Tall Story From

An Old Airy

Verandah Lover

AFTERTHOUGHTS with Percy Chatterton in Port Moresby.

The fire which recently gutted the top floor of the main Papua New Guinea Government office block at Waigani, a Port Moresby suburb, set a lot of people thinking and talking about , the inadequacy of fire fighting services in Port Moresby and other urban centres in Papua New Guinea, particularly in respect of

the increasing number of multi-storey buildings.

The problem is not so much one of manpower as of equipment, and the PNG Post-Courier cartoon depicting a couple of firemen commandeering a kid’s toy motor car pointed it up crisply. There are also, I understand, particularly in the case of high-rise build

ings, problems of inadequate water pressure.

Of the firemen themselves, my impression is that they do as good a job as their equipment allows, and sometimes show con siderable devotion to duty and willingness to take risks, as was evidenced when a government store building in Port Moresby was burnt down a few years ago.

Some of us who have been around for a long time found our minds going back to earlier fires in Port Moresby, especially to the one which destroyed old Hanuabada village in 1942, a catas trophe which, by the way, was not the result of enemy action.

In my case my memory took a trip back into the past to con template the changes in building styles which have taken place over a century. Expatriate homes in Port Moresby 50 years ago were still copied from a tropical Queensland design, with high ceilings and spacious verandahs surrounding a central block of rooms, frequently with a central open living space running through the middle of the house from front to back veran dahs.

As time went by and building costs went up, the verandahs shrank and eventually disappeared, and the lofty ceilings came down nearer and nearer to the heads of the occupants. The result was a house which, in spite of the increasing use of louvres for ventilation, called for electric fans or air-conditioning to keep it cool.

I had the good luck to live in one of those old style houses for many years. Its outer dimensions, including its three metre verandahs, were 32 metres by 11 metres. Its frame was of Queensland hardwood, and after 40 years (it had been built at the turn of the century at a cost of £ 600) the studs were so hard that one couldn’t drive a nail into them without boring a hole for it first.

Most government offices of my early years in Port Moresby were built in the same style, and the quiet and coolness of the inner rooms, protected by broad verandahs, could be conducive either to work or slumber.

Building costs rose, and designs became more and more ‘func tional . Fibrolite, concrete and brick began to replace timber; and the electrically induced coolness of fans, and later of air conditioning, together with fluorescent lighting, replaced natural ventilation and lighting, till a point was reached at which some buildings became unusable during a power cut.

Then came high rise. ANG House and the recently opened Travelodge hotel now dominate the scene in the old city centre and port. There, with limited space and a hilly terrain, high rise makes good sense.

It may be questioned whether high rise makes such good sense in the new city centre at Waigani. Here there is no shortage of space. Three impressive high-rise buildings - the main govern ment office complex, a privately owned office block and the Aus

tralian High Commission building together with a number of smaller though very impressive structures such as the National Library, National Museum and Law Courts, are scattered, appar ently at random, over a wide area of flat grass country. Multi laned, impressively-named streets, at night brilliantly flood-lit though practically deserted, intersect the area and connect it to the main road.

The whole set-up gives an impression of theatricality. It must have cost the heck of a lot of money, and one cannot but wonder whether, in a city in which such a large proportion of the popu lation is housed in shanties and mini-houses, it was money wisely spent.

True, as time goes by this area may fill up and high rise build ings may become essential. But that’s a long way off, and in the meantime something less ostentatious, less expensive and less vul nerable to fire and other risks might have served this young nation better. However, I suppose it’s the way of the young to be a bit

flamboyant.

At the other end of the scale, in providing housing for the less affluent, the much criticised housing commission has, in my opinion, done a good job in the face of many difficulties and plenty of obstruction from land-owners and others.

Sure, their low-cost houses are very small, but there are only two ways in which they could be made bigger. One is by charging rents which only a minority of the people clamouring for houses could afford. The other is large scale government subsidisation, and so far the government has set its face against this solution.

Recently I was very courteously invited by an officer of the commission to have a look at some new designs in low-cost houses which were being tried out in one of Port Moresby’s older sub urbs. I was impressed by what seemed to me to be a very successful attempt to break away from the rectangular box type struc ture.

I wish I could be equally complimentary about Air Niugini’s ‘Disneyland’ a rash of terrace type staff housing currently spreading across the hillside opposite to my perch on the Sabama ridge. The adjective, other than rude ones, which most readily comes to the mind to describe this architectural novelty is

‘quaint’.

For all I know, these houses may be very comfortable to live in, and some of them certainly have a wonderful view. But I find myself wondering what will happen when some late reveller tries to negotiate the narrow spiral iron staircase which leads from the ground to his front door, and what the reaction of his neigh bours will be when he starts to play punk rock with his hi-fi at full blast at two o’clock in the morning.

But to end on a pleassanter note: I have heard no criticism and nothing but well-deserved praise for the PNG Banking Cor poration’s new building in the old city centre. It’s really terrific.

I don’t know who designed it, but he, she or they deserve a nation’s

gratitude.

Let’s hope that that one doesn’t catch fire, whatever happens

to Waigani’s pretentious sky-scrapers.