Death of the Macdhui

A small, but significant, anniversary took place on Monday June 18, 2007.
That was the 65th anniversary of the sinking of the motor vessel Macdhui, sunk in the Port Moresby harbour by Japanese bombs in June 1942.
One of the best-known landmarks in Port Moresby is the wreck of the Macdhui in the waters just off the Port Moresby Technical College at Kanudi.
Many people just drive or walk past without knowing the significant role that the Macdhui played in the development of Papua New Guinea.
Recently, I was asked to be a tour guide for a retired US veteran of the Korean and Vietnam wars, and one of the World War 11 relics I showed him was the wreck of the Macdhui.
As we stood at Kanudi looking out to sea, I wondered what stories the deep blue sea, the rolling hills, and the wide sky could tell me about what they saw that fateful day in 1942.
It was then that I realised that June 18, 2007, would be the 65th anniversary of the sinking of the Macdhui and decided to put pen to paper.
The Macdhui, 4630 tonnes, built in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1930, was owned and operated on the Australia-Papua New Guinea service by Burns Philp and Company Limited.
Macdhui’s maiden voyage took place in March 1931, sailing to Suva, Fiji, via the Azores, Jamaica, and the Panama Canal, with a load of coal.
Then the Sydney to Rabaul route for Burns Philip with 167 first-class passengers’ accomodation.
On June 20, 1931, a fire broke out on another voyage between Madang and Lae, but the passengers were safely taken ashore in lifeboats.
MacDhui was safely towed to Salamaua, New Guinea's then administrative capital, by Neptuna, another Burns Philp & Co vessel.
After patching at Salamaua, MacDhui was sailed to Sydney for six weeks of repairs.
With the onset of war the ship was commandeered by the Navy and used to evacuate civilians from New Guinea, then carrying Australian troops back to Port Moresby.
On June 17, 1942, the Macdhui was attacked by Japanese bombers as it was discharging to lighters in Port Moresby harbour.
It began zigzagging around the harbour but took one direct hit which caused considerable damage.
The vessel later went alongside the main wharf to unload dead and wounded.
The next day, at 10.45am, there was another air-raid warning and the Macdhui moved out into the harbour and began manoeuvring.
Soon after the raid began, it took a direct hit.
The captain headed towards shallow water where his ship finally keeled over onto a reef.
Ten of the crew of 77 were killed along with five Australian gunners from 39 Battalion.
Altogether, the Macdhui took four direct hits.
The dramatic sinking was captured on a black and white movie film shot by the famous Australian cameraman, Damien Parer from a nearby hilltop.
The loss of the Macdhui was a great blow to the morale of the Australian troops in Port Moresby. Until then it had been the only regular and reliable link between Australia and Port Moresby.
After the war, the Australian government compensated Burns Philp for its loss.
The wreck itself is now deeply pitted and corroded under the waterline.
It is gradually breaking up but even if it does slip completely under the surface part of the Macdhui will remain in Port Moresby.
In the late 1960’s the mast was removed and now stands outside the Royal Papua Yacht Club as a memorial to those who died.
One of the bells was erected in the tower of St John’s Anglican Church in Port Moresby and to this day still calls parishioners to worship.
Former vice-commodore of the Royal Papua Yacht Club, Trevor Kerr, tells of a supernatural experience in 1979 when the ashes of the late Captain J. Campbell, skipper of the Macdhui, were laid to rest with his ship.
The powered launch Tina, owned and skippered by yacht club committee member Russ Behan, approached the wreck with Captain Campbell’s two sons, a United Church minister, and Kerr on board.
“The weather in the harbour was unusually placid, not a zephyr stirred,” writes former Port Moresby diver Neil Whiting in Wreck and Reefs of Port Moresby.
“The sea was so clear that the superstructure of the Macdhui could be seen below the surface of the water.
“There was not a ripple on the surface or current drift to break the calm.
“With heads bowed in prayer, the United Church minister upturned the urn containing Captain Campbell’s ashes and scattered the contents into the sea.
“Trevor, observing the ceremony in a more detached fashion than the others, observed the most amazing sequence of events.
“The ashes initially clouded the water as one would expect, but almost immediately condensed into a form similar to a teardrop.
“Then, the most amazing phenomenon occurred.
“The teardrop cloud quite rapidly crossed the six-metre intervening gap between the Tina and the Macdhui and disappeared into the hull.
“At a nudge from Trevor, Russ glanced up and also observed the incredible event.
“The engines of the launch were quickly started and in a state of chilled awe, the funeral party motored away.
“Captain Campbell had returned to his ship.”

Grave robbers wreak havoc in Lae cemeteries

There are some things in life that are so hard to comprehend.

These things make you wonder why some people have the audacity to carry out such acts, which include desecrating the memory of loved ones that families and relatives have laid to rest. These people can stoop as low as stealing brass plaques from graveyards to sell to unscrupulous scrap metal dealers for a fast buck.

In my home town of Lae, this practice has been going on ever since these dealers - who prey on Papua New Guinea's massive unemployment problem - set foot.

Today, a visit to cemeteries in Lae, will show you many headstones on graves that are missing brass plaques.

A case in point is the old graveyard up the road from the famous old Lae airport.

This graveyard is the final resting place for many of the pioneers of Lae and Morobe province, mainly expatriates, and was a relic of a bygone era where visitors could learn so much just by reading the plaques and headstones.

Rest In Peace - RIP - those buried here are supposed to be.

However, this has not been the case over the last 10 years or so, as grave robbers without a care in the world have plundered basically all the brass plaques.

In my younger days, as a journalist in Lae, one of my hobbies used to be wandering old graveyards and reading the plaques and headstones as I could learn so much history. Sadly, I can no longer do this, as many of the plaques are gone.

And the irony is that people are not making any noise about this daylight robbery going on in front of their own faces.

The grave robbers are desecrating graveyards at the old Lae airport, Second Seven (Malahang), and even my Butibam village, to name a few.

Heaven knows what would happen to the Lae War Cemetery if there wasn't tight security around to prevent these intruders.

We never thought that this practice would come to Butibam until a few years ago when plaques started disappearing overnight.

In May 2006, while on a working trip to Lae, I visited my father's grave at Butibam and took pictures.

A short time later, I was surprised to receive a call from my mother, who was in tears as she told me that Dad's plaque had disappeared to these unprincipled grave leeches.

The entire family, just like me, was shocked as we wondered what exactly Dad or we had done to deserve this.

The plaque, to this day, has not been replaced as I somehow have to find the exact wording for a replacement.

My father, the late Mathias Nalu, died on September 17, 1993, after more than 35 years of service with the Education Department as a teacher and later a school inspector.

He had just retired and received his final entitlements, however, never got to enjoy the fruits of his labour as he suffered a severe stroke from which he never recovered until his untimely passing.

Dad was one of those old Dregerhafen and Finschhafen boys who was always proud to call Michael Somare, Paulias Matane, the late Alkan Tololo, and many more, "old school mates".

Dad's school mates went on to become great leaders of this country while he chose to take the backseat as a humble teacher and school inspector.

Hundreds of teachers and public servants packed the St Andrew's Lutheran Church at Ampo in Lae for his funeral service.

The Nalu family was humbled by this show of respect from so many people from all over Lae, Morobe province, and PNG.

I realise that times are hard, but to steal brass plaques from graves to sell to some dodgy scrap metal dealer for a quick buck is unforgivable.

The government should put in place tough legislation to combat those who steal plaques from graves and those who buy them.

These offenders, as part of their rehabilitation, could be sent to Salamaua where the villagers there will teach them how to look after and respect old graveyards.

The old Salamaua cemetery is a relic of a bygone era of the 1920s and 1930s when fevered gold miners from all over the world converged on this idyllic part of the world.

To visit the old Salamaua cemetery is to step back in time, to a rip-roaring period when gold fever struck men from around the globe.

Today the old Salamaua cemetery, or what remains of it, is well tended to by the local villagers.

The graves are mute testimony to the days when European man, running a high gold fever, was claimed by a fever of a different kind.

I have a very simple message for those who removed my father's plaque and those who bought it.

"May God forgive you.

"I find it very hard to do so."

History being rewritten with Bulolo Airport

Many people who have been long fascinated by the story of the gold rush days of the 1930’s feel that history is being rewritten with the re-opening of the Bulolo Airport.
The greatest airlift the world had ever known started from Lae to the Bulolo goldfields in the 1930s.
Built in June 1930, originally the Bulolo strip was 1,150 yards by 120 yards.
Later it was expanded to 1,300 yards in length, covered with grass.
This airstrip was used in conjunction with flying supplies and equipment for gold dredging at Wau and Bulolo.
On January 21, 1942, Japanese Zeros and bombers attacked Bulolo.
At Bulolo, they set fire to three of the Junkers G31 tri-motors on the ground, destroying them.
Gold dredging work ceased as most of the men employed entered military service.
Five days, later, on February 5, 1942, Bulolo was bombed at 11am by five twin-engine bombers.
The discovery of gold at Edie Creek above Wau in 1926 sparked off a gold rush which led to the exploitation of the rich deposits of the Bulolo-Watut river system by large-scale mechanised mining.
The rigours and cost of the eight-day walk into the goldfields and the difficulty of building a road from the coast led to the early introduction of an aviation service.
The driving force behind the development of the goldfields was Cecil J. Levien, a former Morobe District Officer, who has been described as a “rare and formidable combination of opportunist, practical man and visionary”.
Levien persuaded the directors of Guinea Gold N.L. that startling profits would be made by any aviation company that could provide a service to eliminate the arduous walk between Salamaua and Wau.
He secured an option on a small DH-37 plane in Melbourne and engaged a pilot, E. A. “Pard” Mustar, to bring it to New Guinea.
The aviation service was a success from the start.
After two unsuccessful flights around the mountains south of the Markham no one knew exactly how to find Wau from the air.
Mustar landed at Wau for the first time on April 16, 1937.
He began the service the next day with a shipment of six 100 lb bags of rice, charging a shilling a 16, and, making two trips a day, five days a week, carried 84 passengers and 27, 000 lbs of cargo in the first three months.
Rival aviation companies were not long in arriving to share the profits.
Ray Parer, the proprietor of Bulolo Goldfields Air Service who had been competing keenly with Mustar to be the first to land at Lae, came from Rabaul after many delays, and A. “Jerry” Pentland and P. “Skip” Moody soon joined them.
There was ample business for all, and by April 1928, a year after the service began, Guinea Airways (the aviation company that grew from Guinea Gold N.L.) had acquired two extra planes and was employing three further pilots and two more mechanics.
Then in March 1929 a new company, Morlae Airlines, began a weekly Lae-Port Moresby run, meeting ships from Australia and bringing passengers and frozen foods across to Wau, Bulolo, Salamaua and Lae.
At first Bulolo Gold Dredging Ltd and its parent company, Placer Development Ltd, had thought of building a road to the goldfields, but the length of time it would take and the high cost of construction and maintenance persuaded the companies to accept Guinea Airways' proposition that “skyways are the cheapest highways”.
On the advice of Mustar, Bulolo Gold Dredging purchased three all-metal, tri-motored Junkers G-31 aircraft from Germany, which Guinea Airways was to operate under licence for the gold mining company.
Guinea Airways also purchased a Junkers G-31 of its own.
They were huge planes, each capable of carrying a payload of 7100 lbs or 14 short tons together.
The airlift began in April 1931 and continued for eight years: the first dredge began work in March 1932, the eighth in November, 1939.
Another crane at the airstrip lifted the heavy machinery into the planes and a rail crane unloaded them at Bulolo.
Eventually operations became so efficient that nine round trips a day were possible.
The airlift was a remarkable undertaking.
It pioneered the use of aviation in the transport of heavy cargo and, in the words of one writer, “in every respect it constituted a world record”.

Amelia Earhart and Papua New Guinea

Last year 2007 marks the 70th anniversary of one of the greatest unsolved aviation mysteries of all time. ]

The mystery – that of American aviatrix Amelia Earhart – intimately involves Papua New Guinea as Lae was her last port of call before she disappeared somewhere over the vast Pacific Ocean.

Amelia Earhart, darling of American aviation, went missing in July 1937, after leaving Lae for the longest stretch of her around-the-world flight.

The mystery and a long fruitless search –costing many millions of US dollars - had begun. Today, 70 years after her final takeoff – from Lae in Papua New Guinea’s Morobe Province – the mystery is still to be solved.

World attention was focused on Lae in 1937, and continues to this day, when it was the last port of called for Earhart before she disappeared.

Old Lae residents used to recall entertaining the couple in the Hotel Cecil the night before their departure, and then seeing them off the next morning.

Their plane was so overloaded with its eight tonnes of fuel that it was still barely clearing the waves as it disappeared from sight, flying east along the Huon Gulf coast on its way to Howland Island, 4600 kilometres to the north.

On such occasions Lae-ites, regardless of class or social position, felt they were part of history.

Today, a plaque to her memory stands at the Amelia Earhart Park, opposite the famous old Lae airport.

Up the hill from the park, at the Melanesian Hotel, the bar is named Amelia’s after this great woman.

For the last 69 years, hundreds of rumours and theories – some practical but most the products of over fertile imaginations – have kept the memories of Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, alive for millions of Americans.

One of the popular crank theories is that Earhart and Noonan were on a spy flight for the US government and were captured by the Japanese and executed, something that has been vehemently disclaimed by the Japanese to this day.

Some have searched the sea, believing the plane ran out of fuel.

Others think she survived a crash landing but died on a deserted island.

The conspiracy-minded claim Earhart survived and lived out her life under an assumed name as a New Jersey housewife.

There are even bizarre, out-of-this-world urban legends that she was captured by aliens on a UFO.

To US aviation buffs, she is still ‘Amelia’ and they talk about her as though she only went missing yesterday.

The 39-year-old pilot took off from Oakland, California, on June 1, 1937, on what was reported to be her last record flight.

Slim, almost boyish, reminding one of Katherine Hepburn, Amelia Earhart had been setting records for 10 years.

In 1932, she had set a solo record for her Atlantic crossing and earned the nickname of ‘Lady Lindy’, because her slim build and facial features resembled that of Charles Lindbergh.

A year later, she married New York publishing magnate, George Palmer Putnam.

A university graduate, Earhart spoke five languages.

When not flying, she spent most of her time on welfare work in the Boston slums.

Never satisfied with her records, she was always planning something greater.

This was to be IT – the ultimate in long distance flying! She wanted to be the first woman to fly around the world!

Navigator Fred Noonan, senior navigator of Pan American World Airlines, was considered as good as any in the United States.

He had already crossed the Pacific 18 times, directing the flight of the company’s famed China Clipper.

Their aircraft, a twin-engined Lockheed Electra, fast and sophisticated for its day, was well suited to the task.

They had reached Darwin, Northern Australia, 40 days after leaving Oakland.

Possibly to save weight for the long over-water legs to come, they had then unloaded their parachutes.

From Darwin, it was a short trip over to Lae.

New Guinea was the departing point for the most grueling leg of the flight – near 4600 kilometres over water to Howland Island, the longest ocean crossing ever attempted. Their destination was a speck of sand and coral in the mid-Pacific 2.5 kilometres long and just under a kilometer wide.

The Lockheed was to be the first aircraft to land on its newly-constructed airstrip. “Even with a first class navigator on board, it would be an incredible feat to find the island by celestial navigation and dead reckoning alone,” wrote Australian aviator and Earhart researcher Terry Gwynn-Jones in 1977.

“With an error of only one degree in reading, they would miss the island by 72 kilometres.

“Thus it was that the US government stationed the fleet tug Ontario half way along the route and the Coast Guard cutter Itasca at Howland.

“Besides voice communication radios, the Itasca had a radio direction finder and a radio beacon that could be picked up by the aircraft’s Bendix radio compass.

“Once the Lockheed got to within a few hundred kilometers of the island, the Itasca could guide them in.

“Or so it seemed!”

Earhart maintained radio contact with New Guinea, and then later the Itasca and Ontario, until this was lost.

Her last words were: “We are in a line of position 157-337. Will repeat this message on 6210. We are running north and south. We have only a half hour’s fuel and cannot see land.”

The message blasted through loud and clear over the radio of the United States Coast Guard ship Itasca.

The woman’s voice betrayed anxiety.

Quickly, the operator switched to the 6210 kilocycle band and waited for her call.

It never came.

Her silence was shrouded by the crackling of static interference out over the vast Pacific Ocean.

Amelia Earhart, darling of American aviation, was missing

The old Lae Airport

The old Lae airport has played a significant role in the history of the town, Papua New Guinea, and the whole world for that matter.
Mordern day Lae and PNG grew because of the airport (picture above shows the old Lae airport in its heyday in the 1970s).
The greatest airlift the world had ever known started from Lae to the Bulolo goldfields in the 1930s.
World attention was focused on Lae in 1937, and continues to this day, when it was the last port of called for the famed American aviatrix Amelia Earhart before she disappeared somewhere over the deep-blue South Pacific ocean.
Lae airstrip was bombed out by the Japanese on January 21, 1942, however, recovered to become a major player in the development of post-war PNG.
I still have unforgettable memories – as a child - of flying to Wewak, Rabaul, Buka, Kavieng, Goroka and many other places in that trusty old Ansett, TAA and later Air Niugini DC3s and F27s.
The old Lae airport started losing its thunder in 1977 when Nadzab, an American World War 11 strip, became operational.
Fierce political squabbling over the pros and cons of Lae and Nadzab continued until 1982, when, in an unsolved mystery (just like Amelia Earhhart), the Lae airport terminal was burned down.
Nadzab had taken away its glory; however, Lae continued to be used by Air Niugini and other third-level airlines until 1987.
Lae continued to be used as the base for the PNG Defence Force Air Transport Squadron until it was transferred to Port Moresby in 1992.
After that, one of the greatest icons of PNG history was literally left to the dogs, and became covered by bushes.
It was only recently that the land was sub-divided for commercial purposes as well as given back to the traditional landowners.
The story of the old Lae airport is a fascinating one, and is well-documented in the book Lae: Village and City, written by pioneer University of Technology lecturer Ian Willis.
The discovery of gold at Edie Creek above Wau in 1926 sparked off a gold rush which led to the exploitation of the rich deposits of the Bulolo-Watut river system by large-scale mechanised mining.
The rigours and cost of the eight-day walk into the goldfields and the difficulty of building a road from the coast led to the early introduction of an aviation service.
The driving force behind the development of the goldfields was Cecil J. Levien, a former Morobe District Officer who has been described as a “rare and formidable combina­tion of opportunist, practical man and visionary”.
Levien persuaded the directors of Guinea Gold N.L. that startling profits would be made by any aviation company that could provide a service to eliminate the arduous walk between Salamaua and Wau.
He secured an option on a small DH-37 plane in Melbourne and engaged a pilot, E. A. “Pard” Mustar, to bring it to New Guinea.

He then selected Lae as the best place for the coastal airstrip and without bothering to obtain official permission, took on about 250 labourers to clear and level a landing ground under the supervision of Tommy Wright, the foreman of the agricultural station.
The construction of the airfield was perhaps the biggest enterprise ever undertaken at Lae and greatly perturbed the local villagers, who watched amazed as a vast area of bush was torn down and gardens were flattened.
They were in for further surprises when Mustar and his mechanic, A. W. D. Mullins, flew in from Rabaul, where they had been assembling and testing the plane.
Their arrival brought the full power of Western technology home to the villagers with a shock.
Mustar's account of his landing in Lae on 30 March 1927 gives a sharp sense of their mixed excitement and confusion: “Our staff welcomed the machine . . . And the Kanakas! Good Lord! They came in droves to see the `big feller pidgeon'. My engineer, Mullins, was over six feet tall, while I am only 5ft. bins. short, and the Kanakas couldn't understand why the little man was `Number one masta longa pidgeon'. They examined the machine and decided it was `strong feller too much. Me no savvy this feller fashion belong white master'. Some of these natives had travelled for days down the mountains to see the 'pidgeon' .. . They took full measurements of the wings and all parts of the machine with lengths of cane to carry back to wondering villagers.”
The mastery of Europeans, previously seen in their goods and possessions, was now indisputable.
The aviation service was a success from the start.
After two unsuccessful flights around the mountains south of the Markham ­no one knew exactly how to find Wau from the air.
Mustar landed at Wau for the first time on 16 April.
He began the service the next day with a shipment of six 100 lb bags of rice, charging a shilling a 16, and, making two trips a day, five days a week, carried 84 passen­gers and 27, 000 lbs of cargo in the first three months.
Rival aviation companies were not long in arriving to share the profits.
Ray Parer, the proprietor of Bulolo Goldfields Air Service who had been com­peting keenly with Mustar to be the first to land at Lae, came from Rabaul after many delays, and A. “Jerry” Pentland and P. “Skip” Moody soon joined them.
There was ample business for all, and by April 1928, a year after the service began, Guinea Airways (the aviation company that grew from Guinea Gold N.L.) had acquired two extra planes and was employing three further pilots and two more mechanics.
Then in March 1929 a new company, Morlae Air­lines, began a weekly Lae-Port Moresby run, meeting ships from Australia and bringing passengers and frozen foods across to Wau, Bulolo, Salamaua and Lae.
This service cut the time needed to get from Port Moresby to the goldfields from six days to one.
The town developed quickly as the volume of traffic increased.
What had been a rough clearing in the bush in early 1927 soon acquired workshops, hangars, storage sheds, offices, houses and barracks.

At first the growth was unsupervised and chaotic.
Guinea Gold N.L. had built the airstrip without permission and had no power to prevent other operators from using the land or erecting buildings.
As a result early Lae grew as a large European squatter camp.
Each new arrival simply set himself up wherever he pleased without concern for ownership.
Levien in particular was concerned at the uncontrolled building, which he believed was becoming a hazard to aircraft.
No one was sure who owned the land, but that the local villagers may have had rightful claims does not seem to have been considered.
The question of ownership was finally settled in favour of the administration.
The government, with might on its side, ended the squabbling between the various contenders by resuming a large area including the airstrip in August 1927.
Earlier the land had been put up for sale by tender by the Custodian of Expropriated Properties, who had control of it because it was the property that had been expropriated from the Neu Guinea Compagnie.
The administration had been a tenderer, but concerned that it might be outbid by an ambitious, go-getting company like Guinea Gold N.L., it withdrew its tender and resumed the land instead.
The government took a huge slice-the entire 11721 acres of the Compagnie's holding­ stating that it needed the land for an aerodrome, a shipping depot, an agricultural station, and native reserves.
Those wanting to build now had to arrange a lease with the government.
The administration was strongly influenced by an officer of the Department of Civil Aviation, W. J. Duncan, who had been seconded by the Australian government to the New Guinea administration to report on and supervise the founding of aviation services in New Guinea.
Duncan's report, which he submitted in late 1927, recommended that the administration should take responsibility for airport construction and maintenance, that it should sub-divide the area around the airstrip into a series of blocks, each three chains wide and five chains long with a roadway between them and lease each for £20 a year.
Lae thus became the prototype for New Guinean towns built around airstrips.
In such places the airstrip dominates the shape and form of the town, usually occupying the central position. (Later air­port towns were Goroka, Mount Hagen, Kainantu and most sub­district headquarters opened since World War I1).
The airstrip in New Guinea is perhaps analogous to the railway station of an earlier era in America and Australia, because it has generally decided the shape and the settlement pattern of the town.
In early Lae this was obvious: the workshops and hangars clustered between the end of the airstrip and the wharf, the Europeans lived to the east of the strip, near the river terrace, while the New Guinean labourers generally lived on the far or western side.
An important impetus to the growth of Lae was the decision of the gold mining interests to airlift in sections the heavy mining machinery they used for treating the Bulolo and Watut River gravels.

At first Bulolo Gold Dredging Ltd and its parent company, Placer Development Ltd, had thought of building a road to the goldfields, but the length of time it would take and the high cost of construction and maintenance persuaded the companies to accept Guinea Air­ways' proposition that “skyways are the cheapest highways”.
On the advice of Mustar, Bulolo Gold Dredging purchased three all-metal, tri-motored Junkers G-31 aircraft from Germany, which Guinea Airways was to operate under licence for the gold mining company.
Guinea Airways also purchased a Junkers G-31 of its own.
They were huge planes, each capable of carrying a payload of 7100 lbs or 14 short tons together.
The airlift began in April 1931 and continued for eight years: the first dredge began work in March 1932, the eighth in November, 1939.
It proceeded smoothly because of the spirit of co-operation existing between Bulolo Gold Dredging and Guinea Airways, and because of their streamlined operation.
At Lae they had a wharf 75 feet long, with half a mile of railway running around the foreshore to the storage sheds at the airport.
Because of the unsatisfactory harbour facilities at Lae-unstable foreshore, open anchorage and steeply sloping seafloor-all cargo had to be lightened ashore in barges, which were then unloaded by steam crane.
Another crane at the airstrip lifted the heavy machinery into the planes and a rail crane unloaded them at Bulolo.
Eventually operations became so efficient that nine round trips a day were possible.
The airlift was a remarkable undertaking. It pioneered the use of aviation in the transport of heavy cargo and, in the words of one writer, “in every respect it constituted a world record”.
While it lasted the power of Western technology was daily impressed on the local people, who stood by bemused as the town grew around them.
The airlift stimulated the steady development of the town and by 1942, when it was destroyed by Japanese bombing; it had about 120 European residents, about sixty Chinese and perhaps several hundred New Guineans.
It became a bustling, busy place, and though it remained chiefly a centre of the aviation industry, it developed a distinctive town life of its own.
Something of its busyness can be seen in a 1935 report in the Pacific Islands Monthly:
“Lae is now a township ranking high in the Mandated Territory of New Guinea. It is a centre of great activity . . . and one of the biggest (if not the biggest) aircraft centres in the southern hemi­sphere. The European population is now around the hundred mark and is increasing with each steamer. Accommodation is being taxed; so much so that a new hotel has been commenced and is expected to be completed in a month or two."
A death that momentarily focused world attention on Lae was that of the American aviatrix, Amelia Earhart Putnam, who vanished with her navigator, Fred Noonan, after leaving Lae in June 1937 on the longest leg of their trip around the world.
Old Lae residents used to recall entertaining the couple in the Hotel Cecil the night before their departure, and then seeing them off the next morning.

Their plane was so overloaded with its eight tons of fuel that it was still barely clearing the waves as it disappeared from sight, flying east along the Huon Gulf coast on its way to Howland Island 2600 miles to the north.
On such occasions Laeites, regardless of class or social position, felt they were part of history.

Old Lae pictures (point cursor to picture for caption)

Feedback to the Errol Flynn story

I received this comment from one Dianne Gibson in regards to the Errol story below (which has been used previously in this Blog): "I was fascinated to read the article you posted on Errol Flynn. So much of what you write is known to me as my father owned a copra plantation on the Edie Creek during the time Errol Flynn was in PNG. In fact he "borrowed" 5 pounds from dad and (as you say in the article) when dad wrote to him in Hollywood asking for the money, he was sent an autographed photo. Dad also told me the story about the dentist. However, my father didn't like Flynn at all, mainly because of his womanising and brawling. He later refused to watch any film that featured Flynn due to his intense dislike of the man.

"Dad spent 17 years in PNG and then came to Sydney. Prior to that he served with the 8th Light Horse in Egypt during WWI and after his stint in PNG came to Sydney. Like Flynn, my father also wrote for "The Bulletin". His pen name was "Maliesh" but his name was Leonard Wignall. Unfortunately he died in 1961 when I was only 16 and I'm sure he had many untold stories.

"Thank you for your article, it brought back memories of my father.

"With kind regards
Dianne Gibson"