Territories TALK-TALK

With Tolala

If the opening of the New Guinea House of Assembly has done nothing else, it has stepped up Australia's Press publicity of this, its most important Territory.

<HE Australian reader now regu larly has human-interest stories )tn itinerant special correspondents popular newspapers, and most of ;m, I expect, much prefer assign ats in New Guinea to Paddington, [inter s Hill or Bathurst.

At one time we had a day-to-day port on the condition of the quads rn to Greta, a native woman of aiye, somewhere around the Oro ly area. And then we had the Pioneering plug for President hnson from a New Hanover :tion.

I am now awaiting word of a paratist Group, dedicated to nator Goldwater (“Water belong Id money”) in some remote area lere Goldwater publicists have sited.

Dwards Education

Much of the recent publicity has en devoted to emphasise the out mding need for western education r these near-primitive people.

There was one agitator for tertiary ucation for New Guineans in a tier to the Press, writing: “In so r as these leaders must be uni rsity-trained, the delegation [to the jrrie Commission] emphasised the :ed to establish a college for tertiary ucation within the Territory with it delay”.

Is a university degree such an iportant qualification for becoming member of the House of Assembly?

One correspondent mentioned that great number of candidates for ection signed their papers with a oss.

So what? Do they know less of e requirements of their constituents :cause they cannot pen a calligraphic mbol?

Is it not time that the tenants in ir Ivory Towers of Learning should >me down to earth and place their et firmly on the ground; and, at e same time, put a stop to this ea that the New Guinean is an norant, uneducated person?

I would like these critics to have :companied me some years ago as wandered along bush-land paths in

Buka in the company of 10-year-old Rarin who attached himself to me probably because we were both tseezen (initiates) together at the Ndook secret society’s ceremony when I was named Mala and he Rarin.

Anyway, I profited by this attach ment for it was through him and his extensive knowledge of bushcraft that I came to appreciate what a mass of information dwelt in the mind of this small lad and, furthermore, was able to impart it to me in a mixture of Buka and pidgin-English.

We walked many miles on his native island, while he told me the names of flowers, shrubs and creepers and any particular use to which they could be put.

That one was good for stomach aches; this was a rare dye plant; that was used by the women to bring on their menses; that other bush was used for stupefying fish. And so it went on.

He gave me the name of every thing I asked him and told me its uses (if any). He showed me the vines and bushes from which various butterfly pupae were suspended and which he later collected for me, sav ing me chasing wildly about with a butterfly-net.

Out on the reef it was the same: telling me the names of shells and fish; the best time to catch them and those that were good and those that were bad for eating.

The result of my study of Rarin’s mentality astounded me to such an extent that on my next trip south to the Land of Civilisation I made somewhat similar excursions into the bush accompanied by a lad about the same age and acknowledged as being a ‘“bright lad”.

He may have been in some ways, but he knew practically nothing of his own land.

The names of shrubs and flowers? . . . “Aw! That’s botany. I don’t bother with that”, said he. He could tell me about the history of Europe and America and he prided himself on his maths. By now with the aid of slide rules, computers and such

Jgets I expect he has settled down a good job.

As a realist I would say there is solution required, for there is no )blem: Each to his own. But the jerts are not happy to leave it at it. Progress, to their way of nking, must consist of ‘“backward” )ple being educated up to western ndards of living, according to stern ideas and cultures.

Phis is all a part of the “self ermination” policy in which they : being educated. (Never forgetting it the first three letters of OGRESS are of paramount impor ice in the commercialised western rid of today).

And what is the target for this icy? In order that the New incans may have a higher standard living; build better houses with terial from overseas; drive motor s of their own; wear western thes—from overseas; form trade ons; organise strikes, political ties and racial riots and that will nplete the picture of western ilisation as it is today. \t that point we can step down, ike hands with ourselves and rmur; “They are now ready for ependence and self determination, r task is done”. -low are the New Guineans to pay all these fol-de-las? Expert agri tural economists will have the wer: The increase of their primary •ducts: cacao, coffee and copra. . Overproduced? . . . Well, yes, financial experts will fix that—we >e. It’s as simple as that.

\ Lower Levels

Concern as to the adequate speed native progress towards this much mted independence has been ariably confined to executive levels Port Moresby. lut now the New Britain District visory Council has expressed con jrable interest in the subject after Director of Education for the Mission in New Britain, Cr. Rev.

S. O’Hanlon, had strongly icised native indolence, laid the priest: “New Guineans ieve they will one day get a adise State wherein everybody s no work and get everything requires for nothing”.

Vt present, he said, he had heard ative plantation owner does about hours’ work on his plantation h week, but it takes him about hours to do it.

"he upshot of the priest ncillor’s pronouncements was a t'ion being carried for the forma i of local Economic Development mmittees in all backward areas of island.

Another councillor, S t a n i s Boramilat, said that during the electioneering for the House of As sembly he had visited the Pomio area (in the vicinity of Jacquinot Bay) and there the people told him they did not want to become planters and small businessmen. Rather than this they would go back into the hills.

So here we have an example of the native being accused of wanting things for nothing; of not working sufficiently long hours—according to our standards—and we are seeking the authoritative right to compel him to conform to our standards. And

yet, on the other hand, we are guilefully offering him our own par ticular brand of self-determination.

What is the New Guinean to think? What is anybody to make of such double-talk?

The Duke Of Yorks

Although the Duke of York Group is usually looked upon as a more or less unimportant spot in the Scheme of Things of the Bismarck Archi pelago, it really possesses a fund of historical interest.

Early traders used the group as a jumping-off spot to extend business

on New Britain in the 1870’s. (The New Britain folk were too wild.) George Brown launched the Austra lian Wesleyan Church in 1875 at Port Hunter, now known as Molot.

Godefroy & Son started trading on Mioko in 1874 and were succeeded by the Long-Handle Firm (DH&PG), and it was on Mioko where Farrell and “Queen Emma” started their trading enterprise some years later, then afterwards shifted to Ralum and points beyond.

It was at Mioko and Port Hunter where many of the survivors of the Marquis du Rays expedition spent their last hours and were subse quently buried. The cemetery on Mioko is worthy of national pre servation. Much of New Guinea’s early history lies there.

One of the first government build ings in the colony was erected on Kerawara Island when it first arrived in 1884, later to be transferred to Finschhaven, thence to Stephansort, then Frederichswilhelmshaven (Ma dang), to Herbertschoehe (Kokopo) and finally to Simpsonhaven (Rabaul).

In more modern times, of course, we know it shifted to Lae in 1941 and then after the war, it disap peared into the limbo when the Trust Territory was merged with Papua, the Australian Territory.

More Modern Times: In 1911, when I knew the Duke of Yorks well, it had lost much of its prestige.

Hernsheim & Co. still retained Makada as a plantation, with Franz Stehr as manager, although he was planting up his own property on Manuan, opposite Makada on the Duke of Yorks mainland, Franz Stehr, with his Irish-American wife, had come up from Samoa, where they used to run a pub in Apia. They brought their four children, Albert, Franz, Louise and Juanita. They were shipwrecked as they were coming into Simpsonhaven at the foot of the South Daughter.

Ideal For Tourists: Of all the island parts of NG, the Duke of Yorks would be my selec tion for a large scale resort with its white sands, its submarine coral gar dens, its surf and its calm blue waters and its easy reach of Rabaul.

The group is of coral formation, unlike the neighbouring beaches of the Gazelle Peninsula with its black beaches.

New Britain mainland is volcanic.

And who wants to 101 l about on black beaches?