passed the word around.

It took Jock Mac Lean an hour to convince the spy-sensitive officials of Papua that he was an Australian citizen, that the apparently Teutonic accent was that of an unrepentant Scot, and that he had deliberately pulled the leg of the storekeeper’s daughter.

It was even less easy to make the suspicious officials believe that he had walked across the Owen Stanleys. It happened this way: An Australian company had de cided to dredge for gold in the Yodda; and to young Jock Mac Lean had been given the job of trans porting the heavy machinery from

Buna into the Kokoda area. He had been a general handy man in Aus tralia, from droving in Queensland to pearl-diving at Thursday Island, and he just naturally drifted into the mining industry.

The enterprise collapsed when World War I came, and Jock walked out. That was in 1914.

field in there —not enough to enrich, but definitely enough to excite.

The Mac Lean family got away South on the December, 1941, ships, as the Jap invasion loomed; but Jock, like a good many more, just could not believe that his life’s work was in jeopardy—he remained out in the Bainings until the Japs over-

It was 28 years later, almost to the day, when Jock Mac Lean, some what the worse for wear, but still carrying his whiskers, his accent and his Caledonian determination to fight hi s country’s enemies, landed in Buna, after a nightmare voyage of escape from the Japs.

Less than seven miles away, still rusting in the Buna jungle, was the dredging machinery he left there in 1914.

"Mild" Goldfield

Between the two World Wars, Jock Mac Lean had served in the AIF, and later established himself in the Bainings district, near Rabaul —he had Massawa and Rangerere Planta tions, and other interests, and was a well-known planter, producing copra, cocoa and rubber. He had also located a mild sort of gold

ran Rabaul, and the jungle track: became filled with lost soldiers ant. bewildered civilians, trying to fle-s disaster and escape southwards.

Mac Lean still remained on hii properties and ran a sort of hospitas for very sick men, until it became a matter of either surrendering td the thrusting Japs, or clearing outj A party of soldiers already hau taken Jock’s launch, in an attempq to escape by sea—but Jock had gOD their receipt for a craft worth £900( Jock assisted another party to ges another craft into use and wenn with them into St. Georges Channej They lost the craft near Cape Stc George, and took to the Ireland jungle.

Japs in Pursuit

The Japs were constantly in purr suit of the refugees. But the latteri real enemy was not the Japs, no)

A recent photo of Mr. Jock Maclean, in Rabaul.

This is a poor photograph, but worthy of reproduction nevertheless because of its historical interest. It's the only known photograph of the queer craft "Kwang Sang", 30 ft. long, in which 17 men, escaping from the Japanese in New Guinea, sailed through the Battle of the Coral Sea. The 17 figures can all be counted as the craft comes alongside at Buna, on the Papuan coast, at journey's end.

Ihe jungle, but the always treacher ous natives of the lower end of New Ireland —they looted the stores and plantations and betrayed the Euro peans to the enemy, whenever they could.

Only one of his plantation crew stayed loyal to Jock —a man named Bombangi, who went with him in the boat, and assisted him, nursed him and fed him, while they crept northwards through the hostile country in New Ireland, and reached friendlier natives.

At one stage, they came to an isolated plantation, where two elderly women—Mrs. Schultze and Mrs. Keppel—kept guard, one with a revolver and one with a shot-gun.

These well known women nursed Mac Lean through a bout of fever; but he feared he might bring the Japs down on them so he pushed on.

Mrs. Schultze, Mrs. Keppel and Mrs. Parkinson—all members of the famous “Queen Emma” family— subsequently died there in New Ire land, during the Jap occupation.

Two Killed

Further north, in safer country, more directly under missionary in fluence, Mac Lean and Bombangi met up with other refugees from New Britain and New Ireland, and gradually formulated a plan of escape. Using first one crippled launch and then another, they as sembled a party of 19 men, and got possession of Chinese Trader Apak’s 30-ft launch Kwang Sang, a queerly built, junk-like thing with an old motor that went well enough on crude oil and kerosene but could not digest plain oil.

With them were Kyle and Benham -—two well-known servicemen of that time. Kyle, radio operator, kept m touch with Moresby. Just when it seemed that at last they would

get clear away, Kyle and Benham were ordered to stay there and coast-watch. Both were killed by the Japs.

The men set off from Muliama, for the open sea southwards of Gazelle Peninsula. Jock fought hard to keep his faithful Bombangi with him, but there were already 17 men on the overcrowded launch and they made the weeping Bombangi go and live at a mission station.

Somehow they escaped the Japs and got around Cape St. George and cut into the open sea.

Led by Murray, of Kavieng, they worked constantly on the old Bolinder engine. Sometimes they motored, sometimes they sailed (Jock was the sailor, and could get a knot or two out of her, in an emergency) and more often they just drifted.

It was mid-April when they set off; it was mid-May when they got across to Buna, on the Papuan coast; and, if you study the map and the history-books, you will see that they actually sailed along the fringe of the Battle of the Coral Sea, and never knew it.

It was a healthy but scarecrow party of 17 which was succoured by

Jerry McDonald and Ivan Champion, at Buna, in those grim weeks, when the Japs were striking directly at Port Moresby and Queensland Although by now over 60, Jock had only a brief spell with his family in Australia before getting into AIF service; and he was one of the first planters to return to his destroyed and overgrown plantations, One of his first tasks was to search in the war-torn country for Bom bangi, and he found him safe and well. Bombangi has been with him ever since.

Everyone in Rabaul knows and esteems Jock of the Bainings. He now is 75, and his son has taken over the plantations: but, except for a wonky leg, Jock is very well and lively, and at the mere suggestion that he would be happier down South, uses shocking language, in a broad accent of Caledonia. This is his country, and here he stays, It is a pity that Canberra cannot be persuaded that the future of his country—and its extraordinary mix ture of slow-moving tribes—would be improved considerably if a couple of thousand Jock Mac Leans could

be established here.

Rwr.