Netherlands New Guinea in 1956: how to move?

Used Change of Address Card sent from Sorong 3 on the 11th of July 1956 to Amsterdam. 

Until fairly recently there existed a specific type of postal stationary in the Netherlands: the so called Verhuiskaart or Change of address card in English. In the Netherlands it was introduced in the late 1910s as cheaper alternative for the ordinary letter card. Moving to another premises had always caused logistical problems for the PTT and the new and cheap preprinted Verhuiskaart might ease the service's workload. It certainly was a clever device to make people aware of a forthcoming change of address and it must have contributed to a smarter and streamlined postal service. In short: it benefited both the PTT and the users, a win-win game and therefore very Dutch. I'm not aware of foreign change of address cards, but I would be keen to know!

Of course verhuiskaarten were available in the Dutch colonies as well. In the DEI people and businesses used them frequently, since there was a large Dutch presence until the 1950s. It should be noted though that a Malaysian translation was printed below or beside the Dutch text from the introduction from 1909 onwards. So even literate natives and Asian traders might have used them. For the attentive reader: verhuiskaarten were indeed introduced in the DEI 10 years prior to their introduction in Holland.... In the West (as the expression goes) there was no need for change of address cards apparently. The literate population of Suriname and Curacao was very small when compared to the DEI. Hence you might be surprised - and rightly so - why the (still) very large, but almost unpopulated colony of Netherlands New Guinea introduced a verhuiskaart... Even in its heydays the colony counted less than 15.000 literate inhabitants which rarely moved.   

It remains to be seen which argument was used to introduce the verhuiskaart in NNG. It might be suggested that the Dutch 'settlers' from Java and Sumatra were familiar with the concept? The card appeared on the 1st of August 1950. The 3c rate was of course less than the standard 5c letter card rate.  

Reverse of the NNG verhuiskaart

By now it won't come as a surprise that this specific verhuiskaart is a very rare piece in used condition. Extremely rare even when it has been used within NNG. Only contemporary philatelists in New Guinea and the Netherlands seem to have been aware of its existence, so the majority of the used card known to us have been used and stored by philatelists. Unused it's no rarity at all, although only ca. 6400 ex. were ever printed according to Geuzendam.   

The card which serves as illustration to this article is a commercially used example which was sent to the Netherlands. Not as rare as inland use, but nevertheless very rare!! It sold for €600 (ex. buyer's premium ),- at Corinphila NL in 2016.

The NNGPM terrain near Sorong - buzzing with economic activity in the late 1940s 

Sorong in the extreme northwest of Papua is home to the country's profitable oil industry. In 1908 oil was discovered by Shell and in the 1930s the first well was drilled by the NNGPM the Nederlandsch Nieuw-Guinea Petroleum Maatschappij. The Sorong oil wells were one of the economical arguments used by the Dutch to maintain power in NNG after the Indonesian war of Independence. In the mid 1950s the industry was booming, but only a few years later the wells dried up to a large extent and Sorong dried up along with it. The oil company entered into liquidation and a real exodus took place in the early 1960s. It would take decades before the new oil companies would find new wells. Nowadays Sorong is Papua's major economical hub again.   

Concrete oil storage tankers being erected in Sorong harbour the late 1940s.
The island on the horizon, Sorong Doöm, used to be the administrative centre of Sorong 

 

Photo from 1938 which  - I think -  shows the same terrain as the NNGPM area earlier.
Copyright: KB - https://resolver.kb.nl/resolve?urn=urn:gvn:KIT01:219635