1923 — Title: The Tedi River District of Papua. Author: Leo Austen Publisher: London: Edward Stanford, Royal Geographical Society, 1923. Item is in Original Condition, with Blue Wrappers - As Issued, Complete with All the Ads! Notes & Condition: As early as six years prior to Charles Karius and Ivan Champion launching their famous 1926 expedition to cross New Guinea from the Fly to the Sepik, Australian army officer Leo Austen who would soon after become an anthropologist, led several pioneering patrols into the area. In 1922 he was placed in charge of an expedition to explore the country surrounding the Alice River [now known as the Ok Tedi River]. His party included one other officer, a Malay interpreter, twelve armed Papuan natives, and thirty-five Papuan carriers. As he notes the river's navigability and other important geographical features, he also observes various people groups settled along the banks and slightly inland. The Yonggom people and their customs are described at length. Piercing and tattooing, specific superstitions, confessions of cannibalism, fire making practices, cooking on hot stones, plaited fibre and sago leaf skirts for loin cloths, raised dwellings made of dirt and sago leafs with woven rattan doorways and constructed on posts or stilts, principal food staples, the use of long bamboo sticks for preserving water, and European influenced tobacco smoking, are some of the topics discussed in an unbiased manner. Both informative and engaging, Austen's firsthand account of a survey of the Ok Tedi District, formerly known as Alice River, describes a natural paradise, as it was in its virgin, undamaged state, three decades before Kennecott discovered the fabulous copper and gold deposit at Mount Fubilan near the headwaters of the Ok Tedi. He also visited several villages at the foot of the Star Mountains. 8vo. 15 pages, plus a full page sketch map for illustration. Original condition with blue wrappers, titles to front, and containing all the ads. This is a complete issue, seldom found in such good and original condition. Leo Austen (1894-1956) was born Leopold Novak Augstein in Brisbane. He was working as a clerk when World War I began and immediately enlisted. He landed with the first troops at Gallipoli and served in France where he was wounded. He returned to Australia in 1918 as a lieutenant and, with his brothers, changed his Austrian surname to Austen to avoid the anti-German sentiment after the war. On 3 April 1919 he joined Hubert Murray’s Papuan Service as a temporary Patrol Officer based at Daru in the lonely Western Division. He went on to lead many great patrols, there and elsewhere. In 1926 a Chair of Anthropology had been set up at the University of Sydney, partly to train Cadet Patrol Officers of the then separate New Guinea Department of District Services. Hubert Murray allowed some of his officers, including Leo, to attend the lectures. Leo eventually obtained qualifications as an anthropologist and began a parallel career producing many learned monographs and a book on Papua. The 1930s saw a massive upheaval of traditional societies in Papua due to increased European influence. Leo sought to restore and maintain the traditional cohesion of those societies, and was particularly successful in encouraging the revival of the paramount luluais in his favourite haunts in the Trobriand Islands. Leo became part of the Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit (ANGAU) during World War II and attended the major ANGAU conference in February 1944. Towards the end of the war he was the presiding magistrate at the trial of a number of local people accused of collaborating with the Japanese. Later he Leo obtained a position with Aboriginal Welfare in Casino New South Wales, and continued to advocate for aboriginal rights, in various ways, until his final days.
