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Table of Contents

The Popular View of Papua—I Board the Good Ship Guthrie—The Life a Sailor Yearns for—Far Hills are Ever Green—I Meet a Colleague—Inside the Barrier—Whitsunday Pass—Townsville—Why Bustle?—Our Trinity is Completed—A Man of Many Parts—Cairns—North Queensland Hill Station—The Barron Falls—Our New Company—Cooktown—No Man’s Enemy but His Own—Papuan Patriotism—Papua Rises from the Sea.

HAD I taken seriously all that was told to me, both with regard to the climate and diseases of Papua, and the peculiar, not to say truculent, tendencies of certain of its inhabitants, I would have felt like begging the Prime Minister to change the objective of the Commission to Guatemala or some such peaceful and truthful health resort. Nor did most I had read help to discount the prophecies of my friends. For instance, the following quotation from a work by D’Albertis came as a cold douche to a man who had never walked while a horse was available, and who knew that he had one eighty-mile tramp ahead of him, with a big probability of several others:—“It is easier to ascend the highest peaks of the European Alps with an alpenstock, than to cross an ordinary hill in New Guinea.”

I may say that later, when crawling over the Owen Stanley Range, I fully realised why the brilliant Italian naturalist and explorer had let his vivid southern imagination get the better of him.

Having occasion to call on a Sydney doctor, loved by reason of his kindly heart and ever ready help, he put me in a chair wherein a lotus-eater might dream, gave me a cigar whose every ring framed a vision of peace and safe content, and then let himself go on the subject of Papuan malaria. Sitting surrounded by all that makes a man count life worth retaining, he told me that he had sailed many seas, but that from all he had heard of it, and a few specimens it had been his good fortune to see, the malarial microbe of New Guinea was an easy first as a man killer, and brushing aside my hope (based on previous experiences in fever countries) that I was immune, proceeded to tell me of a man who had come to him from Samarai a yellow wreck, and had died within the past week. But he gave me a specific at parting, of which we drank large quantities, and as none of us contracted anything more deadly than skinned heels, we christened it after him. On the eve of departure, I was visited by a veritable son of the sea—one who had sailed up rivers and over reefs on every face of Papua, who had explored, traded, and written a book; and as a result of his experiences he told me that the best way to make the natives God-fearing and useful members of society was to teach them the shorter catechism, and further that while it was humanly possible to find the truth as far north as Cooktown, from there on the telling of it was a lost art.

So, one stormy afternoon, with scarce an illusion left, I boarded the Guthrie, found Harris, our secretary, and resigned myself to do without food for a few days. Before we reached the lightship, however, the squalls had died away, and the harbour, with its plenitude of gardens, looked superb as we went out. On every height windows helioed flashes of farewell, and once more as we passed between the rock-faced gates and steamed into the open sea, it came to me that the man who ever left so good an anchorage to sail in troubled waters was a restless fool with a distorted conception of when he was well off.

Outside, each stroke of our propeller drove us into calmer waters, and when morning broke we were floating on a summer sea; and all day long a picturesque coast line, backed by bold ranges, gave change and colour to the picture.

Why is it that sailors always want to be farmers? Probably because they draw their inspiration from the village scenes so optimistically portrayed on the stage. But be that as it may, the fact remains that all the officers of the Guthrie yearned for the “simple life,” and the Captain would gladly leave his graphic descriptions of the wonderful temple ruins of Java to hang on the lips of any man who chanced to open out on sub-soiling or a new breed of hens. Good fellows one and all—may the gods be never so unkind as to grant them their desire, for a dream-farm is a beautiful and restful vision, but a real one is a “demnition grind.”

A day on board showed me that the East had been “a-calling,” and that she had not called in vain, for all were Orient bound. A young Victorian mining engineer, to join his brother in far Burmese hills—and he was such a clean-souled, straight-limbed boy, that I grudged him to so fickle a mistress. A pearl fisher, two surveyors for the Straits Settlements, a planter for Sumatra, another for Java, and just one gentle little girl off a Victorian farm, going out all by herself to make a planter happy somewhere beyond Singapore. They were all bound for the shining East, and I doubt if one of them quite realised how good a land he was leaving behind; but some day, God send, they will remember and come back to us, and we will welcome them, for only stout hearts go out through all the earth and over every sea in answer to the world-old call. And those of them who return have strengthened their thews and broadened their souls, and so are better able to bear the burdens of nationhood.

We were lying at Pinkenba Wharf, Brisbane, and I was sitting on a deck-chair watching some punts go by, when Okeden, one of the men I would live with, think with, and possibly disagree with, for some months, came on board. Atypical bushman, tall, thin, wiry, with the long thigh, and the clean cut fighting face of a cavalry Colonel, and with a world of kindness in his eyes, and a saving sense of humour hovering about his mouth. He just walked into my life as one who treads familiar ways, and I knew him as one who knows a friend of old days, no matter what dust of years may lie between.

A day out from Brisbane found us inside the Barrier Reef, sailing over a sea of silver, and when off Mackay we saw the sun go down behind Percy Island, the home of an old Colonel who, his life work done, there waits the last reveille. Nor do I wonder at his choice, for the scene was surpassingly lovely. A sea of glass, and out beyond an island mystic, beautiful, crowned with pines and rugged with towers of rock, and scarred with deep cut ravines—above gold-circled clouds, and glowing through their dusky mantles the great red sun, polished and round as some old Titan’s shield. For a little it hung twixt cloud-line and hill-crest, and then plunged from sight amid a blaze of radiant colour, leaving behind bright fragments of its glory in a splendid afterglow.

That night, before turning in, I asked the officer of the watch to call me when we were entering Whitsunday Pass. When he did I regretted my after-dinner enthusiasm to commune with nature at 4 a.m. in pyjamas. I further regarded the officer as unnecessarily officious, but never give a sailor a chance to rout you out in the middle of the night. I fancy he cannot resist relieving the monotony of his vigil by hearing you swear. But when I got the sleep out of my eyes I realised that they were opening on a vision splendid.

Sentinel islands kept watch and ward on either side, as we moved on over a waterway still as the night itself. Then, sun rose, and moon set, and one shore was a realm of golden light, and one was shadow-land just tipped by the sinking moon’s silver beams.

After breakfast we passed a white-sailed schooner showing up against the background of another fairy island, and when she was hull down we were still steaming over a summer sea.

At Townsville we got ashore for a leg-stretch. I understand that the present leader of the Queensland opposition is largely responsible for the port, which, according to his opponents, should be somewhere else; anyway, a majority of the people swear by Philp. The god of the winds is apparently anti-Philp, as he has made several energetic attempts to blow Townsville into the sea.

We lunched at a very fine hotel facing the beach, of which Mrs. McLurcan was once high priestess. I am told that gourmets still regard it as a holy place. Philp has made many laws; Mrs. McLurcan has written a cookery book; one rests his claim to remembrance on a people’s political gratitude, the other on a nation’s stomach. Mrs. McLurcan thou hast chosen the surest path to immortality!

Still sailing over calm and beautiful seas we dropped anchor off Cairns, the while I more than ever realised what a fair heritage we Australians possess. The further north we go the more are we impressed with the fact that if the sea-board inhabitants do not possess “the calm of Vere de Vere,” in its Tennysonian meaning, they have at least come to the unalterable decision that Gordon was right when he sang that “all hurry is worse than useless.”

After leaving us to roll about for hours in an open roadstead, a tender put in an appearance, and shortly a cry arose of “sky pilot.” So did our other colleague impress some of our fellow-passengers, for it was Herbert who stood by the man at the wheel! Something in the cut of his coat collar must have deceived, for there was little to suggest the twentieth-century cleric in the thin, silent man who stepped aboard and made our party officially complete, just as each day onward he entered into and became more and more an indispensable element in our trinity of friendship.

After an exchange of honest God-speeds with all on board the Guthrie, we put off in a tender for a German liner closer in shore, and once alongside of her I obtained painful personal evidence that if the principle of “one man one job” may be earned to a logical absurdity, the reverse as here represented by one captain, mate, bo’sun, deck-hand, and boy rolled into an energetic, excitable, perspiring, cursing whole has certain weaknesses in detail.

As we ran alongside, our captain, dropping his role of steersman, dashed from the bridge, and in his capacity of deck-hand, threw over a fender, then, as boy, caught a rope, while as bo’sun he exchanged curses with a nautical person on the other vessel. Meanwhile our boat drifted under a for’ard scupper pipe, and as a passenger may neither touch the wheel, nor shout an order down into the engine room, I had to watch helplessly the humiliating spectacle of my luggage being drenched with German bilge water. On the whole, I think, individualism can be carried too far.

Cairns is practically level with the sea, the tropical trees in and about it lifting it above the ordinary bush township, but that is all. The approach from the ocean is rather fine, high hills guarding the flanks of the roadstead and backing the town itself. Commercially it is very much alive, owing to the mineral, timber, and agricultural riches, of which it is the distributor.

Having a day to put in, we took the evening train for Kuranda, the local hill station. The trip up is both interesting and picturesque, being nearly all tropical, and with, for a time, splendid panoramic views astern of the rich lowlands, strongly reminiscent of parts of India; and out beyond, the sea, with (to-day) the old Guthrie floating on it. The railway passes a beautiful, but small, fall; skirts the valley down which the Barron river flows, and passes the falls themselves just before reaching the station.

We stayed at a comfortable, if unpretentious, weatherboard hotel, built on a rise just in front of a lovely stream, with a foreground of ridges covered with dense tropical forest, where one sees the banyan and rich foliaged milk tree, from which, when tapped, streams of fluid gush out. Here also grow palms, banana trees, and, near at hand, coffee. ‘Tis the home of the paw paw, grenadilla, loquat, and mango tree, while on every hand are rich tropical blossoms. Hibiscus, bougainvillea, and great white bell-flowers, breathing perfume, delicate and sensuous—a garden to rest and dream in, a grove in which to offer up incense at the shrine of love.

The Barron Falls are different from those in our mountains, in that they flow on the face of sloping rocks from summit to base, and so are white with foam in all their downward course. The gorge on either side is rich in foliage, and during the rainy season the effect must be inspiring, when the rocks re-echo the roar and thunder of the waters’ voices as they rush downward to the sea.

There is a beautiful creeper here with a delicate lavender flower, which one sees through the dining-room windows. In truth, all things here are beautiful, for the warm blood of the tropics is in their veins.

Our fellow-lodgers suggested little out of the common, and we would have gone our several ways unknowing and unknown, save that Herbert had his word doubted as to the height of the falls by an old Scotchman, with the result that the latter, at any rate, will probably regard Herbert in particular, and all Australians in general, as ripe and ready liars.

It is difficult to draw a comparison between the scenery of Kuranda and that of our Blue Mountains; but, wherever such comparison is possible, it appears to me that the mountains completely overshadow the Queensland Hill Station alike in broad expansiveness and rugged grandeur.

Among our new passengers we found a labour recruiter, a missionary and his wife, a widow going to visit the various Mission Stations of Papua, and the lady journalist we had been expecting to meet ever since leaving Sydney, so we steamed out from Cairns with all the dramatis personae necessary for an up-to-date South Sea Island melodrama of a moral and moving character.

A night out, and we were at Cooktown, a hot, not too stirring port, but still full of interest as the spot where Cook careened and repaired his vessel, and fortunate in possessing a monument to the memory of Mrs. Watson and the story of her heroic death on a lonely atol not far away.

Here we spent a hot hour or so in buying forgotten but necessary trifles, and watching one of our party making masterly but ineffective efforts to lose one of that hopeless brigade which are popularly but erroneously dubbed “no men’s enemies but their own.” What cheap and lying begging of the real question is this. Ask miserable wives, starving children, robbed mothers, and victimised friends if this be a fair epitaph for a life of weak and selfish indulgence.

As we left the wharf we saw a crew of fuzzy-headed Papuans gazing after us, for they knew we were bound to the island that was in their hearts, waking and sleeping. Indeed, so strong is their love for their mother-land, that when a steamer that is bringing them back nears it they will crowd her bow and gaze out for hours across the water for a first glimpse of its bold and cloud-crowned mountains. I would that every countryman of mine loved his land as well.

The captain of the Malaita was a raconteur of no mean order, and a most genial fellow to boot. His officers were all pleasant comrades, and one I found to be the son of an old friend of my early bush days, while Miss Gullet (the lady journalist) had enough vivacity and enthusiasm to make a centenarian feel young, or to transform a saint into a human being. But still, once we got outside the barrier, I left them all and lived the simple life—and practised not only the no-breakfast theory but the “no food at all” theory, till blue mountain crests showing skyward through veils of mist told us that Papua was rising out of the Coral Sea.