A Big And Bold

Books

Story Of New

Guinea’S Skies

In my 1973 review of James Sinclair’s Sepik Pilot, the bi

ography of Wing-Commander

Bobby Gibbes, I said that Sinclair was working on a his tory of civil aviation in Papua New Guinea and that, ‘given

; his growing reputation as a

writer, his easy style, and with the proviso that this further book is adequately researched, then it should be a really I worthwhile and long overdue contribution to the history of Papua New Guinea’.

In the event, Sinclair has excelled himself in his story of

how the aeroplane developed

New Guinea from the early 1920 s to the time of the

Japanese invasion in January

1942.

The concept of this thoroughly researched work seems to me to be ‘bigness’.

The book itself is big 11 cm x 9 cm and weighing 1.6 kg comprising 326 pages, 220 000 words, and more than 160 illus trations. The subject itself is big, and, for their day and age, even some of the aircraft: the Junkers, Fords, DH Hercules

and the Handley Page Hamp

stead. Above all, the men (and the few women) Sinclair writes

about were, metaphorically,

big.

If ever there was a pioneer ing venture which needed big hearted, courageous individ uals, on the ground and in the air, then New Guinea 1920 to 1942 provided the classic venue. One cannot look at the photographs of some of these men and not feel they were

somehow special, courageous

and possessed of a sense of pur pose that would lead some of them to fortune, some to fame, and some to their graves. Ran dom examples would be lan Grabowsky, ‘Pard’ Mustar,

Grm Denny, Harry Downing,

Mick Leahy, Ivan Champion,

and Aub Koch.

When I arrived in Salamaua n 1936, as a raw youth, to work or W. R. Carpenter, many of he events portrayed by

Sinclair had already taken place. Nevertheless, the ensu ing 3‘/ 2 years to the beginning of World War II brought me into contact with many of Sinclair’s characters. These in fluences eventually led me to a career in aviation, albeit the

military version.

Sinclair’s main source of material was the near 1700 typewritten pages of lan Grabowsky’s unfinished his tory of aviation in New Guinea. Grabowsky died be fore he could complete his task.

At the instigation of civil avi ation authorities, Sinclair took up the torch. He worked over Grabowsky’s mass of material and, in doing so, has been gen erous in his praise of Grabowsky’s contribution to aviation in New Guinea and to his own completed work.

Sinclair also seems to have tapped every known source to ensure that his book is as com plete and factual as humanly possible. He has interviewed survivors of those early days

pilots, prospectors, explorers,

company men and corres ponded widely in his search for information.

He treats his vast subject cleverly and not on a strictly chronological basis. He deals first with the development of the rich Morobe goldfields and then goes on, in Part 2, to the other varied and related as pects of the story. In doing so he has woven into his tale not only the history of aviation development but also the vital part played by prospectors, of ficers of the Australian colonial administration, company entrepreneurs and others.

The excitement of the race to be the first to operate aircraft from the coast to the goldfields is re-captured in the section dealing with the early Mustar and Ray Parer days; the far reaching vision of C.J. Levien and others in their efforts to raise capital for the new and

risky enterprises; the forma

tion of Guinea Airways Ltd

(GAL) in late 1927; and the birth and growth of the numer ous other smaller aviation ven tures, many doomed to failure.

All are dealt with in absorbing detail. Few would realise that

Guinea Airways, subsequently

to develop into New Guinea’s largest aircraft operator, tried to sell out its interests as early as 1928. The board of GAL took some odd decisions over the years and certainly adopted a most parsimonious attitude at times to some of its loyal em

ployees of long standing.

The years of argument about the building of a road into the goldfields; the fantastic tonnages, world records, of freight and passengers carried by air in the 19305; the saga of the formation and develop ment of Bulolo Gold Dredging Ltd; all contribute to make this an outstanding study of mod

ern history.

Air transport in New Guinea achieved almost unbelievable records. In the eight years from 1922 to 1929 all of the air ser vices of the Australian Com monwealth lifted only 232 tons

of freight. By comparison,

Guinea Airways lifted nearly

this total in the two months of December 1929 and January 1930, without any subsidies.

And in the two years and two months between December 1, 1927 and January 31, 1930 the company lifted 1302 tons of

freight and 2792 passengers. In the financial year ending February 1932 the company moved 3947 tons of freight and 2607 passengers. These figures can be brought into context by comparing them with the total air freight service tonnages of other countries in 1931: United States 513 tons; United King dom 649 tons; France 1508 tons; Germany 2175 tons, In the mid and late 1930 s the three tri-motored Junkers G 3 Is, operated by Guinea Air ways on behalf of Bulolo Gold

Dredging Ltd, were setting

some amazing records: 1936-37 1585 flights, 4513 tons of

freight; 1937-38 1829 flights,

5248 tons; 1938-39 1857 flights, 5297 tons, Gold won in the Morobe District in 1937-38 was $A3.71 million and in 1938-39 $4,264 million. The heaviest single item lifted was a dredge tum bier shaft weighing 7550 pounds, nearly four short tons.

By any standards, these were staggering figures for the pre- World War II period, It was curious that, despite

Guinea Airways depot at Waum, near Wewak, 1935

the tremendous and rapid advances taking place in avi ation in New Guinea, the civil aviation authorities in Mel bourne took years to establish effective on-the-spot control

over the burgeoning industry.

It was 1934 before Max Allen was based in New Guinea and was able to bring a much needed measure of order and control to many aspects of avi ation. Allen and his successor,

Jim Collopy, did sterling

work.

Some of Sinclair’s material is sheer high adventure and romance: the aerial discovery

of the magnificent Wahgi

Valley - virtually a ‘lost world’; the pitched battles with the fierce and stoutly resisting Highlanders; the rivalry of the Roman Catholic and Lutheran missionaries; the 1936 hanging of prospector Ludwig Schmidt for atrocities against local people; the men who died, most of them violently prospectors (Emile Clarius, Arthur Darling, Helmuth Baum, Bill Naylor), adminis tration officers (Jack Hides and lan Mack, besides many others who were hacked about and survived), missionaries (Fathers Morscheuser, Kirsch baum, Bader and Weyer and Brother Eugene), and pilots (Les Trist, Colin Ferguson, Frank Drayton, Frank Buchanan, Eric Chater, Ron Doyle, and others). A number of pilots survived those adven turous days, only to die in World War II: Kevin Parer at Salamaua, ‘Goff Hemsworth in a Catalina, George Joseph Isaiah Clarke in a Walrus at Dakar, Bob Gurney, Ken Gar den, Clive Bernard, Joss Crisp.

The list seems endless.

Most of those who died were big and courageous men. For tunately, some survived to see

out a full life span and we can be thankful for knowing them.

Some did extremely well. A W.

R. Carpenter pilot in 1938, Bert Ritchie, became general man ager of Qantas. Others had

long and distinguished careers

in aviation, such as Ken Jack son and Arch Dunne.

Predictably, the ‘characters’ show through: ‘Crashum and Bendum’ Mendham; Eric Weine, notorious goldfields dentist and pugilist whose ter rific fist fight in the early days with the later famous film actor Errol Flynn left Weine minus half an ear - bitten off; ‘Bat-

JUS2; the single-engined Junkers W 34; and the 3-en gined Ford.

There were some odd, single types, frequently unsuitable or uneconomic: the lumbering Handley Page Hampstead; the DH66 Hercules; Ray Parer’s early Junkers W 33 (The Lady Lettie’) with wire-spoked wheels; and the smaller Avions, Gulls, Genaircos, Shrimps, Stinsons, Sikorskys, Wacos and Widgeons.

The chapter entitled War de serves special mention. It re counts a number of epic, extremely dangerous and

tling’ Ray Parer (if ever a man deserved to die in an air crash it was Parer - but he didn’t); and Charles Lexius Burlington

‘Burlington Bertie’.

The aircraft of the period ranged from bizarre and un likely to highly successful. To have been associated with many of these types and to have seen them in action and flown in some was a never to -be - forgotten experience.

There was the famous De Havilland range: the DH4, 9, 37, 50, 60 (Moth), 84 (Dragon), 61 (Giant Moth), 83 (Fox Moth), and 86 (4-engined airliner).

The highly successful range of metal aircraft, advanced for their day and the real work horses of the goldfields, were the 3-engined Junkers G3l and

largely unrecognised air evacu

ations within and from New Guinea.

The book is beautifully

designed and presented. The

layout, typescript, attractive

dust cover, end-paper photo graphs, maps and total overall quality are excellent. The

photographs are fascinating.

Inevitably a few have deterio rated to an extent which makes

quality reproduction imposs

ible but their historical import ance requires their inclusion.

The author’s foreword, notes

on photographs, epilogue,

appendix on airmail, glossary

of abbreviations and the very full and complete list of illus trations all contribute to an erudite, well balanced and most readable production, rounded off by a good biblio

graphy and an excelled

16-page index.

I spotted a few minor erron which should be noted: William Dammkohler also gets

‘Dammkohlker’ (p. 22); Pilot

Godfrey Ellard Hemsworth was always ‘Goff, not ‘Geoff as in a number of references and the index; the radio direction-finding system re ferred to on p. 268 and in the index was Belini-Tosi, nol “Tosa’; ‘Luchtraart Maata

chappij’ (pp. 277, 305 and index

320) should be ‘Luftvaart

Maatschappij’ ‘Maatschappij

is correct at p. 278 and the index 322; Burlington Bertie gets ‘Berlington’ at pp. 37 and 52.

To end on a nostalgic note.

Sinclair describes some of the history of a New Guinea ‘workhorse’ aircraft VH-ULE, a DH6OG Moth. This aircraft was flown around the gold fields for many years from 1929

by Lionel Shoppee, was

crashed by Kevin Parer at Zenag in 1932, was used by Goff Hemsworth to shuttle out from Otibanda the men wounded in a battle with Kukukuku tribesmen in 1933,

was crashed again by ‘Ginger’

Cameron at Roaring Creek in 1935 and again (birdstrike) by Bill Grey near Sunshine in 1936.

During most of 1939 I hired VH-ULE from Arthur Collins at Salamaua at three and four pounds an hour, nearly half my then weekly salary, to build up flying hours toward my com mercial licence. Collins was doing the same, but his hire charges were conditioned largely by the fact that in those hard days he couldn’t afford to insure the aircraft. Little VH-ULE was staunch to the end and disappeared, still working, under the Japanese

onslaught in early 1942.

James Sinclair deserves the highest praise for his book. It will long remain the definitive history of aviation in that fas cinating country and will, hopefully, stimulate some future biographies of some of the men who feature in his writing. R. Nixon Dalkin, retired air commodore and a for

mer administrator of Norfolk

Island.

WINGS OF GOLD, How the Aeroplane De veloped New Guinea, by James Sinclair, Pacific Publications, Sydney, 1978. $3O.

Pilot Andrew Lang and explorer Frank Hurley with sacrificial pig across the bow of the Curtiss Seagull, in Port Moresby, 1922