Keep In A Cool Place And

A Tale Of The Morobe Goldfields

Keep In A Cool Place And Stow Away From Boilers

By J. M. Bourke

A little sandy strip separating a sago swamp from the south-east surf became dotted with bamboo-walled huts roofed with sago palm. This was the residential section of Salamaua, the beginning of the trail to Edie Creek, a famous New Guinea goldfield of 30-odd years ago.

WHITES and natives were herded together in the hot moisture-saturated climate. For the Europeans, sanitary arrangements were primitive indeed, but for the native carriers conveniences were practically non-existent.

Filth deposited haphazardly in the jungle attracted rats, and the rats played host to a tiny mite which seemed to single out the Europeans for destruction.

The Medical Services of New Guinea had not, at that time, isolated the minute organism that burrowed under the skin of their victims and caused the deadly disease later known as scrub typhus.

The symptoms of scrub typhus were somewhat similar to malaria, but those whose resistance was low before the onset of the disease rarely recovered.

Salamaua had very little to boast of in those days, least of all an undertaker. So the miners constructed the coffins, carried them to the gravesides, read the

services and buried their dead. No native was allowed to construct a cross, or carry a corpse.

The coffins were made of green timber, split on the job, and the finished article often weighed several times that of the occupant.

When a funeral was over, the mourners adjourned to Burley Gorman’s shanty and drowned their sorrow in OP rum. Each funeral was the signal for a wake, but funerals occurred in rapid suc cession, and the wakes became so frequent that the regular mourners sometimes bordered on the DT’s.

Often the pall bearer of today be came the corpse of tomorrow.

When Peter Reedy—whose sister was once a famous actress —

passed on, Joe Fanning, of Towns ville, was the only Catholic sober enough to read the burial service.

Next day, Joe, too, was dead.

By this time, funeral arrange ments had become more relaxed, and a native was given the privilege of constructing a cross to mark Joe’s final resting place.

Instead of laboriously hacking a cross out of green wood, he con structed the symbol of sacrifice from the slats of a Carnation milk box; and so, standing at the head of Joe’s grave, in bold black letters, was this advice to visitors: “Keep in a Cool Place and Stow Away from Boilers”.

Joe would have appreciated that epitaph had he been able to see it.