The Hagen Show is unique—but

bring your own tent

• Life for the tourist in P-NG is not yet wine and roses, as Ken McGregor found out among 10,000 Highlanders . . .

The Mount Hagen Show is still a unique experience with 10,000 Highlanders on parade in all their wildly coloured plumage—even if life gets harder for the tourist as each year the show gets more and more popular.

At this year’s show, held in the Mt. Hagen Showground, seven miles outside the thriving township of the the same name in late August it was open day for local shopkeepers, Hagen authorities and the High landers themselves, as 70,000 visitors of all kinds arrived.

Some prices and services were daylight robbery and operators were only able to get away with them because in most cases visitors didn’t have any choice.

Prices put up for the show were many and varied, from local mini bus charges, because local hire cars were all taken, to top prices for meals. The Hagen Hotel charged tourists 50 cents a shower if they were not staying at the hotel and others, myself included, paid $lO to bed down for two nights on the local primary school floor with a blanket and mattress.

Perhaps the money went to a good cause—nobody told me. Some meal prices in the town were pretty hot and especially designed for the occasion I suspect. Pity. I move around quite a bit and was glad to be at Hagen for the great occasion, but many visitors I spoke to weren’t so philosophical.

10 cents a photo

Even the Highlanders got in on the act, insisting on either 10 or 20 cents before camera fans could take pictures and then they asked fantastic prices for any spears, arrows or miscellaneous junk they carried, Chimbus particularly and Wabag Highlanders proved a nuisance to many by asking for more money after people had bought goods off them.

Most tourists reactions were: “Well, what can we do about it?

We came, after all, and now we’re here we’ll have to buy something and be robbed”. The local get-rich quick-at-any-costs attitude seems a short-sighted one. It would be in teresting to see how many overseas

visitors return to see the show at Goroka next year.

Nevertheless, the Hagen Show lacked nothing in excitement, and the Highlanders themselves were in high spirits. They were the top attraction, but no one enjoyed themselves more than them.

Chimbus, Wabags, Taris, Minj and Wapenamanda men arrived decked in bizarre finery, including bird of paradise feathers, pig’s tusks, shells, leaves, warpaint and an amazing array of weapons varying from bows and arrows to 20 ft spears, Hagen axes and razor-sharp knives.

With their faces a thousand dif ferent colours, everything from nails to bones stuck through their noses and with four or five wives per chief, the Highlanders were an orgy of colour.

Walked 50 miles

Many had walked 50 miles or more up through the Highlands to attend and for most it was the one time of the year there was any con tact among different tribes. Trouble was predicted, but apart from a few drunks and a couple of isolated fights, peace prevailed.

Hamburger stalls, a fairy floss shop and 70-cent cowboy hats were big favourities with the Highlanders, one stall was jampacked by people three or four deep throughout the show.

When it came for the Highlanders to do their dances in the main oval, people 10 and 12 deep thronged the outside fences. With a great roaring chant, the Highlanders surged forward onto the oval, creating 10 times the applause and interest a subsequent polo match received.

Photographers—amateur and pro fessional—charged over the fences to get close-up shots and the High landers doubled their crescendo with drums, yells and animated stamping.

It was a great get together of the one-talks. Most Highlanders had stayed during the show in long houses or Instant Hiltons as they are popu-

larly known outside the show gates.

Many were charged entrance fees to the showground—a point which many visitors and tourists couldn’t under stand as they were, after all, the show, not the visitors.

Exciting drive

Most of the several thousand tourists arrived in Hagen by charter or regular airline flights from Port Moresby and Lae on tiny Cessnas to lumbering DC3’s and Fokker Friendships and for the two days of showtime the nearby airstrip was by far the busiest in NG.

But if you like a drive with rarely a dull moment many ventured along New Guinea’s 300 mile Highlands Road, from Lae to Mt. Hagen. I was a passenger in the Valiant six-cylinder sedan which was on a marathon 6,000-mile test of 10-odd return trips up and down the road, financed by Goodyear Tyres, Mobil Oil and Chrysler.

With co-drivers Colin Davis of

This fine specimen of a man turned out to be quite a businessman and, after charging 20 cents for his picture, spent some time trying to sell the pig tusks which adorned him.

Goodyear and Clyde Hodgins, a Sydney motoring journalist, we left Lae at 6 a.m. and arrived at Hagen about 7 p.m. the same day in time for the show. Our road surface varied from the dry, pot-holed dust stretches of the Leron Plains to the oozing, landslide-torn mud patches of the Daulo Pass, outside Goroka.

Speeds differed from up to 70 mph in isolated stretches to one or two miles an hour up sections of the Kassem and Daulo Passes.

The Valiant ploughed through several waterpasses but there was only one spot—on a tributary of the Markham River outside Lae—where we had a few anxious moments in the middle of a flooded river.

The motor stalled several times but Clyde kept re-starting her and we eventually pulled through, after water had risen to the bottom of the windows.

While the danger of damage to the car from extremely rough strips of the road was always there, it was the near misses with huge trucks on blind bends which kept us well and truly awake.

It’s the best way to see the High lands, though. Tiny, isolated villages line the road, as do the villagers.

Highlanders from Banz, Minj, Chimbu, Nondugl, Goroka, Wata bung and Kundiawa always wave, offer fresh fruit or chat.

Skydivers were a big interest to Western Highlanders, many of whom were familiar with planes, but not men coming in out of the sky.