ROADS AND AIRFIELDS

KEROWAGI KUNDIAWA' OMKALAI NAMBAIYUFA1 J@YOBAI V ® NOMANE ® BOMAI © KARIMUI © HAIA Ramu power transmission

Highlands highway Trunk road Feeder road Developmental road kilometres Airfield in use, 1975 Source: Howlett et a l, 1976

Following missionary plantings in the 1930s, the cash crop coffee was deliberately spread by the government in the early 1950s, and soon was taken up spontaneously with full Simbu zest by those with access to the roadhead. This profound change brought money to rural Simbu without the need for emigration (Brookfield 1968). In 1964 the Admini stration bought out a coffee processing factory owned by the Leahy family at Chimbu River and set up the Kundiawa Coffee Society Limited, later renamed the Chimbu Coffee Co-operative Limited (CCC) but generally called 'the Society'. Marketing and processing are the phases of the coffee industry most readily subject to government intervention. By the late 1960s there was some disillusionment with cash cropping since peasant coffee had not brought wealth on the scale of the whites (Brookfield 1973). However the coffee industry became central in Chimbu politics in the 1970s.

Six government outstations were established in the 1950s, and schools, with every effort made to recruit as pupils the sons of the leaders, with varied response.15 The fathers of many schoolchildren were not leaders in their groups, rather those who had ambition for their offspring. Schooling was initially free, and so schools widened the base for government recruitment and later leadership in clans. Primary and secondary education, both mission and government, grew apace in the 1960s.

From 1950 a process of nominal democratization had started in the New Guinea Islands and Coastal regions in the form of Native Local Government Councils (NLGCs), which from 1963 became multiracial Local Government Councils (LGCs).

Kiaps in Simbu in the late 1950s organised public gatherings at new 'road meeting centres' to promote economic development and other issues, but Simbu leaders were keen to modernize and 'catch up' with coastal areas, and wanted the status of a council. In 1959 the first NLGC in the Highlands was elected in the Waiye Census Division, west of the Chimbu River around Kundiawa. Councils were progressively set up throughout Simbu in the 1960s, and Karimui-Bomai in 1973.16 The village official system ceased to exist wherever a council was established.

15 A prominent tribesman of Gena in East Koronigl, Siwi Kurondo (see Chapter IV, et seq.), in 1958 called for a school just like the Europeans' (Standish 1981a), and later sought a university for Chimbu.

16 Council areas were proclaimed as follows: (a) Waiye 1958, joined by Dorn Census Division (CD) in 1960; Yonggamugl NLGC formed in 1961. These merged to form Kundiawa LGC in 1967; (b) Koronigl NLGC 1961, was joined by Kup CD to form Kerowagi LGC 1967; (c) Chuave NLGC 1961 was joined by Elimbari and Nambaiyufa CDs in 1965 to form Elimbari LGC; (d) Gumine LGC 1965; (e) Mt Wilhelm LGC 1965; (f) Sinasina LGC 1966; (g) Salt- Nomane LGC 1970; (h) Bomai-Mikaru 1973; and (i) Siani LGC (Nambaiyufa CD) broke away from Elimbari in 1974 ( Howlett et a i , 1976:184).

Because of its population and administrative complexity, Chimbu was scheduled to become a separate administrative district; as a first step the Chimbu Sub-District became an administrative Division under a Deputy District Commissioner (DDC). In order to foster a sense of Chimbu political identity, from 1964 Combined Councils Conferences were held for this Division. Then on 1 July 1966 Chimbu became a separate District with its own DC. A District Advisory Council was set up with representatives from expatriate commercial interests and missions as well as the councils, under the chairmanship of the very influential DC.

The Lutheran mission surrendered land for Kundiawa township, which became a bustling, dusty, frontier outpost. Although legally allowed to drink alcohol from 1962, few Simbu had much cash in the 1960s. Kundiawa had several tradestores, a motel and a rough hotel, the latter by the 1970s 'a bit of a hellhouse' (Wheeler 1979:107) on government paydays when thousands of country cousins joined public servants in spending their fortnightly salaries.

Also in the 1960s, the first indigenous kiaps, police officers and magistrates

served in Chimbu as part of preparation for self-government under the Trusteeship

Agreement. Few Simbu accorded them what some kiaps called their ’mystique'#17"ffiey

were tak^n as lacking the formal neutrality sometimes attributed to expatriates, although Simbu^always sought to suborn any officials with discretionary powers. Formal decolonization and independence were not discussed in the mid 1960s by Australia or the Administration, because they had not yet been accepted in Canberra as immediate goals.

Conclusion

This chapter has described the arenas - both social and physical - in which Simbu people play out their lives and politics. Alongside a professed individualism, at the core of the Simbu world view is the clan, which has a strong basis in how people organize their daily lives, as well as forming the ideological framework for much social, economic and political interaction. To the north and south of Simbu lie the Ramu Valley in Madang Province and the Karimui-Bomai. Possibly a little was known of them by hearsay before colonial contact (R. Hide, pers. comm. 1984), but these people are still feared for

sorcery, and their social structure universe differs. It was the colonial processes of

pacification, consolidation, and missionization which opened up the Simbu universe

and created the colonial edifice of Chimbu, and ultimately made social interaction and political activity, as well as trade, possible in ever-widening arenas.

By 1970 the time was ripe for a more rapid change. Secondary-educated Simbu entered business, the churches and the public service, and a few went on to tertiary education. As we shall see, these were to become paths to politics. Before this process can be discussed, however, it is necessary first to describe and analyse Simbu ideologies of precolonial leadership and then to explore the transition from precontact autonomy to the dependent politics of the late colonial era.