The Highlands

It's Worse in Scotland!

Granny Makes

A First' Into

The Highlands

From a Lae Correspondent The spirit of adventure and the desire to teach primitive people the art of weaving has brought an English grandmother from her com fortable village manor house to the wilds of New Guinea. And having done that, just to prove that she is not merely a social gadabout, she has done something no woman has done on her own before—driven from the coast at Lae to Goroka, 5,000 ft up and more than 200 miles into

the Highlands.

r!E granny is Mrs. Molly Car rington, who arrived here not long ago in a small bus-cum caravan equipped with a spinning wheel and three looms.

“It will not be necessary for the natives to learn to use the large looms,” said Mrs. Carrington. “I can teach them how to make small hand-looms out of pieces of wood.

They can weave table and floor mats and turn their knowledge into a profitable home industry.

“I may also teach them to make some attractive clothes like sun dresses. I feel it would give them more poise and self respect.” Mrs.

Carrington hopes to learn to spin banana leaves and kunai grass into fibres.

She explained that she spent most of her time travelling on the road, and slept in her bus at night.

Before arriving here she had spent two months camping out in the bush of Western Australia, and had spent many months in Africa.

' (Over)

Scots grandmother Mrs. Molly Carrington, with her vehicle, in Lae.

Sometimes Impassable

She made the trip to Goroka in a week, with 24 hours on the “road”. The rivers are not all spanned yet and in some seasons the road is impassable to anybody.

Women have made the trip with others but Mrs. Carrington is the first woman to do the trip alone in her own vehicle.

After arriving at Goroka she said she was “appalled” at her temerity in attempting the trip with a van with only three forward gears and “far too heavy a load”. Several times the van had to be unloaded and everything carried uphill.

In the Kasam Pass she had a tow from a man in a Landrover.

And at Bena Bena she was helped in two places when her engine was not strong enough.

At one stage between Kas and Goroka, after it had for three days, she was sti the mud.

Said she, “The going uphr just hard work, running fori 10 minutes and cooling off foie 20. But going down the lonji hills was more tiring as I nes like looking down.”

Mrs. Carrington added tbi Leron had been very low ai “didn’t even get her feet wea the swinging bridges weit; nearly as difficult as she hai cipated.

“In fact I have driven; narrower roads with wors? faces over the mountains in land, and I thought this roas of the way had a good surf' was often wide enough fd cars to pass,” she added.