Papuan Roses By Other Names
p. 29 · Read in the full issue
Other Names
In these days when everyone is falling over backwards to find polite substitutes for what ivas once the respectable word “native”, a couple of paragraphs out of a letter from J. Nixon westwood, about pre-1914 Papua, are enough to make a missionary laugh (we hope).
This man Darling (writes JN), got a job supervising labour on the Port Moresby wharf, but his vocabulary was more suited to Buckingham Palace. One of Jus favourite expressions was: do please do your work in a P ro J )e * manner, you silly goat” Ana the boys resented it.
They didn’t mind being yelled at, or being called bastards or even sons-of-a-bitch. They didn’t know what they tvere, but if they came from trie Eastern Division they knew wnat a goat was, and they being compared to this to such effect that Darling lasted a very short time before he was packed off back to Sydney.