FEATURE FIG. 7 (below): Garra. Hunstein Range, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. Wood. Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin, inv. VI 47.969, acquired from H. M. Lissauer in 1965. From H. Kelm, Kunstgegenstände aus dem Sepik-Gebiet (Neuguinea), Baessler-Archiv, Neue Folge, Band XVII, 1969. It is probable that the National Gallery of Australia’s garra, 2016.31 (fi g. 9), was carved as a replacement for this garra. 96 FIG. 8 (above): Interior of a men’s house, Gahom village, 12 November 1962. Photo courtesy of James O. Hunter. Partially buried skulls are visible in front of the garamut drums. These were said to be ancestral and were used as seats. FIG. 9 (right): Female garra. Hunstein Range, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. Collected May 1971 at Inaro village. Wood, pigment (carved with metal tools). H: 122 cm. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, inv. 2016.31, gift of David Attenborough. This female garra may be termed a “mask” type, as its eyes are pierced through the board. On the reverse of the suspension lug are two carved eyes possibly representing a snake, fl ying fox, or other animal. hunting settlement—probably temporary—near the April River from which the occupants had fl ed before the patrol arrived. One man stayed to keep an eye on the visitors and to protect the dilapidated men’s house in which several garra were kept.7 Hunter took an intriguing photograph of this structure (fi g. 12). In it, several old and heavily weathered garra can be seen outside. The caretaker poses with a fragmentary garra in his hands, interestingly held upside down. Some garra can also be seen as a face when turned upside down, but it is unclear in this case whether the gesture was intentional.8 Within the following decade the Bahinemo received limited contact with outsiders: patrol offi - cers, a few art collectors and dealers, anthropologists and linguists, and a handful of geologists, surveyors, and other exploratory scientists. Notable among this group were Wayne Heathcote, Douglas Newton, Barry Craig, Wayne Dye, and Meinhard and Gisela Schuster. Patrol offi cer and fi eld collector Heathcote entered the Hunstein Range in 1964 and visited every known settlement in the region. According to Heathcote, other collectors of Sepik art, including Iven Solomon, Nils Madsen, and Philip Goldman, did not reach the area, and most if not all of the garra hook sculptures that Goldman published in the 1971 exhibition catalog Hunstein Korowori (fi g. 2) were collected by Heathcote.9 FIRST CONTACT The fi rst government patrol into the Hunstein Range occurred in late 1962 and was conducted by patrol offi cers James O. Hunter and H. W. Gill. In the Gahom men’s house (yeweina) near the Setifa River,5 Hunter observed, suspended among rows of drying bush tobacco, “several carved wooden hooks from which string bags of personal effects and bunches of betel nut hung.” Hunter also recalled other interesting details: The walls of the men’s house had a number of “bark paintings” (probably sago petioles) showing “lizards or human stick fi gures,” numerous bamboo fl utes, and several “crudely carved small fi gures which represent both humans and various animals.”6 During Hunter’s second patrol into the region in January 1963, he entered a small, unnamed
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