They Shelled Out for the Mountaineers
p. 127 · Read in the full issue
From Our Canberra Correspondent The cowrie-shell currency of inland NNG is threatened with de preciation.
When Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer asked his friend the Austrian Charge d’Affaires in Canberra, Dr. W. de Comtes, to get some shells for him he did not foresee the result.
Harrer wanted the shells to pay carriers employed on his successful scaling of the Carstenz Pyramid in NNG. He asked Dr. de Comtes to get them from Tahiti, but the Austrian Consul in Tahiti cabled that none was available because tourists had bought them all up.
When this was announced in Australian newspapers and on radio stations Dr. de Comtes was flooded with offers of shells.
Within a couple of days he had to take on an extra typist to cope with the hundreds of letters and telegrams—and parcels of shells.
“It has been a marvellous example of international co-operation,”
Dr. de Comtes told “PIM”. “In all my postings around the world I have never known anything like it. Already I have received enough offers of shells to pay off all the inhabitants of NNG!”
When “PIM” went to press Dr. de Comtes did not know what to do with all his shells.
He cabled to NNG asking that a message telling of the great shell influx be dropped to Heinrich Harrer with his supplies. But HarrePs wishes will not be known until he completes the long walk back to his base camp. (See “PIM”, February, page 9.)