Sydney Judge's Good-Humoured

Comments On New Guinea

The New Guinea bookshelf has become a little crowded lately, with books about New Guinea coming in from all quarters. But here is one that can be read for both pleasure and profit.

YOUNG barrister David Selby was in charge of a military unit in Rabaul in January, 1942, when the Japanese roof fell in on top of them, and he learned about New Guinea the hard and merciless way—a hunted refugee in the pitiless New Britain jungle. He told the story, pretty effectively, in Hell and High Fever.

Many years later, in 1961-62, he went back to Papua-New Guinea as a temporary judge; and again, on circuit, he had a close look at New Guinea in the raw, although under more comfortable conditions.

This new book, Itamhu, is simply a recital of his later experiences there, plus stories about people and places well-known to most Terri torians—all the result of shrewd observation, and told with kindly, agreeable good humour.

Much of the book should be help ful to our bureaucratic nation-builders because these are the impressions of a judge who has studied, with sympathy and understanding, the habits and thought-processes of the primitive folk brought before him for trial.

These are people who have been suddenly cut off from their age-old practices of tribal war and murder, payback and bride-price and sorcery —wherein they found most of their entertainment —and forced to accept the generally incomprehensible and boring rules of the Western social system. Little wonder that, while his duty obliged him to inflict punishment upon what the clumsy Queensland Criminal Code defines as

malefactors, his personal sympathies frequently were with the law breakers. It all makes entertaining reading.

There are two chapters where Judge Selby (he now is a member of the Supreme Court Bench of NSW) makes comment upon some of the extraordinary political trends which now encompass this country, and some of the queer facets of European life there; and these are worthy of a wider broadcast than they can get in a book.

The Legislative Council is being reconstituted to give the country a native majority in 1964. One school of thought, he says, argues in favour of self-government almost immedi ately. Another maintains that this cannot work, but “will lead to chaos and bloodshed”.

The judge, very properly, keeps off politics; but it is obvious that, as a man trained in logical thinking, he is deeply perturbed. He points out that the population is divided between over 600 language groups, many at enmity with others, with different customs and divergent out looks, but with no trace of an over all nationalistic outlook.

However, Judge Selby fairly states the facts, and leaves others to draw the conclusions.

“New Guinea is like a country suspended between two question marks,” he says. “Its future is as unpredictable as its past is obscure/’

And —perhaps wisely—he leaves it there. —RWR. (ITAMBU. Published by Currawong, Sydney. 31/6.)