Book Reviews
pp. 88-91 · Read in the full issue
Lively Account Of
Port Moresby
Apart from having been the seat of government since 1884, first for British New Guinea (later called Papua) and, since 1945, for what is now called the Territory of Papua and New Guinea, Port Moresby is the only Australian colonial settlement of historical and social significance.
Many thousands of Australians live or have lived in it during the last 20 years and even greater numbers remember it from World War 11, usually without regret. Present popu lation is about 56,000, 10,000 of whom are expatriate. lan Stuart’s book, Port Moresby, divided into two parts —The People Who Made It, and The Places That Make It—deals with Port Moresby as it was and is—a small Australian town in the special setting of a vast Melanesian island.
Stuart’s book has the hallmark of a labour of love, with painstaking research and considerable insight into the gradually changing attitude of the town’s white inhabitants towards their fellow Papuan residents.
Although the book is not and does not claim to be an academic history, it is the first concerted attempt to record the Australian contribution to Port Moresby’s development and is a valuable starting point for historical research into various aspects of the road Papua has taken from the stone age into the modern world.
Situated in one of the few dry belts of Papua-New Guinea, the town’s arid appearance and dust during the south-east season, and its humidity, heavy rains and myriads of mosquitoes during the north-west season, are usually the main cause of visitors’ displeasure. A much more serious cause for criticism, and one that can be chalked home to the town’s past and present white residents, is the chaotic layout of streets and stark architectural ugliness.
Architect Robin Boyd would un doubtedly catch the first plane back to Australia.
Mr. Surveyor Cuthbertson, who laid out the town and Konedobu
with five white assistants (a larger staff than the Department of Lands had for some years after 1945), may have been affected by the scrub itch he contracted during his Laloki River survey, he may have expected Motu sorcerers to spirit away Tuaguba and Paga, but he certainly did not deserve having one of the town’s main streets named after him.
The men of the Public Works Department and, after 1945, those of the Commonwealth Department of Works as well, would have done better to stick to the old Australian country home design, with its wide verandahs, instead of inflicting ugly, hot boxes on white and brown public servants, and setting an atrocious example which private enterprise has followed slavishly.
As there are only a handful of pre war buildings left, among them Ela Church, the post office, and the small wooden building (which is now the Welfare Office) in Armit Street, the book’s account of past uses and occupants of many sites is a valuable record of the past.
Furthermore, Ian Stuart has ex panded on the reports of the town s early days by Romilly, Chalmers, Bevan, Murray, Lett and others.
Andrew Goldie, Mclver and many others are quoted to give an insight into the life and attitudes of the white early birds, and there is a lot of material on the fascinating circumstances surrounding the 1906 Royal Commission which resulted in Hubert Murray’s appointment as Lieutenant-Governor.
The period between World Wars I and II has been treated rather too briefly, and there are some errors (Murray’s friend was Ahuia Ova
Continued on p. 85
and not Lahuia or Ahui, to give one example). Omissions and errors are, however, greatly outweighed by a wealth of material and a lively story.
Chester, the government storeman who made Musgrave, a Resident Magistrate, do four trips to his office to have minor irregularities corrected in a requisition for tacks worth one-sixteenth of a penny, only to shout “no stock” when the re quisition was finally presented, clearly was the ancestor of all gov ernment storemen in Port Moresby.
And Malinowski, the famous anthro pologist, who taught Ma McGrath’s lady boarders to tango, together with various other eccentrics help make this book a delightful gift for any Australian who lives or has lived in Port Moresby.
And there will be at least some Papuans who, after reading Ian Stuart’s account, will be more ready than ever to consider all kurokuro taudia more than just a little crazy.
Hhj.
(PORT MORESBY, Yesterday and Today.
Pacific Publications, Sydney. $5.50).