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HAVING always felt a deep interest in the dark races, I was naturally anxious to visit Papua, and eventually my opportunity came in a manner totally unexpected and by a path hedged with responsibility; the Prime Minister of the Commonwealth Government asking me to accept the position of Chairman of a Royal Commission brought into being (to quote the letters patent) “to inquire into and report upon the present conditions, including the methods of Government, of the territory now known as British New Guinea, and the best means for their improvement,”

My colleagues, under either of whom I take this opportunity of stating I would have considered it an honour to serve, were William Edward Parry-Okeden, Esq., I.S.O., a gentleman who had held high official positions, including that of Chief Commissioner of Police in Queensland, and who, in addition to a matured departmental knowledge, had long and intimate experience both of our native races and the Kanaka problem, and Charles Edward Herbert, Esq., at one time Member for, and now Judge and Resident of, our vast Northern Territory, and consequently of necessity, as well as by virtue of his exceptional powers of observation, closely conversant with tropical and aboriginal conditions.

Thus the Commissioners were drawn from parts of Australia, hundreds (in the case of Judge Herbert thousands) of miles apart, and, as a not unnatural consequence, were all personally unknown to each other, when on 27th August, 1906, his Excellency Lord Northcote, Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia, signed the letters patent giving them official status as the Papuan Royal Commission.

The causes which led up to this step on the part of the then Government were many and complex, and appear to me to have had their roots in a period somewhat remote from the present. Prior to 1883 more or less irresponsible exploring and gold prospecting expeditions fired alike the imaginations and the cupidity of adventurous spirits with their accounts of its mineral richness and tropical beauty; but in that year Sir Thomas McIlwraith, Premier of Queensland, lifted Papua into the domain of political and national problems by annexing it to Queensland, giving, among other reasons for his statesmanlike action, this unanswerable one, “That the establishment of a foreign Power in the neighbourhood of Australia would be injurious to British, and more particularly to Australian, interests.”

Unfortunately, the Imperial authorities professed to think otherwise—possibly, they did not take the trouble to think at all—or it may be that Australian interests were as yet of too little importance to weigh against possible friction nearer home. Be that as it may, the net result to Australia is the presence of a great foreign and naval Power (which to-day seems to have the whole British Empire in a condition of watchfulness) within a week’s steam of her sea-board.

In 1884 a British Protectorate was proclaimed over part of New Guinea; and on September 4th, 1888, the Administrator, Dr. McGregor, officially declared this portion to be a British possession.

The name of Sir William McGregor will ever be remembered in connection with New Guinea as that of a ruler who combined, both as regards natives and whites, firmness with justice; and under him an official system began which did far better work than might reasonably have been expected, when some of the material he had to work on is considered. It is hard to make bricks without straw; yet, officially and financially, that is practically what successive Administrators have been asked to do, from the days of the Protectorate down to the advent of the Royal Commission.

Why McGregor stood alone lay in the fact that he rose in the main superior to adverse conditions, and proved that it was possible to do fine work with a staff in the main more or less hopeless, although certainly leavened by one or two highly capable and self-sacrificing officers.

With his departure, antagonistic elements in the public service, held in check by his commanding personality, gradually began to re-awaken until the officials of the Territory practically lived in two hostile camps.

Meanwhile the problem of white settlement slowly but surely began to assert its claims to more consideration than it had received in the past. Rightly or wrongly, many of the white population held that under the Crown Colony regime, and also under that of the Commonwealth, Papua had been, and was being, governed solely as a close preserve for the native race, and that little or no attention was given by officials to agricultural or mineral development—indeed that white settlement was discouraged rather than welcomed.

Rumours of official friction, of interminable delays in land matters, and of civil discontent with existing conditions roused the attention of certain members of the Federal Parliament; questions were asked on the floor of the House, and eventually on July 4th, 1906, Captain F. R. Barton, the Administrator, wrote to the Prime Minister asking for the appointment of a Royal Commission. This course was adopted by the Government on the 27th of August, 1906, but whether in response to his request or for other reasons I naturally have no knowledge.

Accompanied by the Commission’s secretary—Mr. Herbert Harris—I sailed from Sydney on the s.s. Guthrie on the 1st of September, 1906, being joined by Mr. Parry-Okeden at Brisbane and Judge Herbert at Cairns. At Cairns we transhipped to the Malaita, arriving at Port Moresby, the official capital of Papua, on Thursday the 13th of September, 1906.

From then on till we reached Brisbane on December 6th, 1906, we sailed round the whole coastline, and visited all the important groups of the territory, including a march from Buna Bay across the island and over the Owen Stanley Range to Port Moresby.

Evidence was taken on the Merrie England, in mission houses, stores, government stations, on the diggings, and in the open on the crest of a mountain 5,000 feet above the sea—one of our camps on the overland trip.

This, of necessity, meant that I had to scribble down the following impressions after the day’s work was done, in all sorts of places, and at all sorts of times, which must be my excuse for their sketchy character and want of continuity of purpose.

I have naturally not touched on the real work of the Commission—that will be found in the Official Report—and wherever I have brought officials into the story of our wanderings it has been to speak of them as I found them, by the camp-fire, and on the march, and quite irrespective of the standpoint of a Commissioner.

Kenneth Mackay

Legislative Council, Sydney July 26th, 1909