TO EXPLORE PAPUA.

Taranaki Daily News, 19 October 1922, Page 8

TO EXPLORE PAPUA.

AN AMBITIOUS project. EXPEDITION TO NUMBER 32. London. September 28. The advance party of a Papuan exploratory expedition, directed by Australians' will leave London shortlv to endeavour to obtain the Commonwealth Government’s official recognition. It already has Sir Joseph Cook’s blessing. Mr N. McNeil, of Melbourne, the leader, and Mr. L. Conolly, of Goonabil station, C'orowa, deputy leader, will accompany the advance party. After seeing Mr.'Hugli.es they , will select bases on the Papuan coast for the main expedition, which will leave a year later. It will consist of 32 Europeans, including a naturlist, an entomologist, a meteorologist, an anthropologist, an archaeologist, a doctor, a chemist, an agriculturist, and topographers. The expedition will be assisted by. 400 natives, and will travel 50(1 miles in a line parallel with the Dutch boundary, surveying a strip of country 150 miles wide, and traversing and mapping twothirds of the eastern half of the island. Mr. Conolly states that the expedition will be the largest in expenditure and personnal yet undertaken, and the most ambitious in scope ever sent out by any country, not excluding Scott’s end Shackleton’s. The advance party will take 3000 ft. of film for release throughout the world. It is hoped partly to finance the main expedition with the profits and to enlist public interest and support. Mr. Conolly was formerly a horsebreaker in the artillery.