Wit, adventure, errors

in the Trobriands

Gordon Saville, an Englishman then in his early thirties, arrived at Port Moresby in the spring of 1942 as a sergeant in a Docks Operations Com pany of the Australian Army and not long afterwards was transferred to the Australian New Guinea Adminis trative Unit (ANGAU) in which he served as a patrol officer. He left Papua during the war and has not been back since.

In his book, Saville recounts his experiences in the Trobriand Islands and on Fergusson Island during 1943.

In addition to operational duties, ANGAU was entrusted with many of the functions of the suspended civil administration, and a patrol officer’s daily tasks included the maintenance of law and order, dispensing of justice, public health measures, and indeed, just about everything done by a colonial government to bring the ‘blessings’ of western civilisation to its subjects.

White missionaries and traders having been evacuated, Saville found himself the only foreigner in a well regulated chiefly society, the only one of its kind among the many dif ferently organised, egalitarian socie ties of Papua New Guinea.

Although few outsiders had visited the Trobriand Islands before World War 11, the extensive writings of Bronislaw Malinowski, ‘father of modern anthropology’, who had done 21 years’ field work there between 1915 and 1918, had made academics throughout the world aware of the highly-structured and disciplined way of life of the people. Although gov ernment officers, missionaries and traders had caused some changes, the villagers encouraged by Saville in 1943 still lived much like their grand parents had done when the whites first arrived.

The author came to admire the islanders and, except for deplorable attempts to usurp the authority of Mitakata, the paramount chief, he seems to have done his best to lessen the impact of the foreigners’ war.

He recalls giving medical help (in competition with sorcerers), adjudi cating domestic disputes, exercising magisterial functions, and even doing his military bit by capturing several Japanese. And when Saville fell seriously ill, what Harley Street specialists would, no doubt, have

termed psychosomatic was attribut able to environmental factors: Tro briands society had ‘moved in’ on him.

Recent socio-economic upheavals with political undertones, eg the Kabisawali Movement in opposition to the Local Government Council, are better understood after reading Saville’s account of the material and sexual debauching caused by Allied servicemen three decades ago. The very least that Australians who ruled the islands for 90 years must do is to be sympathetic to and patient with the efforts of men like Charles Lepani and John Kasaipwalova who are seek ing to redress the situation.

Written with good humour and as much understanding as a brief visit allows, this book would have been a very good one had not the 30-odd years since his sojourn played havoc with Saville’s memory.

Regrettably, there are so many inaccuracies that ‘King’ of Kiriwina is no more than an enjoyable adven ture story.

To give but a few examples: There is no record of an ANGAU officer having been parachuted, and the dis trict officer then in charge of the Milne Bay District was not notified of any capture of Japanese in the Trobriands. There are no wallabies on the island, nor are there sago palms on Kiriwina.

James Chalmers, of the London Missionary Society, was killed on Goaribari Island, about 800 km west of the Trobriands, and he never visited them. There was a launch named Tamate, but it was stationed at Aird Hills in the then Delta Division, and not at Losuia.

The canoes of the Trobriand Is landers have always been single hulled; double-hulled canoes, with crab-claw sails, have only been used by the Mailu and Motu peoples.

And those megalithic remains are not near Sinaketa but north-east of Losuia, near Omarakana, and were known before Saville’s time: L.

Austin, an assistant resident magis trate, wrote about them in Oceania, Vol X, No 1 (1939). —Harry Jack man.

(‘King’ Of Kiriwina. By Gordon

Saville. Published by Leo Cooper, London. $8.40.)