The Trobriands: Where Your

Dollar Goes Furthest

By a staff writer

It is not so long since bare-breasted maidens were a feature of the Port Moresby scene.

Smiling, good-looking Hanuabadan belles with grass skirts and flowers in their hair strolled up Musgrave Street, offering village wares to passers-by. Today, 10 years later, the same girls—or per haps their sisters—wear mini-skirts, but not of grass as they hurry to their office jobs. If they should now appear bare-breasted presumably they would risk being thrown into the lock-up.

I don’t know why the bare-breasted ok went out in Port Moresby when did, but I know that before the 5t of the girls were swallowed up their village they were demanding - from the tourist before they >uld be photographed—and were ;11 in g it. They had, in fact, lie partners in the background 10 appeared to be there for no ter reason than to see they got It’s possible that the development a business enterprise out of an 1 custom resulted in a quicker tnise for the custom than other se. I don’t know, but I was Te nded of the disappearing Port 3resby belles recently when I was e of a party which made a week d flight from Port Moresby to i Trobriand Islands—where the rts are mini but still made of iss, and where bosoms are still ashamedly high fashion.

For how long will they remain so? many of the local girls hurried the opposite direction immediately visitor’s camera was pointed their y. Was this Port Moresby again? ;re they becoming conscious of ir nudity? Were they wanting pay nt foi a photograph? kVhy were even tiny children run g from the cameras? How long uld the bare-breasted look remain hionable in the Trobriands?

An explanation

asked an informed islander— le—for an explanation. Yes, it 5, he said, Port Moresby all over tin. As islanders went off to ►resby to work they returned with news that photographs were rth money, and that girls shouldn’t photographed unless they were d. rhis explanation didn’t account the fact that I was never asked pay for a photograph. Men could photographed with impunity. Nor

did it account for the fact that mere children, girls, were anxious to avoid the camera.

Tim Ward, licensee of the Trobriands Hotel, had another ex planation.

“This business of girls not being photographed dates from only a couple of years back,” he said, “when an American arrived with a Land camera—the kind that gives you in stant pictures. This one took coloured pictures. One day he lined up one of the girls, photographed her, peeled off the print and presented it to her.

"Remarkable people"

“As it happened, she wasn’t de lighted. He had captured this young girl’s spirit, and there it was in front of her. She was horrified, and so was one of the chiefs, who brought that print to me and expressed his concern. It hasn’t anything to do with money at all. They still have

their superstitions here, despite the work of the missions.

“These are remarkable people.

There is still a paramount chief and once they had their own form of government, exercised to a high degree. The people show a Poly nesian strain.”

I make no judgments on the two accounts. The matter of photo graphs is merely one of the many interesting facets of current life in the Trobriands. For travellers look ing for something different, and, as yet, off the beaten track, a visit to the Trobriands should be high on their schedule.

Dollar for dollar, the Trobriands are the best tourist value in the South Pacific if you make use of a week end package-deal air charter from Port Moresby.

The Trobriands are a group of 22 islands off eastern Papua, with a total population of 14,000, 12,500

Tim and Beverley Ward, outside some of the new native huts being added to the hotel. They will surround the present central building

f whom are on the main island of kiriwina. Kiriwina is flat, shaped ke a pork chop, about 20 miles >ng and 14 miles wide at its widest oint, but narrowing down in parts ) a few hundred yards wide. The landers live in villages scattered bout the coast and interior, and i the centre is an all-weather airstrip ft over from World War 11.

It is this airstrip which has brought regular air service to Kiriwina in icent years, but the service did not art bringing visitors in numbers itil about three years ago when im and Beverley Ward married on ie island and started the hotel.

Tim, now only 30, had been with e Forestry Department, but saw the ading opportunities. The islanders ere friendly and unspoiled, the imate balmy most of the time, e fishing and croc shooting ex llent.

Friendly hotel

The Trobriands Hotel on Kiriwina no Hilton. It is a friendly, no ills Islands hotel with that leisurely larm still to be found in Islands ick-blocks. It is being extended all e time, and currently it has 22 oms, most of them served by com unal bathrooms. But several sep ate, and air-conditioned units with owers and toilets are almost lished. And individual native hut pe accommodation is also being lilt. There is a swimming pool, and bar with a 24-hour licence.

The tariff is one of those rarities ■all inclusive. SAB a day, or $9 for e air-conditioned rooms when avail le, with excellent meals (plenty of :al seafood) and your laundry. At e weekends, with the charter in, »u will be asked to share, but dur g the week guests have their own oms.

At $8 a day that’s value, but the ards do even better than that, as I und on my charter trip.

Ciriwina is served by a regular air rvice as well as a charter. Papuan ir Transport provides both services, iriwina is a 1 hr. 50 min. flight r DC3 from Port Moresby. Patair ns a scheduled service once a week iving Port Moresby every Thursday tout 7 a.m. and returning the same iy. Cost is 550.80 single, $101.60 turn. If you take this flight you ill thus need to remain at least week, for a total fare of $101.60 id a week’s tariff of $56.

The charter trip is operated by

Patair in the same DC3. This leaves Port Moresby at 8 a.m. on three Saturdays out of every four, return ing to Port Moreby at 3.30 p.m. on Sunday. The aircraft remains at Kiriwina. Cost is $4O return, in clusive of hotel accommodation. No extras! It’s a package deal dreamed up by Patair and the Wards.

Charter details

It’s possible for the visitor to arrive by the regular service and get out on the charter, providing he books

ahead and there is a seat on the charter. Or he can come in on the charter and go out on a regular flight.

If he makes use of the charter at all, either way, he must still pay the full s4o—but a little mathe matical comparison will reveal that it will pay to use the charter, especially as the fare includes a day’s full tariff at the hotel.

The Patair charter that I took had an average load—about 30 passengers.

We had been warned by the airline

Plans for new Moresby hotels

There was great interest in Port Moresby in June in the application by Steamships Trading Company for a liquor licence for a new 12-storey, 135-room hotel it plans to build opposite its present store, overlooking Port Moresby harbour. The site (top picture ) is at present occupied by Arisen’s and a wharf storage shed. Burns Philp objected to the licence being granted on the grounds that it plans to demolish the old Moresby Hotel on a nearby corner (lower picture ) and erect a 10-storey hotel there, and there is not room for two large hotels in the area. The Licensing Court granted Steamships the licence, Burns Philp will appeal.

lo take no more than 10 lb weight 3f luggage each—a restriction whose purpose became obvious on our re turn when our aircraft lumbered nanfully off from Kiriwina, weighted lown with our individual purchases )f ebony walking sticks and carved )igs. Passengers mostly were Port Moresby people—husbands and wives, md groups of office girls making i gang of it, but there was a sprinkling >f visitors from Australia. )ccasional Americans find their way n on the charter.

The flight to Kiriwina takes you icross the spine of Papua, the Owen Jtanley Ranges, within sight of the ild wartime names of Buna and Gona nd out across the Coral Sea.

Kiriwina is flat and scrubby from he air—and not very tropical— here is in fact only one decent-sized lill on the island.

At the airstrip, the plane is met y Tim and Beverley Ward, and two ttractive friends of Mrs. Ward’s, 'oral Hurlock and Dianne Morgan, dio are up from Dalby, Queensland, 3 help out in the hotel for a few lonths. You load yourselves into ic back of a couple of Nissan trucks 'ith seats added, and head along ne of the old wartime roads for ic coast, and the hotel.

Free transport is a feature of the weekend charter. After lunch on the aturday the visitors climb back on le trucks and set off on what turns ut to be a 50-mile trip around the illages—the highlight being a swim t one of the white-sand Trobriand caches. Tim Ward has his eye on nother hotel site there.

Local carvings

The village trip gives the visitors le chance to buy some of the local irvings, which are now the major )urce of income for the islanders, hey have always been carvers; their moe prows and ceremonial yam auses are still a colourful fascinat ig feature of the island. Even the lildren carve today.

Skill varies as much as the prices, Jt a good piece is still cheap in ie Trobriands by general standards, he villages seem to specialise—some iing more expert at carving pigs t all shapes and sizes (including xible-enders!), others at carving alking sticks into fantastic shapes, hollowing out bowls and trays, ne village makes collapsible tables; lother is good at decorating gourds.

Buying is a matter of barter, hich, after a half-dozen villages, m get exhausting and at the end

I the afternoon most of the visitors ■c ready to head back to the hotel w a drink!

Saturday night is dance night— ith the dancing supplied by the en of a nearby village outside the )tel. Our cover picture this month spiels the kind of colourful head esses seen in the Trobriands.

On Sunday morning a couple of i made an early start for an un heduled trip, a 20-minute drive to e mysterious “Stonehenge” in the ntre of the island. Transport and guide were provided free by the ards as part of the remarkable $4O ckage deal.

Ancient stones

These stones have been known r many years, but nobody knows ;ir history. PIM, in February, 36, ran a report on how Mr. A. J. >gan had examined them in 1932 d estimated them to be 2,000 years 1. The Papuan Government an opologist, Mr. F. E. Wiliams, ex lined them in 1936 and said it was ely they were tomb temples, or :red burial places. In Williams’ time ; stones formed a rough oblong, aut 60 ft long and about 15 ft )ad.

Williams recommended that the site preserved and examined, and the ing Lieutenant-Governor of Papua the time, Mr. H. W. Champion 10 is still living in Sydney) was •orted in PIM of June, 1936, as ing that steps would be taken to ry out Mr. Williams’ recommenda is.

What steps, if any, were taken, I I’t know, but the stones have not ;n preserved. Some of them have ;n moved to the villages, and dur the war, when there was an lerican force on Kiriwina, many the stones were knocked down I parts of them used as reinforc for concrete.

Back to civilisation

found them overgrown and it » impossible to see any pattern their arrangement. Nevertheless le scientific investigations are now ig carried out on the stones. Next Qth PIM will publish an article on it is known about them so far.

Uso on Kiriwina are limestone lerground caves, quite extensive, difficult to enter except in dry ither. Archaeological work is also ig carried out on these, as they tain skeletons

The charter visitors head off again after breakfast on Sunday, but this time in two groups. One group takes to the trucks as usual and makes a five mile tour into new villages, end ing on the coast, where they clamber into several ocean-going canoes. The other group sets off from the hotel in canoes and comes back by road.

The canoes for the most part take you down a mangrove-lined river where there is always a good chance of spotting a crocodile on the bank, thus assuring the charter visitors of a final thrill before lunch—and the flight back to Port Moresby. After a weekend in the Trobriands, New Guinea’s capital appears to be less civilised.

Tourist Hotel For

Rarotonga

Construction of Rarotonga’s first tourist hotel will start early next year, the same time work begins on the island’s international airport.

The hotel—with 140 beds and partly built in Polynesian village fashion—will be built by Rarotonga Village Hotel Co. Ltd., which is owned by Cook Island and New Zealand shareholders and is an as sociate firm of Cook Islands Develop ment Co. Ltd.

Cook Islands Development has a seven-acre block of land two miles from the airfield.