Beyond the Coral Sea: Travels in the Old Empires of the South-West Pacific. Michael Moran
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a desert of self-interest, nepotism, corruption and violence. The development of wantokism,1 which evolved quite understandably from traditional community and family ties, is deeply at variance with the notion of ‘fair’ individual enterprise and parliamentary democracy. An egalitarian culture of mutual support dedicated to subsistence survival has clashed with the European individualistic, dividend-driven market economy creating a climate of desperate contradictions. There are no beggars in Papua New Guinea and, unlike many nations, no one would ever starve. The land is rich and fertile, the clan loyalties strong. Yet traditional cultures can no longer supply solutions to the types of internal and external dilemmas posed by the modern world.
Admiral Sir William Goodenough, the chairman of the 1935 meeting of the Royal Geographical Society addressed by Mick Leahy, clearly had a premonition after the paper was read when he commented:
How far and in what direction is the march of man going to interfere with these people? Every possible care should be taken that the people of New Guinea and their country are not exploited in any way.
True values of independence and respect for kastom are struggling hard to survive in the hearts and minds of the new generation growing up in the Bismarck Archipelago.
1My great-uncle, then Lieutenant N. T. Svensen, was an officer in the 15th Battalion (Queensland) 4th Infantry Brigade, Australian Imperial Force, that landed at Anzac Cove on the Gallipoli Peninsula on the evening of 25 April 1915. He made an entry at 6.47 p.m. in his meticulously-detailed diary, written by moonlight on a torpedo boat heading for the beach. ‘We are under shrapnel fire and two or three men have been hit already, one bullet within 18 inches of my foot.’ He distinguished himself in the campaign, was wounded and repatriated to Cairo.
1The term ‘Austronesian’ refers to one of the two major language groups in Melanesia. The other, older and more complex group is known as Non-Austronesian or Papuan. Austronesian may have originated in South-East Asia and all of its languages have a family resemblance, unlike the enormous diversity of the Papuan languages. Austronesian languages are spoken in Indonesia, Polynesia, Micronesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Taiwan.
1This historical word had a Hawaiian origin meaning ‘man’. A ‘bush kanaka’ was a Pacific Islander employed as an indentured labourer in Australia on the sugar plantations in Queensland. It came into more general colonial usage throughout Papua and New Guinea for any labourer. Initially a neutral word, it evolved into a rough form of colonial abuse, much resented by native labourers. It was also used in the islands as a term of what might be called ‘affectionate abuse’, so beloved of the Australian male when addressing each other or local ‘mates’, viz., ‘Come and have a beer you bloody kanaka!’
1Literally ‘one talk’ in Pidgin. People who share the same language, loyalties and cultural heritage. They perform shared activities and support each other as they come from the ‘same place’, village or province. The preferential nature of so-called wantokism is a source of much dissatisfaction in modern PNG and the explanation for numerous misplaced criminal accusations of nepotism in both the private and public sectors.
4. Death is Lighter than a Feather
Across the sea,
Corpses in the water,
Across the mountains,
Corpses heaped up in the field,
I shall die only for the Emperor,
I shall never look back.
Japanese Second World War Poem
No roads link Alotau, the provincial capital of Milne Bay Province, with Port Moresby. Boats are infrequent and no longer run to schedule. Fortunately, this has insulated the province from raskol activity which blights life in the Highlands. The relative isolation of Alotau meant that flying from Port Moresby was the only feasible alternative.
The ‘Islander’ light aircraft climbed laboriously out of barren Jacksons airport over the forbidding green of the Owen Stanley Ranges. A gothic landscape unfolded below, the precipitous ranges and valleys resembling the spires and flying buttresses of monumental medieval cathedrals draped in cloaks of thick, tropical vegetation. The gloom and mystery brought to mind the inconceivable hardships endured by nineteenth-century explorers who attempted to probe the interior of New Guinea from Port Moresby. Precipitous paths needed to be cut through thick jungle slowing progress to a mile a day. Sir William MacGregor, first Lieutenant-Governor and intrepid explorer, wrote in his diary of the ‘deathlike stillness’ that prevailed in the dripping fog that swirled about the moss-covered trees as he climbed Mount Victoria. Gurney airport, which services Alotau, occupies the same position it did in 1942. Charles Gurney was one of the colourful band of aviators who opened up New Guinea in the 1930s and was a squadron leader in the RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force). Below the spinning hub of the propeller, endless plantations of oil-palm unrolled sporadically through breaks in the low cloud.
The terminal was the usual fibro affair with slowly circulating ceiling fans. My luggage was quickly unloaded and packed into a truck. The road into town was severely potholed, with river fords constructed of shattered blocks of concrete. Torrents rushed across them into Milne Bay, threatening to sweep us away. It was hot and uncomfortably humid. Luxuriant vegetation swathed in mist fell like velvet curtains from the ranges lowering into the Coral Sea. The province showed little sign of development.
This formidably rich cultural area is known by Europeans as the Massim. The inhabitants speak Austronesian languages, unlike the majority of Papua New Guineans, who speak one or other of the 300 Papuan languages. Much of the Milne Bay Province consists of islands and the finely-carved artefacts reflect this marine environment. Spectacular ornamented canoes, weapons of ebony and black palm, red spondylus shell necklaces and armshells of tangled beauty, clay pots of abstract shape, and noble war shields are the legacy of the past. Gifted master carvers worked along this coast in the nineteenth century, but the production of such masterpieces has tragically declined in modern times. The culture of the north supports large village communities, whereas in the south, clusters of tiny hamlets nestle along the shore. Their belief in sorcery and magic is strong. Compulsive sweeping keeps the villages free of any personal waste that a sorcerer might fix upon and use in casting an evil spell.
Massim communities are composed of clans ruled by symbolic totems representing an animal, bird, fish or plant. Children take the totem of their mother and it is forbidden for members of the same totem to marry or have sexual relations. In the past the punishment for illicit sex was death. In the almost complete absence of tourism, apart from hermetic groups of divers, the people subsist through fishing and agriculture. Crocodiles and turtles, pigs and megapodes (a small, dark-feathered scrub fowl), bananas and coconuts are being insidiously supplanted by modern supermarket foods, particularly cheap tinned meat like Spam that has scarcely altered since it sustained troops in the Second World War.
The Massim was one of the first areas of New Guinea evangelised by British missionaries in the late nineteenth century. The local people’s profound belief in the power of magic posed the greatest challenge to Christian conversion. The villagers continue to believe that supernatural spirits inhabit trees, streams, rocky places and swamps. Belief in Jesus has not removed the fear of sorcerers who kill by projecting fatal diseases and cannibalistic flying witches that become airborne after dark, snapping bones and tearing entrails. More seductively, erotic magic weaves love spells with flowers plucked in secret groves. More optimistically, a happy life after death is guaranteed by a magic that promises three