The Year We Fought The Rats

By Doug Askew

I had never seen rats—l mean a lot of rats—until I went to Papua’s Conflict Group just after World War 11.

HAD left Sydney in the Ormiston in March, 1946, with about 250 other pre-war residents—the st back-to-the-Territory pilgrims.

I had been engaged by W. R. irpenter to open up a coconut rm over on New Ireland, but in Tt Moresby we found that it was t possible to get there. So I be me a plantation manager for eamships Trading Co. and finished in the Conflict Group—which is string of small islands midway tween Samarai and Misima.

By then the Conflicts had been andoned for about eight years d the secondary growth was rac -1; the palms to see who would be st “into orbit”. [t was something of a shock to e accustomed to the large well -3t plantations of the pre-war lomons. The old homestead had en it away to the termites, and my of the palms had no tops. It s a sort of planter’s nightmare er a whisky session.

A Challenge

lowever, it was a challenge! At st I was back in the Islands at a month. was on the homestead island of taessesa, roughly three-quarters of mile long by half-a-mile wide, i about eight feet above sea-level. had a labour force of 20 siagos, plus a large canoe fitted h a copra-bag sail for getting und it. Later, they gave me a all 8-ton cutter without an ;ine, which could carry 50 bags copra into Samarai. looking back now, it was a lot of l —even if I was on my own for months without radio or shipping idee, and no spuds, onions, or beer ten months. had been in worse places pre -7e got going with the usual tine of plantation work. Then rats appeared—without benefit any Pied Piper, as far as I could They just seemed to burst out of ground, swarming masses of m!

'here was an iron shed, some 40 : long, with 10 feet walls. Half dais was the copra store and the er section was for rations. As ra as we started to accumulate le copra, the rats would get busy it, and also on to our precious - e of flour and rice. ■ you went out at night with a da you walked over rats. I sup e, after eight years solitude, they corned this new tucker. It was

impossible to bag up any copra, be cause the rats soon tore the full bags to shreds, and so we would fill a few bags every day, and load them straight on to the cutter.

Something had to be done, so I organised a special “Rat Gang”—an elite corps of 12 smart lads on a bonus of three extra sticks of to bacco per week. This was something, because tobacco was still in very

short supply.

The Drill

The drill was to line them all up outside the double doors about 8 p.m. with myself, in the lead, carrying a Coleman lantern. Then we would whiz open the shed doors, rush in madly, and close them again with a couple of bags along the bottom.

Everyone had a waddy—including myself—and we would go to work on a seething mass of rats, scamper ing up the framework, along the shelves, and into the stack of rations.

It doesn’t take long for a gang of boys to get steamed up, once they get going, and they really enjoyed this game. It would have been a bang-up, smash hit on TV!

What with rats in their hair, and running up their legs, everyone soon found it more comfortable to be stark naked, as covered in sweat and flour, and screaming like banshees, they beat rats down from the walls and picked them up in handfuls to bash on the cement floor.

Just Temporary

Soon the store would be clear —for the time being I would call a halt, and we would solemnly count all the bodies, and I would note the tally down in my “Rat logbook”. Then we shovelled them into copra sacks.

Sometimes we would have thre? shows per night, and a tally of up to 1,200! At the end of six months, according to the logbook, we had killed 14,800 rats. All of them were dug in around the palms as fertiliser.

Finally, we felled all the nearby bush, piled it up, and set fires through it. With a brisk sou’-east blowing, it made a wonderful sight one night.

This seemed to discourage the rats —for several months.

Before I left the Conflicts, how ever, they were mobilising forces for another offensive. An old Samarai resident told me the rats had been there in 1909, when he was planting some of the adjacent islands.