Beyond the Coral Sea: Travels in the Old Empires of the South-West Pacific. Michael Moran
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was a slightly mad challenge maintaining a business in this remote spot. Australians generally manage extremes with equanimity and dry humour.
‘I’m just travelling the islands. Chris Abel from Masurina told me to look you up. I’ve heard you have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the place.’
‘Well, it’s certainly interesting. Wallace knows a lot more about the local villagers and Kwato Mission, of course. He was born there.’
‘I’m surprised there are so many old buildings left. Didn’t the Australians carry out a scorched-earth policy to stop the Japanese?’
‘Yes. Unnecessary, though. The Japs buzzed the island a few times in flying boats and dropped a couple of bombs but that was it. The Aussie Administration Unit set fire to all the commercial and government places including the famous hotels. Tragic loss. You can still see the few survivors around the football pitch.’
Missionaries were the first Europeans to establish themselves in this part of Eastern Papua New Guinea. By 1878 the Reverend Samuel MacFarlane had made Samarai a head station for the London Missionary Society, but the LMS soon exchanged land on Samarai for the island of Kwato a short distance away. At the turn of the century Samarai had no wharf or jetty and goods were off-loaded from trading vessels into canoes. It was a government station, a port of entry and a ‘gazetted penal district’. Local labour was forcibly recruited here for the plantations. Copra and gold-mining dominated life, and this tropical paradise became a more important centre than Port Moresby. The town, if it could be described as such, consisted of ‘The Residency’ (a bungalow built on the only hill for the first Commissioner General, Sir Peter Scratchley, appointed by the Imperial Government in 1884 and dead from malaria within three months), the woven-grass Sub-collector’s House, the gaol (with the liquor bond store in the roof), the cemetery and Customs House, and two small stores plus a few sheds. There were no hotels or guesthouses in the early days of the 1880s, the traders living mainly on their vessels and the gold-diggers camped out in their tents.
The Europeans besieged Whitten Brothers’ premises since alcohol was dispensed from their store. The empties were hurled onto the sand from the roofed balcony. A village boy collected the bottles the next morning and counted them. Whitten then divided the number of bottles by the number of men drinking and so accounts were democratically settled. According to the entertaining reminiscences of Charles Monkton in his book Some Experiences of a New Guinea Magistrate published in 1921, men dressed mainly in striped ‘pyjamas’ or more festively in ‘turkeyred twill, worn petticoat fashion with a cotton vest’. He describes picturesque ruffians roaming the palm-fringed shore. One incorrigible known as ‘Nicholas the Greek’, after pursuing an absconder through impenetrable jungle, returned with only his head in a bag. When questioned about the missing body he laconically commented, ‘Here’s your man. I couldn’t bring the lot of him, so I’ll only take a hundred [pounds].’ Monckton also describes ‘O’Reagan the Rager’, who was ‘never sober, never washed, slept in his clothes, and at all times diffused an odour of stale drink and fermenting humanity’. The spectacular sunsets and moonlit tropical nights of Dinner Island had formed a cinematic backdrop to all types of mysterious schooners, yawls, ketches, cutters and luggers with eloquent names such as Mizpah, Ada, Hornet, Curlew and Pearl.
‘Life was pretty primitive here in those early days, I suppose.’ I wanted to draw Poole out. He obliged me at length.
‘Simple pleasures as now, I reckon. The malarial swamp was filled in by the prisoners to make a cricket field. Local people were forbidden to wear shirts in case they spread disease. They believed “the fever” came from the miasma that rose from the stagnant water. Mal aria means bad air, I think. Samarai was a deathtrap. The cemetery was always full. In fact, the fatal swamp occupied the football pitch right in front of your guesthouse. Sheep were imported from Australia and used to graze there until they were needed for meat. The residents, I think there were about a hundred and twenty in the early part of the century, played tennis, cricket and the children went swimming. Simple pleasures as I said.’
‘Sounds idyllic.’
‘There was always the demon drink. That’s a story in itself. The first hotel was called The Golden Fleece. One large room and a veranda. It was built of palm with a thatched roof. No doors or windows. Guests were expected to bring their own sheets, knives, forks and plates and sleep on the floor. Drunks would stumble in at night in hobnailed boots and fall over each other cursing and swearing.’
‘But I thought Samarai was famous for the glamour of its hotels!’
‘True, but that was later in the 1920s. There were a couple of better hotels – the largest one had two storeys and was called The Cosmopolitan. Another called The Samarai, was at one time run by a real merry widow named Flora Gofton. Missionaries had to drag the drunks into church. One called “Cheers!” during the consecration.’ I had to smile at this.
‘And the hospital?’
‘Oh, they built two hospitals and two schools – one each for Europeans and Papuans. Water was segregated as well. “Pride of race”, they called it. On moonlit nights people would go around the island by launch singing. Everybody loved the place, although it was pretty wild with drunken miners and labour recruiters.’
‘Women must’ve had a pretty rough time.’
‘Some sad stories there. Many just upped sticks and left. There was a Swede named Nielsen who worked his butt off and made a few quid. Then he married a pretty Australian girl who was a bit footloose, you know the sort. She finally pissed off and went south. Every three weeks he would paddle his dinghy out through the mangroves to meet the steamer. Dreamed she would be on it. He always dressed up to the nines to meet her, immaculate – tan boots, clean shirt, tie and white duck trousers. She always disappointed him and never arrived. He would return to Samarai cursing all women and get drunk as a sponge that night.’
‘What about married women?’
‘Spent all their time looking after ill children. Helluva life. I’ve got part of a letter here somewhere that will give you an idea.’ He fished around in a hefty file by his armchair and extracted a dog-eared photocopy. I noticed he kept scratching his legs and bare arms as did most expatriates I met in Papua New Guinea.
‘This one was written by Nell Turner, married to an officer of some sort. It’s from The Residency, used to be up on the hill, dated January 1909. She writes: “Alf is not at all well tho’ he is gaining weight this last month … Kate is a lot bigger than mother – gets bigger and fatter after each baby. Mollie had convulsions on New Year Eve and took over two hours to come out of it, was quite stupid for a couple of days after, she seems quite recovered now. Munrowd had a fit a week after Mollie, but is well again. Jean had a dose of fever but is on the mend.”’
‘Sounds drastic to me. Matter of fact my own wife is in Australia at the moment. It’s tough for women here.’ He carefully placed the letter back into his archive. ‘I hope to write a history of Samarai one day. No time of course.’
I suggested we find Wallace, so we went over to the guesthouse. I called out but there was no reply. The large room was sparsely furnished and seedy, like an old people’s home. A meal was laid out on a table under white gauze. It was dim despite the fierce sun blazing down outside.
‘Yu yah! kamap pinis!1 I had gone down to the wharf to meet you!’
A voice came from the gloomy interior at the back of the house. A patriarchal Melanesian in an immaculate white shirt emerged from a corridor limping slightly. His grey hair was carefully groomed, teeth mauled by betel, warm eyes that expressed a mixture of love and disappointment. One of his hands had been amputated midway down the forearm.
‘Got your letter. I’m Wallace Andrew.’
Ian left us. Wallace immediately sat down at a bare table and began to play a game of patience with a limp deck of cards. It was as though he needed to erect a barrier to communication as a safeguard. Clearly he had spent years of his life playing this