Will The South Seas Get Ex-Kenya Tourists?

The flood of American tourists which for years has put the real money into Kenya tourism has, since the Congo trouble, dwindled away to a trickle. Americans are more susceptible than most to crises (there are 10 to 15 per cent, less of them in the UK this year because of Berlin), and just at the moment all Africa is tabu.

There is a hope that the Pacific—particularly Papua-New Guinea— will gain from Africa’s misfortunes, Africa, of course, has a lot that P-NG has not—good hotels, roads that while not always good, make the interior accessible; and above all, animals. The easiest way to entertain a tourist is to set him to watching for wild game, and even the most fractious will go away happy if they see an elephant or two, or a brace of lion curled up in a roadside bush.

No one seems to go to Africa to see the Africans, and this is where the Pacific comes in—people do go there to see the native life, and in fact the Pacific has little else to offer tourists. In some parts of P-NG the unspoiled native life is unique—but it is going to become less unique as it becomes more sophisticated, and once the P-NG natives become as uninspiring and uninteresting as the town Africans, no one is going to travel far to see them either.

It’s a pity that P-NG can’t do what the African governments have done with their wild animals—created vast parks or reserves. But could you imagine the howls that would come from the General Assembly of UN if large areas of primitive NG were set aside for wild human life —with cunningly contrived tree-houses here and there so that the over civilised rest of us could sneak in and take a look unobserved. — Sydneysider.