Native labourers were carried as freight, seated on the aircraft floor under a cargo net.
They were bloody lucky to have a cargo net. My very first flight was in 1948 in a Lockheed Hudson freighter belonging to the Sydney Morning Herald Flying Services based at Camden NSW. The captain was the manager (chief pilot) Harry Purvis AFC - during the war he was the former chief instructor in the RAAF on Hudsons. Pre-war he flew Smithy's Southern Cross.
Harry was to conduct a short test flight after an engine change and invited a few of the ground staff at Camden along for the flight. I was a general hand age 17 and jumped at the chance. It was a bare bones freighter with no seats and no safety belts except for the two pilots. If I recall correctly, about six people including me, piled into the Hudson and sprawled on the metal floor. The noise of the engines at take off power was painful as there was no cladding. We just hung on to any protuberance we could find. Any weight and balance that Harry may have drawn up was useless of course
We were airborne for about 30 minutes on the test flight which included a prop feathering test on the new engine. I wasn't told how to clear my ears on descent and they hurt like hell on descent. Neither can I recall any form of passenger safety briefing in those days. No cargo net on that trip, either. In fact I don't recall cargo nets were ever used either in the Hudsons or DC3 freighters. We simply packed in the newspapers already bound in hessian bundles and placed them on the floor of the aircraft. Approaching the dropping zone the co-pilot would leave his seat and move down the back of the fuselage and store the selected bundles at the rear door of the DC3 or the Hudson.
The crash of one Hudson near Muswellbrook which stalled while turning in on the dropping run, was partially attributed to the co-pilot and newspapers bundles being right down the back at the rear entrance door causing a rear centre of gravity problem coupled with a tight turn