Introduction

By The Editor.

The exploration of Papua-New Guinea has been a continuing process. Even today new groups of people occa sionally are still contacted. Not until recent years has New Guinea’s exploration been planned; much of it has been the work of miners, labour recruiters, missionaries, adventurers, with different objects in mind. Many of these people have been doers, not recorders of facts, with the result that our knowledge of the territory’s ex ploration has not kept pace with the exploration itself.

One of these early recruiters was Bill MacGregor, who aroused the envy of District Officer G. W. L. Towns end in 1929-30 by his explorations in the Central Mountains. In his book. District Officer, Townsend wrote, “He penetrated right into what are now known as the Western Highlands—the first European to do so. He had brought back a fine collection of hair-nets, wigs and stone axes, the first to come out of the Highlands. He did not get as far south as Wabag or Mt. Hagen, but I think it can be said he was in the Highlands several years before James Taylor and the Leahy brothers, who are credited with the discovery in 1933. He made an excellent map of the route he had taken. He allowed me to inspect it, but not copy it.”

The first account of that pioneering expedition is here published for the first time, with a map and photo graphs. But it is not MacGregor’s account, for MacGregor is dead and presumably left no record. In any case, he was not alone, but was merely one member of a party of five men prospecting for a company called Akmana. Their explorations were a combined effort. Three of that party are still alive—H. V. (“Pontey”) Seale, now 84, E. A. Shepherd, 73, both of Sydney, and Reg Beazley, 75, of Brisbane.

I learned of Akmana when late last year Ernie Shepherd, whom I didn’t know, phoned me to inquire about a New Guinea address. He was not sure whether Seale and Beazley were still alive—he knew the others to be dead—but he agreed to write an account of the expedition for PIM from notes taken at the time.

Before he finished it he had located his companions—Beazley through a newspaper advertisement.

In March the three men were reunited for the first time in 40 years at Shepherd’s Sydney home. Seale, who had carried a camera, brought along his original negatives, and Beazley an unpublished MS. They checked over Ernie Shepherd’s punctilious narrative, as here published, and agreed on its facts. They will make available to researchers their original material, for PlM’s account is not exhaustive.

The Akmana expeditions did not penetrate the great valleys which were later discovered by the Leahys and Taylor, whose glory remains undiminished. But they were apparently first to contact the Highlands wigmen and bring back wigs. And Seale’s photographs are historic.

Beazley and MacGregor among the Highlands wigmen in 1930. This picture was taken at a stockaded Highlands village on the Upper Maramuni, 6,500 ft.