Probably Ate The Birds, Too

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31083, 11 June 1966, Page 5

Probably Ate The Birds, Too

The town with a normal population of some 600 Europeans swelled this May 14, the day of our arrival to 3000 Europeans. Accommodation was so greatly taxed that visitors slept on floors in private houses some without matresses. The reason for the influx was the two-day Eastern Highlands A. & P. Association Goroka show.

The pens enclosing horses and pigs and cattle testified that this was an agricultural show. So did the booths containing activity of school, institute, mission and the propaganda tents of the administration and the temperance society. Around the perimeter of the ground were grassthatched and bark-bound huts displaying the activities and handcrafts of the tribes. They were darkly stuffed with masks, bows, knives and coffee beans. Coffee is now the primary export earner for

New Guinea having taken over from copra. The Eastern Highlands area last year produced £2 million worth of coffee. Bull-Ring Setting The performers in and out of the arena were 65,000 of the 363,000 natives of the area. It was a sort of minstrel show in a bull-ring setting. The grand parade on the afternoon of the second day was led in by a handsome brahmin bull, horses and cows, a tractor and a modern light car. Then came the first of the "sing sing” groups. The excitement sensed about the ground all day as they rehearsed now bubbled and seethed and the ground seemed to vibrate. The insistent bounce and chant and the rattle of decorated spears and shields stepped up the pace of the whole show. For i

an hour the grand parade developed slowly into a cauldron of cacophony. Mudmasked demons leaped and glistening warriors wearing leafbark and tapa cloth dyed every strong cheap colour from the trade store bounced wildly. The kundu drums and the shouted echo-chants- welded with the noise of a pipe band infecting the audience and all performers. Over-willing groups flared one against another and were barely controlled by yelling baton-carrying native policemen. The age-old rivalries showed signs of erupting. A pig carried by one group was shot with arrows and speared in an ebullient display and the butchery completed amid wild yells and the flinging far and wide of entrails.

The din gradually subsided after two hours or so but it was like a stubborn fire, it took a lot of putting out. The C

groups left the arena one by one to orbit the grounds. Now in the late afternoon the loud-speaker leaked out “Would the police go immediately to the pig pens for the pigs are disappearing?” My mind jumped forward an hour to the fires and feasts of the evening outside the long houses of the visiting tribesmen. Died En Route Another cage in the grounds was already empty for in the zoo section—which displayed a cassowary bird, guinea pigs, and opossum and snakes—a sign hung on an empty aviary, ““Sorry. All the birds intended for this exhibit died en route.” Perhaps the hunger of the natives in the long days of marching to the show from their highland villages couldn’t quite make the distance.