Guinea goldminer

Joe Bourke, New Guinea goldminer

Deaths

of Islands People

Yet another pioneer of the days Defore Papua New Guinea ever join ed the tourist circuit has departed with the death earlier this year of Joseph Michael Bourke. He was 78.

Joe was born at Ayr, Queensland, ind after service in World War I went to New Guinea in 1925 as a nember of the New Guinea Ex- Dropriation Board. He was transfer red to Wau in 1926 (he is the ‘Police Master Bourke’ in lon Idriess’ lomewhat fanciful Gold Dust and ishes).

Bill Royal and Dick Glasson had List discovered the fabulous gold of idie Creek. Joe soon decided that he life of a goldminer held more •romise than government service, nd he resigned in 1927 and went •respecting. For some years he had lis ups and downs not many men riade their fortunes on the oldfield, most barely making wages - and when he was offered a job in 4arch, 1935, prospecting wild ountry at the head of the Fly, Alice, Itrickland and Sepik rivers, he ac epted.

The 1935-37 gold prospecting ex •edition of the Oroville Dredging Company, under its American eader, the mining engineer Ward Villiams, is one of the great sagas of xploration in New Guinea, but it is lardly remembered today. Oroville /as a powerful company, prepared o spend heavily on a search of that nland country for gold. Ward Villiams gathered a small but ex • erienced party, including Joe lourke and Bill Korn from the /lorobe goldfield, and during the arious phases of the expedition mployed two aeroplanes piloted by ituart Campbell and Ken Garden, nd pioneered the technique of free- Iropping from the air to ground larties.

They went right up the Fly, estab ishing a basecamp and airstrip at viunga, beyond D'Albertis Junction /here the Alice River comes in nd today a government station and ey establishment in the huge Ok 'edi copper project.

In September, 1936, Joe Bourke.

Jill Korn and Wallace Kienzle

made an extraordinary walk to Telefolmin at the head of the Sepik, following the route of the discoverers, Charles Karius and Ivan Champion, on their wonderful North-West Patrol of 1926-27. They built the first airstrip at Telefolmin and used it as a base to explore and prospect the wild mountainous land in the very centre of mainland New Guinea. But they found no payable gold, and in June, 1937, the expedition was disbanded.

Joe went back to the Morobe goldfield and when the Pacific war came served in the NGVR and ANGAU until 1943, finishing the war in American small ships and inter-island cargo ships.

I first met him in 1948, when he was in the process of building his Wau Hotel. He was a bluff, genial man, with a warm, ready wit he and his wife, Billie, were kind to a young cadet patrol officer and later, when I was officer-in-charge of Mumeng patrol post, I got to know them very well. They were at the time manufacturing soft drinks in a modern little factory situated, of all

places, near the Watut-Bulolo River junction. In 1951, Joe founded South Pacific Brewery and in 1955, Morobe Hotels Ltd. He dabbled in goldmining at intervals (it seems once a prospector, always a prospec tor) and in fact was a very shrewd and successful businessman, After they left PNG some 10 years ago, Joe and Billie settled in the beautiful Bli Bli Valley, outside Nambour in Queensland, and, although he was in comfortable cir cumstances, Joe carried on various business activities more or less as a hobby. I received a letter from him in 1969, when I was stationed at Goroka in the Eastern Highlands, asking me for a photograph suitable for the jacket of a new issue of a lit tie 45 rpm gramophone record he had made some years before the story of Adam and Eve in Pidgin, He did an exceedingly robust and amusing version of this famous old item I have just listened again to the copy he presented me with and it is well-worth acquiring, if any copies still, survive, to hear Pidgin

“as she was spoke”.

James Sinclair