New Guinea Venture

At the age of eighteen, the author joined the Voluntary Service Overseas Organisation, and was posted to Eastern New Guinea to work with an Anglican Mission, despite not being particularly religiously minded. Eighteen is a young age to be setting off to the far side of the world, and Michael does a lot of growing up over the year he spends in Papua New Guinea.

The big drawcard for New Guinea was working with the pygmy people, although there is very little of an anthropological nature contained in this book - other than some very basic explanations of pygmy life. As expected the mission was more concerned with changing their lives than recording their culture.

The start of the book described in detail his journey to Madang, the largest town near the village he was to be based. Madang is on north coast on the Bismark Sea around midway along the coastline of Papua; the village is inland and at a higher altitude in the Bismark range of mountains. His journey to get there depended on travel in a small plane and then some rigorous hiking.

For the most part Michael spent a lot of time working on logisitics and carryout out treks from Simbai to the outlying mission setups. Most missions had either a European or native teachers running things, and there were many other mission statements like Simbai that held leadership roles. Michael became responsible for stores and food, but was constantly bemoaning the fact he had limited responsibilities, always looking to take on more. The fact he was eighteen, and had limited capacity to keep his temper in check were obvious factors against this.

At one point he mentions in a letter to his old school, describing what he was doing, and made vague mention of the heavy lifting involved in transporting of good around the highlands and how a mule would have been helpful. Some weeks later a letter arrives advising that a great sum of money had been raised to facilitate this mule. So Michael had a purpose, and now the leverage of the donated funds to allow his whim.

Mules, of course, were not present in Papua New Guinea, but the Australian military had a number of donkeys that were available for purchase. The second half of the book charts the process of purchasing five of these and the logistics and dramas involved in getting these from a place called Erap, all the way back to Simbai. The journey to Erap was complex enough and involved planes, boats, trucks and hiking, with the two pygmy helpers (who were to be the donkey-men) having to travel separately for the first leg due to the limitation on space in the first plane.

Donkeys being donkeys, the trip back was fraught with excitement and there was much to be learned for Michael and his two helpers.

An amusing enough 190 pages, but middling at 3 stars. 30/3