With a Bang

Sydneysider Goes Walkabout

Hollandia Ends Not With a Bang But a Whimper...

Hollandia.

The rumour that Mercedes cars are being given away here for a couple of hundred pounds is just one of the happier miscon ceptions the outside world has about this place. But other things are cheap (see at right).

Every car worth shipping out has been shipped, or will be, and Vm told that there were few Mercedes, anyhow—one Jaguar head ing the list of exotic breeds.

cars that are left are almost clusively of the common or varieties, most of them pretty i at that. Fiats, VW’s, Morris , Prefects, a few old American few newer English ones, make vehicle census, plus, of course, tinous white jeeps of the UN. st saw these white jeeps in d Kashmir two years ago; I i they have been scuttling about mgo in the last 18 months, they are here; symbols of n and the sort of world we iddled ourselves with.

Transport Troubles

ddition to cars, the übiquitous an scooter is everywhere be in this place, it is necessary to ne’s own motive power. Hol ds spread out all over miles istal hills—the highest and suburb a thousand feet or ibove the bay. The hotel is a of miles from the shopping and post office; a bit less lat to the government offices; tes to the airport at Sentani; iot hilly distances from any else. And even before the crisis Fere no taxis. e is a public bus service but f thinks of using it except the is and it is impossible to find w it runs, or where, or when.

Therefore the first thing that any one has to do is to find himself a car, or failing that, a scooter. Some of the correspondents who have been here some time have bought cars—such as a nine-year-old Fiat, two-cat power, everything coming adrift, for $l5O US. This works out cheaper than hiring one for a long period.

There are no car-hire firms but the good Dutch burghers have been quick to catch on. Currently I’m renting one from someone in Public Works for 30 guilders a day—about £Stg.3 or £3/15/- Australian.

It’s a small asthmatic Fiat in a reasonable state of preservation which I got because I knew a man who knew the man. I’m told it’s a bargain —4O guilders a day is the usual asking-price for any car; an American Press correspondent can hardly wait until I go, so he can take over from me.

Hollandia now is like Australian New Guinea towns were right after the war when only a few salvaged jeeps stood between you and walking.

Here now, as there then, the politest form of greeting is: “Are you alright for transport?”

Almost everyone, except the top brass who are staying for some time, are accommodated at the Hotel Noordwijk—the Government Hotel— which is a dining-room-bar under one

roof and a series of long buildings of cell-like bedrooms cascading down the hill in terraces.

Each tiny room has a bed and table, a wash basin, a tiled floor and a place to hang your clothes. In the front is a sitting-out balcony; at the back, a 3 ft. wide, tiled cat-walk where the domestic life of the estab lishment is carried on.

If you are an old-hand, you have invested in a plastic bucket (for wash ing your clothes—no plugs supplied with the wash-basins), a pressure-pak of insect spray, and, maybe something in which to make yourself coffee as an alternative to the brew supplied by the establishment (that tastes like something left over after boiling a pair of football-socks).

There are clothes-lines out there and to get into the gravelled yard where we park our hired cars and scooters, we first must negotiate napkins, bras, wet bathing suits and drip-dry shirts.

Anything Goes!

Guests may play ladies and gents out on the front porch, but out back, anything goes. This morning just after dawn, when I went, overdressed in a modest cotton nightgown, to hang up my own washing, the Indo nesian finance expert from two doors to the west was there in his cotton underdrawers; and the Dutch news agency correspondent, a thing gang ling youth, was hanging out shirts dressed in his inevitable “at home” costume of blue swimming trunks and thick spectacles.

Things in the establishment are per haps not normal at the moment. The manager, with almost all the other B-4’s, is leaving on October 1 and he and the other couple of Europeans on the staff are now seen only occasion ally, as fleeting shadows in the back ground. The place runs mostly through habit, with an occasional push from the Papuan staff.

The food is Teutonic - Colonial, which mostly means Indonesian, ex cept Saturdays and Wednesdays when it is what they call “European”, You take breakfast from 6.30 a.m. —sausage, cheese, boiled or fried eggs and thick bread that is spread with butter and malt-extract/codliver oil or sprinkled with hundreds-and-thousands in four flavours, including chocolate.

To fit in with the extraordinary office hours (7 a.m. to 2 p.m.) the

main meal of the day is at two and this, on the five non-“ European days” of the week, consists of a heap of rice on top of which you pile fiery pieces of fish or meat, ground-up red peppers, pieces of cucumber to stop the conflagration, soup made of Chinese cabbage or noodles and sausage, fried eggs, minced ham or chopped omelette. This universal space-filler will probably be followed by one canned peach, sitting forlornly on a silver dish.

Wash it down with two glasses of beer and you will naturally do what you are supposed to do—sleep the hot afternoon hours away until supper at seven! Supper is rissoles or a salad, raw smoked meat, sausage, pinkish coloured tea, bread and butter and English jam—or hundreds and thousands in four flavours, including chocolate!

Since the Michael Rockefeller dis appearance less than 12 months ago, something like 250 journalists and correspondents have visited this place, trying to wring the last ounce of juice from the trouble-spot.

At present there are no more than half-a-dozen, now hanging on in the hope that something newsworthy will happen—like a riot or a plane crash or the murder of a UN official. Most of them are stuck with it until at least October 5.

For a world conditioned to daily newspaper sensationalism, there is little at the moment that provides grist for their mill. Having stated the case the rest is mere repetition.

The only one who semes to knock out his daily quota of deathless prose is our Dutch friend of the swimming trunks, who at least has the satis faction of getting some sort of re sults from his efforts: The cables he sends off one day are part of the daily news-service from the local radio station here in Hollandia two days later—datelined The Hague.

The Experts

For the rest we have the experts and the observers and the military personnel and advisers—Chinese, Guatemalan, American, Australian, Indonesian, Swedish, Egyptian, you name-it-we-have-it.

They sit around in animated groups, drinking beer and laughing their heads off. Or sometimes in not so animated groups, picking over the house that they want, the car that they think

they should have; occasional!;! tated because there is not at single room left in the hotel.

Decent, family men probabl;! depending upon the way you II it, human vultures, on the national payroll, picking over j other national corpse, reducing to another job, another week’s' packet.

In another age, before we H so diplomatically nice, sco would have put poison in theiii or pushed them over a cliff om night. Now we invite them to tail parties.

Pretty Hollandia

Hollandia itself is one t prettiest towns in Australian cc New Guinea and in normal o stances there could be many\ places for tropical service. AL the old Hollandia was establis a settlement in 1910, it was i pre-war capital (that was Al and the new coastal town as ii today has grown from the b;c Americans built during thei (Very soon now it will bo Indonesian name of Kotabaru Many of its sections are s ferred to by their wartime nr Dock Two or Dock Four; B:f Beach) G, etc. Many of tr cellent roads, particularly the • to the Sentani airstrip, are imr upon American roads, as is airport at Biak.

With many of the women go; town is now socially dead. Thd of the moment is superficially! and unreal against a sombrei ground of disappointment, careers and financial jeopardy The new arrivals strut thei little superficial parts, in no w with the fabric of the past, uu by the fact that for the rese now a matter of waiting out tr

UN MAN IN P-NG: The United [?] now has its own Information Ce[?] Port Moresby, with Mr. Sami Das charge. Here, in Rabaul recently, [?] with Sister Chris Kouchmenidies, Nonga Base Hospital. Both were [?] Jerusalem and enjoyed a chat in