Sees Papua

Carrying The White Woman's Burden Is Gun Totin' Joan Smith Sees Papua

(White) Woman Staff Writer

ie white woman in Papua

keep a pistol handy. It’s

ig to be like the Mau Man

mya.

says Mrs. “Joan Smith” (a 10m de plume because she doesn’t want to go back to

Moresby a marked woman”),

istralia’s big circulation, pulp

i Weekend. er a knock-’em-down and jm heading ( Let me in, Sina , and a picture of a blonde d with an automatic beside n the pillow, the first half paragraphs of Joan’s story go ns: nounding on my wall is constant, a occurrence whenever my husband y. Relentless and terrifying, be am just one of a handful of white in a sea of natives, black fists knocking on the fibro at it outside my bedroom and the i soft and insistent whisper. “Let sinabada (woman). Let me in!”

I lay there in my bed paralysed *ar. All I can do is grip my .25 tic and shiver even in that Papuan ith heat, and hope the “boy-wire" my window will hold. -wire!" nember when I arrived in Port Y five years ago “boy-wire” had r been heard of. The natives had •iendly then, trusting and depend ;ople. Something like the “fuzzy ingels" of the war. hat was five years ago. Every year have noticed the change in them mounting arrogance, their lack of ie, their contempt for us, and the of their semi-literacy, days they despise the white man, the white woman, interfere with Idren, steal from us, revile us and represent. These just aren’t my 1 feelings and fears, they are the and fears of almost every man man in the Territory, home, Australians" is an onen In Port Moresby today. And they hey taunt us when they say that >uld rather have the Germans back, Americans for their money.

;he same fascinating fashion

)es on to tell how no white i dares venture onto the of Port Moresby at night;

it Ela Beach, fascinated by

women’s bare legs and arms,

(Continued on page 97)

local natives make filthy gestures; how the Pacific Islands Regiment rioted at Koki (getting on for a couple of years ago now); and how the “Goiala” (Goilala?) garbage truck boys chased the white official into his office, and went for him with an iron bar.

It goes to prove, she says, that we have taught them too much, too soon—been too soft with them and now “all these years of so soft pedalling and intensive education have blown up in our face”.

Not New Trouble So much for Joan and her Week end treatment. Like all ventures into pure sensationalism, this one

a dangerous grain of truth in wever, it is mighty exaggerated it is perfectly untrue that any his kind of trouble has de ed only in the last few years, e was plenty of “boy trouble” in places as Rabaul between the and the trouble goes back before that and is fundamental certain state of native sophis on and is not confined only to 7erritory. idents have increased in Port sby in recent years in propor to the tremendous increase in Curopean population, and the quent attraction to the town tives seeking employment. j things are not nearly as bad ihn Smith says, and there are ares that can be taken to ate an existing situation— igh judging by 100 per cent. »ean, “civilised” communities is no way, while humans come r o sexes, of eliminating such nts entirely. ; of the ways of curtailing “boy e” is punishment—but that appen only after the native is t. in Smith” might have solved >wn particular troubles in a ! of simple ways. As she lives ort Moresby—which is as ised as Brisbane — she could the telephone installed. A one call to the police station sven to the Police Commis himself —would, no doubt, the necessary interesting re >he might try the experiment ig boldly to the door—or these shutters she says they now in place of glass louvres — nth or without gun, demand know what in the blithering went on. This method has of precedents, and as the if native involved has usually as much moral courage as ther adolescent delinquent, is lly successful.

'lying Paralysed"

whatever is done, one thing e: If the Joan Smiths of Moresby cannot find any more ic method of dealing with a ging native than lying ysed in bed” gripping a .25 (which presumably they are g only for themselves as an itive to a fate worse than , then they should never e further north than a Syd iburb where the worst thing m happen to them is to wake i a “Kingsgrove Slasher” be leir beds. is not to say that an incident type involving a native, is not sing to any European woman, -errifying to some. But no ‘ how many laws are made

for European women’s protection, the ultimate remedy lies in the hands of the women themselves.

Nothing could be more calculated to give the hoodlum native element of Port Moresby or any other big Territory town (and the element is there alright), the idea that it has the whip hand, than for it to feel that white women generally, go in the sort of terror that the Weekend article depicts.

The fact is, of course, that the Territory is still a black man’s country of complex though, perhaps, changing problems. In order to live there successfully requires a dif ferent set of values than is required in suburban life, an awareness of the problems and the necessary moral stamina to make the neces sary adjustment. At one time this was called carrying the “white man’s burden”, but, perhaps, un fortunately, this is no longer a popular concept of European ad ministration of a native country.

“Joan Smith’s” picture of a Territory packed with terrified females all toting guns (presum ably with the permission of the police) in order to protect them selves from unruly natives, is so ridiculous as to be almost amusing.

Almost amusing—if it were not for that tiny substratum of truth that is so distorted in this article as to become pretty close to dangerous.

Flynn, now about 23, disclosed a marked talent for acting; and, from that experience, he went on to Charles Chauvel, to take the part of Fletcher Christian in the 1933 film, In the Wake of the Bounty From there it was only a step, via Europe, to Hollywood and fame.

All the New Guinea “old hands’’, of the 1926-33 period could tell stories of the devil-may-care Errol Flynn, miner and trader and irresponsible vagabond. They cursed his trickery—and laughed at his escapades.

Gatherings of “befores” in Sydney still like to get Mrs. Alice Allen Innes to tell of the days when she ran the famous Salamaua Hotel, and of how the ingenious Errol, on his erratic way out from the gold fields to new and fresher pastures, took with him a selection of the irreplaceable Innes towels and sheets.

With equal fervour, Flynn would pay a storekeeper’s bill with a bouncing cheque, lead a lonely planter’s romantic wife along a giddy path, or stay on in some hopeless place in the jungle to nurse a miner down with Japanese river-fever (scrub typhus to those of the modern school).

They called him a very wicked young man; but when, five years later, he was bestriding the world's screens as the unforgettable Captain Blood, they were proud to have known him.

His House in Papua In PIM of May, 1937, after I had made one of my regular tours of New Guinea, I published a photo graph of Flynn’s house, with the following note: “All over the world, now, people mentally genuflect before the name of famous film star Errol Flynn; but in Port Moresby and Wau they refer to him familiarly as “old Errol”, and tell funny stories about his hard-up days in Papua, and the rows in which he was con tinually involved.

“He was a doughty and usually victorious fighter, and some of the young bloods of Port now seem in clined to boast of the rather terrible hidings they received at his hands.

“Flynn tried to establish a tobacco plantation 15 miles from Pt. Moresby, and there he built the bungalow reproduced here in a delightful situation, looking north wards over a mountain valley.

Later, he sold it to the novelist, Beatrice Grimshaw. She lived there for some years, and then sold the plantation to Dr. Strong, head of the Health Department. . . .

The house is now falling to decay.

Errol Flynn never changed. He earned millions, and died with only $100,000; and, even as this is being written, a long line of ex wives and boastful concubines are squabbling over his estate and his burial-place.