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Beyond the Coral Sea: Travels in the Old Empires of the South-West Pacific
Michael Moran
A romantic and adventurous journey to the hidden islands and lagoons beyond Papua New Guinea and north of Australia.East of Java, west of Tahiti and north of the Cape York peninsula of Australia lie the unknown paradise islands of the Coral, Solomon and Bismarck Seas. They were perhaps the last inhabited place on earth to be explored by Europeans, and even today many remain largely unspoilt, despite the former presence of German, British and even Australian colonial rulers.Michael Moran, a veteran traveller, begins his journey on the island of Samarai, historic gateway to the old British Protectorate, as the guest of the benign grandson of a cannibal. He explores the former capitals of German New Guinea and headquarters of the disastrous New Guinea Compagnie, its administrators decimated by malaria and murder. He travels along the inaccessible Rai Coast through the Archipelago of Contented Men, following in the footsteps of the great Russian explorer ‘Baron’ Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay.The historic anthropological work of Bronislaw Malinowski guides him through the seductive labyrinth of the Trobriand ‘Islands of Love’ and the erotic dances of the yam festival. Darkly humorous characters, both historical and contemporary, spring vividly to life as the author steers the reader through the richly fascinating cultures of Melanesia.‘Beyond the Coral Sea’ is a captivating voyage of unusual brilliance and a memorable evocation of a region which has been little written about during the past century.Note that it has not been possible to include the same picture content that appeared in the original print version.
BEYOND THE CORAL SEA
Travels in the old Empires of the South-West Pacific
MICHAEL MORAN
Dedication (#ulink_2b6b7499-2270-5f7d-ba2b-8ec1b19f4a50)
For my mother who saw this voyage begin but not end and the children of Papua New Guinea so full of energy and eternal delight
Epigraph (#ulink_2df8e2be-2877-51f2-94f6-6d362cdbf5ee)
I have always thought the situation of a Traveller singularly hard. If he tells nothing that is uncommon he must be a stupid fellow to have gone so far, and brought home so little; and if he does, why – it is hum – aya – a tap of the Chin; – and – ‘He’s a Traveller.’
WILLIAM WALES
Astronomer and Meteorologist
Captain Cook’s Second Voyage in the Resolution
Journal 13 May, 1774
Contents
Cover (#u3a514cd1-60de-5a5b-ac30-13202fb88cb7)
Title Page (#u91ce298e-2f10-5d41-b212-de212beb2c34)
Dedication (#u938833f6-ece5-5ef2-a118-7754b6db55be)
Epigraph (#uecb18b7f-6343-549f-8e5b-a27e26e6bc47)
Maps (#u848ccf5a-5780-5427-94c4-a28caac449b1)
Prologue (#u7fd44c93-ab67-57ee-aa9e-c89db70ed64d)
1 Forsaking Pudding Island (#u21d29fc5-18e2-5107-be86-73760d26d4bb)
2 The Eye of the Eagle (#ua737560c-1715-591a-a39c-dee3211b8093)
3 ‘No More ’Um Kaiser, God Save ’Um King’ (#u959e3854-2690-5fc1-86ce-d4143f6f1519)
4 Death is Lighter than a Feather (#u9f8ef1c1-4fbf-5e33-ac2d-05e76c602374)
5 Too Hard a Country for Soft Drinks (#ua7162253-8717-5867-8428-2e2f2bf70828)
6 ‘Mr Hallows Plays No Cricket. He’s Leaving on the Next Boat.’ (#u7000a60e-2161-56a2-8300-db1afbe5f74b)
7 Constitutional Crisis in Makamaka (#litres_trial_promo)
8 ‘O Maklai, O Maklai!’ or The Archipelago of Contented People (#litres_trial_promo)
9 Kolonialpolitik Defeats the Man from the Moon (#litres_trial_promo)
10 Minotaurs on Gilded Couches (#litres_trial_promo)
11 Feverish Nightmares (#litres_trial_promo)
12 Grand Opening – Tsoi Island General Store (#litres_trial_promo)
13 An Account of the Criminal Excesses of Charles Bonaventure du Breil (#litres_trial_promo)
14 ‘In Loveing Memory’ (#litres_trial_promo)
15 ‘The Sick Man Goes Down with the Plane’ (#litres_trial_promo)
16 ‘Rabaul i blow up!’ (#litres_trial_promo)
17 Queen Emma (#litres_trial_promo)
18 A Moveable Feast (#litres_trial_promo)
19 ‘No Trespassing Except By Request’ (#litres_trial_promo)
20 Auf Wiedersehn, Kannibalen (#litres_trial_promo)
21 Under the Mosquito Net in Malinowski’s Tent (#litres_trial_promo)
22 Farewell to That Strange and Fatal Glamour (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Afterword (#litres_trial_promo)
Brief Chronology of Significant Historical Events in Papua New Guinea (#litres_trial_promo)
Bibliography of Principal Sources (#litres_trial_promo)
Index (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
Author’s Note (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Maps (#ulink_1b7f493b-7106-59f9-8af2-239b139b6c10)
Prologue (#ulink_a0d1d0a0-37b1-5a09-87e1-046b4f0187da)
‘If you dress well, they won’t eat you!’ Wallace said.
He shuffled the cards with the stump of his right arm, beginning another interminable game of patience. The light was failing, the atmosphere oppressively hot and humid as the cards flapped on the bare table. Local boys glanced in darkly as they passed the flyblown screens covering the louvred windows. They were interested in the visitor and craned for a better view. A wretched poster of Bill Clinton greeting King Harald V of Norway hung at a crazy angle from the flaking wall.
‘We thought you were Gods.’
His rippling, grey hair caught the sun and he smiled, teeth showing the past ravages of chewing betel nut. Wallace Andrew was a distinguished personage with a heart of gold. This virtue had brought him many misfortunes in life. He began to hum the hymn ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’.
‘Such a lovely tune, don’t you think? Young people today have abandoned proper hymns.’
The ceiling fan was motionless, the air thick and still. A pretty village woman with an ancient profile began to hurriedly set the table for dinner, laying out cutlery, bananas, pineapple and some lurid green cordial in a glass jug. She covered it with mesh. Malarial mosquitoes had already begun to ride the last shafts of sunlight in the dusk. ‘Napoleon will be here at seven. They will come directly from the chamber and then go out again,’ she said in excellent English, clearly for my benefit. They generally spoke the Suau language in the islands around Milne Bay in Eastern Papua New Guinea.
‘Fine men. Like my grandfather, a fine man,’ Wallace noted sadly, another fast game of patience in progress in the gloom. He adopted a consistently high moral tone in all his conversations and talked often of selfless Christians.
‘Charles Abel, one of the first English missionaries, always wore a bow tie, white shoes, starched shirt and trousers. He was never kai kai’d
(#ulink_c7e5ceaf-fa6d-577c-a1e6-469d58ba8216) because they respected him. His wife came from England too. She delivered a village baby after they landed and her white dress was soon covered in blood. They didn’t eat her. She helped them.’
Wallace was, after all, the grandson of a cannibal and an expert on matters of cannibal etiquette.
Two men carrying folders dragged open the grill on the front door and entered the main room. They glanced quickly and expectantly at the deserted bar but it had been some time since any festivities of an alcoholic or social kind had taken place there. They greeted Wallace. He stood up full of respect and pleasure that government ministers had chosen to be guests at his establishment.
‘We go up, then come down to eat, then go out.’
The brevity of their speech was almost aggressive as they noticed the white stranger in their midst. The assertive masculinity of Melanesian culture. Their dark features could scarcely be seen as they climbed the central flight of a once-grand staircase that branched into two wings of remarkable austerity and dilapidation. Their bare feet made only the slightest sound like large cats padding about. Floorboards creaked overhead and doors slammed. Silence apart from the worn cards softly slapping one over the other. Wallace scarcely glanced at the deck as he deftly adjusted his amputated arm, leaning slightly to one side, gathering them in.
‘You can walk around the whole island in the moonlight. It’s beautiful. Even if you are drunk nothing will happen to you here – not like the hell of Alotau!’
Wallace was full of trust in his fellow man yet he had suffered many betrayals. Tropical foliage spun by the moon appealed to my sense of romance, but this particular night was pitch black.
Fluorescent lights cruelly illuminated the dining room. The Kinanale Guesthouse was in desperate need of refurbishment. During colonial days it had been the single accommodation for white employees of the Steamships Trading Company.
(#ulink_100ac32f-7377-5151-a421-c7248013e6cf) Paintings of sailing ships and bush huts with strange watchtowers covered the larger cracks. A small lounge opened off the main room like a builder’s afterthought. Geckos darted in erratic motion across the stained walls. Dinah removed the mesh from the table. She laid out fish and taro on platters together with a jug of crystalclear iced water. A solitary bell sounded the hour over the football pitch, former cricket ground, former malarial swamp that lay before this once select building in the centre of the island. An air of abandonment and futility gave rise to a curious sense of threat and lethargy.
The government officials had changed into crisp shirts for the evening session and padded over to the table. Wallace, perhaps sensing their shyness, decided to introduce me.
‘This is Mr Michael from England. He is a famous man and wrote me a letter,’ searching the while in a battered briefcase. He produced the creased relic and began to read out loud, to my acute embarrassment. ‘Dear Mr Andrew, your name was given to me by Sir Kina Bona, the High Commissioner in London and I …’
Their fierce expressions changed at once to broad smiles of extreme friendliness. But the visitors must always make the first move.
‘Wallace has been telling me all about your important government work. What are you doing on the island?’ I was tactfully pouring a glass of the luminous cordial so as to avoid appearing overly inquisitive. Wallace beamed from his proprietor’s perch.
‘I’m Napoleon, Assembly Clerk for the Milne Bay Province and this is the Principal Adviser to the Provincial Government. He’s from Morobe Province. We are running a seminar for local councillors. Welcome to our difficult and beautiful country.’ The introductions seemed overly formal, even odd, in this place that had clearly seen better days.
I was on Samarai, a tiny island in China Strait that lies off the southeastern tip of Papua New Guinea, described before the Great War as ‘the jewel of the Pacific’. It was the original port of entry to British New Guinea and had been the provincial headquarters before Port Moresby. This gem lay on the sea route between China and Australia. The tropical enchantment cast by Samarai was loved by all who visited it. Destroyed by the Australian administration in anticipation of a Japanese invasion that never happened, it was now more like the discarded shell of the pink pearls still harvested nearby.
Having dinner with the descendant of a cannibal, a man who spoke reverentially and compulsively of the shedding of the blood of Christ whilst humming ‘All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small’, was just the beginning of a cultural adventure through the largely unknown islands of Eastern Papua New Guinea.
(#ulink_5149af18-9db0-5657-ba5e-efa7d3c8e965)Pidgin for ‘food’ is kai kai. Here it is used as a passive verb – to be kai kai’d is to be eaten.
(#ulink_7853dd16-bcca-5c2b-b9d9-fb8182c7e89a)Steamships Group is one of the largest public companies in Papua New Guinea with many diverse business interests apart from shipping. The original Australian company was established in adverse circumstances in Port Moresby in 1924 by a retired sea captain, Algernon Sydney Fitch, the first branch opening on Samarai in 1926.
1. Forsaking Pudding Island (#ulink_94128a05-1908-5162-9152-06d4474ac7fc)
London
29 September 1999
It was raining heavily as I clambered out of the taxi in the Mall and ran up the grand flight of steps past the Duke of York column into Waterloo Place. The statues of the explorers Sir John Franklin and Captain Scott looked stern and Olympian. I was heading for the High Commission of Papua New Guinea through a forest of history and high culture, umbrella up, head down. The high classicism of Nash’s Via Triumphalis, former site of the Regent’s wanton and ruinous Carlton House, could not have contrasted more strongly with the musky odour in the corridor of pagan carvings that led to the High Commissioner’s office. Grimy windows overlooked Waterloo Place. The national flag wrapped around its pole badly needed cleaning. Papua New Guinea time and GMT were indicated by rough signs on mismatching clocks. This was clearly the lair of a culture unconcerned with cosmetic niceties. His Excellency Sir Kina Bona, the High Commissioner, was chewing gum and watching the Rugby World Cup as I wandered in. He had an instantly likeable face and seemed unaffected by his diplomatic status.
‘How do you do, sir?’ I held out my hand respectfully.
‘Much better if I could get out of here mate! Do you like rugby? What can I do you for?’
The gum thunked into the bin. Rugby was the furthest thing from my mind, but this was a promising beginning. He had a refined, educated air and wore fine-rimmed glasses. Underneath the banter I felt a moral outlook at odds with the modern political world.
We sat down and began to talk. An islander from Kwato in Milne Bay Province, he had attended the mission school as a child, secondary school in Sydney, studied Law at the University of Papua New Guinea and was Crown Prosecutor at the Public Prosecution Office until 1994 when he was subsequently appointed to the post of High Commissioner. Married to a ‘Lancashire lass’, he should have left London two years ago.
‘Britain has little interest in PNG but all the Commonwealth High Comms cooperate very well.’
Grotesque Sepik river masks grinned down like a nightmare from another world.
‘Where are you off to?’ he enquired vaguely, settling uncomfortably into a leather chair.
‘I’m planning a trip around the islands next year. I don’t intend to go to the Highlands at all. Far too violent. Just the islands.’
‘Yes – the violence. Moresby is pretty bad. The police are so under-funded that corruption is rife … the jungle hardly lends itself to strict policing. Not like Surrey!’
He laughed with a hint of derision at the ease of civilised life.
‘I used to live on Norfolk Island off the coast of Australia. Home to the descendants of the Bounty mutiny.’
I was fighting to establish a rapport with this fellow islander, some common ground. The masks seemed threatening in Waterloo Place. The contrast was suffocating.
‘Really? Islands are special places. I miss the sweet waves of Samarai and Kwato on moonlit nights. Cities, well …’
He drifted off into an unexpected romantic reverie. I explained myself.
‘I got bored with catching the seventy-three bus down Oxford Street to Victoria every morning. Threw it up in the end. The job I mean.’
‘What were you doing?’
