Through Wildest New Guinea Witt

Cleft Stick And Water Tank

It's Tougher When Only Four Gents Are Expecteo^ When Qantas inaugurated its Super Constellation service bets Sydney and Port Moresby in January, they took four journalists Australia for a 10 days tour of Papua-New Guinea. This wa:e lighter side of the tour, as seen by JUDY TUDOR, who went for T

When we got back to civilisation we all agreed — t Courier-Mail, the Australian Broadcasting Commission t editor of Qantas’ own Airways, and the PIM — that as pm junkets went, this one got top marks — mostly for the thini that were off schedule.

FOR John Elliott, of Courier-Mail, there was fulfillment of the dream of years. He had at last seen a savage carrying a message

in a cleft stick.

This particular savage ws elderly gent, dressed in the 9 high fashion of a length of ts 1 The “message” was a Qantas; ways ticket, which he carrri the end of a twig, and had I fully covered with a doubledb air-sick bag to save it from 1 wet.

He joined us at Minj, was 1 for Goroka, and sat shivering 1 near-nakedness on the colol bench of the DCS airfreiie while the weather closed in our while we made several false 1 and finally were decanted fan night to try again in the moo His plain look of disgust (“IT is air transportation, I tilth stinks”), as he was off-loadeos the rain, only added to Coo Mails delight.

Confounded Cans

For Nevil Peterson, of the £ there was the quite obvious pleii of turning 15 cans of blanks into 15 cans of recording: everyone from a native W Councillor to a coffee planter At one time or another, w mothered these confounded case Nevil’s — which his Corjn

WATCH OUT! This is one of the world[?] unusual road-signs. It is on the road tha[?] the airstrip at Wau, where you don't gi[?] to the car on your right, but to the[?] dropping on you from above.

DISTINGUISHED. The man in the cenn[?] ture looks like a three-star Chinese[?] with his aide-de-camp, but he isn't,[?] time-expired labourer, wearing the lates[?] in trade-store millinery. He and a dozeia[?] were at Goroka, on their way home to a [?] village after 18 months at work on a [?] plantation. They were dressed to kill [?] white singlets and pillar-box red lap-la[/] Chinese caps to match.

SPACE PROBLEM. It's difficult to get [?] gallon tank into a DC3; and it is diff[?] get a photo of it without getting somet[?] of focus, as the one at the bottom is[?] on there were two tanks for Mini —whic[?] things just that much more difficult all[?] (See story).

ses had supplied to him in a >phane bag which early in the e split down the middle, nally, in dead of night, at oka, we hired a Land Rover taxi set off for the trade store at th Goroka, got the Chinese jrietor out of bed and w(ith aid of matches and a torch re seems to be no electricity in part of the town, yet) spent en bob of the Commission’s iey on one of those trade-store n-bags. 1 these bags have big letters ;he outside, in imitation of air bags, and this one, believe it ot, had ABC in big white letters ss the front. think had I waited long enough, owner of the store would have e up with one marked PIM.

No Champagne Route r Jefferey Smith, of Airways, it t have been an experience to what flying is like off the apagne routes, in country where rule still is that if you can’t through it, round it, or over ou don’t fly; and where the way to know whether the ice of the strip is safe for -off, is to borrow the local »’s jeep and drive furiously up down: If the jeep doesn’t turn the DC3 probably won’t, either, r me: I’d done it all before, most of it before; but there the delicious experience of g three Tender-feet meet, -on, the full impact of Terri y transportation, Territory s and Territory hospitality.

Barley-sugar Now

me of the rest of my time was pied with the business of ghtening out the fact that I been born into the wrong sex. the proprietor of Pine Lodge

A DC3 freighter with tin seats down the side. But what a liar I turned out to be!

This plane had real, forward facing seats, not the reclining type as yet, but so revolutionary that if I had been paying my own fare I might have demanded the money back out of sheer disappointment.

“Well, that will be the end of that,” I told the boys, “from here on you can expect travel the Territory way.”

We were turned out of bed at 4.15 a.m. the morning we were to fly from Rabaul to Lae, but due to a slight technical hitch, still managed to arrive at the airstrip late, faced so I told them, with a 21 hour, pre-breakfast flight to Lae, travel ling “hard”.

The captain was annoyed with us for being late, so we had our minds on other things as we climbed aboard unprepared for Shock 11.

Seats. Forward facing; not re clining as yet; but covered with

Hotel at Bulolo said, when he tried to show the four of us into two rooms: “Four gents were expected .

Port Moresby was 21 days of fun, but Moresby isn’t the Territory and we didn’t begin to glimpse that until we left for Rabaul-four hours by DCS, 15,000 feet up, to get over something. Courier-Mail said that his cigarette wouldn’t burn. Some one else complained that he breathe. The purser offered free oxygen, but there were no takers My stocks were away down, anyw y promised them real, New Guinea travel, north of Moresby.

freshly laundered, white covers.

There was pre-take off barley sugar with this lot. And breakfast trays. Cornflakes, grape juice and hot rolls over the Bismarck sea.

A lot of the air pioneers of New Guinea have not lived to see this day, but I have, and I still can’t quite believe it.

On our itinerary for the next day was “Flight to Wau from Lae, by Otter”.

I’d last seen these Otters at Bankstown aerodrome, Sydney, in the middle of last year, when they were handed over by de Havillands to Qantas. At that stage they

STILL DOING A JOB. —A few years after the end of the war, the Bristol Aircraft Corporation took one of their then new Bristol Freighters on a world tour. The last place that they took it to was Wau, New Guinea. It is there yet. The air-strip at Wau has a one-m-eight gradient, and during the festivities that marked its arrival, the big plane got under way by itself, trundled down the strip (while local residents discussed whether someone should sacrifice his jeep by running it in front of the plane and trying to stop it), crossed the road and a couple of ditches, and ended up in a coffee plantation. The plane was pronounced unsalable, and after the engines and more valuable parts had been removed, the plantation owner used it for a time as a boy house In January, when this photograph was taken, the fuselage was being used as a wood shed and the portion that was once the nose, as a fowl-house. Down the nose portion is written the names of the places that the plane had visited before. it came to its Unfortunate full-stop in New Guinea At one stage a local humourist painted at the tail-end of the list: "WAU-R.I.P.".

But this has now weathered off. Since this mishap, planes are now always parked across the strip —and not facing up or down it.

had seats in them. I’d laughed.

Just see what happens to them when they get to NG, I’d told myself.

But nothing apparently did.

When we climbed into our Otter that morning there was no barley sugar or grape juice and the crew consisted of just one—tlje pilot— but there were the seats, large as life and twice as un-natural.

By this time I had the feeling that we were being followed around by seats—but that was the end of that. From there on, until we rejoined the Super Constellation at Port Moresby, transportation re sumed its more accustomed New Guinea form.

They Just Weren't Expecting

The boys hadn’t slept in Port Moresby; and they said they didn’t sleep in Rabaul either, and what was more, they weren’t getting used to it, as I’d said they would. , „ At the Rabaul hotel the re ceptionist said they were crowded out; people had suddenly come in from everywhere; it was a holiday week-end; all the children were going back to school. Yesterday it had been quiet—but today! Two of the men could share; one could go in the annex with the pilots, SHOULD IT BE PORT TORRES? The bronze tablet on this memorial in the pleasant little garden at the intersection of Dougias and Mus grave Streets, Port Moresby, was orovided at a cost of about £9O, by the Historical Society of Papua. Says a member of the Society: "it almost broke us—and now a local amateur geographer, Mr. G. A. V. Stanley, reckons he can prove that the harbour was discovered by Torres!"

"And you, Mrs. Tudor —You see, we weren’t expecting I’m afraid you’ll have to share”.

To which Mrs. Tudor answered "Hell”, and bethought her of the time she was last there in a like predicament, and had espied, out on the beach front, a sort of thatched house.

So she asked about that. It was, she was told, the old staff quarters and she would not like it there.

But after she had persuaded the management that she would like to view, and that after viewing, she liked it very well, she moved in.

It is true that it bore only a dim relationship to those luxury hures of some Fiji hotels that are let out at about five guineas a night, but it had two bed-rooms and a verandah and a shower, and some

one who couldn’t have known' my besetting sin is ironing an packing lousy, had left an e3s iron there.

But what was more too point, I had the lot to myself.l in peace and quiet, while my{ male colleagues—or so they were kept awake by babies see ing, Rabaulites wassailing, guests nattering and, ft brought up all-standing the fi ing morning when all the trav school-children were rooted o 4 a.m. to catch the plane.

Stiii Not Expecting

Two days later, when we I on to Lae, the manager of O mess met us with the he’d had a house all ready fi but the previous evening hir been inundated by bowlers i Wau or some point east of : and he was terribly sorry bic

BORED GENTLEMEN. These Highlander[?] tarn o'shanters, too. Mostly the head[?] the guy's own hair kept in shape by a [?] but the pom-pom on the model on the [?] made of fur; while the bored gentleman[?] right wears feathers on his, instead. The[?] from Wabag and were visiting the brigh[?] of Mt. Hagen. The medal worn on th[?] head of the fellow on the left says thas[?]

a Tul-Tul —an Administration-appointed [?]

official who can usually speak Pidgi[?] one proved he could by saying, at on[?] he was dying for a smoke; and that a[?] of chewing-gum wouldn't be a bad thing[?]

were just cleaning the house as for you Mrs. Tudor—he t been expecting—and he was 1 that there was still some i the room. someone was a female bowler he had gone off for the day wl and had locked the door i her. So Mrs. Tudor, the ected, camped on the verandah day until the bowling lady home and collected her duds.

Pine Lodge, Bulolo, after the itemps of one of the four expected turning out to be j, the whole thing was sorted everyone’s satisfaction, mge double room-with-bath, , the amenities of civilisa furniture that was real and nprovised out of boxes and of patterned cotton; peace uiet. It was cool enough for iket on the bed and no one lined about not sleeping that days later at Goroka Hotel lony of buildings that has out of the one Bulolo-type that Mrs. Ellen Pitt started not more than seven years hey were, of course, expecting len, but by this time the odd of the party had contrived ichalance about the whole and took morning tea while jceptionist arrived from up treet and shuffled things sufficiently to find her a

It's the Unexpected

That's Fun programme had said that ws 0 fly from Lae to Goroka by iment-chartered DC3, carry th the plane around the Wahgi Valley and return to 1 for the night. ’s what the programme ut that is not how it turned id because it did not, this as enjoyed above all others, n we got into the plane at was for once proved right— [d-fashioned tin benches with ket on top, and piled high middle of the cabin, every the Admin, ordered, pattern of the day was set he moment of take-off. As 3 we were air-borne over the am, the purser said: “Who’d nice, hot cup of coffee!” ill would. /ent forward and hunted in nard. Then he came back.

I like a nice, hot cup of a?” he asked. “They’ve left tee off.” oroka there was a discussion whether we would leave our e there to await our return, save it on”, said the purser, lever know”.

loroka we loaded, amongst

unk, a 1,000-gallon tank for lext stop along the way. must be going in for water r ation in a big way, because

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At Mt. Hagen the District Com- S"S2g; f a i d wnhn? 6 fw UI H llk ? two trips into Wabag that day if Smw? 10 , one return b y Baiyer * T Pere , was a discussion amongst the four of us as to whether we would go first trip or second, but by this time we were learning things ourselves. We voted £ s t trip, just in case.

Wabag lies west of Mt. Hagen, in a sort of truncated mountain valley at 6,700 feet. It is reached by weaving in and out and round mountains, and across tropical rain forests and patches of native gardens. So far as I could see, there is only one way in and one way out, which naturally cuts flying opportunities down by half.

Wabaq's Inflationary Spiral

T . . ... , ' J It was in this country that they had that abortive gold-rush shortly after the war. At that stage, the natives of the area were seminomadic hunters, and only one steel axe existed in the whole area.

It was an old German axe that had been traded in from the Sepik, and the native who owned it had

given two sisters in marriage and five pigs for it.

One of the first things the Administration did when opening up the area was to arrange air drops of axes to encourage the clearing of land for gardens—which now are flourishing.

An air drop of dried peas for patrol rations that then proved too heavy for carrying, were distributed about the same time, and formed the nucleus of a local pea-growing industry around the seven or eight thousand feet elevation. (The ADO who told us this piece of local history couldn’t tell us what happened to the owner of the two-sisters-five-pigs worth of original axe when the Administra tion started an inflationary spiral by dropping axes right out of the sky.) We arrived at Wabag at the same time as a local cloud-burst. “We’ve got to get out of here in five minutes, or we’re stuck”, said the captain and to facilitate the re moval of cargo in the time limit, we were smartly shoo-ed from the cabin, tape recorders, cameras, gadget bags and all, to stand beneath the wing while the local calaboose line made short work of the unloading.

But it did no good. When the cargo was out, we climbed back into the plane, the purser broke out the lunch boxes, we rummaged through our suitcases and got dry shoes and sweaters and Who dunnits, and settled down to camp.

In an occasional break we got out and wandered around the station while the pilots borrowed a jeep and rushed up and down the strip, or called up Hagen or Goroka on the plane’s radio.

But with one break (when the ADO arrived with steaming coffee) mostly we watched the gap at the end of the valley, through which we sometime or other had to get out.

Visability: Nil

Twice we got all set to go, but more clouds rolled in from the wings to reduce visibility to nil.

Then late in the afternoon, it was It.

As we tore down the sodden strip and into the cloud of the valley —“Baiyer River in 15 minutes, or Wewak in two hours” —I privately wondered, as the wing tips seemed to graze the trees, if it might be some place else, even sooner.

Wabag’s storms and thunder followed us to Baiyer River, and on to Hagen and later Minj. At Minj the storm closed in and with less than an hour to darkness, not enough gas left to reach the

t, and the prospect of not ng down into Goroka, the ain called it a day. inj has no pub—no rest house t it has a lot of private itality, and at this stage the • appeared in his alternative of Travellers’ Aid Society. In time than we could collect our , he had us organised. the gathering dark I was sited on my hostess’ door-step. : for tonight. OK?” said the 1 and disappeared, vas taken in, given a hot bath, shown my room, all without ;ss batting an eyelid. The rest the party were similarly 'bed. Courier-Mail into the □r’s house; Airways into the ’s establishment. ABC went le local bachelors’ quarters.

Celebration

e rest of us had quiet nights; the bachelors, it appears, ed to celebrate. Nevil, who, e most journalists, likes ar hours, tore himself loose a.m. He had been told that as to sleep in a house “down So in rain and pitch dark without a torch, he stumbled igh a couple of paddocks and ry drains and finally found a >oo hut with a bed in it. He ito the bed, and next morning, to one had come along to te his possession, concluded he had found the right spot. ♦ * * len we got back to Moresby dvilisation and passengers were 1 to collect their seat tickets, s handed one that had typed it “Mr. Tudor” (though some when they saw it was other had inked in a surreptitious was obvious, as I said in the ning, that four gents were ted.