Falling in love with Daru

By MALUM NALU

Daru, the once-thriving former capital of Western province, has sadly become a forgotten backwater despite all the riches from the Ok Tedi mine.

It is a dismal-looking town covered by bush, potholes and very basic services such as health are wanting, as exemplified by the town’s hospital.

 Fishing canoes at Daru

The sad story of Daru, perhaps, epitomises what has happened to all of Papua New Guinea since independence in 1975.

People from Daru and the South Fly area – long neglected by the PNG government - are known to cross the Torres Strait regularly to Australia to seek treatment in such places as Saibai and Thursday islands.

 Rundown Daru hospital, which has been recently plagued by allegations of mismanagement

Saibai Island is the closest part of Australia to another country.

Lying in the Torres Strait, off the tip of Cape York Peninsula, Queensland, the mangrove-rimmed mudflat is only 4km from PNG - a mere 20 minutes in an outboard dinghy, but a journey from poverty to plenty in terms of health care for residents of the palm-thatched villages of South Fly, PNG, north of Saibai.

I know this only too well because my late wife, Hula, was from Irupi, one of the southern-most villages of PNG in the Torres Strait and I have heard so many stories from her as well as from my in-laws.

Mothers bring their sick children to the primary health care centre in Saibai, and who can blame them?

The PNG government gives them next to nothing!

But before the rot set in, in the pre-independence days, Daru was an exotic melting pot of expatriate traders, planters, crocodile hunters and even missionaries.

Former kiap (patrol officer) and Member of the first House of Assembly Graham Pople, whose first posting was Daru in 1956 as a 21-year-old, tells me that Daru is still the love of his life and his all-time favourite place in PNG as a kiap.

 Graham Pople

This is despite it being disparaged in the past as “Siberia” – a place where kiaps who did the wrong thing were exiled there and forgotten.

From Daru, Pople served the whole of the massive Western district (now province), including crossing the border to the then Dutch New Guinea.

These included Kiunga (now the capital of Western province), Lake Murray, Balimo, the Star Mountains and many more.

In his yet-to-be-published autobiography, The Popleography, Pople writes about arriving in Daru on a Qantas Catalina flying boat in 1956 and how he fell in love with the place.

“At the time of my arrival in Daru,” he recalls, “the expatriate population consisted of the DC (district commissioner) and his wife, an assistant district officer, a patrol officer with wife, medical officer and wife, European medical assistant, and agricultural officer and family, and a clerk also married.

“There were we three cadet patrol officers – all single.

“There was Lenny Luff who owned a store, who was married with grown children and their families; the Maidments who were both in their 80s but hale and hearty, and running another store; and Peter Day, who ran the BNG Trading Emporium.

“Off the island, there was a floating expatriate population of traders, planters, crocodile shooters and even missionaries.

“In addition, Australian Petroleum Company (APC) was working in the area and their boats and personnel often dropped into Daru.”

Pople remembers that the indigenous population living on the island consisted of about 250 people classified as mixed race (and thereby entitled to drink) and about 200 villagers who were not entitled to partake of intoxicating beverages.

However, this did not stop them from making their own local beverages, which are known as gamada and tuba.

“The people living at Daru are a most-polyglot group,” Pople adds.

“Daru is only 14 hours sailing from Thursday Island and has been a port of call for pearling luggers and like, since the pearling industry began in the Torres Strait.

“The Kiwai were always hospitable and therefore a population has grown that traces its ancestry back to Portugese, Australians (original), and Australians (recent), Japanese, Malays and many others.

“Also, when Lieutenant Governor McGregor arrived from Fiji, he brought his senior NCO policemen from there, and some of them settled at hospitable Daru.

“The Tabua clan are the descendants of one such family.

“These people, being the first I had anything much to do with in PNG, have a special place in my memory and affections.

“One such was Badia Travertz, who was an old man in those days.

“He was a shipwright and was in charge of the slipway and the basic workshop associated with it.

“He was a most-interesting person and I used to enjoy sitting down in his workshop and listening to his stories.”

Pople talks fondly about his old mates such as George Tabua and Arthur Wyborn, originally from the British Islands and who later become a Member of Parliament, and whose family still live in Daru.

There is also Ebia Olewale, who “later became a very-eminent politician and was one of the founders of the Bully Beef Club along with Michael Somare, and a leader of the nation into self-government and independence”.

“He was rightly knighted for his efforts.

“I remember Anzac Day in 1956 and the school children marching and saluting the Australian flag.

“I have photos of this ceremony.

“Ebia appears in some of them as a very-young and fresh-faced young man.”

Daru, being an island, had a jetty, but because of the shallowness of the water it extended for some 200 metres or so into the channel.

“To make unloading easier, there was a railway line laid out between the end of the jetty and the government store building,” Pople says.

“Several carts were used to transport goods backwards and forwards, being man-powered (usually prisoners).

“This jetty was a favourite night fishing spot where the police and other government workers made their assignations with the local maidens.

“Daru was a prison island where the worst of the prisoners from throughout Papua New Guinea were sent to serve their terms, it being reasoned that no one could escape from there and remain at large.

“There was a very well-attended church on the island, the London Missionary Society (LMS), headed by a very-dedicated but sensible Gordon Price.

“He had a very good following from among the residents and each Sunday, the church was packed”

Apart from the hard foot slogging, Pople also spent a lot of leisure time fishing and shooting crocodiles – two things for which Daru is famous for – after which there was always a plentiful supply of beer.

 The barramundi, probably the finest eating fish anywhere in PNG, abounds in Daru and Western province.

 Fish being sold at Daru, including the prized barramundi

But the area’s real wealth lies in crocodile hides; Daru may be the only place in PNG which lives ‘on the crocodile’s back’.

In 1959, while on leave in Australia, Pople was advised that his request to return to Daru and the Western district had been refused and he was to be posted to Western Highlands.

Despite his pleas to go back to a place he had grown to love, he was advised to go to the Highlands and broaden his experience.

Daru, to this day, has a special place in the heart of the now 75-year-old Pople.

Highlands Highway blocked

ANGRY and frustrated landowners have blocked off 20km of the Highlands Highway – cutting off all traffic and jeopardising commercial transport, The National reports.

The illegal roadblocks start from Wara Simbu up to Chuave, bordering Eastern Highlands.

Aggrieved landowners and claimants gathering for a meeting with Chimbu police commander Supt Joseph Tondop at the Dumun section of the Highlands Highway yesterday. The people had blocked the highway over unsettled highway rehabilitation payments, totalling K67.8 million, owed to them by the national government. 

The landowners living along the highway showed their frustrations after the government failed to settle K67.8 million in outstanding payment under the Highlands Highway rehabilitation programme.

People from Western Highlands, Enga and Southern Highlands, who had planned to travel to Goroka, Lae and Madang, were forced to postpone their trips yesterday morning in Mt Hagen after hearing word of the roadblocks.

Trucks based in the three provinces and laden with tea, coffee and other agricultural products for export and local markets in coastal provinces were stranded in Mt Hagen.

Those in Kundiawa with cargo bound for Lae were stranded in Goroka.

Business houses in Western Highlands said they would be severely affected if the problem prolonged.

Trucking companies said no goods would be transported to the upper highlands region until the highway was fully cleared.

Mt Hagen’s Waghi Valley Transport operations manager Allen Benette said the company had grounded all its trucks bound for Mt Hagen and Goroka.

“There would be no transport until the road is free and the situation is under control. I have spoken to Chimbu police commander Joseph Tondop, who assured me that the road would be cleared by midday today (yesterday),” he said.

Members of the police force in Chimbu, led by Tondop, clearing the felled trees using chainsaws at the Dumun section of the Highlands Highway

Mt Hagen’s Kutubu Transport operations manager Clement Tarere said six trucks were sitting idle while thousands of kina worth of business had gone down the drain.

“Even though we are affected, the landowners also had a point to put across and the relevant authorities have to address it quickly, like they did in other parts of the highlands,” he said.

Lae’s Mapi Transport operations supervisor Michael Arut said they had yet to allow any transport operations but a few trucks, with dry goods bound for wholesale in Southern Highlands, were stranded in Goroka.

He said fuel supplies and other materials for the mining areas were also affected

Ex-BSP boss expresses shock over arrest

FORMER Bank South Pacific boss Garth McIlwain was shocked and completely surprised when he was taken in for questioning by police on Wednesday, The National reports,

He did not know he was going to be charged with fraud and forgery, and made to fork out K5, 000 in cash for bail.

“I have served the PNG banking industry for more than 42 years and have worked with the PNG Banking Corporation, the Credit Corporation and BSP and, in all these years, this is the first instance that I have been faced with such criminal charges, which is very disappointing indeed,” McIlwain told The National yesterday when recounting the four-hour ordeal that he went through, including being locked up like a common criminal in the police cells.

McIlwain told The National that he was initially asked last December to assist police with their investigations into issues relating to court cases involving BSP, and he had kept in contact with the fraud squad.

 “I was cooperating with the fraud squad as they asked me to do, in December, so when I arrived in Port Moresby from Rabaul, I rang an officer there to let them know I was in town.

“When I did that on Monday, I was asked to come into the office on Wednesday.

“I did so, at about 3pm. I was kept there from then until about 5:30pm and was taken to Boroko police station and remained there from 6pm to 7pm.”

After he was charged, McIlwain was allowed to make one telephone call, and he called BSP executive Robin Flemming, who went with lawyer Michael Henao to assist him.

Flemming had brought the K5, 000 bail money.

The National had erroneously reported that Flemming was arrested and charged along with McIlwain. 

“I did not have that kind of money on me; I do not carry that kind of cash and the police told me to pay K5, 000 cash before being released,” McIlwain said.

He was CEO of BSP from 2000 to last year.

He is a naturalised PNG citizen, now retired and living in Kokopo with his family – his wife is from East New Britain.

McIlwain is credited with the successful merger of PNGBC and BSP, now the biggest bank in PNG and the Pacific region.

The utterance and fraud charges he is facing relate to a complaint lodged to police by businessman and former politician Peter Yama.

Yama yesterday distanced himself from the McIlwain arrest, saying he did not intimidate or influence police to make arrests.

“I first complained to police about BSP three, four years ago. Why would the charges take this long if I had such close connections?

“Police see the evidence, they see something is wrong and they acted,” he told AAP.

“This is not tactics of intimidation; I did not go to the police commissioner and tell him to make this happen; I’ve been in Madang, not Port Moresby.

“I do not have a grudge against anybody,” he added.

 

BACA urges Baki to act

A COALITION involving the Transparency International and business houses have slammed the arrest of lawyers and bankers doing their duty, and questioned Police Commissioner Gari Baki’s silence on the behaviour of his policemen, The National reports,

The Business Against Corruption Alliance (BACA) made this strong statement yesterday following the arrest of former chief executive officer of Bank South Pacific Garth McIlwain.

BACA said the harassment and jailing of bank employees and lawyers in the ordinary conduct of their employment duties were illegal and unacceptable.

It said they were frightening examples of what many perceived to be influence being exercised over elements of the police force by external factors.

“They are clear examples of the breakdown of the constitutionally guaranteed rule of law in PNG, and the police commissioner’s silence is a damning indictment of his conduct as commissioner,” BACA said in a statement sent to the media yesterday.

It said PNG was now confronted with a situation where the law was seen by many to be the victim of personal influence.

“Baki’s position as commissioner is untenable if he will not come out publicly and state categorically that this situation is unacceptable to him, that it will end, and that he will issue instructions and ensure his officers abstain from such activities,” BACA said.

It said the situation was threatening the effectiveness and fairness of the legal system, and the confidence of business and investors in PNG.

“It was also a threat to the democratic system and the rule of law, and lucrative large scale projects like the LNG project could be under threat.”

BACA urged Baki to hold an urgent meeting to address this issue.

It said the government and the commissioner must wake up to this threat and take drastic action.

Several attempts to get comments from Baki were unsuccessful.

 

 

Rift widens between Gulf factions

THE rift between Gulf Governor Havila Kavo and local level government presidents backed by the only two other Gulf MPs is widening when Kavo yesterday refuted claims of his lack of performance in office, The National reports.

At a press conference yesterday, Kavo said that calls through a seven-day notice for his dismissal, were  illegal.

The latest development was alleged to have been instigated by the other group as a result of his deferral over a week ago of the swearing-in of LLG presidents, which Kavo said yesterday was necessary adding that the processes had to be considered carefully and had to be in line with certain administrative processes.

He said as the mandated leader of the province, what was being reconsidered was in the best interest of the people of Gulf.

He also questioned why there was a rush by certain individuals to appoint LLG presidents into the provincial assembly.

He said he would  refer Kikori MP Mark Maipakai and Kerema MP Pitom Bombom to the Ombudsman Commission for instigating a provincial assembly meeting in Kerema on Wednesday.

Kavo also referred to section 17 of the Organic Law of Provincial and Local Level Governments (OLPLLG).

During that sitting in Kerema, which he said was an abuse of constitutional right and illegal, nine LLG presidents were sworn in and a motion was passed for a seven-day notice for Kavo to attend the July 7 assembly meeting or be stripped of his governorship.

He added that notices had to be served 14 days earlier.

But yesterday afternoon, another meeting by Bombom and the LLG presidents was convened where the group pledged its solidarity, asking Kavo to turn up for the July 7 assembly sitting.

Bombom challenged Kavo before the presidents and journalists to turn up for the planned sitting if he truly was the mandated head of Gulf like he claimed.

Amongst what was discussed at this meeting was Kavo’s  alleged neglect of his duties and responsibilities by not allowing proper debates on the Gulf provincial budget before their passage for the years 2007, 2008 and last year which was in contravention of section 20 (1) (c) of the OLPLLG.

Also, the governor had not provided a sound position paper for Gulf on certain benefits sharing agreements for the PNG LNG project which may result in the province missing out on essential project funding and other benefits.

Meanwhile, a letter to Kavo last Friday from the secretary for the Department of Provincial and Local Level Government Affairs was issued advising the governor to convene an assembly meeting this week.

This had not taken place.

The secretary could not be contacted yesterday to deliberate on the matter.

Pictures of yesterday's protest march in Madang

A woman in the cutthroat world of coffee buying

By AUGUSTINE DOMINIC of CIC

The dramatic increase in coffee prices this year has lured many into the coffee business.

One of them, and the only noticeable female competitor to other male buyers in town,  is Repy Mopafi (pictured) from Bena in the Eastern Highlands province.

Mrs Mopafi parks her tinted white 10-seater Toyota Land Cruiser between Mendikwae Trading and Goroka Bowling Club in Goroka and buys coffee parchment almost every day.

She is outstanding because all other buyers are male and are lined up at one side of the fences of Goroka Council Chamber and Ela Motors while Mrs Mopafi is on their opposite side.

She was buying Arabica parchment Coffee for K5.00 per kilogram when she was approached.

She said she was honest in her dealings which she started in May 2010 and this was prompting many coffee farmers to go and sell their coffee to her.

“Depending on the type of contract I get with factories, I want to do honest buying and am purchasing at a higher price at the moment,” Mrs Mopafi said.