Big army expansion in P-NG

The population of the Lae area of Papua-New Guinea will increase by something like 3,000 next year following the completion of a great new Australian Army establishment at Igan, seven miles from Lae, between the Busu and Bumbu rivers.

THE army area which covers 700 acres and will cost an estimated SBi million will have its own sewerage system and sealed roads throughout. The establishment will provide living, working and recreation space for about 3,000 people, ineluding wives and families of men serving in the Pacific Islands Regiment who will be the occupants.

There will be 53 major camp buildings, 51 houses for European personnel and 215 houses for local enlisted personnel, as well as six barrack blocks for unmarried soldiers, The establishment will have its own swimming pool and recreation grounds as well as full educational facilities for soldiers’ children.

A work force of 90 Europeans and 650 natives, including 141 trades men, are at present building the camp.

Stage one, amounting to about half the area, should be completed by January, and stage two about May next year. The first of the build ings should be ready about November when some army personnel are ex pected to move in. [gan w iH become the third major army camp in the territory, the others being at Taurama, in Port Moresby, and at Moem, about seven miles from Wewak. The regiment also has camps at Vanimo, west of Wewak, and at Goldie River, a training establish ment near Port Moresby.

The Gateway of the Sun at Tiahuanaco, Bolivia, is near the shores of the world's highest navigable lake, Lake Titicaca. It is about 13,000 ft above sea level. Thor Heyerdahl believes that the Tiahuanacans were driven from their homeland to the Pacific coast, and from there into the Pacific.