BOB CLELAND
THE Aramia River in the Western Province of Papua New Guinea is home to plenty of crocodiles.
It winds through flat country and many shallow lagoons feed into it – ideal crocodile habitat.
The people living there call themselves Gogodala. They number about 15,000 today and live in well constructed villages on the lagoon edges. It is inevitable that Crocodile often clashes with Gogodala.
On the edge of the biggest lagoon lies the town of Balimo, taking its name from a large village on its shores. Also assuming that name was the government sub-district headquarters of the area.
When I first arrived there as Assistant District Officer in the late 1950s, there were many crocodile stories and legends, some handed down through generations, some more recent.
All were related with awe, bravado, humour or sadness by the Gogodala people. Several revolved around a huge old-man croc whose territory included the mouth of the Balimo lagoon.
He'd been shot at with gun and arrow, trapped in a traditional pit, and speared with wood and steel, but always got away and lived to attack another pig, dog, wallaby or Gogodala. I saw him several times basking on the river bank.
Working in the office one day, I heard angry voices rising and falling like the sound of surf. I wasn't particularly worried in this peaceful and friendly part of PNG, so stayed put.
Suddenly a police constable came running to say I'd better come as the Balimo and Kewa people were about to fight. A huge swell of angry voices and cries reached me as confirmation of the constable's message.
‘Come on Ian.’ I said to the patrol officer with me in the office. The walk to the commotion took us only two minutes. The rest of the police detachment were there and alert.
As for the antagonists, some had bows with arrows, some had bushknives, but none looked really serious about using their weapons.
With the help of the police and the station interpreter, we got the squabbling villagers sitting in two groups, still hurling a few insults, and were able to piece together the story.
In one of their long, graceful canoes the Kewa people had been paddling downriver from their upriver village. They spotted the old man croc sunning himself on the bank at the mouth of Balimo lagoon.
They were able to sneak up on him (maybe he was getting old) and get a very substantial barbed spear into him. He erupted into the water with the spear sticking out of his body. They didn't much like losing the spear, but accepted that it was gone for good and the croc would (as usual) live.
Several days later, a canoe-full of Balimo villagers, on their way out of Balimo lagoon, saw something unusual in a pool made shallow by the low water of the dry season. With great excitement, they found the crocodile feared by three generations, dead with a twisted steel spear in his side.
They quickly skinned the old croc from nose to tail-tip, extracted the spear and continued on their way, taking the rolled-up skin and spear with them.
The bush telegraph worked quickly and before long the two groups were arguing about who owned the skin. A big skin was worth a lot of money.
‘Ours,’ said the Balimos. ‘We found it and skinned it.’
‘No, ours,’ said the Kewas. ‘We speared it and killed it.’
An indissoluble argument, but at least they agreed they should go and let Gavman decide. Once onto the neutral territory of Balimo station, though, their patience ran out and tempers boiled over, leaving me to settle a dispute the like of which I hadn't seen since my time in the Highlands.
Well, I didn't come up with a Solomonic solution. I didn't even need to invoke the law. The croc must have been dead awhile before being found and the Balimo people didn't have any salt to rub in to preserve the skin.
The argument had been in progress for several days in this very hot, humid climate and when we ceremoniously unrolled ‘Exhibit A’, we found it to be rotten, putrid and crawling with the larvae of sundry insects. Quite valueless as a skin.
There was huge disappointment, loss of interest, cooling of passions. Everyone went their way with sad expressions and that was that.
But what a croc he was! That skin measured twenty-one feet, three inches (6.5 metres) from snout to tail-tip and its commercial measurement around the belly was 72 inches.
The spear, a solid length of five-eighth inch hexagonal steel, was bent like a piece of fencing wire.
