Australian
Screen

an NFSA website

Jungle Road (c.1963)

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clip A road from Wewak to Maprik education content clip 1

Original classification rating: not rated. This clip chosen to be G

Clip description

This clip shows the role of Army engineers and a unit of the Army Reserve (then called the Citizens Military Force) in the construction of a road from Wewak to Maprik.

Curator’s notes

Prior to 1980, the Army Reserve was known as the Citizens Military Force (CMF). In this clip, a CMF unit, supported by a unit of Royal Australian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (RAEME) undertakes construction work on a road from Wewak to Passam, then over the Torricelli Mountains to Maprik. In its final segment the film frames the road project within a greater development mission of transforming New Guinea’s ‘wild country’ into a ‘civilised community’. The notion of transforming New Guinea’s highland jungle into ‘rolling pastures’ proved for many reasons to be untenable. Eighty percent of the population today still lives in subsistence or semi-subsistence rural arrangements.