Victor Prescott's book should have the details. you can buy copies from him.
Email j.prescott@... and ask for his "Map of Mainland
Asia by Treaty" and "Boundaries of Asia and Southeats Asia".
The latter has the PNG details.
I suspect because it was a big river, it made sense to not leave the inside
of a large bend outside of PNG when it made more practical sense to leave it
to PNG
who could access it best.
I doubt it was ther Angle Inlet mistaker hypothesis. I will check tomorrow.

B

>From: "Peter Smaardijk" <smaardijk@...>
>Reply-To: BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com
>To: BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com
>Subject: [BoundaryPoint] Fly river
>Date: Tue, 01 May 2001 09:26:42 -0000
>
>Thinking about the subject of straight borders, something that I have
>wondered about for a long time came up again. The island of New
>Guinea is divided by a pretty straight line. Almost straight, because
>there is the Fly river that forms the boundary between Indonesia and
>Papua New Guinea for some distance. In a book about our own little
>Dutch Siberia (nothing to boast about actually), the penal colony for
>political prisoners at the Upper Digoel river in the 'thirties, I
>read that most prisoners that fled tried to reach the Fly (no, that's
>probably NOT why that river is called that way), being the closest
>borderline near the camp.
>
>Does anyone know why the Fly was included in the boundary? Straight
>lines like the New Guinean one normally don't bother about rivers. I
>suspect an error like the N.W. Angle one...
>
>Peter S.
>

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