“Jock"MacLean

Death Of “Jock"MacLean

By a Staff Writer

The death of former New Guinea planter Mr. John (“Jock”) Mac Lean in Brisbane at the age of 82 recalls the “spy scare” he touched off in Port Moresby in World War I, and his epic escape from the Japanese in World War 11.

Maclean, who first went to Papua in 1908, started the scare in 1914 when he walked, travel stained and bearded, out of the jungle of the Owen Stanley ranges into a Port Moresby which was jittery with apprehension of spies from adjoining German New Guinea.

He told a suspicious shop-girl that he was not naturalised and left her convinced that this broad Scots accent was German.

His parting genial threat to blow up the ships in the harbour (which happened to be waiting to invade German New Guinea) touched off a full-scale spy hunt which didn’t end until he was found playing poker.

Officials, even more convinced of his sinister intentions because he had shaved off his beard, took some time to satisfy themselves that he was an Australian citizen with a Scots accent.

It was less easy to make them believe he had walked across the Owen Stanleys after an Australian gold-dredging company on the Yodda had collapsed following the outbreak of war.

Mac Lean had begun working in the Yodda after abandoning the first coconut plantation to be established on Cape York. He had also been a drover and a pearl diver in Queens land, Twenty eight years after his Port Moresby episode (later in World War I he served in Gallipoli and France with the AIF) Mac Lean sailed

into Buna with 16 other refugees aboard a launch which had run the gauntlet from New Ireland.

Mac Lean had, between the wars, settled in the Bainings as a planter, and he remained there until the lapanese overran Rabaul.

Mac Lean stayed on his properties, and for a time ran an improvised hospital, until it became clear he would either have to surrender to the Japs or escape.

His own launch had already gone with a party of soldiers attempting to escape by sea, so he helped another party to get a boat into use and went with them into St. George’s Channel. They lost the launch near

Cape St. George and took to the New Ireland jungle.

There they found their real trouble was from disloyal natives, and the party had many narrow escapes before finally they obtained a 30 ft, junk-like launch.

Setting off from Muliama, on the east coast of New Ireland, some times they motored, sometimes they sailed but more often they just drifted. It was mid-April when they set off and mid-May when they reached Buna, on the Papua coast.

Mac Lean was then more than 60, but he joined the AIF and was one of the first planters back in New Guinea after the war.

"Jock" McLean