South Pacific's First Drive-in

From Renata Cochrane, in Port Moresby s ° uth Pacific Islands first drive-in picture theatre opened in Port Moresby on July 7.

It’s an £85,000 project which would startle the thousands of service men who used Port Moresby’s Ward’s Strip as a bomber base during the war if only they could see it, because the Papua Sky Line theatre now takes up a big slice of that area. Roads little-used since the war overgrown, pot-holed and broken, have given way to a big new sealed stretch which takes 300 cars a “sitting”, as their occupants peer at a giant screen 80 ft wide and 63 ft high.

The new concrete projection room, although perfectly new, still has a war-time look, though. It seems to be a cross between a gun emplacement and a radar station.

The new drive-in has a restaurant, too, after the style of those in Australia, and as soon as there is some liberalisation of film censorship for the native people, the owners plan to put in grandstand seating for natives without cars. The new Administration settlement for native people at Hohola is only a mile away and the whole area Is being rapidly developed in other ways. There is a Teachers’ Training College across the way, and a new school on the way, together with a new broadcasting station for the ABC.

The Administration plans to put in new roads to replace some horror stretches that exist at the moment.

The man behind it all is former Sydney publicity man Bill Maloney He is connected with a partnership of Far Northern Theatres of Cairns, and D. C. Watkins, of Port Moresby.

Far Northern Theatres already operates a drive-in at Cairns.

Said Mr. Maloney: “We like sites where there is no TV And any body can see that Port Moresby is a place that is going ahead tremendously.”