Keith Jackson & Friends: PNG ATTITUDE

Katua Niugini - the story of the mine at Pangkirangku

LEONARD FONG ROKA

PANGKIRANGKU WAS A HILL situated at the location of the present day idle Panguna mine pit in Bougainville. Pangkirangku (later turned into ‘Panguna’ by colonisation) was the hunting ground for the Guava and the Moroni people who mostly intermarried each other.

Oral history says that the area was colonised by the people not in one wave but infiltrated by individual people, especially through marriage.

It happens that a family can be a first settler of a territory. Later, as they increase in numbers and emerge as a clan, the young men go back to the place of origin to seek a wife for a male son and she is brought to Moroni.

She settles with her new in-laws and expands the clan. In due course, her children inherit land through the many land ownership rites of passage known to the Kieta people of Bougainville.

But with the dawn of the Bougainville secessionist and anti-mining conflict in 1988, the militant leader, the late Francis Ona, had publicised that he was the major landowner of Pangkirangku. This was a negative a taint on the identity of the true owners of Pangkirangku.

Ona belonged to the Kurabang clan but his group of immigrants into Guava village was second in the line of migrations. (Measuring migration waves in oral history is fluid. They might be just a generation apart or decades.) Ona’s ancestors entered Guava from the southern Orami area, where the first PNGDF soldier was killed around 1989.

The first group of Kurabangs that entered and colonised the Pangkirangku and Guava areas came from the west in the direction of Onove and Evo. Thus the first group owned much of the Pangkirangku ridge that hosted the ore bodies that attracted CRA to mine it in the 1960s and sparked the Bougainville crisis that killed thousands of innocent Bougainvilleans.

Ona’s line of immigrants came into dominance in controlling land as they produced more female members in what is now Panguna. The original immigrants, family members of the brothers Dumenu and Anthony Ampe (pictured) of which more below, produced less females – who are the powers and owners of land in the Kieta society.

Seeing this unfortunate development, the members of the original immigrants began to transfer ownership to the second wave of settlers. In this process the family line of the late Francis Ona came into dominance in decision making in the Guava-Panguna area.

In the first wave of Kurabang, just before World War II, were born two brothers, Dumenu and Anthony Ampe.

The brothers were the rightful and inarguable chiefs and owners of the vast proportion of the customary land in the ridge and braes of the Pangkirangku.

As children, the brothers and their siblings enjoyed the jungle, wild rivers and gardens. Later, in 1950s, the eldest Dumenu became referred to as a retard. But he was a prophet.

In this state of mind, he left Guava and erected himself a makeshift shelter a safe distance away to the west of the main village on the Guava-Kokore ridge.

There, close to his abode, he selected a high point on the trail and began digging the earth with his bare hands like a child. Days he dug and nights he dug. When travellers encountered him he would cry, ‘I am destroying your beautiful land and your future is not good’ and laugh.

Reminiscences of rough times: May River & the Mianmin

BILL BROWN

IN AUGUST 1956, THE PEOPLE FROM MAY RIVER, a right-bank tributary of the mighty Sepik River, invited their upstream neighbours, from the Yellow River to a feast.

They neglected to tell their guests that they were to be the main item on the menu and, on a Sepik River sandbank, they slaughtered at least 29 Yellow River people and cooked and ate them.

Patrol Officer George Oakes, 22 was based at Lumi where, in his second year of service, he had been thrown in the deep end, including solo patrols into the Yellow River area.

Oakes, born in New Britain in 1934, had, along with his mother and younger brother, been evacuated to Sydney on the Macdhui in July 1941. His father, the Rev Dan Oakes, died on the Japanese prison ship Montevideo Maru when it was torpedoed in July 1942.

Oakes returned to PNG as a Cadet Patrol Officer in January 1954, and was first assigned to Mendi. Two years later, he was posted to Lumi.

He later wrote:

About the beginning of August 1956 some bodies were found floating in the Sepik River with parts ... cut out. They were identified by their tattoos as coming from a long way up the Sepik River. … About the same time, Kit Kitson, a recruiter... returned to Lumi with the story that some Yellow River people had been killed and eaten by May River people.

Under the headline ‘Head-hunters kill 28 in New Guinea massacre’, the Sydney Morning Herald of 22 August 1956 reported:

One native, with a gaping wound in the forearm staggered into Lumi … He told the Lumi District Officer that the victims were members of a fishing party. … The witnesses who brought the story back to Lumi carried bundles of sweet corn to indicate the numbers of men and women who had died.

Then came another shocking headline in an Australian newspaper, ‘N. Guinea Woman sentenced’:

An Administration post-office employee, Patricia Robertson, was sentenced today to three months' imprisonment … charged with having disclosed the contents of an official radiogram … [she] had sent the Sun a message about the murder of 28 natives in the Lumi area.

It was a bizarre event, a white woman, a teletype operator employed by the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, had been sent to gaol, and the town of Port Moresby was horrified.

Robertson was sentenced on Friday 31 August and, because the gaol had no suitable accommodation, spent the weekend in the gaoler’s residence with Inspector George Gough and his wife while “works department carpenters worked around the clock ... erecting accommodation … at Bomana Gaol” near Port Moresby.

Meanwhile George Oakes was recalled from a patrol west of Lumi to accompany Assistant District Officer Frank Jones to the Sepik River, which they reached on 28 August 1956. There they waited for ADO Mert Brightwell to arrive, by boat from Ambunti so they could travel to the crime scene of the mass slaughter.

Jones, in charge of the Lumi Sub-district, during his previous term as ADO Telefomin, had crisscrossed the ranges and valleys in pursuit of the murderers of patrol officers Harris and Szarka and policemen Buritori and Purari, after another notorious incident.

Jones was to lead a dawn raid to capture the last of ringleaders in 1954. Following long-leave and marriage, he took over Lumi at the end of January 1956.

Mert Brightwell became a Cadet Patrol Officer in June 1947 following war service as a RAAF Wireless Operator/Air Gunner. Posted to Ambunti, in 1954, when it was still a Patrol Post in the Angoram Sub-district, he spent months escorting an oil-search expedition to the Sepik headwaters, before assuming control of the newly created Ambunti Sub-district, in June 1956.

He had wide shoulders, a barrel chest and no neck – attributes he credited to his long line of furniture-removalist forebears. But, despite his stature, Mert was light on his feet and the life of the party when he would sashay from behind a screen, straw boater in one hand, cane in the other, tap dancing through his own sung-rendition of Father In His Life Was Ne’er A Quitter.

Far away in Port Moresby a bizarre event was in train. Young Patrol Officer Tony Redwood “was called to headquarters at Konedobu, told [he] had been selected to lead the May River patrol [and] was sent to Police headquarters to select 12 native police from anywhere in the Territory, the best [he] could identify.”

BRA was the root of bloody civil conflict in Bougainville

 LEONARD FONG ROKA

IN OCTOBER 1992 I WAS A KID roaming around parts of the Kieta and the Bana districts in South Bougainville with Bougainville Revolutionary Army ‘A’ Company bodyguard unit.

The unit was attached to my relative, the late Autonomous Bougainville Government president Joseph Kabui, who at the time was vice president of the Bougainville Interim Government (BIG).

I provided escort duties to my leader and partook in no armed operation except one assault on, as I see it today, an innocent Bougainvillean in Bana.

Despite the fact that my father was killed by the BRA in 1993, I consider myself a Bougainvillean nationalist.

This is because of the awareness I have for the ill treatment of my island of Solomon / Bougainville by colonisation and later by Papua New Guinea, especially as a result of the copper mine on my land of Panguna.

As Panguna people, we sparked off a conflict that saved Bougainville from the brutality of Bougainville Copper Limited, Papua New Guineans and the squatter settlements that grew on our land. (I carry a scar on my face caused by kids at the Arawa’s Morobe Camp in 1988).

But it was not our fight alone. It was a struggle for self-determination that went back to the so-called cargo cult movements like the Hahalis Welfare Society and other groups that sprung up in Bougainville, especially after the onset of the works to construct the mine.

These were groups condemned publicly but silently assisted by Catholic missionaries and a few expatriate cocoa and coconut planters. They demonstrated without violence against ‘rascals’ on our island.

Engaging the barrel of the gun, we did the old timers proud in 1988 by sending the ‘rascals’ packing in fear and pain from our beloved island. Thus did they realize the fact they were ‘rascals’ in Solomon exploiting and suppressing a people they were not related to.

In that fight we created the Bougainville Revolutionary Army. I know this name shocked the Pacific and even our Papua New Guinean rulers, or Ivitu, as we know them in Buin.

But the big question is, why did we turn on each other? This is the question that must be answered today so that we take Bougainville in the right direction.

In 1990, I was a Grade 4 student at Kaperia Community School in Arawa when the first ceasefire was signed by Sam Kauona (BRA) and Leo Nuia (PNG), known as the ‘Butcher of Bougainville’.

All the BRA men were stationed at Panguna. Law and order was observed for a month with the late Francis Ona as the supreme head.

But, as these BRA men got out of this cage, they started calling themselves redeemers of Bougainville and began to harm businesses in Arawa by looting.

Once after school, I encountered two BRA men wearing shoes they ahd not paid for, saying to the cashiers in a store known then as the Haus Bilas: “We have suffered in the bush fighting for you”.

In memory of Kure Whan & all the manki mastas of PNG

PHIL FITZPATRICK

The following might be politically incorrect but I don’t really care….

WE WERE IN A BAD WAY when we walked out of the Murray Valley in late 1970.  The valley is high up in the rugged Star Mountains in Western Province and we still had to get over the icy pass in the Dap Range before we were home free.

1970 was a strange year in more ways than one.  Gurias were knocking houses off their stilts in Tari and Wewak and a savage outbreak of influenza, which killed thousands of people in the Southern Highlands in 1968, was still lingering on in the high valleys.  It was the latter which nearly brought our patrol to its knees.

Ours was the second administration patrol to visit the valley and the days were necessarily tense – if anything nasty was going to happen in a newly contacted area it generally happened on the second patrol when the people had got the kiap’s measure. 

Then when we got to the end of the valley we ran into the raggedy end of the 1968 flu outbreak.  We did all we could for the people but when we ran out of medicines and started to come down with the flu ourselves we decided it was time to leave.

We avoided the villages on the return trip as much as possible so as to lessen the chances of infection and staggered on our way.  When we got to the bottom of the Dap Pass we had two people on stretchers and a line of walking wounded.

Constables Womi, Heaoa and even jovial Arau could barely put one foot in front of the other.  Imbum, the rotund interpreter had lost his bounce and Simoki the medic was running himself ragged trying to keep both himself and the carriers upright.

It was because of the efforts of two special men that we got safely over the pass and into the welcoming arms of the Catholic Mission at Bolobip.  The first was Fiamnok, the pixie-like mamusi (village constable) and sorcerer extraordinaire from Loubip.  The other was Kure Whan, my cook and aide de camp.

Fiamnok had the powerful legs of the mountain Min but Kure was a lowland Awin from Kiunga, unused to steep country and gut-busting tracks up almost vertical mountain sides.

Both men ranged up and down the patrol line, taking over from the sick carriers where needed, tending to the men in the stretchers and generally chivvying and cajoling everyone along.  At night they set up the tents, cooked for everyone and tucked the sick up in bed in front of warm fires.

Guise should be recalled in Milne Bay commemorations

DON WOOLFORD | Herald-Sun | AAP

THE LITTLE-KNOWN ROLE of the most remarkable Papuan of his generation should be recalled during the commemorations marking the 70th anniversary of the battle of Milne Bay - Japan's first defeat on land in World War II.

John Guise, the first Papuan to make a political impact, didn't mind a bit of boasting, especially if it involved cricket and the unbeaten 253 he once smashed which was, and may still be, a record for Milne Bay first grade.

When profiled after he became speaker of the House of Assembly in 1968, he didn't want to talk about his war.

He did, however, suggest speaking to Ian McDonald, who was then chairman of the territory's Copra Marketing Board.

McDonald had been Guise's boss in the Australia New Guinea Administrative Unit (ANGAU), which Guise joined as a signals clerk soon after it was set up in 1942 to provide a skeleton civil administration in the unoccupied parts of PNG. It also had quasi-military responsibilities.

On the night of August 25, 1942, the Japanese began their invasion of Milne Bay.

Guise was sent, in an open dinghy, through 32km of heavy seas, to tell the bayside villagers to douse their lights.

He then safely returned through the ships and landing barges of the advancing Japanese.

"The Japs were relying on the village lights to guide their attack," McDonald said.

"But John had done his job well. They landed three to four miles (5-6km) off course and this made a big difference to us."

After the war Guise, who was born in 1914, went from strength to strength.

He was elected to the first House of Assembly in 1964 and became speaker after his re-election.

He was a cabinet minister during the self-government period and, at independence in 1975, became PNG's first governor-general. He died in 1991.

Michael Somare, with whom he had a testy relationship, is regarded in PNG as the father of the nation.

But Guise, 22 years older, was, as the first Papuan to make a political mark, a true pioneer of nationhood.

And his exploit 70 years ago in the dark waters of Milne Bay is a reminder of the hugely important role played by civilians in the New Guinea campaigns - the ANGAU officers operating and dying behind enemy lines, the extraordinary coastwatchers, and the thousands of Papua New Guineans recruited, and in some cases press-ganged, as bearers.

It was much more than a soldiers' war.

Queensland police and policing in Papua New Guinea

QUEENSLAND POLICE SERVICE NEWS

THE QUEENSLAND POLICE have had a long association with the policing of Papua New Guinea. In February 1911 Constable Gerard Hurst [right] resigned from the Queensland Police and joined the Royal Papuan Constabulary where he stayed until May 1912, after which he rejoined the Queensland Police.

The Royal Papuan Constabulary was initially established by the Australian colonial administration as part of colonising Papua in the late 19th century.

The New Guinea Police Force, which covered the former German New Guinea and British New Guinea, was set up by Australia during World War I and formalized as part of the League of Nations mandate of 1920.

In July 1912, Constable Charles Perrin answered a call by the Commissioner of Police for a Constable with special qualifications to serve in the Royal Papuan Constabulary.

By May 1913 Perrin [left] had found the conditions of service in Papua unsatisfactory and rejoined the Queensland Police.

The RPC played a significant role resisting the Japanese occupation of New Guinea during World War II.

The two territories were amalgamated during and after World War II leading to the merger of the RPC and NGPF into the Royal Papua and New Guinea Constabulary.

Between 1945 and Independence in 1975, more than 400 police officers were recruited worldwide to form the Royal Papua and New Guinea Constabulary. A large number of Queensland Police officers resigned to serve with the RPNGC.

The structure was retained after PNG gained independence in 1975, although the name changed slightly to the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary in 1972.

The RPNGC is part of the law and justice sector of the government of PNG and is headquartered in Konedobu.

Retired RPNGC officers, their families and anyone else who may be interested are welcome to attend the Royal Papua and New Guinea Constabulary Annual Luncheon at the Waterloo Bay Hotel, 75 Berrima Street, Wynnum on Saturday 4 August at 12 noon. Email Earl Sanders at earl.040635@bigpond.com

Last journey: Rare photograph of Amelia Earhart in Lae

CLIFF HOWARD

THIS IS MY LATE DAD’S previously unpublished photograph of pilot Amelia Earhart, at her pre-flight briefing in Lae, on her last day alive - 2 July 1937 - before disappearing over the central Pacific Ocean near Howland Island.

The photo, which shows Amelia discussing her flight plans and fuel needs, was taken in the final hours of daylight before she departed at midnight. On the back of the photo my dad has written ‘last photo of Emilia Earhart (but who can tell?)’.

Also pictured is her navigator Fred Noonan [partly obscured] and to her left is my father Frank Howard, who was manager of Vacuum Oil Company PNG [later Mobil].

Amelia Mary Earhart [24 July 1897 – July 1937?] was a noted American aviation pioneer and author. She was the first aviatrix to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean during an attempt to make a circumnavigation of the globe in 1937 in a Purdue-funded Lockheed Model 10 Electra.

Amelia had married George P Putnam, in 1931. They had no children.

On 2 July, Earhart and Noonan took off from Lae in the heavily loaded Electra. Their intended destination was Howland Island, 4,113 km away. After contact was lost with Howland Island, attempts were made to reach the flyers with both voice and Morse code transmissions. Two-way radio contact was never established. The aviators and their aircraft had disappeared.

Frank Nelson Howard (1911 – 63) later became an Australian army artillery sergeant in Papua New Guinea during World War II. In 1944 he married Meredith Neil Iredale.

For further information about the photo, email Cliff Howard here.

Additional information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Earhart

Turning PNG’s rich history into a bit of scrap metal

TERRY EDWINSMITH

MANY THINGS CONTRIBUTE to a country’s history. The events of the past, whether for good or ill, fashion the way people see themselves. History is often very local but a single event may have far reaching influence or consequence.

History is often marked by events such as war, exploration, mining, border changes, the removal of trees or the planning of exotics, urbanisation, migration, colonisation, new governments, independence, world events that impact locally, family structure redefined, volcanic disturbances. The list is endless!

One small event that may have lasting consequences on an emerging nation is the insidious and destructive practice of metal theft. The removal of electrical or telephone cables to extract the copper, is annoying and contributes to a lack of production and inconvenience in the affected area.

Eventually the missing wires can be replaced or more up to date technology can replace the telephone cables with digital microwave replacements, but at a higher cost. No matter, someone else will pay, the thinking goes.

Whilst history may be best told through the recollections of those who were there, memorials and plaques also record historic events for posterity. The removal of plaques, signs, statues and grave markings, to name a few, has the effect of removing the memory of those who went before.

The wise men and women who gave service, the soldiers who fought for their land, the explorers who blazed a path and were recognised by their peers on carefully engraved plaques which if made of metal, may have been removed to the smelters’ ovens.

Once the metal has been reduced to a molten state, the memory of the individual or significant event often ceases to exist. The present generation is then ignorant of life changing events, rendering them poorer for the lack of this experience. Their heritage is taken from them.

This parlous state of affairs was bought to my attention when I recently visited the historic Old Port Moresby Cemetery at Badihagwa and a more recent gravesite at Taurama Barracks.

In each case the metal plaques bearing the deceased’s name with their personal details have been removed.

An historic old cemetery stands silent with headstones and burial markings intact, but not one name remains on the hundreds of headstones, except for the few whose details are carved in stone by the masons’ hands.

People like Sir Hubert Murray have avoided desecration of their burial site because the headstone is carved rock rather than it being a metal grave plaque.

In the Taurama Barracks Cemetery, the site of the grave of a former RSM, WO1 Fredrick Wilson remains unknown, victim of metal thieves.

What a sorry state of affairs awaits the citizens of Port Moresby when they find that the memories of their heroes and loved ones have been erased forever. What visitor or student of history to this area returns home disappointed that their search has been thwarted by “raskols”, more intent on destruction than preserving the rich history of PNG life.

Around the world, historic cemeteries provide income from the tourist as well as being a record of past civilizations.

There should be laws enacted to control the sale of scrap metal, and if such laws now exist then a strengthening of the laws with better policing should be put in place.

If the scrap metal trade is a cash-in-hand business with virtually no regulation, then it should be made a legal requirement for metal dealers to record and confirm the details of all sellers. The law needs updating with sellers being required to show some form of identification and receive payment into their bank account.

There is little point in having a rich history if present and future generations never get to learn about it. The country is poorer as a result!

The 2005 election in Bougainville’s ‘no go zone’

LEONARD FONG ROKA

IN THESE WEEKS OF JUBILATION for Bougainvilleans on the seventh anniversary of the birth of the Autonomous Bougainville Government, I want to look back at the year 2005, when the process of making today’s government was undertaken.

This first ever Bougainville general election in 2005 created the inaugural Bougainville autonomous government under the leadership of the late Joseph Kabui.

Unofficially walking out of the University of Papua New Guinea in 2004, late in that year I ended up supervising an AusAID project on researching crime on the streets of Arawa.

At the same time, I was assisting the Kieta District Manager, Otto Noruka, in his strategising of how the election should be executed in the No Go Zone of Ioro constituency (Panguna).

During this period, with the formation of an autonomous government in the air, the Meekamui was active in undermining democracy and ‘people power’.

The late Francis Ona’s two ‘iron men’, Moses Pipiro and Chris Uma, were often at loggerheads. Both were anti-ABG, but between them there was a wide political divide of who was the rightful boss of the Panguna area.

Thus, out of Bougainville’s 33 constituencies, Ioro (Panguna) was a special case. First and foremost, it was the Francis Ona’s Meekamui stronghold; then it was where most of the people who terrorised the peace process were based and repelled pro-peace government officials.

Upon my appointment as Assistant Returning Officer for what was my home constituency, I got the pro-peace Bougainville Revolutionary Army ‘A’ company commander, Peter Onabui (the man who had led the seven-man assault on the PNGDF in late 1992 and killed eight soldiers), into my eight election teams. He willingly accepted and helped greatly.

After securing Peter Onabui to the cause, I named every polling booth using my well established knowledge of the constituency. The main problem that remained was the appointment of polling officials to man the booths.

The problem was the culture in Bougainville whereby everybody wanted to be part of the effort despite the fact that the system cannot cater for everyone, especially financially. And most, seeing themselves as being neglected, resorted to a threat of arms. This often demoralised new people.

My eight polling booths (some were to move from one location to another to accommodate voters) were Okoni (mobile), Narinai, Bapong (mobile), Tonanau, Barako (mobile), Toku (mobile), Dapera and Parakake. And so I went about seeking former BRA men to lead.

As I was scavenging the Toio Valley south of the Panguna mine and behind the Guava-Kokore ridge looking for men to work as polling officials, a former BRA man handed me a Colt M1917 .45 revolver. However I encountered nothing negative so it was that the teams were readied and their names forwarded to Returning Officer Noruka for approval.

Then, the teams attended the three day election workshop at the United Church Youth Centre complex and were intellectually and economically geared for the tasks at hand.

The last concern to me and my teams was the transport of the ballot boxes to and back from Panguna.

Three years amongst the cannibals

BY HARRY TOPHAM

WHILST ROAMING THROUGH the Internet looking for information on early PNG history, I inadvertently found a very interesting book on pre German times in the New Guinea Islands.

A wild country or three years amongst the cannibals of New Britain was written by Wilfred Powell FRGS in 1883 and traces young Powell's adventures travelling in the New Britain and New island regions from 1875 to 1878.

Financed by a group of wealthy Sydney patrons, a young Powell set off from Sydney aboard a 15 ton ketch to New Britain via the Torres Strait thence around the Trobriand Islands eventually arriving in the Gazelle.

It must be remembered that at that time the region was a virtually uncontrolled area with no formal government in place.

It was a time well before the Germans later annexation of New Guinea although it seems that the British authorities, through their Fiji based Governor of Polynesia, kept a watchful eye over its British missionaries who had ventured northwards to establish their influence in this area.

Although a relatively wild place, it is interesting to note that other outsiders had also moved there to establish trading posts and there was considerable maritime traffic passing through the area.

Wilfred Powell lead quite a remarkable life starting out as a scholar, adventurer and later a noted diplomatic holding numerous Consul General’s positions before his retirement.

Although Powell was a noted scholar, this book was written to capture a wide audience as evidenced by his style of writing which is laconic, simple prose, written in a rather swashbuckling cavalier style with enough embellishment provided to keep the readers attention firmly fixed to the pages awaiting for the next unexpected outcomes happening.

The book appears to have been a secondary interest to Powell’s real intent, which was academic in nature dealing with serous studies into linguistic, ethnological and zoological issues, which was his academic forte.

His attention to detail was also remarkable, with even the names of villages visited recorded on his maps.

Although much of his more serious research findings are skipped over in this book, it contains many sketches that obviously formed a greater part of his research notes.

Powell’s adventures are remarkable. He was present during the massacre of the Presbyterian missionaries in the Gazelle. He was around when the Mother Volcano erupted forming what were later named the Beehives in Rabaul harbour.

Joseph Kabui & his leadership of Bougainville

BY LEONARD FONG ROKA

THE LATE JOSEPH CANNSIUS KABUI was the last premier of the North Solomons Province in 1990 when the Bougainville crisis erupted and the first President of the Autonomous Bougainville Government in 2005 as the result of the Bougainville Peace Process that slowly began in 2004.

Joseph Kabui was born around 1954 in Sipuru Village (new Paruparu in the Evo-Torau constituency). His mother, Agatha Sipura (my great grandmother), was a widower and hails from the Tumpusiong Valley of Panguna. She had my two grandmothers with her first husband and remarried into Evo (our neighbouring constituency) and had the next three that are from the elders, Martin Miriori, Joseph Kabui and a woman.

He was educated at Pirurari, Sipatako village schools, Tunuru, Saint Joseph’s Rigu mission schools and Ulapia (Channel College) in PNG. He took sometimes with the BCL civil works as a spotter handling the stop-go sign in the work places. From here, late Henry Moses (then head of BCL workers’ union) had him in the Panguna mining workers’ union and from here he spent a year or two at the University of PNG and back in BCL again. After sometime, the union had him in the United States in a program on labour laws.

After returning, he was into politics. He was with the community government for a while in the early 1980s and contested the provincial election in the mid-1980s and began the premier of North Solomons in 1987 to 1989 when the crisis came about to splash out the PNG people and government.

Has many, for example his NSP government secretary, late Peter Tsiamalili left the island he after being threatened by the BRA, he remained back and faced the consequences. Despite being harassed by the order less and unorganized BRA personnel of the 1990s, he remained steadfast a Bougainvillean leader.

In 1990, the late Francis Ona after shutting the mine and getting rid of non-Bougainvilleans had not much interest in the former NSP premier but, it was Ona’s military strategist, Sam Kauona, who actually invited Mr. Joseph Kabui in the BRA politics of that era. In one of the late months of 1990, Sam Kauona ordered his faction of the BRA to bring Mr Joseph Kabui and his elder brother, Mr Martin Miriori to his village in Tororei; there he officially asked them, especially Kabui to help the BRA in its political manoeuvring.

From here, the Bougainville Interim Government (BIG) was born. Some peace efforts like the Endeavour Accord, a trip to the UN Rights of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples hearing in Geneva, and the declaration of independence in 1991 (UDI). Also, there was this establishment of the Radio Free Bougainville that broadcasted from Arawa that drove a lot of BIG propaganda to the population.

The day the Kukukukus came to town: a recollection

BY PAUL OATES

MID-WAY THROUGH 1970, it came time for the annual Lae Show and this was something District Commissioner Bill (Father) Seale gave much attention to.

It was a splendid opportunity for each Sub District to display the craft and produce of its region. Each was required to submit a display and most of the liklik kiaps were required to provide some sort of supervision for those who were attending. Many of us were also required to help organise the Sub District exhibit.

The prestige of winning the Sub District award was, we discovered, much sought after and competition was fierce.  Various Show committees had been preparing for months but to many of us ‘Johnnies come lately’ it was a new experience.

So there we were, three liklik kiaps from the Finschhafen Sub District, who had been extracted from our stations, flown to Lae at short notice and told we were to organise our exhibit.

I remember arriving at the showground, showing my Police Warrant Card to get in and being met with a mountain of produce, various exhibits including a live tree kangaroo in a wire-fronted box and a group of Tami Island wood carvers. A large display stand had been allocated for our use and we observed other field staff busily erecting their own Sub District exhibits nearby.

Having visited the Sydney Royal Easter Show in my youth, my artistic temperament came to the fore and I suggested we collect all the fruit and vegetables from the Sub District that had been piled in a heap at the front of the stand, and separate it into groups of various colours and sizes.

We could then place this fruit and vegetables into various geometric patterns on the stand. So for the want of any other direction or even a better idea, this we started to do.

At that point, some Kukukuku warriors in full dress intervened. Their Sub District (was it Wau or Menyamya?), had brought these blokes as part of their display.

The ‘Kuks’ as everyone else referred to them (although I understand this was originally a derogatory term in their language meaning muruk, cassowary), decided to stage an impromptu singsing rehearsal.

The Kukukuku form of singsing is quite different from other places. Firstly, they do not use drums (kundu) and, instead of having eloquent head dresses, costumes and dance steps, they grab their weapons and men and women run around in a circle yelling “Eyahh…yah…yah…’ in a high pitched yell.

We didn’t hear that initial cry however we did hear the result. There was a sudden rumble, not unlike a guria (earthquake), a great cloud of dust and, within 30 seconds, the whole area cleared of people.

‘Doc’ Vernon of Daru - doctor, planter trader

BY PHILIP SELTH

GEOFFREY HAMPDEN VERNON was born in Hastings, Sussex, England on 16 December 1882. Having migrated to Australia where his father was NSW government architect, Vernon was educated at Sydney Church of England Grammar School and graduated the University of Sydney MB, ChB 1905 and ChM 1907.

After a residency at Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney, Vernon practiced in country towns in NSW and Queensland. He was appointed Captain in the 4th Light Horse Field Ambulance, AIF on 4 March 1915. Vernon damaged his hearing by concussion, probably on Gallipoli.

He was MID and awarded the MC, for ‘conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty’ when RMO with the 11th Light Horse Regiment at the battle of Romani in August 1916.

(The citation noted that Vernon ‘tended and dressed the wounds under heavy fire, displaying great courage and determination. Later, he remained out all night with a wounded man’.)

Promoted Major in January 1917, Vernon was wounded in action in November at Tel el Sheria. He returned to Australia in August 1918.

Vernon was discharged in December ‘in consequence of medical unfitness’. He was appointed an Honorary Major in the Reserve of Officers.

In the post war years he was the Queensland government medical officer, and had a private practice on Thursday Island. During this time he regularly visited Dutch New Guinea and Papua.

In 1932 he moved to Daru where he bought a store and small kapok plantation, continued to practice as a doctor, and, so Stuart Hawthorne tells us in The Kokoda Trail: A history, continued ‘his cherished explorations of the Fly River region’.

Having sold his interests on Daru in 1938, he bought a coconut plantation at Port Glasgow in eastern Papua where he tried to grow kapok then rubber. He retained the plantation and an interest in a block growing rubber near Kokoda when appointed government medical officer on Misima Island.

In Sydney in 1941 on leave he was rejected by the Army because of his age. Back in Port Moresby he was mobilised in the AAMC on 27 February 1942.

He was immediately attached to the Papuan Infantry Battalion as Medical Officer and placed in charge of the native hospital at Sapphire Creek until June when he went to build a hospital at Ilolo near the start of the Kokoda Trail.

He worked as a doctor to the Papuan carrier line, but in July 1942 on his own initiative he crossed the Owen Stanleys and tended the wounded of the 39th Australian Infantry Battalion at Kokoda.

His lobbying of General Rowell led to better conditions for the carriers being employed on the Trail. Captain Vernon became one of the ‘most easily recognised and remembered men on the Trail’.

‘Deaf, husky-voiced, outwalking men 30 years younger, indifferent to personal safety or comfort, broad in interests and accomplishments, Vernon (now ‘the old Doc’) was being called an “unsung hero” by 1943’. He did not leave Oro Bay until March 1943.

Then and now: a tale of a legacy that was lost

BY ROSS WILKINSON

The story of the Bangalum–Middle Watut Road, Mumeng Sub-District, Morobe Province

IN 1971 I WAS THE KIAP ADVISER to the Mumeng Local Government Council and, effectively, its works supervisor.

Registered on the works program for 1970-71 and 1971-72 was the construction of the Bangalum-Middle Watut Road [pictured above] that extended beyond Sambio into the Watut Gorge where the Watut River intersected with the Mumeng River. 

This project was just one of many in the Morobe Province initiated under the prompting of the then District Commissioner Herbert Percy “Bill” Seale who was awarded an OBE for his contribution to the Territory’s communications through the construction of roads like this and airstrips.  Of course all the kiaps under Bill thought his award was for “Other Bastards’ Efforts”!

I had obtained a permit to use explosives and, on behalf of the Mumeng Council, a licence to store explosives.  I designed and constructed a secure concrete magazine for this out of Mumeng along the Wau Road with a high earth barrier between the building and the road.  The explosives were necessary because much of the early road bench was through quite steep rock face.

I hired a compressor and jackhammer to drill the shot holes.  I had police stationed on the Wau Road to stop traffic whilst I charged and fired the shot holes in series to bring down the rock face and create road bench space.  After each set of explosions, I had to check the rock face for evidence of any charges that had not fired before continuing.

The Council had also hired a private bulldozer contractor to do the clearing of rubble and form the bench.  Occasionally, as happens with fractured rock, rocks would lock into each other and not fall which would create potentially dangerous situations for the dozer operator working underneath the rock face. 

This meant that I had to occasionally climb the face with a stick of gelignite, fuse and detonator to set a charge to break the tangle and bring the face down.  This meant working closely with the dozer operator including standing on the blade for him to lift me up to the rock face.

Occasionally, to break the tedium, the dozer operator would do the drilling and blasting and I would drive the dozer.  That was until the day I had a brain fade and nearly put the dozer over the edge of the bench into the river below.  I haven’t driven a bulldozer since!

One day, the Council President, Mambuyong Tukop, who came from the Watut, complained to the Assistant District Commissioner, Tony Cooke, that we were proceeding too slowly.  He was invited to spend a day with us to understand the daily work requirements and patterns. 

Because of the ever present danger of falling rocks, he was invited by the dozer operator to stand on the running board and keep a lookout above for such rocks and warn the operator.

I had just fired a set of charges which resulted in a hang-up of rocks in the fractured rock face.  Commencing our usual procedure, I placed a stick of gelignite in my belt, clipped a detonator onto a length of safety fuse and put the crimping pliers in my pocket. I climbed onto the dozer blade as the operator manoeuvred me into position. 

Who bit my border? Headhunters & the jag

BY FRANK JACOBS
NEW YORK TIMES

YOU PROBABLY DON’T THINK MUCH about the border between Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. And when you do, you might not think much of it.

It looks so straightforward and simple: following the 141st meridian east, it neatly splits the island of New Guinea in two almost equal halves.

The western half is part of Indonesia, while the eastern half forms the bulk of the independent state of Papua New Guinea, which also consists of the Bismarck Archipelago and several smaller islands.

The border has an understated beauty: the whole of New Guinea itself, which looks like a tilde, seems to balance on that line halfway across it, as if the island were an Alexander Calder mobile, and the border the string holding it up.

Whether you consider the accidental symmetry of the Papuan border pretty, or just pretty boring, is a matter of taste. It is also beside the point: zoom in on the southern half of the border, and its evident simplicity collapses.

About 250 miles south of its northern terminus at Wutung, on the Pacific coast, there’s a huge chunk missing from the straight line as the border jags west. It looks like teeth marks, as if someone took a giant bite out of the border but then decided they didn’t like the taste of it after all.

That chunk is a bend in the Fly River, most of which courses east of the border, on the Papua New Guinea side. The bend strays west across the 141st meridian over a distance of about 40 miles, as the Torresian crow flies. Following the thalweg along its many twists and turns, the riverine border adds up to about 95 miles.

Curiously, when the Fly bends back west and the border resumes its straight southward course, it does so 1.3 miles east of the 141st parallel, an indentation that is imperceptible on all but the most detailed maps.

It’s hard to see what could be the advantage of having a border run through impenetrable jungle slightly to the east of another, equally impenetrable stretch of jungle. Which raises the question, as itchy as those mosquito bites reported by venturers into the Papuan inlands: Why?

The answer lies at the border’s southern terminus, another 150 miles farther down, on the shores of the Arafura Sea. And it involves headhunting — but not in the “Hey, have we got a job for you!” sense of the word.

In 1893, the area was plagued by a rash of actual, proper headhunting. These raids required action from the British, who then were the colonial power in the southeastern quarter of Papua New Guinea. But their room for maneuver was complicated by the dubious, unmarked position of the border with the then-Dutch-controlled west of New Guinea.

The problem was solved by a deal that moved the border below the Fly a bit to the east, to the mouth of the Bensbach River, conveniently nearby, in exchange for the adoption of the Fly River border, further north.

The murder of Jack Emanuel, district commissioner

BY ANDREW LESLIE PHILLIPS
Memoirs – Part 6

EAST NEW BRITAIN District Commissioner Jack Emanuel’s murder was political.

In May 1969, a year before I arrived on Rabaul’s Gazelle Peninsula, the Mataungan Association was formed. As the self-appointed voice of the Tolai people, one of the most politically sophisticated groups in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea, it sought the abolition of the recently created Multi Racial Local Government Council.

No doubt they were influenced by the spate of African liberation movements. Like the Bougainvillians the Tolais wanted independence. During this period there was friction between supporters and opponents in the Tolai community and property was destroyed. A whiff of revolution was in the air.

Jack Emanuel had been detached and appointed District Commissioner on special duties, to convene one-on-one meetings with influential Tolais from both factions. Emanuel reported privately to the head of the Department of District Administration in Port Moresby, the legendary chief kiapTom Ellis.

From the late nineteenth century there had been gradual encroachments on traditional Tolai lands by German and Australian interests. A recommendation by a District Commissioner at Rabaul just after World War II, that the Administration buy up all run-down plantation land and hand it back to dispossessed Tolais, was vetoed by the Australian colonial government.

From 1946 onwards the people of the Kabaira area occupied about 120 acres of unused plantation land owned by expatriate interests. From 1967 there were intermittent attempts to evict the villagers.

For six years, the Kabaira villagers continued to seek a solution from the Land Titles Commission. They felt the courts were denying them protection and that they might lose all their land. The leading villagers in the Kabaira area decided to bring their grievances to the notice of Jack Emanuel.

On the morning of Jack Emanuel’s death, about 30 villagers from the Kabaira area moved on to Kabaira Plantation, chased the plantation laborers off the land and started cutting grass. The plantation manager was alerted and a small police presence, which had been left on the plantation after a previous trespass, radioed the authorities in Rabaul.

Jack Emanuel and two squads of police totaling 60 men, were sent to investigate. They were confronted by the grass cutters and a large number of villagers. A group of ten village leaders wearing traditional face and hair decoration confronted Emanuel and the police.

One of them, appeared angry and excitable and approached Emanuel and they spoke briefly. Emanuel took the man by the arm and they moved away from the main police party. Emanuel was taken into the bush and out of sight. The police waited.

Rabaul: the world shakes, intrigue - and murder

BY ANDREW LESLIE PHILLIPS
Memoirs – Part 5

IN 1970 I RECEIVED INSTRUCTIONS to leave Bougainville and move to the government run radio station in Rabaul where I would become Assistant Station Manager.

In the late nineteenth century Rabaul had been the capital of New Guinea when it was occupied by Germany. It was home to the Tolai people who had a long history of contact with Europeans and were considered the most sophisticated of tribal peoples in the entire country.

When the first World War broke out in 1914, Germany surrendered the island to Britain who, in turn passed it to Australia under a League of Nations mandate. New Britain, like most of Papua New Guinea, was invaded by Japan in the Second World War as they pushed south towards Australia.

The planters, Europeans who leased large tracts of land to grow copra made from coconuts and lived a leisurely colonial life on the tropical island, were forced to abandon their plantations but some stayed to hide in the jungle to become coast watchers.

The coast watchers were legendary. They lived with the natives and reported on Japanese maritime troop movements, peering through binoculars from their hideouts on the shore.

Like most of the Pacific islands, you could still see the remains of the war littering the beaches, rusty hulks of landing barges and sometimes, the twisted remains of fighter planes still visible in the jungle.

My wife and I moved into an apartment and assembled our bamboo furniture we’d brought from Bougainville. I joined the local yacht club and took to sailing a sixteen foot skiff called a Fireball in competitions in Rabaul harbor. Many deep- water sailors used Rabaul as their home base and the yacht club was a locus of expatriate life.

The manager of the radio station was another Australian, a garrulous fellow, opinionated and demanding, who soon left his young wife for the prettiest girl in the office. He was new to Papua New Guinea, did not speak the lingua franca - Pidgin English, and was reliant on me more than he wanted.

I handled the local news, writing it in simple English and passing it to the staff to translate into local languages for broadcast. I had no love for this man and when he became ill as he often did, and was finally hospitalised to have half his intestines removed, I was not unhappy. I was in charge and things seemed to go more smoothly at the station.

It was on one such occasion that a severe earthquake hit Rabaul. Like many islands in this part of New Guinea, volcanoes abound and Vulcan volcano had suddenly risen in Rabaul’s harbor in the 1930’s, steaming from the sea. Years later, in 1994, it exploded showering the surrounding area for miles with pumice ash devastating the town and causing Rabual’s abandonment.

I was waiting at the Rabaul airport for the Australian minister in charge of colonial territories, who was making an official visit. As his plane circled overhead preparing to land I felt the earth begin to move.

The Bougainville revolution & its consequences

BY ANDREW LESLIE PHILLIPS
Memoirs – Part 4

THE WEALTH GENERATED BY THE RIO TINTO GROUP, a diversified, British-Australian, multinational mining and resources group with headquarters in London and Melbourne, did little to help the local Bougainville economy.

The Papua New Guinea central government received a small percentages of the profits yet it still comprised almost half the gross national product of the new island nation. Papua New Guinea had become reliant and subservient to new white masters.

The people of Bougainville began voicing their dissatisfaction to these arrangements in the late 1960s. The murmurings were evident when Barry Middlemiss sat with us that morning at the Kieta Hotel.

Magistrates, protected by police and patrol officers, sat with the locals to negotiate land purchases but offered them only a pittance.

The promises of wealth and other benefits never materialised and as the natives saw their gardens and rivers, their forests and hunting domains ruined by the mining venture, they felt helpless and angry.

Local leaders demanded more and though the Bougainvilleans gained some independence in 1972, the PNG Parliament denied complete autonomy and a fair share of profits from the mine.

Geographically Bougainville is part of the Solomon Islands. Only by a caprice of history did it become part of the political entity known as Papua New Guinea. There is nothing new about this situation for colonialism has always disregarded the natural world and its bio-regional borders favouring a policy of might is right and national borders, like history, have always been written by the victors.

The entreaty by local leaders to recognise Bougainville’s geographic uniqueness was refused by the central government which was no surprise given the potential wealth of the island and the substantial investment by the mining companies. The limited autonomy granted Bougainville was more symbolic than real.

After two decades of ignored protests, petitions, compensation claims and twenty years after I’d left, Bougainvilleans had had enough.

In 1988, a handful of islanders stole company explosives from the mine and destroyed electricity pylons, buildings and machinery and, using guerilla tactics, shut down the mine.

The Bougainville revolution became secessionist revolt and lasted ten years claiming some 20,000 lives.

When I’d arrived in the late 1960s, 80,000 people lived on the island but by 1988 that number had doubled. Until revolution broke out, the mine accounted for around 45% of Papua New Guinea’s total export earnings. Without these earnings PNG would quickly go broke.

Papua New Guinea, with the assistance of Australia, responded to the revolt by sending in the military. As a result, Bougainville declared itself independent and formed the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) to defend their land and the environment from further exploitation.

Australian intelligence advised Papua New Guinea to enforce a total goods and service blockade of the island, including medical supplies. No one was allowed on or off the island. Many of those trying to bring in supplies or transport refugees off island, were killed by the PNG army who now maintained a stranglehold around Bougainville.

The Phillips’ memoirs 3 - A chance at journalism

BY ANDREW LESLIE PHILLIPS

I WOULD BE POSTED BACK TO KIETA in Bougainville as an assistant radio station manager and journalist. By now the copper mine had completely changed the landscape.

By the late 1960s, the small, quiet town I’d known less than two years earlier, had become a seething locus of industrial activity. Eventually the mine in the mountains would grow to a gaping red hole nearly a mile and a half across and half a mile deep, one of the largest in the world.

I was the assistant manager at Radio Bougainville. The manager had worked in commercial radio in newsrooms in Australia, and he typed one-hundred words a minute. I was very impressed.

He was intelligent, knowledgeable, generous and encouraging and it did not take long before I found myself back in the District Office - but this time asking the questions and reporting answers in simple English news broadcasts I wrote for broadcast.

I was treated with some disdain by the patrol officers, with whom I’d worked. I was seen as a turncoat and an outsider. But I revelled in my new role and held no animosity toward my former colleagues.

I knew I’d made the right decision and that their days were numbered. I was carving a new career, capitalizing on my local knowledge, which was unique amongst my expatriate radio colleagues.

Our small radio stations were independent from the District Administration and answerable to the District Commissioner only in declared emergencies. The model of broadcasting was similar to that of the Australian Broadcasting Commission, which in turn was based on the British BBC model.

We saw ourselves as independent and adversarial to the government. I was proud of this position. We were far more than propagandists though propaganda of a productive kind, broadcasting health and local government messages, was part of our modus operandi.

Now there were thousands of workers on Bougainville, living in air-conditioned trailers and much of my job involved reporting on the activities of the mine.

The track I’d driven from Kieta to the Panguna mine site when I’d arrived on the island two years earlier, was now a four lane highway wide enough for dump trucks with tires twelve-feet high and it sliced through the landscape climbing up the steep Crown Prince mountain range to Panguna. Each time I visited, the site was bigger and the open cut deeper.

And it was not just the mine itself that had obliterated the landscape I’d come to know and love. Where once had been a curving beach and coconut trees at Loloho, was now a wharf stretching far out to sea ready to receive the ships that would carry the ore to market.

Rows of prefabricated boxes, housing offices and personnel, sprouted along the beachfront and the roads buzzed with activity while the natives watched with sad resignation.

Their gardens were gone. No longer did they paddle into the bay to fish. Some now worked as laborers for the mining companies. The canteens were crowded with redskins, highlanders whose skin was lighter with a red tinge, unlike the inky black Bougainvillians who resented these interlopers who stole their woman and were known as “rascals”, the pidgin English term for trouble- makers.

Things in Bougainville were changing rapidly. Arawa plantation where Barry Middlemiss had worked tending the copra plantation and Kip McKillop’s magnificent orchid collection, had been flattened and it was now the base of coastal operations for the mining venture and the port would grow to be the third largest in the country. A huge pipe designed to carry a slurry of copper and water from Panguna now speared through the jungle down from mountains to the wharf.

The tailings, from the mine site, the toxic residue of mud and chemicals extracted from the gigantic hole, spilled down into the headwater valley of the Kawerong River and thence into the Jaba valley, where they spread out across the valley floor, destroying large areas of rain forest and killing fish in the rivers.

The Jaba discharged about 150,000 tonnes of rock waste and tailings daily. A tonne is more than 2,000 pounds weight and 2,000 pounds is one ton so there was lot of it! At its mouth the Jaba River built a delta of poisonous mud out into Empress Augusta Bay, and sand and gravel spread northwards along the shore. No longer did the rivers and the valleys teem with fish and wildlife. It was a dead zone. And the lives of those who lived there were irrevocably changed.

Before the mine opened I had walked those valleys and crossed the pristine rivers on patrols. I saw it in its original state, as the native had for centuries. But now everything had changed and it was with heavy heart I watched as gigantic yellow machines lumbered across the landscape ripping huge chunks off the mountainside searching for copper and gold.

My first PNG posting – struggle on Bougainville

In this second part of his PNG memoirs from the 1970s, ANDREW LESLIE PHILLIPS, now a radio station manager in the USA, recounts his first experience of being a patrol officer in Bougainville

THE BOUGAINVILLE DISTRICT OFFICE was close to the sea; a flimsy two story building overlooking Kieta’s harbor.

The air was infused with the musky smell of copra, dried coconut kernels from which coconut oil is squeezed, stacked along the shore in brown hemp sacks ready for the small boats that carried them to trading vessels anchored in the harbor for delivery to Rabaul and the world market.

The dust from the road that serviced the harbor, floated through the louvered windows of the office and most days the sun beat down on this small coastal town.

Kieta was perched on a narrow ribbon of land skirting the harbor. Pok Pok Island loomed off shore, protecting the harbor from the squalls and storms that sometimes tore in from the east with great ferocity.

Pok Pok [crocodile in pidgin English] had the shape of a huge crocodile lying flat on its belly on top of the sea, its huge head jutting to the south, its tail tapering to the north. It was inhabited by local natives who paddled their small canoes loaded with copra, fish and vegetables for sale in Kieta.

Jimmy Wong’s Chinese trade store was at one end and of the settlement and Kieta’s hospital, a series of grass huts with tin roofs, was at the other. Between were administrative buildings huddled under the ubiquitous coconut trees that curved and swayed against the cloudless sky providing dappled shade from the tropic sun.

Houses with enclosed verandahs protecting the inhabitants from the teeming malarial anopheles mosquitoes, crept back from the shoreline and climbed steeply up the mountains offering a fine view of the picturesque harbor.

A thick green blanket of jungle, a carpet of dense undergrowth and a profusion of tropical forest trees swathed in creepers and vines and screeching wildlife, accelerated rapidly into the clouds toward the inland spine of the island.

The Kieta Club, a white’s only club where the local expatriates drank too much, took pride of place at the center of the small community and near the shoreline was the Kieta hotel where I stayed when I first arrived.

It was run by a small jolly Aussie fellow who wore colorful sarongs and recruited natives from the Mortlock Islands over the horizon, an idyllic group of small islands on a single atoll, north east of Bougainville and part of the Solomons.

The Mortlock islanders are Polynesians with straight hair and slim bodies who fitted the stereotype created by the French artist, Paul Gauguin who’d lived in Polynesian Tahiti in the latter part of his life. They were unlike the Negroid, stocky, blue-black Bougainville natives.

This was my first posting in Papua New Guinea. I was 23 and far from my former life in Australia. It was almost my dream come true. Almost because I was acting as district clerk, tied to a desk and a formidable row of file cabinets, answering directly to the District Commissioner.

The adventures I sought in the jungle would have to wait for the return of the regular clerk who was on furlough for six months and I was his replacement.

I bunked in a back room at the Kieta hotel with three other patrol officers who were new inductees to the Bougainville District administration. There’d been an influx of officers because copper and gold had been discovered in Bougainville’s central highlands.

Soon landsmen and surveyors would arrive to negotiate purchase of large tracts of beach front for a massive port to export the minerals. And thousands of acres of virgin jungle high in the mountains to mine the minerals.

It would be patrol officers who’d accompany the land surveyors, magistrates and land wardens, to negotiate land exchanges to begin one of the world’s largest mining ventures.

A new life in Papua New Guinea

BY ANDREW LESLIE PHILLIPS

Andrew Leslie Phillips is now general manager at radio station KPFA-FM in the USA but as a young man he spent time in Papua New Guinea as patrol officer. Andrew has now written a memoir of those times. We’ll be publishing extracts in six parts....

IN AUSTRALIA I SICKENED OF THE URBAN LIFE, the crowded rush to work in the mornings, the tiresome after-work booze-ups at the pub and the predictability of my future. I’d spent five years in advertising. I was now an account executive doing the bidding of my corporate masters, selling the American dream that had become Australia’s.

My initial fascination had become a curse and no longer was I interested in the shallow search for unique selling points and catchy phrases, the pretty pictures and the jingles, selling capitalism to the masses.

As I observed the careers of my fellow workers grinding relentlessly toward retirement, I felt a dark cloud descending and as it thickened around me I struggled to find a way to escape.

I thought about inland Australia where mining companies paid well and life was rough in the desert. I considered joining the army, something to initiate and toughen me and help me escape the malaise I felt.

But the war in Vietnam was in the headlines every day and Australians were dying in a distant struggle that made no sense to me and I quickly dropped the idea. And then, one day, an old school friend suggested Papua New Guinea.

We were having lunch at a pub when he told me about patrol officers, young men employed by the Australian government taming the wilds of Papua New Guinea. Suddenly the cloud lifted as I realized that perhaps this was the answer, a way out; overseas travel and adventure, all paid for by the Australian government.

Immediately I began reading to learn as much as I could about this faraway place and applied to become a Cadet Patrol Officer with the Australian Department of External Affairs. It would take six long months before the invitation for an interview arrived.

Rudyard Kipling and Joseph Conrad had nothing on James Sinclair and Jack Hides, Ivan Champion and the other great explorers who wrote of their adventures in Papua New Guinea; who’d disappeared behind the ranges and into the swamps and vast inland valleys deep in unexplored territories on the second largest island on Earth.

These books vibrated with authentic adventure and raw excitement that tantalized and fascinated me. The authors were ordinary Australians in an extraordinary country and I prayed that one day I would join their ranks and see this land and the people about which they wrote.

Their books described journeys into territory never seen by white men, cannibals and crocodiles, exploratory patrols that lasted months and yielded reports of sorcery and magic, unique characters and taim bilng tumbuna, the time in the past which still lived in the present in Papua New Guinea.

It has been called “the land that time forgot”, “the mysterious island”, “the most primitive place on Earth”, but these were European appellations and had no significance to a people who had evolved complex kinship systems and survival techniques of great diversity and complexity unmatched in my white washed culture.

I felt ready for a new life and my desire was strong. My will to make the cut filled my every day. But I was twenty-three years old, at the older end of the spectrum for applicants, and feared my dream might not materialize.

But then the invitation for an interview arrived. Four hundred young men had applied for forty new positions as cadet patrol officers in what appeared to be the last induction, as the colonial period slowly wound down in Papua New Guinea.

My interviewer was a big, bluff former senior patrol officer who spoke softly belying the image I had of hard-bitten veterans of New Guinea. He told of his love of the island and the people and a life very different to mine and I hung on his every word.

The trials of J J ‘Mangrove’ Murphy, 1914-97

BY PHILIP SELTH OAM

IN EARLY 1946 AT LAE, Captain John Joseph Murphy, a former Papua New Guinea Patrol Officer and Coastwatcher on New Britain was tried by court-martial.

He was charged with having ‘treacherously given intelligence to the Japanese’ and, under section 40 of the Army Act, with ‘conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline’ in that while a prisoner-of-war he gave to the Japanese more than his name, rank and number.

The charges, two of which carried the death penalty, were based on a captured document purportedly a record of Murphy’s interrogation when captured and statements taken by the Allies from Japanese soldiers at the end of the War.

Defended by his cousin, the Sydney QC Eric Miller, Murphy was honourably acquitted of all charges.

Murphy had spent more than a year as a prisoner of the Japanese at Rabaul.  Only seven of the original 63 prisoners in the Tunnel Hill camp survived; Murphy was the only Australian. 

The court-martial arose from information Murphy allegedly gave the Japanese when he was captured in October 1943.  At the court martial the defence argued that Japanese documents had been incorrectly translated and that others had given information to the Japanese under torture.

After the war, Murphy returned to PNG, finishing his career as District Commissioner of the Gulf District, based at Kerema.

A film documentary is now being made on John Murphy’s life.  A radio program on the ABC is imminent. 

Attempts have been made to persuade the [federal] government to posthumously recognise John Murphy’s service as a Coastwatcher and in helping keep fellow prisoners alive in Rabaul.

But not everyone accepts the court-martial verdict.

Murphy was a well-regarded Administration officer.  His actions in the Rabaul POW camps clearly saved lives.  For that alone he deserves recognition.

But how can one explain the captured Japanese documents and testimony of Murphy’s interrogators?  Records now available show the case the defence mounted at the court-martial was in part flawed. The prosecution and conduct of the case, too, was flawed. Today, it is most unlikely the case would get to trial.

John Murphy does deserve public recognition for his time as a POW. But one cannot simply say the court-martial should never have been held.  There were questions to be answered (although they should have been addressed by an inquiry rather than by a court martial.)

I am writing a biography of Eric Miller QC, having written his entry for the Australian Dictionary of Biography.  In the course of my research into Miller QC’s life, I stumbled upon John Murphy’s story, with which I have become fascinated.  (Others use the term ‘obsessed’.)

So I am now trying to juggle my professional and family life with researching and writing two biographies, both about Australians who deserve greater recognition that they have received to date.

Philip Selth is Executive Director of the New South Wales Bar Association and a former President of the Canberra & District Historical Society.  This note was originally published in the CDHS Newsletter from a paper Mr Selth  gave at the National Archives of Australia, Canberra, on 13 July 2010

Patrolling Papua: the Army in pre-independence PNG

Former Australian Army Sgt TERRY EDWINSMITH recalls an epic patrol from Wanigela to Gurney by 1 PIR (D Company) in March/April 1968

ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT TASKS of the Australian Army in 1968 was to assist the development of the Pacific Islands Regiments in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea and help guide the military personnel towards the country’s imminent independence.

To this end the regiments engaged in regular defence force training and civic action duties to help local communities all over the country.

The patrols that ventured into most parts of the Territory undertook a variety of civic action projects, such as bridge building and repair, track maintenance, general village repairs and gardening work.  More specialist corps provided medical aid, road development, civic buildings and bridge construction.

These activities helped create constructive attitudes in the minds of the soldiers towards the people and such activities helped identify the people with their Army.

These patrols assisted recruiting in remote areas, and helped minimise tribal exclusivism in forming an integrated National Defence Force.  The soldiers themselves developed a pride in their history and unique culture as they patrolled even the remotest villages of the island.

So it was with some of those goals in mind, a desire to conduct a census en route and also to check the accuracy of the maps of the day with the actual features on the ground, that an RAAF Caribou aircraft was loaded at Jackson Strip, Port Moresby with members of 1 PIR’s D Company heading for Wanigela in the Northern Province. 

Sgt Tribuna, a Papuan, was in charge of loading.  The DHC Caribou, first purchased in 1964, was the workhorse of the Australian Military until 2009.  It was a versatile transport aircraft, capable of short takeoffs and landings on unprepared runways of more than 365 metres. 

Its rear opening ramp doors enabled personnel and cargo to be unloaded quickly.  Aircraft could carry 32 troops or 2 jeeps or equivalent.  The ramp was also used for parachute drops.  A purpose built urinal at this ramp had few users when the tail gate was lowered whilst in flight.  For some years Ansett-MAL operated a single commercial Caribou in the Highlands.

An early morning start for D Company based at Taurama Barracks in mid March had most personnel and provisions in Wanigela by early afternoon.  Wanigela airport was built by the Allied Forces in WWII and consisted of a single grassed runway primarily used for transport flights.  This inland village airstrip was known as No 2 Strip during the War.

Blatchford education archives add papers for 1968

THE BLATCHFORD COLLECTION is the largest compilation of archival materials relating to the pre-Independence Papua New Guinea education system brought together in the one place.

And, after a bit of an absence as he pursued more athletic interests, Loch Blatchford [pictured amidst his collection] has returned to the exacting task of writing abstracts of these documents to make them more accessible to researchers and to a general readership.

The bulk of the collection comprises letters and documents from the files of the PNG Department of Education before 1977. These are supplemented by material from other PNG departments and a number of private collections.

If you have documents relating to education in Papua New Guinea, you might care to email Loch Blatchford and advise him. Researchers are also welcome to get in touch with Loch.

The Blatchford Collection for 1968, together with abstracts for all the other years from 1944, is now available here in PNG Attitude.

Much of 1968 is spent examining all levels of the education system to determine its future structure, direction and related manpower needs. There is a move to involve the religious Missions in educational planning for a unified approach to education and economic development.

In January the Secondary Planning Group issues a 140-page report to support the establishment of a number of new high schools and the expansion of existing high schools.

In March the ‘Report of Joint Working Party on Educational Policy’ is produced. The report written by the Administration and the Department of External Territories, but strongly influenced by Director of Education Ken McKinnon, sets the framework for the Administration and the Missions to form an integrated education system planned on a national basis and staffed by a unified teaching service.

In August and September Professor LJ Lewis undertakes a look at the primary curriculum and advises against a rural bias. He also recommends a committee of inquiry be appointed to report on the question of relationships between the Mission and Administration education systems.

McKinnon discusses the matter with Canberra but goes on leave on 3 September and does not return until the end of February 1969. The latter half of 1968 is spent organising the membership of a committee. Beeby is a firm member and Canberra suggests Weeden as another.

In July the Ministerial Member and Assistant Member system is introduced into Parliament with Members being required to be in Port Moresby for three weeks each month to meet with the Administrator and become involved in policy and budget planning.

Mathias ToLiman the Ministerial Member for Education is taking more responsibility and the Missions, especially the Catholics, which he feels may become a tool for the Administration.

‘Programmes and Policies for the Economic Development of Papua and New Guinea’ is released in September.

The Governor-General reconstitutes the Department of Territories as the Department of External Territories so that it may concentrate the bulk of its activities on Papua and New Guinea.

And, for those readers who have not visited the Collection before, here’s what just one of those thousands of abstracts looks like:

JOHNSON LW
COLONIAL SUNSET
UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND, ST LUCIA, 1983

“After the 1968 election we had in mind the appointment of some Ministerial Members from the Pangu Pati but the party rejected these proposals preferring to be independent of government decisions.  Pangu was well led in the House by Michael Somare, with strong support from Tony Voutas, Ebia Olewale, Pita Lus and others.” p16

The orphaned islands of Bougainville and Buka

AS COUNTRIES THROUGHOUT HISTORY battled over territory, the mad rush to gain colonial territory left the world with numerous island groups split down the middle or as archipelagoes where one or two islands were isolated from the rest of the group.

This created initially artificial divisions in otherwise homogenous places that eventually became quite real over time.

In the 1880s and 1890s, the colonial aspirations of both Germany and the United Kingdom ramped up in the South Pacific.

The Solomon Islands was one of the places where the interest of the two empires collided. Under Otto von Bismarck, Germany was making its first real run at international colonisation, encouraging private companies to stake out new lands for the country to claim.

One such company was the German New Guinea Company, which sought to create a system in New Guinea similar to that of the Dutch to the west in what is now Indonesia.

Establishing a colony in 1884, the German influence soon spread from New Guinea into the islands to the east – what we know today as the Bismarck Archipelago.  As well, the northern Solomons further to the east also fell under this new protectorate.

Meanwhile, British and Australian missionaries had been entering the Solomons from the south only to receive hostile, often violent, receptions from the indigenous population; a population that had grown distrustful of outsiders due to their experiences with plantation labour recruiters. 

These ‘recruiters’ resorted to trickery and/or kidnapping to obtain labour for sugar plantations in Queensland and Fiji, as well as guano mines across the Pacific.  In order to ensure peaceful conditions in the region, and to crack down on such illegal labour practices, the UK established its own protectorate over the south Solomons in 1893.

Eventually, the claims of the Germans moving in from the north met up with those of the British in the south.  At the same time, Germany was looking to solidify it claims to the western half of Samoa, also claimed by Britain. 

In 1899, a tripartite convention granted Germany’s request to claim Western Samoa in exchange for granting the Solomons to the UK – all except for the two northernmost Solomons, Bougainville (the largest of the group) and Buka, which remained with German New Guinea.  After World War I, rule over the territory was transferred to Australia.

Under Australian rule, large copper deposits were first exploited on Bougainville, and starting in the 1960s the Panguna mine became one of the largest on the planet.  Almost all of the profits from this operation went into the coffer of its Australian owners or to the Papua New Guinea government rather than back into Bougainville. 

Disgruntled, a movement amongst Bougainvilleans for independence arose in the mid-1960s.  While this did lead to some autonomy in 1972, as a non-integral possession of Australia, the islands was ruled to not be entitled to the same level of compensation as other Australian territory. 

This, combined with the murder of two public servants in the highlands, stoked the fire of secession, and by the time PNG achieved full independence in late 1975, Bougainville had already seceded as the Republic of the North Solomons. 

While this secession didn’t take, disputes over mining compensation continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s, eventually resulting in full-blown civil war for much of the 1990s. 

A ceasefire took hold in 1997, followed by the establishment of the Autonomous Bougainville Government in 2000, but a promised referendum on independence has yet to be held.

Source: The Geographer

Lapita find opens new chapter of PNG history

BY GENELLE WEULE

A HUGE TREASURE TROVE of artefacts including thousands of fragments of pottery provides the first evidence that the sea-faring Lapita people settled in mainland Papua New Guinea.

The discovery, by a group of archaeologists from Australia and PNG led by Dr Bruno David and Professor Ian McNiven from Monash University, may also give clues about the origin of Torres Strait Islanders.

The groups' findings have been presented this weekend at the Australian Archaeological Association Conference in Toowoomba.

The Lapita culture developed on islands off the east coast of PNG around 3,500 years ago. About 300 years later the Lapita people headed east to become the first humans to settle the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji, moving later to Samoa and Tonga.

Evidence of their settlement is found in the remains of intricately patterned pottery used for rituals.

But while fragments of the pottery had been found on mainland PNG, archaeologists believed the Lapita people never settled in this area.

"We thought that these were an island people only, there was no evidence of these people going onto the PNG mainland at all until we had our findings near Port Moresby," says McNiven.

Between 2009 and 2010, McNiven's teams of archaeologists and local community members excavated several sites at Caution Bay, north-west of Port Moresby.

"When we dug deeper down between 1 and 2 metres below the surface we found evidence of Lapita people and lots of it," says McNiven.

This suggests the Lapita community was very well established, not just passing traders, he says.

Covered under 110 tonnes of sediment lay food remains — shells, fish bones and turtle bones — that indicated the marine-loving people lived in several villages that extend one square kilometre inland.

The excavations also revealed a wealth of implements — stone tools, cutting tools and stone axes made out of volcanic rock — as well as Lapita pottery fragments. The largest site, known as Bogi 1 [pictured], contained thousands of fragments of pottery.

Also included in the find were scraping tools made of rare obsidian found on West Fergusson Island, 500 kilometres to the east.

"So suddenly everything changed. These weren't just people moving out into the Pacific moving further and further east. We now know they came underneath the bottom part of Papua New Guinea and settled on the mainland," says McNiven.

"This is a whole new chapter of Pacific history that nobody knew about."

Photos: Professor Ian McNiven

Source: ABC Science, 2 December

Supreme saga – Hal Holman’s first sculpture

As his first Gold Coast exhibition of sculptures and paintings approaches, HAL HOLMAN writes about the unusual circumstances in Port Moresby that inspired him to become a sculptor.

WITHOUT BEING AWARE of how significant the ferro-concrete hull of the Phoenix was in the evolution of my career in art, and immediately after we had shifted it to Shorty Jordan’s boatyard, there came a moment when my entire life would change dramatically.

It was the beginning of the wet season in Moresby.  Owing to the boat being uncovered, work came to a shuddering halt.  Even after brief respites when the sky cleared, the flat area of the yard at the foot of Tuaguba Hill remained awash and drained slowly.

Gum boots of course were the answer, but there was still the deadly hazard of electrocution.  The boatshed was at least two hundred yards away and all power was connected to the boat through extension leads lying on the ground - worn leads that were walked on and driven over during working hours.  And the entire framework of the hull was highly conductive steel.

The only apparatus available to me was my electrode welder.  I had oxy welding gear as well, but had not yet mastered it.  I used it for cutting and heating only.

During this wet season I was approached by the government’s Works Department to help out with a problem at the recently completed Supreme Court building at Waigani.

It appeared that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was to officially open the building in a matter of four weeks, and there was neither the name of the building nor the official National Crest on the front façade.

Because I had designed the crest and was, by then, skilled in metalwork, the Department homed in on me to salvage the situation by asking me to produce an almost instant sculpture to adorn the wall.  I quoted on a cost plus basis for I could not imagine just how much material would be needed.  The quote was approved.

The Department stated it would prefer the design to be somewhat contemporary in style and not a slavish copy of the original.  I knew I would enjoy the challenge.

In the worst possible weather and with a deadline that would daunt the most courageous, I plunged in, gumboots and all.  I purchased all the steel I needed and had it delivered to the site.

Such a sculptural piece was classified as direct metal to indicate the proposed work was fabricated; not cast in a foundry, but hand forged and welded.  I often considered the Phoenix as direct metal, and a work of art.

For days and nights, until well after midnight, I drove myself to complete the task.  Had I been experienced it would have been a fairly smooth operation, but back then experienced I was not.

Barefoot New Guineans showed ‘em how!

From the Pacific Island Monthly archives of 45 years ago, JIM HUXLEY reports on the forgotten ‘barefoot Test’

THE YOUNGSTERS FROM Papua-New Guinea, playing rugby league barefoot, thrilled crowds in Brisbane, Sydney and NSW country centres, and the tour was such an overwhelming success that other territory schoolboy teams will be invited on similar visits.

The highlight of the recent tour came at the Sydney Cricket Ground when more than 62,000 spectators saw the New Guineans play a curtain raiser to the third and deciding Test match between Great Britain and Australia.

It was also the third and deciding Test between the under eight stone schoolboys from New Guinea and a team from NSW.

New Guinea won the game 13-5 and then Australia went on the complete a satisfying day for the Sydney fans with a convincing 19-14 victory over the British visitors.

The New Guineans lost only two of the 10 games they played in Australia – and the scoring was often something remarkable.  They crushed a combined Brisbane side 31-0.  At Tamworth they beat north-west NSW 21-8.  They accounted for a Newcastle combination 14-8. At Wollongong they won 13-5.  And at Forbes they thrashed the locals 19-0.

Everywhere they gave an outstanding display of clean, entertaining football, running and handling intelligently, kicking with good results and tackling round the legs in copybook manner.

The young New Guineans were selected after a series of trial matches in Port Moresby among teams from Goroka, Rabaul, Lae and Moresby.

Source: Pacific Islands Monthly, vol 37 no 10, October 1966

The long & colourful career of John Moresby

BY EDWARD HARRIS

ONE JOHN MORESBY, late Admiral and sometime Captain-in-Charge of the Royal Navy, has planted, or imposed, the Moresby surname on both New Guinea and Bermuda.

The capital of independent Papua New Guinea remains Port Moresby, while the great playing field at the Bermuda Dockyard retains its appellation as Moresby Plain, sometimes seen in the possessive ‘Moresby’s’, as John Moresby’s creation it was.

Between John and his father, Fairfax. two generations of Moresbys gave a century of service to the Royal Navy, much of it in overseas duty, with John’s including the pleasant position as Captain-in-Charge at the Bermuda Dockyard, flying his pennant on the old warship, HMS Terror, a fixture of Grassy Bay for many years in its dotage.

The old boy was Admiral of the Fleet Sir Fairfax Moresby GCB, KMT, DCL, born in 1786, and slipping his moorings at the good age of 91, about the time son John took up, at Bermuda, one of his last active postings of a long naval career.

During part of his service, Fairfax Moresby was the senior officer in the early 1820s at Mauritius, acting on orders to suppress the trade in slaves in eastern Africa, concluding in 1822 the ‘Moresby Treaty’ restricting the local slave trade and giving British warships the right to search and apprehend vessels that might be so engaged.

Later as Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Station at Valparaiso in the early 1850s, he assisted in the moving to Norfolk Island of some of the inhabitants of Pitcairn Island, the latter today, like Bermuda, one of the last of the oceanic islands of what is now Britain’s clutch of ‘Overseas Territories’.

His son John was born in 1830 and entered naval service as a cadet at the age of 12. Yet a teenager, John was on the Mediterranean and American Stations, so it is possibly that he visited Bermuda between 1845 and 1849.

His most significant posting began in 1871, prior to that of Bermuda in 1878, when he was authorised to survey the coast of New Guinea out of the Australian Station.

During the course of that work, he discovered the ‘China Straits’, which promised a shorter route between Australia and the Far East.

John Moresby claimed New Guinea for Britain at the appropriately named ‘Possession Island’, but it is not known if he informed the indigenous population of their transfer to Queen Victoria’s imperial inventory of real estate.

All this work was carried out in HMS Basilisk, named for the king of serpents, but a slow and ageing ‘paddle sloop’, which had earlier served on the North America and West Indies Station, headquartered at Bermuda.

After New Guinea, while hoping for another sea appointment, ‘But here, too, I was doomed to disappointment’, Captain John Fairfax arrived on his first land position, after a period of coastguard work, at Bermuda in April 1878, where he lived in ‘The Cottage’, the official residence of the Captain-in Charge.

On 1 April 1881, Captain John Moresby, later Rear Admiral, left Bermuda after a three-year stint at the Royal Naval Dockyard: ‘I handed over my command to another, when parting kindnesses, warm farewells, and much speechifying, poured in on me from all quarters, together with gratifying official recognition; but I think the Commander-in-Chief Sir Leopold McClintock’s last words were my greatest pleasure, when he simply said: “I hope I shall be regretted as you are when I also give up my command”.’

Edward Cecil Harris MBE, JP, PHD, FSA is Executive Director of the National Museum at Dockyard, Bermuda

Source: The Royal Gazette Online, 19 November
http://www.royalgazette.com/article/20111119/ISLAND09/711199948

Karkar coconuts maintain German tradition

A CENTURY AFTER the Berlin-based New Guinea Company started coconut palm plantation in New Guinea, the popular fruit is still being harvested and used to make everything from oil for soap to food products.

Paul Goodyear and his wife German wife Barbara run a 2,000-acre plantation farm on Karkar Island where they employ 600 people.

Row upon row of palm trees measuring 30 to 40 metres high tower over the farm.

The trees are called 'German palms', a reference to the Berlin-based company that started industrial palm plantation here 100 years ago and to the Papua New Guinea's former colonial master Germany, which ruled the northern part of the island from 1884 until World War I.

Coconut and coconut-based products once accounted for 90% of PNG’s exports until investors discovered the country's vast natural resources of copper, gold, nickel, oil, gas and wood.  But coconut is still a main source of revenue.

The Goodyear plantation produces 50 tons of copra - dried coconut flesh from which the oil is extracted - and 20 tons of cocoa every month, says farm manager John Lang, who has worked here for 25 years.

The oil is used to make soap and margarine.

Although coffee has for some years now surpassed coconut on PNG’s exports list, the country remains one of the world's top ten coconut producers.

Workers at the Goodyear farm collect coconuts that fall from the tree once they become ripe. The fruit's tough brown shell is then broken and the flesh is left to dry in sheds before it is pressed for oil.

“Everything is done manually,” says Lang.

He says that 6,000 coconuts are needed to make a ton of copra, which gives 420 litres of oil.  Every tree grows about 75 coconuts a year.

The farm also makes cocoa, a fruit whose beans are dried and used to make chocolate.

Source: Monsters & Critics, 19 November

Kiaps and the Panguna mine: the truth revealed

BY KEITH JACKSON

IN AUGUST 2007, former Bougainville District Commissioner Bill Brown MBE [pictured in 1968] wrote to the Department of Foreign Affairs in Canberra pointing point out a major error that had appeared in the book, Documents on Australian Foreign Policy, Australia and Papua New Guinea 1966 – 1969.

The book was composed largely of official documents and, very much like the Wikileaks cables of more recent times, allowed rare insights into the words and actions of Australian politicians and bureaucrats in the three or so years it covered.

But when Bill Brown read the book he was particularly struck by documents that covered the time he was serving his nation in colonial Bougainville.  It was a turbulent time and the role of the kiap in trying to educate people about what would happen to their land with the arrival of the Panguna copper and gold mine was a particularly difficult one.

There were about 20 kiaps directly involved with the establishment of the mine and, without exception, they were a voice of knowledge and reason in the face of corporate intransigence, academic insouciance and an Australian government driven by the desire to give PNG resource exploitation at all costs.

The views of these men is perhaps best articulated in an interview kiap Ross Henderson gave to Film Australia in 1969, when he said:

It did not surprise anyone that the Moronis were angry over the land situation. It is not just a block of dirt to them - it is part of the body and the soul. Their whole social system is based on land. The land is owned by the ancestors now dead, the present occupiers and by the unborn generations to come. The occupiers have the right to use the land, to lease, but not to destroy.

From as early as 1966 we have been telling all the villages as much as we knew of the project, and tried to put them into the picture …. It was difficult even for us to envisage what was going to happen. You can imagine how bewildering it must have been for the Moronis.

But many subsequent writers on those times, times which led to the bloody civil war in Bougainville that resulted in something like 20,000 deaths, compounding their lack of first hand research with a too easy acceptance of official documents, did the kiaps a great disservice.

The kiaps were blamed for things they did not do, and accused of doing things that, knowing what they knew, they would never have done.

So in 2007, so many years later, when Bill Brown saw the errors entrenched in the official documents of that earlier time, he decided to tackle Canberra and get the bureaucrats to address the errors and distortions of the documents.

The initial response from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade was encouraging:

You are quite correct in your analysis of the errors which flow from the mistaken heading to Document 307.  … Sir David, with whom I have friendly relations, has made me aware of the issue and we've come to an agreement on how to correct the record.

When we release these publications, we are aware that they will be carefully scrutinised and we do our best to make them accurate. But anything of this size and complexity will never be perfect. ... All this means that we need to be courageous enough to keep putting things into the public domain and also that we should be humble enough to welcome observations from our readers - and particularly from historical participants such as yourself.

Well, pretensions to accuracy, courage and gratitude were soon betrayed by the reality of a Department that would prefer to leave lies on the record than to admit error.  As Bill Brown writes in the paper Bougainville Texts - Some Flaws In The Shards, which you can download below:

In 2007, Sir David Hay was told that a clarification would appear in the next volume, to be published in a year or so, and that a correction would be put on the DFAT website in the immediate future.  Sir David waited, and he died. If he had not, he would still be waiting. Foreign Affairs updated their website, but made no correction and did not admit the error.

Even today, the Department is still promoting the book “Documents on Australian Foreign Policy, Australia and Papua New Guinea 1966 – 1969” as “a detailed record of the classified communications that informed and determined Australian policy in Papua New Guinea between 1966 and 1969.” There is no admission of error or flaw, and there is no correction.

“People have suggested that the Australian government has been niggardly in acknowledging the role played by kiaps,” writes Bill elsewhere.  Niggardly?  That’s putting it mildly.  The term I’d use is “bloody disgraceful”.

Anyway, you can read Bill Brown’s compilation here – an invaluable contribution to the history of a troubled island and a welcome clarification of the kiaps’ role in those years between the mid sixties and mid seventies when they did their level best for the people of Bougainville.

Best turned out to be not good enough, but the blame cannot be sheeted home to those 20 or so kiaps.  You’ve got to look a lot further south for that.

Download Some flaws in the shards by Bill Brown

Underwater find is not missing submarine AE1

AUSTRALIA'S MOST ENDURING maritime mystery, the disappearance of the World War I submarine AE1, looked like being solved with the discovery of a shipwreck near Rabaul.   But it was not to be.

The RAN's first submarine, AE1, sank with all 35 hands on 15 September 1914 off the Duke of York Islands.  It was Australia's first naval loss of the Great War.

On Wednesday afternoon, as two Australian and New Zealand navy vessels scanned the sea bottom looking for unexploded munitions, the outline of a wreck appeared on the screen of the hydrographic survey vessel HMNZS Resolution.

The find was in the Simpson Harbour area not far from where the 600-tonne AE1 was last sighted near the entrance of Mioko Harbour.

AE1, under the command of Royal Navy Lieutenant Thomas Besant, was to assist with the capture of German New Guinea.

But the submarine found three days ago has been identified as Japanese, from World War II, not AE1.

The mystery remains.

The clan ascendant: the O'Neill's of PNG

BY PHIL FITZPATRICK

PAPUA NEW GUINEA’S prime minister, Peter O’Neill, probably has the blood of the legendary 5^th century High King of Ireland, Niall Noigiallach, running in his veins.

The surname O’Neill is an Anglicisation of the original Gaelic Ua Néill, which is variously thought to mean “grandson of the champion”.

The grandsons of Niall Glúndub, a descendant of Niall Noigiallach, were the first to use the surname.

The O’Neill’s spread far and wide but they originated around Innishowen in County Donegal in Eire and then spread east into Ulster in Northern Ireland, which they now call home.  In Ireland clans are known as septs.

 

The principal seat of power of the kings of the O’Neill septs was at Tara.

(There is an interesting irony here.  Peter O’Neill is the prime minister of an independent country but the place where his paternal ancestors come from is still a British colony.)

The coat of arms of the O’Neill’s is a red left hand on a grey or white background.

Legend has it that Ireland was promised to the first man able to sail across the sea and touch the land. 

The race was hard fought and the contenders were running neck and neck until a man called O’Neill cut off his left hand and threw it on the beach, thus claiming the first touch and the prize.  Clearly a man able to seize the moment!

There are three principal O’Neill dynasties today that are each represented by the direct descendants of the original independent kings of Ulster. 

The kingly titles were originally passed on under Irish Brehon law and later by other titles through first born sons. 

Today these dynasties are represented in Ireland, Spain, France, Scotland, Portugal, England, America, Australia and now Papua New Guinea.

The O’Neill’s still maintain a confederation of its septs in Ireland that meets annually.  In 2010 the group met to formulate a new global sept and to plan an O’Neill museum to be built in Ulster.

That’s his father’s side of the story.  Fifth century is not so long ago.  No doubt the ancestors on his mother’s side go back a lot further.

WO1 Frederick Wilson RSM - leader of men

BY TERRY EDWINSMITH

MY UNEXPECTED POSTING to PNG in September 1967 as part of Australia's military assistance programs to TPNG, found me initially housed at Murray Barracks in Port Moresby for a fortnight before it was decided to relocate me to Taurama Barracks.

With approvals in order, an army transport vehicle drove me a short distance along unsealed roads to 1PIR at Taurama Barracks. It was a pleasant drive with some partly burnt hills on either side of the road.

The guard at the gate bid the vehicle enter and we drove to the battalion administration headquarters, a high wooden verandah building surrounded by flowering trees and shrubs. The wide verandas were covered with foliage with birds in abundance.

Green was everywhere to be seen from the parade ground to the picturesque admin. building. What beauty!

Into this scene I alighted with my modest belongings, mounting the stairs only to be greeted by the camp's RSM who had descended the stairs, probably from his office to greet me.

He extended the hand of friendship and bid me welcome to the battalion. That greeting by RSM Wilson has remained with me all of my life. I was a stranger and he welcomed me. I was made to feel at home.

RSM Wilson then directed me to my accommodation and I began my brief settling in for a 15 month posting that proved to be a highlight of my life.

RSM Frederick Wilson had worked his way up the ranks in the Australian army to achieve the highest level of the non-commissioned officers rank of Warrant Officer Class 1.

In addition he was appointed as the battalion’s Regimental Sergeant Major, answerable only to the Commanding Officer, Lt Colonel Hearn, a fine achievement indeed at the prestigious infantry battalion of 1PIR, especially when you learn that Fred was separated from his family in England and sent to Australia at the age of eight, probably as part of a child migration scheme.

On dressing for lunch in old colonial Rabaul

BY PETER KRANZ

 

GO BACK 40 years from the 1930's and you find the Victorian dress codes for the tropics was a lot more formal, as shown in this photo from the 1890's of the Parkinson family of Rabaul.

The history of colonial bilas is very interesting. It amazes me how our Victorian ancestors dressed like this in the tropical climate of New Guinea.

The local people were much more sensible (although I'm guessing that a dukduk costume isn't too comfortable).

It's also worth noting that there was reverse feedback, whereby local bilas traditions of the Pacific and Africa directly influenced European society.

Just think of the hundreds of thousands of birds paradise sacrificed to the European hat trade in the nineteenth century.

This is now making a comeback - as shown by this collection.

I sincerely hope that no more birds of paradise are being killed for this western fashion craze.

On dressing for dinner in old Salamaua

BY KEITH JACKSON

A COUPLE of years ago there was a fascinating protracted discussion in PNG Attitude about the formal dress habits of the expats in pre-World War II Salamaua.

Now Phil Tarlinton has dropped in on this exchange and has offered readers this interesting image of his father Cliff Tarlinton.

And, yes, it affirms that the nines were to be dressed up to in old Salamaua.

The photograph was taken in the township around 1936-37.

As Phil says: “Showing that indeed the expatriates did dress up and that it was a place to live and enjoy this beautiful country, even in the 1930’s”.

Huggins and Gatsby will be beside themselves with ecstasy, exuberance and joie de vivre.

Nation builders - first ASOPA long course

 

IT WAS 1949 and the Australian School of Pacific Administration (ASOPA) at Middle Head in Mosman, Sydney, has been established less than two years.

Originally located at Duntroon in Canberra, in May 1947 ASOPA was relocated to a group of Army huts on Middle Head. Kiaps (patrol officers) who already had accumulated some considerable experience in the twin territories of Papua and New Guinea were brought to Sydney for “the long course” – a two-year diploma program.

This historic photograph, provided by Bill Brown MBE, shows the participants in the course, more about them below. They studied subjects like law, social anthropology, geography and colonial administration. They were taught be eminent Australian academics like Camilla Wedgwood, Hal Wootten, Jim MacAuley and Charles Rowley. 

In his memoir, Looking for a good book, the late Reg Thomson wrote: “There was no doubting their academic attainments or ability to deliver a tertiary standard course of real value…

“Of the 14 officers completing the Diploma course, 12 would return to New Guinea where one went on to become Director of Lands whilst one of the Forestry students also headed up his Department. For the next twenty-four years these people would be members of the one team.”

And a most distinguished team it was.  Here are some notes, provided by Bill Brown, about this group of men, most of whom, for the next quarter of a century, were to lead the development – political, social and economic – of Papua New Guinea.

Back row, left to right

KW (Ken) Jones - son of JH (Bert) Jones (1921 kiap, post-war Director of Department of District Services and Native Affairs), brother of Dennis (Cadet Patrol officer 1949). Married Joan Pennefather (eldest daughter of Vic B Pennefather owner of Tokua Plantation, Kokopo, Rabaul. Resigned circa 1951, to become part of the Kokopo community.

DRM (Dave) Marsh OBE - married Alison Lamden (daughter of pre-war Assistant Resident Magistrate and post-war District Officer, William Lamden, and brother of post-war kiap WJG (Graham) Lamden). Retired as District Commissioner 1975 – see also http://asopa.typepad.com/asopa_people/2009/09/marking-png-independence-16-september-1975.html.

DR (Don) Prowse - resigned 1950 to follow a new career.

HW (Harry) West OAM – went on to become a distinguished District Commissioner and senior bureaucrat. See our previous article at http://asopa.typepad.com/asopa_people/2011/08/presenting-the-first-of-the-post-ww2-kiaps.html

E (Eric) Flower - ADO, DO, DDC and a/DC. 1971 Executive Officer, Works Management and Planning, Department of Administrator, Port Moresby.

LR (Jim) Landman - specialised in Native Authorities - 1953 ADO (Native Authorities) Manus, resigned in the 1950s to follow a new career.

BB (Basil) Hayes - ADO, DO and DDC. 1971 Assistant Secretary, International Relations and Internal, Department of Administrator

Middle row, left to right

DS (Don) Grove - 1966 - 1975 Director of Lands, Surveys and Mines. Member of the House of Assembly.

JW (John) Gibson - a/ADO Kairuku Sub-district 1950. Resigned circa June 1950 to follow a new career

FV (Fred) Reitano - 1950 ADO Maprik, 1956 ADO Lorengau – resigned to complete Law Degree. Private practice, and then Law Department, Port Moresby

AK (Kingsley) Jackson - 1970 Principal Officer (Lands), Division of District Administration, Department of Administrator, Port Moresby. 1973 District Commissioner.

Front row, left to right

HT (Harry) Plant - married Ivani Champion, daughter of Ivan Champion. 1953 ADO Native Authorities, 1958 Senior Native Authorities Officer, 1966 Assistant Director, Local Government Division DDA. Resigned circa 1968 to head up Local Government in Northern Territory.

AJ (Jim) Humphries - 1953 ADO Buin, resigned to complete law degree, then barrister, Brisbane.

GC (Clive) Bowman - did not graduate, resigned circa 1952.

KW (Keith) Dyer - 1966 Principal Officer (Lands), 1968 District Commissioner, West New Britain, 1970 First Assistant Director, DDA.

Memo reveals dying moments of Panguna

BY MARTYN NAMORONG

A CONFIDENTIAL MEMO viewed by The Namorong Report alleges that the prime minister and ministers in the PNG government were sympathetic to the rebels cause on Bougainville during the early days of the conflict.

The memo was sent by Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL) chairman, DS Carruthers on 6 December 1988 to the directors of CRA Limited. CRA, an Australian company created by Rio Tinto Zinc based in London, owned 53.6% of BCL.

In the memo, Carruthers alleges that members of the PNG cabinet, particularly the Minister for Minerals and Energy and the Minister for Provincial Affairs, were hostile towards BCL. He describes the reception Robert Cornelius, BCL managing director received when he saw politicians in Port Moresby.

“On Friday 25 November, Bob Cornelius went to Port Moresby to press the government to do something about the law and order situation, and especially about the theft of explosives.

“He met a hostile reaction from the Ministers for Minerals and Energy and Provincial Affairs and the North Solomons Premier who blamed BCL for all the trouble.”

Mr Carruthers then met with the Prime Minister and Provincial Affairs Minister and received a similar response. He writes that the Minerals and Energy Minister believed the problems had arisen due to misappropriation of Landowner Trust funds.

Carruthers wrote that Prime Minister Rabbie Namaliu’s priority was to appease the landowners. He described their meeting as unsatisfactory. He concluded thus:

“The situation is extremely worrying because the National Government, which has largely neglected the deteriorating situation for most of the year, seems unwilling or unable to assert its authority, and indeed is divided among itself.

“The Melanesian Alliance (represented by the Ministers for Provincial Affairs and Minerals and Energy), which is strong in Bougainville, continues to show a degree of sympathy for the landowner militants.”

Thus having assessed the situation, BCL decided not to restore operations. Carruthers informed the directors that, with his support, BCL had advised the government it would not continue mining Panguna.

Carruthers wrote in BCLs Annual report of 1989:

“It is not clear at this stage how the problems on Bougainville will be resolved. They are part of a widespread issue about how the income from mining operations in Papua New Guinea should be distributed.”

Today PNG still faces the dilemma of deciding how income from mining operations should be distributed. We haven’t learnt any lessons, have we?

Source: The Namorong Report
http://medicmangi.blogspot.com

The originals: First of PNG's post-war kiaps

BY KEITH JACKSON

 
THE BREED OF men known as kiaps – call them what you will, assistant resident magistrates, patrol officers, whatever – made their presence felt on the island of New Guinea from the late 19th century.

But in the most recent era, that since World War II, serving Australia and the people of what is now PNG, there were the kiaps as we recognise and know them today: the men who did more than most to develop a nation from 800 fragmented tribes and to ready it to govern itself.

It was a mission they accomplished with great effectiveness, although many of them continue to deny the achievement to this day.  They should not.  I saw what they did then.  I have had no reason to change my mind since.  Without them the nation-state of Papua New Guinea could not possibly have been created.

The luminous photograph above, taken in 1944, is a great and telling picture in its own right and it is also of note because so many of the young men it depicts in the two back rows (some who at the time were still serving as wartime soldiers) went on to become significant figures in the pre-independence story of Papua New Guinea. [Left click on the photo to see it in larger dimension]

As such, their names and their own personal stories are honoured.

And in the front row are their instructors; some great names there too.

Harry West OAM (middle row, fourth from right), one of the great kiaps, wrote in PNG Attitude some years ago:

Then in 1944, Army routine orders sought applicants to attend a School of Civil Affairs for aspirant patrol officers.

I was interviewed in Cairns by Colonel Murray, later the first Administrator of Papua New Guinea, Les Haylen, the Secretary of the Department of Territories and a Federal MP, along with numerous others and 40 ended up at Duntroon.

After five gruelling months, 18 of the 40 were returned to their units, six were sent to Borneo and the remaining 16, including me, to PNG.

Australia took Papua New Guinea very seriously in those days.  And of the 40 men who attended this first kiaps’ course, only 22 graduated.

The passing of the years dulls the memory, and sometimes the name of a man who was fiercely well known back then has receded to some murky cavern of the mind, proving nigh impossible to retrieve.

But PNG Attitude’s correspondents have sought to reconstruct this group of stalwart men – and this is where they have got to so far:

Back Row, left to right: 1 - Michael Conroy; 2, 3,4 -Unknown; 5 – Hitchcock; 6,7 - Unknown; 8 - Watson; 9 - Geoff Herkes; 10,11 - Unknown; 12 - Kingsley Jackson (District Commissioner, retired 1973); 13 – Unknown;14 - Cassidey

Middle Row, left to right: 1 - George Tuckey (kiap, died Kundiawa, c 1946): 2 -McKinnon; 3 - Unkown; 4 - Dudley Young-Whitford (Patrol Officer & Assistant District Officer, died 1958); 5 - Des Clifton-Bassett (District Commissioner, retired 1973); 6 - Breakespear; 7 - Grainger (Blue) Morris (possibly Registrar of Cooperatives); 8 - Unknown; 9 - Doug Parrish (kiap, later Secretary for Labour); 10 - Harry West OAM (District Commissioner, later Secretary, Department of Native Affairs); 12 - Brian Connelley; 13 - Eric Flower (kiap, later Executive Officer Department of Administrator); 14 -Russ Crooks

Front Row, left to right: 1 - T E H Strehlow (anthropologist); 2 - Jim McCauley (lecturer in history, ASOPA luminary, great Australian poet); 3 - Unknown; 4 - Dudley Jones (later Solicitor, Rabaul); 5 - John Black (1946-1948 Assistant Director, District Services and Native Affairs); 6 - Colonel J K Murray (PNG Administrator prior to Sir Donald Cleland); 7 - Ralph Piddington (anthropologist); 8 - John Andrews (lecturer ASOPA, later Professor of Geography, University of Melbourne); 9 - John Legge  (later Professor of History, University of Melbourne); 10 – Lieutenant Peter Ryan MM, kiap, publisher and commentator); 11 - Sgt Major Stead  (later at ASOPA)

I thank another great kiap, Bill Brown MBE, a former District Commissioner of Bougainville in truly exacting times, for sharing this historic photograph with us.

Leo Austen: the forgotten kiap

BY PHIL FITZPATRICK

LONG BEFORE Kennecott discovered the fabulous copper and gold deposit at Mount Fubilan. near the headwaters of the Ok Tedi, and six years before Charles Karius and Ivan Champion launched their famous 1926 expedition to cross New Guinea from the Fly to the Sepik, another of Hubert Murray’s dedicated “outside men”, Leo Austen, led several pioneering patrols into the area.

Always a meticulous man, Leo wrote up his patrol reports in great detail and must have wondered why Murray had overlooked him when choosing who should go on the famous first-crossing patrol.  No doubt he shrugged and put it down to the typical luckless lot of the average Assistant Resident Magistrate.

Leo was born Leopold Novak Augstein in Brisbane in 1894.  He was working as a clerk when World War I began and immediately enlisted.  He landed with the first troops at Gallipoli and served in France where he was wounded.

He returned to Australia in 1918 as a lieutenant and, with his brothers, changed his Austrian surname to Austen to avoid the anti-German sentiment after the war.

Like many of his fellow soldiers, the war changed him and he felt out of place and became restless.  He joined Murray’s Papuan Service on 3 April 1919 as a temporary Patrol Officer based at Daru in the lonely Western Division.  He went on to lead many great patrols, there and elsewhere.

In 1926 a Chair of Anthropology had been set up at the University of Sydney, partly to train Cadet Patrol Officers of the then separate New Guinea Department of District Services.  Hubert Murray was a great believer in on-the-job training but he allowed some of his officers, including Leo, to attend the lectures.

Leo eventually obtained qualifications as an anthropologist and began a parallel career producing many learned monographs and a book on Papua.

The 1930s was a period that saw a massive upheaval of traditional societies in Papua as the influence of the Europeans spread.  Leo was one of those “enlightened” officers who sought to restore and maintain the traditional cohesion of those societies.  He was particularly successful in encouraging the revival of the paramount luluais in his favourite haunts in the Trobriand Islands.

Leo became part of the Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit (ANGAU) during World War II and was one of the 15 District Officers who attended the major ANGAU conference in February 1944.

Towards the end of the war he was the presiding magistrate at the trial of a number of local people accused of collaborating with the Japanese.  Leo was a sympathetic listener to these people, who explained that the Japanese had told them the Australians had been defeated and would never return. 

Although he found them guilty and imposed the mandatory death penalty he fully expected, as was the practice, for the sentences to be commuted to prison terms.

The army had other ideas, however and turned up at the trials with a jeep load of rope.

How anarchy trumped a freedom movement

BY LEONARD FONG ROKA

This is an extract of a chapter in my unpublished autobiography. It is based on stories I heard— and saw for myself— around my blood family consisting of the late Autonomous Bougainville Government president Joseph Kabui and Martin Miriori.  These brothers are my grandmother’s small brothers - LFR

BOUGAINVILLE IS PART-AND-PUZZLE of the Solomon chain of islands in the South Pacific, but enslaved by the impacts of colonialism under the rule of Papua New Guinea which is one of the big but unstable democracies in the Oceania region.

Since the 1960s, Bougainvilleans resisted the rule of Papua New Guineans and the development of the Panguna mine in Central Bougainville that, as Bougainvilleans say, was purposely built to finance the then newly independent state of PNG and its ‘redskins’ (Bougainville’s term for Papua New Guineans).

As one of Bougainville’s political icons, Martin Miriori [right] wrote in 1993, that Bougainville and its people were Australia’s independence gift to PNG.

The resistance was there, but the uncreative PNG leadership ignored it by offering the people of Bougainville the provincial government system, that I should refer to as puppet-like in nature. It did not satisfy the Bougainvillean desire for progress; but instead, brought harm and relegation to the natives.

Squatter settlements, crimes against the natives, and denial of access to economic and social benefits pouring out of development projects like Bougainville Copper were unbearable, and I saw them.

That long history of intimidation by PNG was released from the hearts and minds of Bougainvilleans in late 1988 in the form of armed confrontation. The late Francis Ona [pictured left], as I remember, toured a couple of places in the Kieta district in the early months of that year, telling the people that things were seriously wrong with the Panguna mine and the landowners. One of these meeting places was at Piruana sub-parish east of Arawa which my father attended and later talked about.

Beside Francis Ona’s campaign, there were also various little groups that were holding meetings to find ways to eradicate the threats posed by the redskins and the slums that encircled the town of Arawa and all urban centres. Matau’neri Naving was one my father was in, and the list goes on.

There was a group based at Piruana as well. But its operations were legal, that is it was pressuring the provincial government to address its issues of concern.

All these resistance movements were autonomous in their actions, timing and approach. But, the significant factor behind them was that Bougainville allowed them to happen, though they had no central leadership.  But had common ambition and inspiration from early secessionists like Father John Momis (now ABG President) at the heart.

So, how actually did the crisis start in 1988?  It was sparked and intensified by a number of independent incidents that were not in reality political.

The protest marches and declaration of independence for Bougainville in 1975 was planned and executed by leaders like Moses Havini from Buka, Michael Aite from Paruparu and many others, with the backing of popular figures like John Momis and Leo Hannet from or near the village of Dupanta in Onove just west of the Panguna mine. After this gathering, they marched through the mine and Arawa and ended up declaring independence on 1 September 1975.

Ten years later in 1988, two weeks before Francis Ona’s walkout from the BCL-landowner meeting at Panguna, just below at the Dupanta village the Tumpusiong valley people were protesting against the uncontrolled tailings disposal, even though the pipeline had just been completed. These protesters were led by local politicians Wendelinus Bitanuma and Martin Miriori.

The Tumpusiong protesters brought all the BCL equipment that regularly worked on the tailings river banks from their resting areas along the Kavarong River (Java to Whiteman) and assembled them, blocking the Panguna-South Bougainville highway at Kavarongnau, which was the home of the brothers Martin Miriori and the late Joseph Kabui.

Whilst all this was going on at Panguna, areas around Aropa, Toniva, Kieta and Arawa on the east coast were spontaneously struggling with the squatter settlers. Thus all these uprisings had no common binding factor. Nor central control in terms of leadership.

Francis Ona, after walking out of the Panguna meeting, immediately left for the jungle saying, ‘Well the war has started’ when he heard about the Tumpusiong protesters struggling with police led by Commander Luke Pango.

So the war started, but without any management strategies to guide the whole operation; or to know where to stop. Who to recruit to fight and everything else was not prepared for. Thus, any able man entered, migrating to the Panguna area to join the militant movement. The ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ went in to fight.

Small bands of men from all over the Kongara area joined in support of the Panguna people and their cause. But, mostly, young men got involved because off the ‘anti-redskinism’ that for so long had kept them imprisoned in their own land.

This was well demonstrated in the killing of redskin settlers at Lake Momau in the Tumpusiong west. Here, a young girl offered herself for sex to be spared, but a shotgun barrel was placed into her vagina and a shot fired by the Bougainville rebels.

Anti-redskinism and the Panguna mine conflicts (actually, family originated) combined and gave birth to nationalism and the fight to attain Bougainville independence.

But, as I saw it, the issue of independence came in because there was widespread support of the militant’s activities and the complete withdrawal of the PNG government in 1990 followed by the blockade of our island.

Leadership was the problem. Francis Ona lacked the charisma to be able to politically influence and control his fighters and the Bougainville people. He denied them by hiding from them in his Guava village.

Immediately after the 1990 ceasefire, his loyalists barricaded the village and kept him guarded. To see him, people had to cross checkpoint after checkpoint. Or witch doctors had to screen you if you had an intention to see the ‘Founder’, as he was called then.

Ona was not allowed, for unknown reasons, to be in the public places. Thus we Bougainvilleans, who thought that freedom was now at our disposal, were lost. Lost because Francis Ona, who the society saw as the liberator of our island, was now hiding for a reason no one knew.

The power to maintain law and order was nowhere to be felt on the streets of Arawa and the Kieta area. Ona remained hidden in his mountain home of Guava. The society descended into chaos during the weeks of the first 1990 ceasefire signed by Sam Kauona and Leo Nuia.

What was happening, in terms of leadership? Immediately, after the ceasefire all the militants were ordered to station at the Pangunat township. They did just that, and ate in the BCL mess facilities under orders to protect all property. Except Ona and certain BRA seniors, who were given ex-BCL cars to use for their operations.

But, after just a few weeks of stabiity, Francis Ona gave orders to move all BCL cars and other things of value to him to his Guava village. Conflict erupted. BRA men from other areas saw these developments and began to grab whatever that was of interest to them, especially cars.

When the possible gains of war were depleted in Kieta, they went on to other districts like Buka Island in the north. Bougainville was now out of control and the leader was not prepared for the outcomes of his own actions.

A period of warlords was born. Each BRA commander ruled his own men based on their respective village areas. No one was in Panguna, for it was deserted as men began to pursue their own interests.

There was also fighting amongst the BRA groupings. A well known incident was the killing of the Bazaar brothers in 1991. Seven brothers from Kongara, the first group to capture police weapons, were rounded up and killed at Camp 5 along the port-mine access highway.

The reason was a power struggle. Ona was not there for the men who had sacrificed themselves to defend his mission.

Each BRA commander was his own decision maker and implementer. And for this innocent Bougainvilleans lost their lives as anarchy spread like fire. The once united Bougainville was gone—divided by greed, terrorism and disorder.

History of the conflict in Bougainville

BY VICTOR RAJAKULENDRAN

BOUGAINVILLE IS AN ISLAND 10,000 km2 in size with a population of 160,000 people who speak English, Pidgin and their own local languages.

French explorer Louis de Bougainville sighted the island in 1768 and named it after himself. By an agreement in 1899 between Germany and Great Britain, Bougainville was separated from the rest of the Solomon Islands and remained under German control while the Solomons went to Great Britain. Bougainvilleans object to this separation.

During World War I, Australians occupied Bougainville and, after the defeat of Germany, the German territories collectively called New Guinea became mandated territories of the League of Nations.  They were placed under Australian administration in 1920.  During World War II, Japanese occupied the island in 1942.  By 1944 US troops have regained control.

After the war, Bougainville was again put under Australian administration, but this time as a United Nations trust territory. By 1960 an Australian geologist had found copper and gold on the island and large scale prospecting began in 1963.

In 1968 elections were held throughout PNG. Bougainville called for a referendum on secession, but the Administration did not meet this request. Self-government was given to PNG in December 1973 and full independence from Australia in September 1975.

Two weeks before PNG gained independence, Bougainville unilaterally declared independence emphasising its wishes to remain separate from the new state of PNG.

Bougainville appealed to the United Nations without success. A year later, negotiations with the PNG government resulted in agreement for limited autonomy and Bougainville became a province of PNG and was to have its own government.

Many Bougainvilleans complained that the people did not democratically elect the Bougainvilleans to the delegation that signed the 1976 agreement.

By 1988 it became increasingly clear to Bougainvilleans that mining profits from Bougainville Copper Ltd were not benefiting them and that the mining activity was seriously damaging the island's environment.

This paved the way for the tension between the PNG government and the Bougainvilleans to escalate into violence. In the same year, an organised group of traditional landowners, later came to known as the Bougainville Revolutionary Army, forcibly closed the mine and demanded the renegotiation of contracts.

The PNG government responded by sending in the police riot squad and then the PNG Defence Force, which caused the displacement of 24,000 villagers.

This struggle to close the mine escalated into a struggle for self-determination and indigenous control of the land as the population of Bougainville turned massively against the PNG government.

As a result, in April 1990, the PNGDF left the island defeated and imposed a sea blockade. On 17 May 1990, Bougainville unilaterally declared its independence from PNG for the second time and established the Bougainville Interim Government.

In response, taking advantage of the hardships caused by the blockade, the PNGDF re-invaded Bougainville. By 1991, the PNGDF, although using Australian donated helicopters and Australian and New Zealand pilots, as well as being funded by Australian and international aid programs, continued to be unable to defeat the BRA.

As a result the PNG government imposed a blockade around the island preventing even the Red Cross from giving humanitarian aid, whilst continuing military offensives. It is estimated that more than 20,000 Bougainvilleans died from 1990-96.

During this time, some Bougainvilleans fought on the side of PNGDF against the BRA. These Bougainvilleans formed the Bougainville Resistance Fighters. During this crisis, it is alleged by many sources that many crimes including rape, torture, killing of civilians and destruction of property were committed by the PNGDF.

As a result people either joined BRA, BRF (who fought on the PNGDF side) or sought safety in PNG controlled care centres or fled to care centres in the Solomon Islands.

The war in Bougainville ended in 1998 with the signing of a peace treaty, leaving the island devastated but unbowed.

Source: www.tamilcanadian.com/article/1732   Reposted for PNG Attitude by Leonard Fong Roka

Did Rio Tinto fund the war in Bougainville?

WHATEVER MICHAEL SOMARE might have done in office (or out of it) over the past 22 years, as the first prime minister of Papua New Guinea, he undoubtedly displayed fibre in negotiating the terms of the country’s independence from Australia.

Not least in 1972, when his government forced a radical revision of the agreement, brokered five years earlier by Australia with Rio Tinto, to enable the Panguna copper-gold mine on Bougainville to proceed.

Last month Sir Michael swore an affidavit accusing Rio Tinto of having financed, and virtually master-minded, the war by PNG against Bougainville that followed an landowners’ revolt against the mine in late 1988.

See http://www.minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=11012

Central Bougainville MP Jim Miringtoro has said Rio Tinto and the Australian government were directly involved in the Bougainville crisis and used the PNG government to start a war against its own people for the benefit of the company.

Miringtoro said Sir Michael Somare had revealed that Rio Tinto was directly involved and responsible for the war on the island as reported on the television network SBS.

See the program Bougainville: Blood and Treasure: http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story/watch/id/601246/n/Blood-and-Treasure.

See the transcript of the Bougainville program: http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story/transcript/id/601246/n/Blood-and-Treasure.

See the video Saving Our Land:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvuGPgMhGws.

Source: London Mining Network

Just let me lay my brother to rest

BY IAN MCPHEDRAN

THE FAMILY of secret World War II soldier Lieutenant Alan Gubbay had no idea he was buried in a war cemetery at Lae.

But the army knew all along the "Z" Special Unit officer died during a top-secret mission, was buried by locals on a tiny island and had been disinterred and moved to the Commonwealth War Cemetery at Lae in 1947.

His younger brother Donald is furious the family was never informed and wants the remains DNA tested and sent home to his birthplace - the French territory of New Caledonia.

He said he can understand the army's reluctance to admit its mistake because it would open up "all sorts of issues".

"They told us he had 'no known grave' and that is what my family believed," Donald Gubbay said. "I want the army to conduct DNA tests to confirm the identity of my brother so I can take him home to be laid to rest.

"If they had done their job properly in 1947, we would have taken him to New Caledonia then."

Donald, the youngest of four brothers, said he had the support of the French Government and would go directly to the Papua New Guinea government if he did not receive a positive response from Veterans Affairs Minister Warren Snowdon.

Australian policy prevents war dead from being moved and just one Australian soldier, General William Bridges, the first Australian to reach the rank of general, has been disinterred and moved to another country - from Gallipoli to Canberra.

Lieutenant Gubbay was a member of an eight-man "Z" Special team sent to Muschu Island off Wewak to identify the location of heavy Japanese guns causing havoc for Allied troops.

Seven of the eight men perished, including two who were executed and probably cannibalised by Japanese troops on the neighbouring island of Kairiru.

Three died in battle on Muschu before Alan Gubbay and three others fled the island on logs and either drowned or perished on the nearby island of Kairiru.

He and another soldier were buried by local people who led a postwar recovery team to the gravesite in 1947. The lone survivor, Mick Dennis, caused havoc with his Sten gun for 10 days on Muschu Island, killing many Japanese before he paddled a timber plank for 10 hours to the mainland.

The 92-year-old lives in Sydney and his remarkable story is told in two books called The Guns of Muschu and Against All Odds.

"They were hunting me, but every time they got close I would knock the first few off and then go bush," Mr Dennis said.

To this day, the Military Medal winner cannot understand why the executed men did not swallow the cyanide pills carried by every "Z" Special operative.

"I survived, that is the way the cookie crumbles," he said.

When he arrived back on the mainland he spent several days harassing the Japanese before he heard an Australian patrol and the familiar voice of one of his commando mates. "Is that you Fatty?" he yelled through the scrub.

Jim Bourke, from the recovery group known as Operation Aussies Home, led an unsuccessful search team to Kairiru Island in July 2010, which included Donald Gubbay, to try to locate any Australian graves.

According to interviews Mr Bourke conducted, Lieutenant Gubbay was almost certainly one of the two men buried by locals on the island and later moved to Lae.

Source: The Adelaide Advertiser

Artefact treasures were hidden in plain view

BY SUSAN HAGEN

FOLLOWING UP on a footnote in a book a few years ago, Robert Foster, the professor of anthropology and of visual and cultural studies at the University of Rochester, drove an hour west of Rochester and found one of the largest and oldest collections of Pacific Islands artifacts anywhere in the world.

That 2006 discovery took place in the Buffalo Museum of Science. Although the museum had a couple of dozen objects on display, when staff took Foster to the museum’s storeroom he discovered thousands of pieces.

“I was stunned,” Foster says. “It was off the map. Buffalo’s not a place you’d expect Pacific Islands objects to be.”

The P G T Black Collection—safely preserved at the museum for the last 70 years—contains some 6,200 objects from remote villages and colonial outposts across Melanesia, everything from stone axes and toys to fishing tools and spears.

Although individual items had been displayed, a catalogue of the collection had never been published and the trove of cultural treasures remained virtually unknown among scholars.

“The collection provides a window into the early encounters between Pacific Islanders and traders, missionaries, and collectors,” says Foster, an expert on the effects of globalisation.

“These objects reveal islanders’ innovative response to the influx of Europeans and new technologies around the turn of the 20th century.”

“It’s an unusual collection in that it emphasises everyday objects more than exotic ritual objects,” he says. “I’ve speculated that in some ways it’s a ‘shadow’ collection, representing objects that were being replaced at the time by what Europeans were bringing in.”

P G T Black [right], the collector, was a branch inspector for Burns Philp & Co, the trading and shipping firm based in Sydney.  He acquired the objects—pieces used by Pacific Islanders at the time—between 1886 and 1916, and in 1938 the Buffalo Museum of Science bought, sight unseen, the 40 crates they filled.

Lacking proper documentation, the Black collection remained relatively unknown even among Pacific studies specialists. The problem, Foster explains, was that without accurate records of where and under what circumstances objects were acquired, scholars lacked crucial context for them.

But a lucky break and some timely advocacy by museum staff and Foster solved the mystery. After tracking down Black’s grandson in California during the mid-1990s, a former museum curator discovered that the family owned three trunks of papers, including material from the period when Black was collecting.

Last year, following inquiries from Foster, Black’s great-grandson donated the original diaries to the museum. From these documents—itineraries, really, says Foster—and other material in the Australian archives, Foster has been able to piece together some of the missing background on the collection.

His scholarly sleuthing will now culminate in a book, an online catalogue, and a museum exhibit, Journeys into Papua, that opens in September in celebration of the museum’s 150th anniversary.

The collaboration is a “match made in heaven,” says Kathryn Leacock, curator of collections at the museum. “He provides the research, we have the collection.”

Foster anticipates that the insights culled from the collection will eventually come full circle. He’s working with senior researchers at the Australian Museum, the National Gallery of Australia, and the Australian National University on ways to incorporate the objects from the Black collection into regional projects.

Such initiatives, he says, will help make the artifacts accessible to the communities from which they originated and provide a rich set of resources for constructing local histories.

“It’s amazing when you think of these objects that were created in New Guinea in the 1890s and then went to Australia, and then to Buffalo and then—for those that were part of other exhibitions—New York or San Francisco or Washington DC,” says Foster.

“They’re not inert. They have what I call ‘social lives’—and new meanings continually get attached to them.”

 

Photos: [1] One of Black’s meticulously kept diaries  [2] P G T Black, the Australian inspector for Burns Philp who collected the items between 1886 and 1916.  [3] A museum drawer holds examples of earrings and other ornaments from Central Province

Source: Rochester Review, University of Rochester.  Additional reporting by Kathleen McGarvey.  Photographs by Adam Fenster

Port Moresby to Portsea: a world away

BY TERRY EDWINSMITH

ON THE PENULTIMATE day of summer in southern Victoria 2011, I had the opportunity to visit Sorrento on Port Phillip Bay so the boy in me could watch the comings and goings of the Queenscliff to Sorrento car ferry as it plied across the bay.

This hourly spectacle demonstrated the efficiency of this maritime endeavour as eager holiday makers and tourists boarded for the 40 minutes journey. After having our fill of this activity, my wife and daughter, with me in tow, walked the streets and visited the shops of Sorrento full of Sunday sightseers.

After spending our money, I suggested we might look at Portsea, a 10 minutes drive from where we had eaten lunch. None of us had been to Portsea before but for me it was a name that had been with me for most of my life either through radio, newspapers and television. Who can forget the great Herb Elliot training on the sandhills or his trainer, Percy Cerutty commenting on almost any subject. Not to mention John Landy, Betty Cuthbert and Jimmy Carruthers.

 

Portsea to me represented sportsmen, action and the Army Officer Training School (OTS), somewhere in the wilds of Portsea’s peninsular. To a young boy, the chance to become an officer in the Australian Army was almost as attractive as becoming a “he-man” and change from an absolute weakling, having sand kicked in one’s face, to a Charles Atlas look-a-like.

The great attraction of OTS was that you would become a leader of men in twelve months with a career for life in the Australian Army. But where on earth was Portsea for a young lad from Kelvin Grove, only a short distance from Gona Barracks in Brisbane.

I followed a path in the High School Cadet Corps where I rose to the rank of corporal. Time moved on and college life in Brisbane called, as did the National Service Act as marbles rolled and I found that I was in the initial intake of national servicemen for training in the Vietnam conflict.

The beginnings of Kundiawa town

BY MATHIAS KIN

LOCATED UNDER the corridor of a 500-metre high limestone outcrop stretching east to west in the north, Kundiawa town is a bustling town with an estimated population of over 15,000.

It is the capital of the Simbu Province and is home to the best hospital in Papua New Guinea. This story of the beginning of Kundiawa town starts 77 years ago under very unlikely circumstances, a meeting of two leaders from vastly different worlds.

In 1934, Chief Bongere of the Kamaneku tribe had a garden at today's Kundiawa Works Compound.

One day, some strange people came from the east and made camp near the garden. They took some corn from the garden and as payment left some shells and an axe covered by corn leaves. Very early next morning, these aliens had gone west. Some people who hid in the nearby bushes told Bongere of these strange events.

Many days later these strange people returned. Bongere, being a big fellow and a fight leader for his tribe, confronted them. Before Bongere could do anything silly, these intruders took him to his garden and showed him the items they had hidden there.

Bongere was surprised by the strangers’ sincerity and was pleased with the instant wealth he had gained for some nothing corn. He promptly became friends with these people, especially their leader, William Bergmann. Bergmann told Bongere he would return soon and build his house to live with him there.

In those days, the present day Kundiawa town was a fighting zone for the Kamaneku and Endugla tribes and their allies. For this reason, the area was never permanently settled.

The Ega area, where the school and mission headquarters is today, was owned by the Kamaneku tribe. The Premier Hill area known as Tema and the Malaria Area were owned by the Endugla tribe.

A year earlier in April 1933 the Taylor-Leahy patrol had brought the first white men the Simbu people had seen. The Catholic missionaries led by Fr Alfonse Schaefer came through the area in November 1933 having crossed the Bismarck Range from Bundi and settled at Mingende.

The Lutheran missionaries under the leadership of Rev William Bergmann came from Finchhafen through the Markham and Goroka in May 1934. That was when they encountered Chief Bongere. As he promised, Bergmann came back to settle at Ega on the 12 September 1934.

On that day Bongere came down from his Keakge village on Tokma Mountain with a big white pig and killed it in front of his new friends. He then rubbed tanget leaves into the blood of the pig and planted it in the soil.

In this way, he officially signalled that the land was given to Bergmann and the Lutheran Mission. This was the beginning of a close relationship between Bongere and Bergmann. The locals called Bergmann Berman and others called him Kamanekumugl meaning Kamaneku tribesman.

There were two reasons Bongere and his Kamaneku tribesmen easily befriended Bergmann and gave their land to him.

Firstly, these aliens would be a physical barrier between the two tribes, helping prevent further troubles. The people had already seen the power of the white men’s firesticks from earlier patrols. They also believed that by being friendly, these aliens would side with them in the event of an attack from the Enduglas.

Secondly, Bongere and his Kamaneku tribesmen did not want these people who owned everything and knew everything good to go to another tribe. They wanted them to be close to them so that they would benefit from all these goodness.

Chief Bongere’s astuteness served its purpose - the two tribes have not had any fights since then and their sons and daughters are educated, well-to-do personalities all over PNG and abroad.

The Mission quickly built an airstrip which today is Simbu Airport and the first plane landed a month later. In the ensuing months and years the station was an important stopover for prospectors, missionaries and administration officers passing through from Benabena, Bundi and the Hagen posts.

In early 1935, after the killing of two Catholic missionaries in the Gembogl valley, kiap Jim Taylor established the first Chimbu-Wahgi post at Tema, now Premier Hill. From here, the kiaps carried out many punitive expeditions into the Gembogl area to avenge the killings.

They killed tens of tribesmen from among the tribes there. Sadly these killings were not recorded and the outside world never knew of these bad acts. Mr Taylor even took more than 50 tribesmen as prisoners all the way to Salamaua on the Morobe coast. Most of them perished and never made it back to their families in Gembogl.

World War II had a devastating impact on the positive progress of the church work in the area. Rev Bergmann and other missionaries of German origin, including Father Schafer from Mingende Catholic mission, were interned in Australia.

During this time, the Ega and the Mingende stations were occupied by the Allied forces. When Bergman returned after the war, his station was in tatters. Bergmann had to start all over again to rebuild.

But soon after, through the hard work of these missionaries and their indigenous workers, the station was brought back quickly to its former state. Ega again became an important centre for the spread of the Lutheran Church throughout Simbu and the highlands.

By 1953 the Highlands Highway was built through the Simbu-Wahgi from Goroka. This post, later named Kundiawa, became the capital of Simbu (then known as Chimbu) in July 1966 when the area was declared a district separate from the Eastern Highlands.

Kundiawa has today grown to be an important commercial and government centre for the central highlands.

Had it not been for the shrewdness of Bongere and the inspiration and entrepreneurship of his friend Bergmann, we would not have a Kundiawa like we do today.

Mathias Kin (45) was born at Deri village in Salt Nomane Karimui District in the Simbu Province.  He graduated from PNG Unitech in 1992 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Metallurgy. He works as an advisor with the Resettlement Project on the LNG Project; prior to that he was a public servant in Simbu for 14 years.  He is married with 8 children

Rudy Buckley: Montevideo Maru witness

BY MAXWELL R HAYES

ONE OF THE MOST incredible discoveries to come to light confirming the Montevideo Maru departure from Rabaul with captive service personnel and civilians was from the eye witness account of a then 12 year old child.

This observation led to further investigations with conclusive proof identifying one of the many soldiers being herded onto this unfortunate Japanese POW vessel.

Rudy Buckley, as a young child living in Rabaul with his parents, was one of several children given camp jobs and various other duties by his Japanese captors one of which was cooking rice for the soldiers. They worked for nine to ten hours daily for a small sack of rice.

Around the time of the sailing of the Montevideo Maru from Rabaul in June 1942, Rudy was working within the area of the Colyer Watson coal wharf near the former Shell depot in Wharf Street, Toboi, when he became aware of extensive lines of servicemen and civilians all in shorts, part or tattered uniforms, under cover of soldiers with machine guns.

They were being herded from a POW camp situated in the area later known as 2/22nd Street towards this partly burnt out wharf. Rudy recalls that at this time the town was under aerial bombardment and squads of the captive soldiers were forced to take cover in a very large concrete rain water drain until the raid was over.

After this he saw that they were then being taken by barges (of the type Rabaulites have later seen in the tunnels, i.e. a landing type barge with an armoured elevated steering position at the rear) from this wharf to the vessel anchored two to three hundred metres further out in the harbour.

The loading of these POWs in this manner took the better part of a whole day. Later that afternoon there was an allied bombing run over the harbour and the undamaged POW vessel left before nightfall.

As these captive soldiers and civilians were being marched to the foreshore for carriage on the barges to be taken to the Montevideo Maru, one soldier smiled at Rudy and threw him a khaki army issue handkerchief, secreting it from the view of ever present Japanese guards.

As was then the requirement, soldiers’ names and serial numbers were written on issue uniforms and accoutrements in Indian (black) ink. Rudy, being unaware of the significance of this name and serial number retained this memento and thought little of it.

He kept it in a tin box along with Australian soldiers’ badges and other items which remained buried at Ratongor about twenty miles from Rabaul on the north coast road, during the period of his families captivity there. This would have occasioned severe punishment had his captors discovered the buried tin box.   

Australia's 2nd great Papuan colonisation?

BY PHIL FITZPATRICK

THE LAST CHAPTER in the saga of human global colonisation belongs to Papua New Guinea.

Around 3,300 years ago Austronesian-speaking people ventured from New Ireland and New Britain east into the vast South Pacific and populated the islands as far away as Samoa and Tonga, a distance of about 4,500 kilometres.

The travels of these adventurous seafarers are relatively easily traced because of the remains of their patterned pottery, called lapita, and their shell armbands and obsidian tools.

We know that Austronesian speakers also colonised the south coast of Papua because their descendants are still there in villages from Mailu to as far west as Manumanu. 

The supporting archaeological evidence has been thin on the ground however and it has been difficult to put these migrations into context or discover when they occurred.  To date they have been regarded as a reasonably modern phenomenon.

A new archaeological dig at Caution Bay, about 20 kilometres west of Moresby, during 2009-10 has now discovered extensive deposits containing lapita pottery which date to between 2,900 and 2,500 years before the present.

This date range is towards the end of the known lapita manufacturing period and is roughly the same time as the Papua New Guinean seafarers were reaching Samoa and Tonga.

There are archaeological sites on mainland Papua which contain pottery but these remains come from a later period, which began about 2,000 years ago and are different from the earlier lapita style.

The site at Caution Bay is very big, stretching some 6½ kilometres along the coast and up to 1¾ kilometres inland; making it easily the biggest lapita site so far discovered in the Pacific. 

The size of the site also indicates that it was a viable and permanent settlement for over 400 years rather than just a series of transient events.

At one of the dig sites the archaeologists worked their way through modern deposits to the lapita material and then down to evidence of pre-lapita occupation, including a burial that could be up to 4,200 years old.

This is interesting because it shows that the lapita pottery makers were colonising a previously settled coastline whereas out in the Pacific to the east they were the very first humans to arrive.

Like the Austronesian speakers, these previously settled places were occupied by people who also exploited the resources of the sea.

We know that the Austronesian seafarers were traders and tended to mix well with the people already living on the Papuan coast.

This could mean that Austronesian-speaking people, like the Motu, may have been in Papua for longer than originally thought.  This and other intriguing questions have yet to be answered.

Also intriguing is the possibility that the lapita makers may have gone even further west to the Torres Strait and even to mainland Australia.

For more details of the recent discoveries at Caution Bay by Ian McNiven and his colleagues see the latest edition of Australian Archaeology, No 72, June 2011.

Beginnings of the modern art movement

BY MELANIE EASTBURN

LIMITED EDITION PRINTMAKING was introduced into PNG in the late 1960s and reached its peak of popularity in the 1970s. The practice began to fade in the 1980s and has now virtually disappeared.

The prints produced belong to a specific period of social, political, artistic, literary and educational change in png. Created by artists from a diversity of backgrounds, the works present strong and vibrant images that continue to resonate.

On 21 November 1969 an exhibition of woodcuts by Mathias Kauage and screenprints by Taita (Marie) Aihi and English expatriate Georgina Beier opened at the University of Papua New Guinea’s Centre for New Guinea Cultures in Port Moresby. The show, probably the earliest to include prints by Papua New Guinean artists, was organised by Georgina and Ulli Beier.

Aihi, a Roro woman from Waima, was 18 years old and had lived most of her life on Yule Island Catholic Mission when she met Georgina Beier and was encouraged to pursue a career in textile design in Port Moresby. Kauage, on the other hand, had tracked down an initially dubious Georgina Beier after finding inspiration in an exhibition of drawings by (Timothy) Akis which she had organised in February 1969.

Akis’ exhibition was extraordinary not only because the artist, from Tsembaga Village in the Simbai Valley, Madang Province, had started drawing seriously just six weeks before the show opened, but also because it was essentially the first exhibition of ‘contemporary’ art by a Papua New Guinean artist.

Contemporary or ‘new’ art using imported techniques and materials is largely an urban concern in PNG, with work carried out either in dedicated municipal settings, or in specific schools and cultural centres outside of them. The reasons for this are practical as well as cultural; it is in those places that the necessary equipment and materials are most readily available and ‘artist’ as a personal career choice was not, until recently, part of Papua New Guinean culture.

While those with exceptional artistic skill were acknowledged and appreciated, they also participated in the everyday activities demanded by culture and survival. As writer, researcher and collector of PNG’s  contemporary art, Hugh Stevenson, put it: ‘The idea of a person exclusively subsisting by art production and dedicated in his thinking only to art would have been exceptional’.

During the 1960s Akis worked intermittently as an interpreter and source for a number of anthropologists, drawing in order to communicate designs or ideas that were difficult to describe in pidgin.

Georgida Buchbinder, an anthropologist from Columbia University, was taken with Akis’ sketches and, when he travelled with her to Port Moresby in January 1969, showed his work to Georgina Beier who she suspected would find them intriguing. Aware of his potential, Georgina Beier encouraged Akis in his drawing.