Colonial Development in Central New Guinea

Abstract

THE HEART OF THE island of New Guinea was long supposed to be wholly mountainous and uninhabited, but in the early i930's, shut off from the coast by high mountain ranges, great grass valleys were discovered. Drained by the headwaters of some of the major rivers of Papua-New Guinea and all lying between heights of four to seven thousand feet above sea level, these valleys, green, temperate, and fertile, supported a greater concentration of native people than existed anywhere else in the island. The effect of their discovery was tonic. For Westerners, Papua-New Guinea was not a pleasant country to work in, but a hard land from which a living was scratched with difficulty by the relatively few white men who ventured there. European capital had never, with the exception of a gold strike, been invested on any significant scale. But suddenly, in the midst of this unattractive land, a wonderland was found-an area so obviously suitable for white settlement and the maintenance of normal European life that the enthusiasm of the early explorers spilled over in phrases about a new white highlands which would be, in time, the most important part of the country. The attraction which the central highland valleys have had upon the minds of European settlers had not been constant but has always been present. The realisation of the idea of a new white highlands has met with difficulties in which frustration over the slow pace of European settlement has been mixed with the charms of contrast between the temperate highlands and the hot, humid coastal areas. The material attractions which the central highlands hold out to European settlers are considerable. The lure which drew the early explorers was gold: gold miners first penetrated into the highlands, confident that they would strike it rich. In this they were disappointed. There is probably no gold in commercial quantities but individual miners have worked payable claims and in the Upper Ramu river area of the eastern highlands natives who interested themselves in mining produced over /I2,00 (Australian currency) worth of gold during the year I953-54 and more than /i i,ooo in the previous year. But the most perceptive of the early entrants into the highlands did not look to gold as the basis of future development but thought rather of agriculture and stock-raising. The highland valleys, especially the eastern ones which seemed most suitable for European settlement, are best suited to such plantation crops as coffee and tea, and certain other crops such as peanuts,