Territories TALK-TALK

With Tolala

The year 1962 has already started by the time you open these >es; nonetheless I wish that it may bring you Joy and Health and, we all, Peace of Mind and Peaceful Living. Happy Days . . . vays.

matter whether you are 17 or your thoughts at Christmas are inclined to become retro ve, and you have thought •es of other, older Christmases icr places, with other faces.

I write it is Christmas Eve and in a Sydney suburb but, not un ally, my thoughts go back to Guinea Christmases of other ere was my first Christmas party , and it was on Mioko Island e Duke of Yorks in 1911—just ;ars ago! was at the home of Mr. and Hellfritz. He was manager of XH.&P.G. in New Guinea; and were a charming couple who ously had lived also in Tonga Samoa. Hospitality with them dways spelt with a capital H. e company’s recruiting schooner, m, was in port and jovial, black led Capt. Peters was the Master exuded good-fellowship wherever ent. The newly-arrived assistant Ir. Hellfritz, Herr Keidel, was with various other members of Samoa; and, last but by no is least in interest to me, was ist Engleh a r d t , the sun hipper from the adjacent island ’abakon, whose creed demanded ;y and a diet of coconuts, ical hostesses, when brave enough ivite him to a party, invariably dated (with often mixed feel as to the manner of the dress /ould adopt (if any), and with he could be dined and wined. i this occasion he was most ;ing. He arrived in a white and white lavalava. For him, :xplained, it was an evening of ng for he had clothed himself abandoned his coconut diet and : justice to the beer and wine.

Welcome Relief tie of the happiest Noels was that 914, down in Bougainville. I was ting up Arigua but happened to d Soraken, the head station of iseul Plantations, helping with

the annual returns. World War I was on, and since end of July we had been cut off from our base and supplies at Faisi, brought us by the old Mindini from Sydney.

Rabaul had been captured in mid- September by the Aussies, but Bougainville was still awaiting the “take-over” up to first week in December when the steamer Meklong dropped anchor at Soraken, en route to Kieta.

Colonel Watson and some hundreds of troops were aboard. The siege was lifted! We were at last living under our own flag; and living off the land and the smell of an oily rag was about finished.

The ketch Actaea was hastily despatched to Faisi for supplies and

returned in time for Christmas. And did the welkin ring!

The Mad Twenties There was a Christmas time at the Kokopo Hotel one year in the early twenties when a gathering of Exproboard lads made whoopee to some extent, and there was an itinerant anthropologist by the name of Pitt-Rivers staying there.

He was married to a daughter of Australia’s Governor-General, Lord Forster, and had recently been doing “research work” on Maty Island. He wore a shaggy beard, which at one stage of the celebrations was not at all popular with the young Board Bloods. They promptly started to operate on the hirsute appendage with a hoop-iron sarif, but without much success.

In Rabaul from the late Twenties to the early Forties the two clubs — the Rabaul and the New Guinea — were the main centres of Christmas festivities; the former with its fancy dress ball, and the latter with its Childrens’ Party, when each child in the town received a present.

In 1941 all presents had been bought and arrangements well in hand when the evacuation of all European women and children was

When looking through some old photographs Marco the daughter of the late Clark of pre-war Tolala ’came upon this old photograph of Council of New Guinea. It was opened in May,\933, by me then Minister for Territories, Sir Charles Man. Of the 15 me - IZnlnTe Ino to, only six are still six were victims of the Japanese. Shown left to right, V. A. Pratt. Dr. E. T. Brennan, W. G.

H. H. Page, A. N. McLennan, E. W. P. Chmnery, and B.

Perriman.

Seated-. N. P. H. Neal, J. C. MullalyE. P.

Tom Griffiths ( Administrator), R. L. Clark, G. H. M y H. O. Townsend. (: The survivors are McLennan. Chinnery, Perriman, Neal, Mullaly and Holmes.)

ordered. The presents were loaded on board Macdhui with the evacuees and the party was held at sea.

A Sad Season While the women and children were having their party on the high seas, the male section of Rabaul was cracking hardy and forced to reconcile itself with buck parties held in black-outs.

Jap reconnaissances and air-raids added excitement but it was, I think, about the saddest Christmas Rabaul had ever experienced: Family ties broken and an air of brooding appre

hension and uncertainty over every gathering—no matter how liberally the bowl might flow.

The existing conditions were not conducive for celebrating the Birth of the Prince of Peace or the dis semination of the Message: Goodwill Towards Men.

Lever Wanderings

The story by Supercargo told in the December Editors' Mailbag (p. 22) of a Lever scout giving the Gilbert Islands the “once over” re minds me of the time some years later (probably 1923) when George

Fulton (manager of L.P.P.) came i to New Guinea in Koonakara (whi( succeeded Kolombangara ) with tv of his lieutenants, the Chief Plant tion Inspector Harrigan (it cou] have been O’Harrigan) and Chi( Medical Assistant Pinching.

I was sent along with them on tour of inspecting Board plantation particularly in the Witu and Kavien districts. Levers were toying with th idea of acquiring the old Germa estates, but it would be in a big wa] so Fulton explained.

He was impressed with the Wit properties; Kavieng did not appe£ to him so much and when he gc around to studying the native labou conditions he was not too happy a all.

Chief Officer Nils Manson, of t[?] Australia-West Pacific Line ves[?] “Milos”, married petite Grace See[?] nursing sister at Nonga Base Hos[?] tal, Rabaul, in December. The we[?] ding was at the Rabaul Method Memorial Church. The couple m[?] while the bride was returning [?] “Milos” from Hongkong some tin[?] ago, and the wedding was arrang[?] to coincide with the latest visit the ship to Rabaul.

Photo: C. H. Me[?]

othing eventuated from the tour, sitting down on a coral patch 14 hours in the Albatross Channel of Kavieng (much to the chagrin tie Skipper, Capt. Swanson), and some interesting reminiscences me from Medical Man Pinching, was a one-time Jamieson Raider iouth Africa and was once sen :d to be hanged! ibour conditions were not too :ult in 1923. It was about this that Sepik labourers first came the market. The Highlands itry had not even been dis red. Whatever George Fulton Id think now (were he alive), of ;nt conditions is, perhaps, better recorded. Anyway, the BSIP has roblems of labour . . . And so, the Gilberts, the Unilever in ts did not expand in NG.

According to Hoyle

(eryone realises, I think, that the linistration in P-NG is doing /thing possible to bring about J integration within the Territory, ited. But surely such a publicity iaign as that launched over the tion of a half-caste Chinese-New nd’s application for membership Port Moresby club is carrying :ampaign beyond all reason; quite t from its very non-U aspect, ost Europeans living in Papua or New Guinea have experienced life of some description and v the usual procedure that before ;mber is proposed it is customary it out a “feeler” before the ballot if there is an unfavourable re n, then the nomination is with is a foolhardy member who in on forcing the ballot, irrespective nng forewarned. > the casual observer, reading the ants in the Sydney Press on the n Chan incident, it would appear the club in question is being ; a whipping-post for racial dis ination, and it is hard to believe a Public Service club is con ed compelled to accent an appli n because it comes from a civil mt and that it has no discrimina powers at all. :atures of the incident which I :t: The local paper blazoning the nal business of a club in a three nn head-line on its front page; iey newspapers’ splash head-lines: our Bar War Splits Club”, il Looms for Us in New Guinea”, Colour Bar, says Club Man”, hat sort of an impression is that g to make on the reading public ydney? More especially as Aus ans are now becoming slightly ur conscious in respect to their

own abos, and what they don’t do for them.

I go all the way with President Cox, who is reported to have said: “Ours is a private club. The com mittee has the right to accept or re ject any nomination”. If a private club has not that right, then it im mediately ceases to be a club and becomes merely a pub.

As a postscript: If certain govern ment officials and the Press are so concerned about the rejection of a Mixed Race’s nomination to a club, why is it they do not do something about giving them Australian naturali sation? Or is that something which only can be granted by Paul Meernaa Caedwalla Hasluck in his own good time?

A Happy Man Here in my little back-water the other day I met up with a rubber planter from Papua—one Steve Peter son, who has a place not far from Moresby. He told me he was quite content with present conditions; no labour troubles, especially; the price had dropped a bit, but he was opti mistic, And what was more, happy about the prospects.

It was a change to listen to a contented planter. I wonder why that same optimism does not seem to pre vail on the other side of the border?

Do they feel more secure within the Australian territory than in that of the United Nations? (Over)

Sectarianism For years now in P-NG (nm especially since World War II) ■ nominationalism has become r amongst the fallowed fields of prit tive people. All the latest Amerio gimmicks are being used. The lat is an accusation levelled againstl certain sect as attempting to ms capital out of the old, old stunt of eclipse of the sun.

If I remember rightly it was fil exploited by whites amongst 1 blacks in a novel by Rider Haggac Alan Quartermain.

I well remember, back in 19* pulling the same stunt on a village' Buka natives over an eclipse of 1 moon, which I prophesied (with i aid of an almanac) and gained mu prestige thereby.

I suppose, in view of current even I can count myself lucky that tho were no news-hounds on my trail 1 the time, and that my rival tradl did not lodge a complaint.

But I suppose that, after the box with wine and beer bottles Christian Church dignitaries, stag over the birthplace of Christ l;t Christmas Day, one should not I surprised at anything occurri amongst the ranks of rival religionii anywhere. Little wonder that, w.\ 30-odd so-called Christian denomin tions jockeying for souls in P-Nt that tactical steps are attempted eliminate some of them.

Gerald K. H. Chan, aged 23, has succes completed his final year at the Sydney versity graduating B.Sc. (Agric.). He is first Chinese born in New Guinea to H[?] gained such a degree. He received his pri[?] education at the Rabaul Sacred Heart Se[?] before going to Australia to the Chris[?] Brothers College, Waverley, NSW. He now joined the NG Department of Agricult[?] He is the son of Mr. and Mrs. G. Chan, Bailu Plantation, Kokopo.—Photo: C. H. M[?]