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SHELLS, FEATHERS & FLYING DRAGONS, New Guinea highlands, 1950s

SHELLS, FEATHERS & FLYING DRAGONS, New Guinea highlands, 1950s

$30.00

FOR POSTAGE TO PAPUA NEW GUINEA, PLEASE CONTACT US AT info@photosofthepast.com.au for revised price to cover international postage.

SKU: B123 Category:

Description

This book just published, is mostly of wonderful photographs taken by Tony Chadim, a pilot for Gibbes Sepik Airlines plus a few by the author. These images, not seen before, show the life of the Highland people at a time when they were being thrust into the twentieth century from a stone age like existence. Government patrols were still penetrating into remote valleys at this time.

You will see the natives in the tradition dress of old, men carrying their bows and arrows, the women behind bearing heavy loads going to newly created markets where previous warring clans could now socialise in peaceful coexistence. The new law and order had arrived.

You will see the early pioneering aircraft that Tony flew to remote crudely made airstrips perched on the side of mountains including the dragons, the name given to DH-84 bi-planes. The large German wartime JU-52 Junkers also feature.

When a man courted a girl from another village it was customary for the man’s family to bear gifts for the bride’s family and here we see bride price delegations carrying traditional items for this important event. Shells, feather and a few pigs. Theses are the old days now gone.

The author, a hydrographer, a relative late-comer to the Highlands to measure rivers in the region was joined by Chadim at this time, late 1958, and together they measured river flows in the whole region. Both keen photographers and always armed with their cameras.

For anyone who has been to Papua New Guinea, this book is a must. This is ‘taim bepo’ (time before) westernisation and independence from Australia.

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