Long Way Place (Cannibal Country Trilogy, Book 1)

by Andrew Wareham

  “What sort is he?”

  “London Missionary Society, better than the Yanks but not much. At least he won’t be telling his lot to ignore the police and the government because they are sinners and unsaved.”

  Patrick shook his head, the task of administration would be easier without the missionaries, he said, but very quietly. The churches had the ear of the big bosses in Sydney and London and it was a very foolish public servant who tried to offer the politicians truth instead of pious wishful thinking.

  Brown soup was served, followed by steak and potatoes with fresh bread.

  “Eat it up, Ned! It’s corned beef and rice once you land!”

  “But at least you get fruit most of the year, Patrick!”

  “Good for bloody flying foxes, Richard! Human beings need meat!”

  It was, apparently, a long-standing argument between the two public servants. Presumably it gave them something to talk about in the evenings in the bachelor quarters.

  The voyage north was a useful introduction to the Territory for Ned. Talking in a bar was a very different thing to a formal briefing in a government office and Patrick and Richard were able to put official policy into more sensible words while Eamon and Taff and Maurice made the opinions of Burns Philp, and the very few independent planters and storekeepers, quite clear.

  The official policy did not officially exist – the Australian government had not spelt out its intentions in or towards Papua and the governor of the day was at almost total liberty to create his own climate of opinion in his administration. Hubert Murray, one of the longest serving governors, was a strong-minded man of beliefs that were in many ways in advance of his times and in almost every way at variance with those of the planting, storekeeping, shipping and prospecting interests. There was little short of civil war amongst the whiteskins in Papua – only fear of the kanakas kept the guns silent.

  “It’s simple, really, Ned,” Maurice said, “no bugger speaks to Murray and he never talks to us. Spends all the time he can upcountry, exploring new areas, and leaves the RMs to do the work. They uphold his laws, because that’s their job and he selects them anyway, makes sure they’re all his sort, more or less.”

  “It’s not that simple, Ned,” Patrick said. “Before Murray the blackbirders were slaving kanakas all along the coast, selling them into the cane fields in Queensland or over into the Dutch lands to the west. He stopped that, quicktime. The Chinese were coming down after trepang and pearls and gold dust if they could find it, and shooting as often as paying for their stuff. They still come down but they behave themselves now, except for a very few and they mostly get caught. You don’t see starving or flogged labourers any more, and the kanakas are more peaceful because of it. And he keeps the missionaries under control, as much as anybody can. Sure, he reckons that the kanakas should be educated and turned into little Australians; he says they can be brought to independence in two or three hundred years with a bit of patience and care. Don’t know many who’d agree with that, but he’s honest and never pockets a penny other than his salary, and at least he’s trying to bring law to the coast.”

  “Too much bloody law, if you ask me,” Maurice responded. “A kanaka picks up a spear and you shoot him and then spend the next two years arguing in court. I don’t want to flog any of my labour line and I make sure they’re fed whatever the profits are, whether the price of copra is high or low. But these blokes are warriors and half the buggers are cannibals besides. They’ll kill each other quite happily, or me if the mood takes them, and it’s no good saying PC Plod will be here next month if you’re naughty!”

  “It’s a violent country, Ned,” Taff commented reflectively. “It’s no good pretending it’s a vicar’s tea party, and it’s no good picking up a gun at the least excuse either, mate. I get by down at my place, but I’m half way to Samarai, down east. They’re different folks down the Gulf towards the Fly, much more likely to pick up a spear or club, that lot. Same as the buggers inland of me, the Orokaiva clans, they’ll eat any bugger who comes near ‘em. Good thing they stay up in their mountains, say I – I’d like to see what Murray’d have to say to that mob!”

  The steamer made its way into the harbour at Port Moresby a couple of hours after dawn – the coral was sufficient that very few ships tried to close the coast at night. There was a single wharf - long enough to take three or four ocean-going steamers and a dozen or so of island boats - four large warehouses and a scattering of office buildings. Looking uphill Ned could pick out a few houses amid the coconut palms and larger trees.

  “Konedobu’s down to the left about a mile, round the point there.”

  Patrick gestured towards a four hundred feet high rock outcropping that seemed to be covered in corrugated iron sheeting.

  “Water works, mate, all the rain runs off in the Wet and goes into the tanks, enough to get us through the Dry, most years, though it’s a bugger when the rains fail, or so I’m told. They’ve been good the last five years.”

  “Konedobu’s where you live, is it?”

  “Most of the public servants are in the compound at Konny, Ned, except for some of the married ones who’ve got their own places up on the hill here, especially if they’ve hitched up with local girls. Murray insists that public servants get married properly, they can’t just keep a mistress. If you’re on a plantation it’s easier, but you’ve still got to pay and make sure any kids are kept and educated till they grow up. Hard to say that’s a bad thing, to my mind!”

  Half an hour and the ship was tied up and a group of local men, stevedores apparently, were waiting patiently under the shade trees for the hatch covers to come off. Nothing would happen until the customs and quarantine officials appeared and they would probably not get out of bed for another hour, or so the Burns Philp men swore. The purser waved to Ned and pointed to his toolbox and trunks which had just been dropped by cargo net onto the wharf.

  “Thanks, mate!”

  Ned walked down the gangplank in the middle of the group, all of them turning their backs on the missionary who was busily ordering the purser to hurry up with his boxes and was being ignored. Ned had bought the purser a couple of beers, the missionary had not.

  A very fat and not especially handsome Australian was stood by a one-horse closed van, Papuan Rubber Company stencilled on the tilt. Ned crossed to him, grinned and put his hand out.

  “You must be Ned? I’m Alfred, depot manager at Port Moresby. I’ll get the boy to put your stuff up… No, don’t do it yourself, that’s for his sort, not us!”

  ‘Alfred’, not ‘Alfie’ – that said a lot about him. His attitude said more.

  “Right, Alfred, I’ve got a lot to learn about the way things are done up ‘ere.”

  “No worries, mate! We’ll get you up to the transient quarters, you’ll be there for a couple of days while we get everything sorted. Account at Burns Philp this arvo, Konny’ll take up all of tomorrow, and you’ll want to look at the stuff we’ve got in the warehouse the day after. What is it, Tuesday today? With luck, we’ll get you up the hill on Friday.”

  The quarters were, more or less, the Company’s club for its single men, a place to stay when going off on furlough and waiting for the steamer and a base for a few days of local leave when life in the bush got too much to bear. There was a bar, a full-size snooker table, a darts board and a shady verandah looking out over the bay. Other amenities of a female nature could be supplied, it seemed. Ned was introduced to the three men in temporary occupancy.

  “Mr Fitzgerald, you know, of course, Ned.”

  They shook hands and Fitzgerald said he was going south on the boat next day, important business in Sydney, he was sorry he would not be able to introduce Ned to the Company himself.

  John, who shook constantly, possibly from the after-effects of a recent bout of malaria, was ‘going finish’, his contract completed and not signing on again. He had almost nothing to say to Ned, or to anyone other than the bar boy.

  David Griffiths had
much to say to everybody. He had come down from Laloki to escort Ned through the perils of Port Moresby and up to the Company and was only too willing to be of assistance.

  “Made my own way out of the Welsh Valleys, boyo, so I ‘ave, and back I am not going! Junior clerk in the office at the pithead in Merthyr, I was, when the war broke out in South Africa, fourteen years old but big enough in build if not in height and I joined the Colours and was at the Cape six months later. Sergeant, I was, with a Mounted Infantry battalion inside two years and took my discharge all right and tight when the battalion disbanded. Stayed on in Africa, went up north after the gold, but there’s little left for prospectors and fossickers there, so it was across to Samarai and the islands for me. Got the chance to join the Company six years ago and took it – no place for a lone man, not in the Gulf – too bloody risky, boyo! Five more years and I shall have saved enough and it’s my own plantation for me and the rich life. Better than bloody coal mines, I’ll tell you!”

  Fitzgerald seemed to have heard the story before and in any case knew nothing of the pits or of the miner’s life. He had missed South Africa, had stayed in Malaya, felt just a fraction guilty that he had not done his part, was inclined to be resentful of those who had.

  “You did not join up, Mr Hawkins?”

  “At sea, sir.”

  The implication of service was not lost.

  Lunch – corned beef fritters and rice – consumed, they took a single beer to wash it down. It was never wise to drink too much alcohol during the day, but the water was hardly safe and a man must keep up his fluid intake in the Tropics.

  “No tea, Mr Fitzgerald?”

  The manager shuddered, shook his head. “The lemons up here, Mr Hawkins, are impossible! ‘Mouli’, they call them, a cross between lime, lemon and something unknown to the science of mankind! Tea is a drink for temperate climes, I suspect, Mr Hawkins, though we managed quite well in Malaya.”

  Ned was ushered out into the afternoon heat, found it not too unpleasant.

  “She’s right at this time of year, Ned, humidity’s not too high, like. Come the Doldrums it can be unpleasant, and in the Wet it gets sticky, you don’t want to walk then, but we can manage half a mile or so today. How the kanakas get along without hats, I don’t know, but I suppose it’s different for them – look over there, boyo, do you see the tits on that one!”

  Ned glanced at the bare-chested girl, hardly into adulthood, he supposed, no suggestion of sag; not a lot more than a child, in fact. He thought he might come to dislike Davy Griffiths. He said nothing, looked downhill to the wharfside where the missionary family was finally being loaded onto the LMS cart, four hours after docking.

  “Bloody missionaries! More trouble than they’re worth, Ned bach. Jesus! Has that one brought children with him?”

  “Four girls and a little boy.”

  “What a prick! This is no land for families, not outside of town anyway.”

  They reached the Burns Philp store; the mercantile hub of Port Moresby, a corrugated-iron roofed warehouse with a few internal partitions and a dozen counters, all presided over by whiteskins with several Samoan assistants. The few customers were all white.

  “None of the kanakas can count beyond twenty, Ned, and there ain’t much in the way of schooling yet. Murray wants to build a secondary school, but he’s got to find the money for teachers so it’ll be bloody years before that happens.”

  Davy led Ned to the offices at the rear, introduced him to the manager who passed him across to Maurice, waiting at his desk.

  “I thought it would be easier if you dealt with somebody you knew, Ned, so I came straight in to work. Bugger-all better to do up here, anyway.”

  Ned had noted that Maurice had been quite enthusiastic at the bar on the way up, suspected that it was where he spent his free hours, every day.

  “Now then, Ned, there ain’t any banks up here so BPs,” he pronounced it ‘beeps’, “acts for the Company in paying your wages. We keep an account which you draw on as you want, keeping it in the black, of course, but mostly you won’t use much money up here. The Company pays you a food allowance, but for single men the procedure is that it’s put directly across to us and we send a wagon up to your mess every month and settle up with the Company. The only thing you’ll spend on is your bar bill, and they present that every month and deduct it direct. Most blokes keep a few quid in hand in silver, florins and shillings, for anything they want to pay as extras up at Laloki,” he grinned and winked while Davy leered.

  It was obvious enough what he would need the money for; no worries, he liked a warm bed as much as any other man. He made no mention of the drawstring purse in his pocket and the sixty two sovereigns in it - that was his business.

  “When you go on leave we’ll have the Company ticket here and we will, with your permission, cable down to the Brisbane or Sydney office a couple of days in advance to tell them how much you can draw there, or you can pull out cash up here.”

  It seemed simple enough to Ned, though he he’d had no experience of banks before. He thought he ought to find out something about them, one day.

  “Now then, Ned, the rations we send up each month, all the obvious stuff for the mess kitchen. Flour, rice, sugar, bully beef, tinned stew, coffee, tea, cocoa, bars of chocolate, tinned butter, beans, cooking fat, condensed milk, prunes, raisins and sultanas, strawberry jam, marmalade. Is there anything special you’d like?”

  “Not really, I’ve never been too worried about what I eat… tell you what, though, can you get hold of that tinned apricot jam, the stuff we used to get from South Africa when I was a kid?”

  “Got it in stock, mate. I’ll just make a note to send a tin up every month; some of the other blokes are bound to like it too. The cooks bake good bread, I’m told, so you can have it for breakfast.”

  “Go down well, that will, Ned. We’ve got our own chickens up there, so there’s always eggs and they buy in from the local market, fruit and veg when it’s to hand – not much in the Dry, goes without saying. Pawpaw, mate, that’s the stuff, a big slice of that for breakfast sets you up for the day, and the skin’s good on cuts or sores as well.”

  Maurice nodded, it was one of the few things that could cure a tropical ulcer. In its early stages, of course, only cutting dealt with an established one.

  “You’re right for clothes, Ned? What about a net?”

  Ned raised an eyebrow questioningly.

  “Mossies, mate, bloody binatangs! They carry malaria, that’s proved now, and a lot of blokes reckon they spread dengue as well, and that’s a bastard of a disease, break-bone fever they call it because that’s what it feels like. A net over your bed makes sense; I always sleep in one, and stay indoors for half an hour either side of sundown, that’s when they’re most active.”

  Ned nodded, he had been told the same down in Cairns.

  “Is it as bad as Queensland for spiders and snakes, Davy?”

  “Nowhere near, mate – there’s maybe one here for every ten there, though that still makes a hell of a lot. Use your sense and she’ll be right.”

  “Right. Put me up a net, would you, Maurice? Best I should take it up with me on Friday, do you think?”

  “Cart goes up on Thursday, day after the ship’s cargo gets into the warehouse. I’ll put it on then, Ned.”

  “Thanks, mate.”

  They wandered back to the Company quarters, Davy pointing out the sights of Port Moresby, which was quickly done.

  “Half a dozen Chinese stores down to the waterfront. Bit of a settlement across to the eastern side, shacks thrown up by outsider kanakas, came down as boys working for masters here, got ‘emselves married and moved out of their quarters and built squats where they could. Going to be a bloody nuisance in twenty years time. Their families ain’t going to have work, boyo, and there’s sod all garden land for them to grow on, so, unless the harbour gets a lot busier they’re going to have no food and no money, and they won’t take very easily to starving, I reck
on.”

  The generator failed in mid-evening and it was too dark to play snooker so they had a couple more beers and went to bed early, a fairly usual event, Ned gathered.

  Breakfast soon after dawn, six o’clock starts the normal, Ned was assured, and they wandered downhill to the coastal track that led under the shade of the coconuts round to the wooden shacks that housed the administration in Konedobu.

  “No money to build better, Ned, because Murray insists on spending it on stocks of relief food and water pipes for the villages. I’m not sure he’s wrong there, mind you, but I don’t say so aloud, not in front of his public servants who’ve got to work and live in Konny.”

  They went to Patrick’s office first and solemnly proceeded through the limited formalities of entry to the Territory.

  “Nationality, Ned?”

  “English.”

  “Have you any documents to prove it?”

  “Seaman’s card? Issued in Bristol.”

  Passports were used almost exclusively by government employees, mostly on diplomatic business, although a few businessmen carried them to establish their financial probity in foreign parts.

  “That’ll do, Ned. What’s its number?”

  The note was made, the page turned and forgotten about.

  “Got any criminal convictions, Ned?”

  “None, mate, I could always run faster than the coppers.”

  “Married?”

  “No.”

  “Next of kin?”

  “Who?”

  “Family, Ned, to write to if you cark it out here. Tell ‘em what happened.”

  “None, mate. Pair of twin sisters who went out to Canada, someplace, with the Orphans Society, nobody else.”

  It was not that unusual, though there was normally a mention of dead parents. It would be impolite to ask any more.

  “Trade, occupation or other skills?”

  “Ticketed steam engineer,” Ned produced his certificate in proof.

  “Good, I don’t think we’ve got one of those, Ned.”