Atmosphere And Objectivity

In NG Literary Travelogue

The latest book on New Guinea—and it seems now there is always going to be a latest book on New Guinea—is a sound piece of work in low key, like the man who wrote it. It has neither the adventure nor the sweep of history of some recent books on the Territory.

Australian film producer Maslyn Williams has made a literary travelogue of his seven years of film-making in P-NG (during which he made about 30 films), and the book’s title, Stone Age Island, sets its tone.

Mr. Williams has obviously seen too much of the outback of the Ter ritory to believe that any headlong rush there towards independence is going to be in anybody’s best interests.

At the same time, he is aware that the political future of the country could be decided by pressures over which there is no intelligent control, so his book does not crusade for one approach or another.

He is content to report mildly on the things he has seen and the things he has heard.

He quotes planter Bobby Gibbes: “I think, maybe, that someone down in Canberra had best start thinking about making our New Guinea folk

into dinkum Australians, before they decide they’d rather be something else”.

And an unnamed resident: “It is neither the Highlander nor the coastal sophisticates whom we whites need to worry about, or even the disgruntled and confused Buka of the Solomons or the arrogant Mekeos of Papua.

“It will be governments, including our own, following paths of political ambition or expediency, who will decide our future without reference to ourselves or to the people of New Guinea, or any kind of morality or justice, unless we ourselves do some think soon.

“Faith in the future is a fine thing, but history is what happens. Look what they did in West New Guinea.

Even semi-literate villagers in this country were shocked and dismayed when 700,000 people of their race were given away in a political poker

"Wave Something!"

me played in the ante-chambers of ; United Nations.”

And Mr. Williams quotes himself, icn discussing the refusal of some lais to give up land so the Rabaul strip can be improved; “Compared with the great issues it divide the world today it is a rial matter. Elsewhere it might be olved by physical or financial sssures. But Australia hesitates to : these pressures. First of all :ause she believes that New Guinea )ple should willingly contribute /ards their own advancement, and ondly because any suggestion of :rcion will bring well-instructed tch dogs baying at the bar of the I ‘lt is across this rickety bridge compromise that Australia is ing to lead a straggling cavalcade mutually antagonistic and hetero ictic human beings into the 20th fury, out of an isolated and orphous past, into a gregarious 1 unified future. It seems an im sible task.” dr. Williams’ passing report on three New Guineas—the coast, hinterland and the highlands— strates very well just what kind of :ture it all is. lis favourite New Guineans are Highlanders, “ who look you in eye and smile without doubt or e or shyness. They have self )ect and are prepared to meet you -way and to do things for them es, not needing or wanting charity being forced by poverty to sub ience or deceit”.

Hope in Highlands

he Highlands are the real hope 'lew Guinea’s future, Mr. Williams ears to believe. There in the up -Is, with almost half the native ulation of the Territory, they are ifferent people from the coastal uans, who were delivered from Drical obscurity by missionaries, different from the people of the h coast, “who had Prince Otto Bismarck and the merchants of aburg for godparents”, he future of the Territory and i of Australia might well depend, eels, on just how sensibly the re mship between Australians and Highlanders is developed, here are, of course, different rates 3rogress in the Highlands. The igi people are bright and breezy, pig feasts and sex play the most

exciting delights in life; the Southern Highlanders still prefer a good inter tribal battle for their entertainment.

Among many ancedotes and stories of this area is Mr. Williams’ on-the-spot report of how the first wheeled transport came to Tari.

It was a Land-Rover whose chassis, too big to be flown in, had to be manhandled 60 miles over the mountains from Laiagam.

More than 2,000 Laiagam natives started it on its way by cutting a laddered track up the sheer sides of their valley to the escarpment above, passing the chassis and the tray hand over hand above their heads, then ADO Bill Crellin in Tari (now of Samarai) and his carriers “walked 11 desolate days in one of the earth’s most lonely places, through valleys unknown to the outside world, carrying an automobile’’. They crossed into Papua at 10,000 ft and waded two great rivers.

When the Land-Rover was being put together 10 miles of road were built by the locals, who considered that Crellin was mad for wanting a track so wide.

Maiden Run The first vehicle in Tari had its maiden run on the airstrip before a large and curious crowd, who turned and ran without shame as soon as the “house” began to move off with a roar. Women snatched up their babies and hid behind the station buildings.

When the excitement died down, Crellin, Williams and two policemen set off to try out the new road.

“As we left the airstrip and turned on to the road leading to the T'agari bridge,” Williams reports, “a great shout went up from all the men who were watching, for now they could see the reason and the meaning of the road, and they ran after us, hooting with excitement”.

As the truck stopped briefly to load some shovels, the crowd stood wide eyed, “enlightenment and understand ing flooding even more fully into their minds as they nudged each other and pointed out the thing carried a man’s load for him, and as much as many men could carry”.

But as Mr. Williams points out, progress in many other ways is swift in New Guinea and there is no uniformity of development. Some of the statistics in Stone Age Island are out-of-date already.

But such is New Guinea today that no book can keep up with the statistics. It is atmosphere and objectivity that counts, and Stone Age Island supplies both.—Sl. (STONE AGE ISLAND. Collins, London.

45/-.)