Sparkling text

Yet Another

Look At

New Guinea

Australian journalist and author Keith Willey always says what he means, with apologies to nobody. This propensity of his

lifts a big new picture book,

called New Guinea, out of the coffee-table class and into that group of New Guinea books worth having because they say

something.

New Guinea certainly looks like a coffee-table book. It’s in large format, with a striking full-colour full-gloss jacket opening expansively on to generous pictures and text, beautifully produced, the whole being the weight of a large coconut.

Robin Smith, whose pictures they are, has done a skilful, perceptive job with his camera. Among some outstanding shots is his full page portrait of bearded Father Ross, Ml.

Hagen’s pioneer missionary.

His pictures of smoked Kukukuku bodies propped up on their hillside, although done before by Colin Simpson, and of the old woman with all fingers of one hand cut off as an expression of grief for the death of her children, are dramatic com mentary on some current aspects of New Guinea life.

Sparkling text

But it is Keith Willey’s text that puts the sparkle into this book, despite the occasional literal or out of-date fact that blemish the story here and there. (No publisher seems to be able to close the gap between writing and printing to keep up with the swift developments in New Guinea).

Willey tells us without blinking that Port Moresby is “a cancer on the emerging nation of Papua-New Guinea”. There, he says, “Chinese storekeepers often mark up prices by 10 per cent, if the customer is a native”; and some expatriates, “bolstered by allowances, rent sub sidies and paid holidays south every two years, have adopted a superior attitude to the native—and indeed, to other whites. Children in the suburb of Boroko, pampered and waited on by servants, are the most

obnoxious young Australians on earth”.

In Port Moresby, says Willey, the diehards, the “Befores”, congregate now in places like the Papua Club “and commiserate together over their rum”. The Papua Club, which still has no native members, is too ex clusive even for the Administrator.

But he adds, “Australians in the territory take themselves a lot less seriously these days. . . . There are great changes for the better in race relations. Even the most reactionary of the Befores accepts that in dependence now must come. The only question is when. . . . Everybody has a theory on Papua-New Guinea, and mine is that the territory should be given internal self-government in 1972—the year of the next election.

After four years of that it might be time to think of target dates for independence”.

Army take-over?

Willey is worried about the possibilities of the Army taking over in the event of political crisis, as in Africa; and by the dangers of a further development of the “Papuans versus New Guineans” cult, or “the coastal people versus the High landers”. If the territory “is not to fall apart from independence”, he believes there must be a feeling of nationhood, and one way to help it is to give the territory one name.

He plumps for “Niugini”, which he would like to see put to a referendum, and proclaimed without delay if accepted.

But the talk of politics in New Guinea bores him. What passes for cafe society in Port Moresby, he says, is hypnotised by politics and talk, talk, talk , . .“the flow of words going far into the night”.

“Frankly, I hold to my opinion that there is less in New Guinea politics than meets the eye,” says Willey. “Will talk alone be enough to control a land where people respect above all a strong hand? Can the wheedling and cajoling of the politicians command the obedience still accorded the stern order of the patrol officer? I suspect the future Prime Minister—who the ‘intel lectuals’ await as if this were the

Second Coming—is not yet in the House of Assembly at all”.

Willey’s text is thus often provocative, and generally breezy and entertaining. Some of his comments will be appreciated more by the people who know New Guinea than by the casual visitor.

It is unfortunate, for both books, that this Smith-Willey volume has been published at exactly the same time as one by James Anderson and Don Hogg, also called New Guinea, and reviewed by PIM last month.

They are similar in format and general content, and making a choice won’t be easy for the buyer. The main difference is in the text; Hogg plays it straighter than Willey. pm in Colour, pictures and text by James Siers, is not in the same class as New Guinea, but nor is it meant to be. It’s not as lavish and the price is lower. Yet all the pictures are in colour, and its strong point is that it devotes a decent amount of space to the outer islands of Fiji. They deserve it, but seldom get it.

Pictorially, Siers goes in for the pretty picture, the scenery shot, rather than the dramatic, so the book sometimes takes on the flavour of a high-class travel brochure. His text is mainly a personal travel account of where he went and what he saw, and is thus not a comprehensive picture of Fiji.—Sl, (NEW GUINEA. Published by Lans downe, Melbourne. $8.95. FIJI IN COLOUR. Published by A. H. and A. W.

Reed. $4.50.)