I think it was a complaint that Mrs Steinbeck was making when she spoke to me. We were standing on the pavement outside my offices in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, from whence I had been summoned by her tour guide. Mr Steinbeck had delegated his wife to reprimand me whilst he remained in the back seat of his limousine. I think it was sometime in 1967.
The eminent author and his wife had been staying in Lae on the northern coast of New Guinea and had hired my travel company to guide them around its hinterland. The lady who ran the local office undertook the task. She had telephoned to warn me that the Steinbecks would be seeking me out to express their considerable dissatisfaction with her efforts. She, like many Australians, was not notably deferential when addressing important folk. It might have improved her attitude towards them had they not insisted he was John Steinbeck’s brother.
I believe Mr and Mrs Steinbeck had hoped for a period of rest and reflection in Papua New Guinea following a visit to the ill-fated war in Vietnam. He was said to have betrayed his principles by writing favourable reports about US engagement in the region. His wife was later to suggest that his experience in the war zone had led to a change of mind. He may have begun to question both its legitimacy and its execution whilst he was in Papua New Guinea.
The lady from Lae told me that Mr. Steinbeck had been very angry with her whilst she was driving him and the third Mrs Steinbeck to see the remains of the abandoned gold fields at Bulolo, some two and a half hours by road out of town. She told me that Mr Steinbeck had complained about back pain. The road from Lae to the gold fields was very rough indeed in those days and the off-road performance of contemporary motor vehicles was poor. He would have been shaken about somewhat. It is not surprising that he complained. Later, whilst in Japan on his way home, he was found to have two or three collapsed vertebrae. He underwent an operation in the USA to relive the paralysing pain this unfortunate condition causes. He died in December 1968 of heart disease exacerbated by heavy smoking.
I had not trained my Lae branch manager well enough in the business of tour guiding. She was a feisty lady who was prone to make dismissive remarks about native Papua New Guineans. Her attitude would have upset Mr Steinbeck who may have found parallels in the events in his own country where Martin Luther King was at the height of his powers. He may also have reflected on the sad history of Native Americans. To be fair, it took both Canada and New Zealand a long time to legislate for, and begin to effect, a more enlightened policy towards Native Canadians and Maoris. Such polices need concerted and determined action by governments. This was a not a benefit available to Native Papua New Guineans at the time.
The gold fields at Bulolo had played an important role in the relationship between Australia and Papua New Guinea though the wealth they generated was of little benefit to the latter. They were also notable because in the 1930s, in the absence of roads, eight 3,000-ton aero-portable gold dredges were flown into them from the port of Lae in one of the first major air lift operations in history.
The tourist industry was in its adolescence when the Steinbecks visited Papua New Guinea. The commercialisation of sacred ritual and custom was one of the dilemmas it faced then and still faces now. It is exemplified in the vicinity of Bulolo by the Anga tribe’s custom of preserving the corpses of their dead by smoking them slowly and ceremonially in a Spirit House. The dried human remains were smeared in red mud and left sitting on bamboo platforms on the mountain side overlooking their native villages. At least one of the sacred sites where some of these fragile remains are to be found is now included in tour itineraries. I believe the custom of smoke curing ceremonies has been resurrected recently. Christian missionaries had attempted to stop it in the early years of the twentieth century by offering the Anga supplies of salt with which to cure the corpses. They may have reasoned that it would reduce the ritual which attended the smoking method.
By the time I was summoned to speak to them the Steinbecks were spending a few days in Port Moresby before flying home to the USA, probably via Hong Kong and Japan. I do not recall much of the conversation with Mrs Steinbeck. I do remember the famous Noble Laurate glowering at me from the back seat of a limousine.
DON'T KILL ME NOW 