For Moresby's centenary

In 1873 Captain John Moresby, RN, discovered Port Moresby and to mark the centenary of that event, a second edition of lan Stuart’s Port Moresby—-Yesterday and Today has been published. The first edition was published in 1970 but this has now been brought up to date by the author, who is Rector of Port Moresby; the extensive maps have been revised but the historic endpapers reproducing Cuthbertson’s original survey map of the town have been retained.

The edition is limp bound but otherwise is in the same format as the first. Its new style, at a lower price, makes it a somewhat handier book than the original board and cloth edition.

We are aware, of course, that many Papuans are now disposed to deny that Captain Moresby discovered any thing, and are reluctant to allow ex patriates any of their vanities in this department. Certainly, according to the experts, Man—now called by the outsider labels of Papuan and New Guinean—has been established in the big island of New Guinea for at least 30,000 years, having drifted down from SE Asia when the last ice-age had about 15,000 years to run and the sea level was much lower than it is today.

The first arrivals probably walked across land bridges in what is now the Arafura Sea—or the Banda or Flores Seas—and later arrivals may have come by canoe in coastwise voy ages along more extensive islands than we know today. About this we can only make educated guesses based on 20th century scientific knowledge.

We do know that Papuans were well established in villages like Hunua bada, Pari, Tatana and others when Moresby and his men, in the old Royal Navy three-masted steamer Basilisk cautiously crept through the uncharted break in the reef on February 20, 1873.

What Captain Moresby did do was discover Port Moresby for the rest of the world, as other Western navi gators had been discovering other parts of the New Guinea mainland coast and the offshore islands and archipelagoes for two centuries past.

John Moresby named the almost land-locked harbour after his father, Admiral Sir Fairfax Moresby—the inner part, Port Moresby, and the other Fairfax Harbour, and so they still remain although if the Papua New Guineans follow the pattern of their African cousins, there could be a lot of name changing in the years ahead.

Among those who were most in terested in Moresby’s discovery was the Rev A. W. Murray of the London Missionary Society which had a station on Australia’s Cape York. At the end of 1873 four Rarotongan teachers were landed at Port Moresby and a year later came the first white settlers, the Rev William and Mrs Lawes and their small son. Other white missionaries followed; so did traders, gold seekers, planters, mer chants, lieut governors, civil ser vants, adventurers, soldiers—a page ant 100 years long. This is what lan Stuart’s book is about —the people, the places and events that have all gone to making the port and, more particularly, the city that stands upon its shores.

Port Moresby is doubtless in for some changes in the immediate future and in the long term. But its first century of history as Port Moresby, as distinct from a scattering of primi tive villages, is fixed, immutable. lan Stuart has done an excellent job of putting it all into this readable book.

This revised edition has 368 pages, plus 20 pages of photographs and maps, and an extensive index and bibliography. Pacific Publications

(Aust) Pty Ltd, at $3.95.-

Judy

Tudor.