Keith Jackson & Friends: PNG ATTITUDE

Lloyd Hurrell - Kiap, soldier, planter – dies at 95

BY JOHN FOWKE

LLOYD HURRELL CMG OBE MC DIED PEACEFULLY at home last Tuesday. He was the last of the pre-World War II Kiaps- and one with an exemplary record.

Later a pioneer coffee-planter at Wau in the 1950s, Lloyd was a member of the TPNG Legislative Council and one of the founders of the old Coffee Industry Board - the boardroom at the present Coffee Industry Corp in Goroka is named after him.

Lloyd is survived by his wife and five children. His son Don is one of the few AusAID consultants serving in PNG who can be said to have made a real difference by his presence as a police adviser in Goroka.

The National Archives of Australia note:

In 1939, (Albert) Lloyd Hurrell applied for the position of cadet patrol officer advertised in Sydney newspapers. After serving briefly as a Kiap in New Guinea, Hurrell joined the Australian Military Forces in 1940 (NGX18). He was awarded the Military Cross for his actions on 11 November 1942 during fierce fighting after the recapture of Kokoda.

After World War II, Hurrell returned to Kiap duties in New Guinea. In 1950 he was appointed Acting District Officer of the Menyamya district, and was instructed to establish a new settlement at this remote post in the ‘uncontrolled’ Western Highlands.

The following year, Hurrell was ordered to investigate a raid on the village of Kiatsong during which several people were killed. While investigating the raid, Hurrell’s party was attacked. He fired a warning shot, which unfortunately killed one of the attacking men.

Hurrell resigned from his Kiap duties in 1954, and established a farm and coffee plantation near Wau in the province of Morobe. He entered national politics in Papua New Guinea, and served for many years as President of the PNG Coffee Marketing Board. In 1969 Hurrell was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his services to the Board.

Three years ago, Lloyd published an account of his early PNG experiences in the memoir Hurrell's Way, described by James Sinclair as “a marvellous, highly informative read by an ex-soldier – Syria and Kokoda Track in World War II – and then patrol officer in New Guinea’s early days of Australian administration.”

Lloyd Hurrell’s funeral will be held at 11am on Monday 4 June at Tweed Heads Crematorium.

Top photograph from Lloyd Hurrell’s World War II army record of 1939

Dubbo Dave Kesby - a man for all seasons - dies in Sydney

BY KEITH JACKSON

AT 2.30 THIS MORNING, Dave Kesby died of cancer. He was 68 and a most admirable man. I am struck with grief.

Dave was a classmate of mine at the Australian School of Pacific Administration in 1962-63 and went on to teach in the Rabaul area before returning to Australia in about 1966 (apologies for the vagueness, I'm in Queensland and without records).

He got more degrees and worked as a school counsellor around Sydney for many years before purchasing a taxi licence. Cab driving may not seem every professional’s cup of tea – but Dave loved it. The passing parade of passengers and conversations was a source of almost unmitigated delight.

It could have been a sad day when ill health finally forced him to give the cabbing game away about 18 months ago. But there was always the Berowra ukelele band....

I last spoke with Dave eight days ago. He was in hospital, he knew he was dying and we had two conversations.

The first was short. He'd been allowed to leave his hospital bed for a couple of hours to see his grandson play football. The boy scored five goals and Dave was pleased to have seen that. He said he couldn’t talk for long and said goodbye.

A minute later he rang back, saying he didn’t want us to end on that sombre and abbreviated note.

He said he’d had a good life, that he felt happy. He was surrounded by the family he loved and he told me he was not afraid of death.

We talked politics – like we always did – and Dave puzzled over the desiccated state of the Labor Party, to which he had a lifelong commitment, knowing he would not live to see it in any other condition.

His mouth badly ulcerated, Dave found it difficult to talk, but talk we did. He apologised for not wanting any of us to join him at the hospital, but he said he wanted us to remember him as he was.

A man for all seasons - good for them all. Benign or malign. A little regret but not a trace of self pity.

Then we said a final farewell.

Dave was man of unremitting courage and good cheer. A man of honesty and straight-forwardness who never fooled himself that things were other than they really were.

A man constantly delighted by his fellow humans (bullies, thugs and Liberals excepted) and generous in spirit to the many people who came his way.

 Dave leaves behind Elissa - a beautiful, calm and courageous woman, his sons Jack and Pete, and other family members.

A celebration of Dave’s life will be held at the Uniting Church, 6 Alan Road, Berowra Heights in Sydney at noon on Wednesday 2 May.

PNG mourns passing of novelist Regis Stella

ON THE EVE of the launch of his third book, Unfolding Petals: Readings in Modern PNG Literature, senior lecturer in Literature and English at the University of Papua New Guinea, Dr Regis Stella, died on Wednesday.

Dr Stella, born in Bougainville, held a PhD from the University of New South Wales and had been teaching at UPNG since 1988. His thesis on PNG literature was later published as a book that is now a recommended text in universities.

Dr Stella had been a deputy dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and was formerly the director of the Melanesian Institute of Arts and Communications.

Colleague and fellow writer Dr Steven Winduo described him as a reserved, intelligent and hard working man.

PNG Attitude contributor Peter Kranz said  Dr Stella was “a private and talented man and a great writer”.

Dr Stella’s first novel in 1999 Gutsini Posa (‘rough seas’ in the Banoni language) was centred around the Bougainville crisis and experiences of that conflict.

Steven Winduo later wrote: “Far from its existential value, Gutsini Posa is a novel that [was] an important literary representation of the struggle of the Bougainville people to come to terms with the crisis that had completely devastated their moral and physical strength.

“Regis Stella’s place in the literary culture of PNG is secure.”

Thanks to Kairu Laho, UPNG Public Relations

Terry Hewitt, ex teacher and tough all-rounder

BY WARREN READ

I WAS SADDENED TO LEARN of the passing of Terry Hewitt. He was a teacher, principal and registrar in the Madang and Central Moresby area from 1963 to about 2003; after which he went to Fiji then returned to Cairns area where he died 9 October 2011.

Terry did the ASOPA teachers’ course in 1961-62. He spent a lot of years around Saidor, some on Karkar, some in Madang, then later in Moresby.

He spent his early years with that great bear of man, a pre war officer and veteran of the middle east and the PNG campaigns, R Ivor McIlwain, and his offsider P K Moloney; perhaps not the easiest people to get on with. But Terry did - he liked them and they liked him. Terry could get on with anyone.

He was a very clever man, matriculating at 15 from the Marist brothers - they were good teachers, put aside the other propaganda. Terry picked up a few degrees on his way through life. No effort for Terry.

Apart from his high intellect, he was very musical. He played most instruments and specialised in the guitar (he used to make them as a hobby) and had his own band. He even wrote a few songs.

One song was a parody of I’ve been everywhere man: “I have walked the Finisterres man." The term Finisterres in Portguese means the end of the earth. Terry had walked some of that and knew how hard it was.

Another song was Having a beer with Leo. Leo was at Lamtub under Terry's auspices, a dedicated but different type of teacher. Terry handled him well.

I recall in 1969 there was an organised charity walk from Madang to the Plantation hotel, a distance of about 50 kilometres on an open, hot coral road. I was not over keen and mentioned this to Terry, who said: "I’ll come with you" And he did - such was the measure of the man.

I last saw Terry in Brisbane with his son Peter early last year when he was down from Cairns. Terry looked ill but I did not think the end would come so quickly.

Goodbye Terry; you were a great man and great all-rounder.

Stan Jackson OAM dies after a long & adventurous life

BY KEITH JACKSON

MY FATHER, STANLEY JACKSON – teacher, author, environmentalist and marathon bike rider - died on Friday evening at the grand age of 98.

Born in Lancashire, England, in 1913 into a working class family, he was the first of his line to win a scholarship to grammar school and gain a university education.

He fought in Burma in World War II as a member of Mountbatten’s forces and, in 1949, perceiving no real prospects for his family in a depressed post-war Britain, migrated to Australia with his wife Joan, my sister Susan and me. Joan, who he loved greatly, predeceased him in 1976 after a 15 year struggle with cancer.

In Australia, Stan taught economics and geography at Nowra High School for many years – teaching me in two of them to some reasonable effect – before finishing his career, to care for an ailing Joan, as deputy headmaster of Pittwater High School in Sydney.

In the intervening time he had authored a series of popular text books, Economics and the Economy (McGraw-Hill), which provided him with a steady income for many years.

After Joan’s death – pursuing a long interest in environmentalism and physical exercise – he rode a bicycle from Sydney to Manchester in England, visiting me in the Maldive Islands in 1978 as part of this epic journey.

Some years later, at the age of 75 in 1988, he led the 'International Friendship' bike ride from London to Sydney to mark the 1988 bicentenary of Australian settlement. Included was a period in hospital in India after he broke a number of ribs when he turned his bike the wrong way up a highway and was hit by a truck.

Following that there were other marathon rides: including one the length of the Rocky mountains from the Mexican to Canadian borders and, in his late eighties, another the length of Japan from north to south (during which he spent a night in a paddy field after being blown off his bike in a hurricane).

Despite having fought against the Japanese in World War II, Stan grew to love Japan and its people, learned Japanese, and had two books on the environment and human relationships published in that country, to which he was a frequent visitor.

In 2002 he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for his environmental activities and cycling exploits.

He spent 20 years as a firm companion of Helen Murphy OAM, who shared his passions and who was herself a great contributor to society. Helen died four years ago.

Stan lived a long and productive life and established a new base for the Jackson family in Australia – having been followed to that country by many British relatives following his own emigration.

He visited Papua New Guinea on a number of occasions.

Stan is survived by children Keith, Susan and Peter; grandchildren Simon, Sally, Ben, Roger, Nicholas and James; and great-grandchildren Cooper, Madison and Sydney Keith. Joan and Helen predeceased him.

Award-winning academic dissected PNG's history

BY JON FRAENKEL, STEWART FIRTH & BRYANT ALLEN*
THE CANBERRA TIMES

HANK NELSON Born 21 October 1937; died 17 February 2012

PROFESSOR HANK NELSON, 74, of the Australian National University died in Canberra on Friday 17 February after a long battle with cancer.

His was a life focused on both Papua New Guinea and Australia, and it was the relationship between the two that nourished his intellect.

Born in 1937 in Boort, country Victoria, Hank ''Neil'' Hyland Nelson spent the late 1960s and early 1970s teaching at the University of Papua New Guinea.

His books, including Black, White and Gold: Goldmining in Papua New Guinea, 1878-1930 and Taim Bilong Masta: the Australian Involvement with Papua New Guinea, established for him a reputation as the foremost historian of Papua New Guinea.

His work on the Japanese occupation of PNG, and Australian involvement in the Pacific War, entailed ventures into oral history involving collaborations with journalists, as with the 1982 documentary series Angels at War, which won awards both from the Australian Film Institute and at the Nyon Film Festival in Switzerland.

That work led to his involvement in the preparation of displays and sound archives of the Australian War Memorial.

Nelson wanted history to serve a broader purpose, and he wrote not just for his colleagues or his profession but for a wider public.

His three books published by the ABC exemplified this approach, above all Taim Bilong Masta: The Australian Involvement with Papua New Guinea, ABC, 1982, which told the story in large part through people's reminiscences.

Nelson once joked Australians were such a rarity in the ranks of historians at the Australian National University his position had to be due to affirmative action. That was typical humility. Nothing could be further from the truth.

He was a splendid historian, equally at home with the detail of Papua New Guinea's history and with theories of political power or the dynamics of group identity.

He was proud of his rural origins, his national service and his school teaching, and he drew upon them perceptively in books such as Prisoners of War: Australians Under Nippon and With Its Hat About Its Ears: Recollections of the Bush School.

His background was the foundation of his research, and it helps to explain his concern for the place of the common people in history.

Eminent historian Hank Nelson dies in Canberra

BY KEITH JACKSON

THE HIGHLY-RESPECTED PACIFIC HISTORIAN Hank Nelson died in Canberra on Friday night after a long battle with cancer.

Professor Nelson lived in Papua New Guinea for seven years from 1966-73, teaching at the then newly-established University of Papua New Guinea.

This experience gave him a lifelong love of PNG and he developed a professional interest in that country and the Pacific, with his expertise being much called-upon and highly valued.

One of his particular research interests was the period of Japanese occupation in PNG. 

In this respect, he was of huge assistance to the Rabaul and Montevideo Maru Society when it was establishing a factual understanding of the circumstances surrounding the sinking of the prison ship Montevideo Maru – which resulted in the deaths of over 1,000 civilians and servicemen who had been imprisoned by the Japanese in Rabaul.

Hank also greatly assisted the Society as it moved through its establishment and acceptance by the Australian government - a process which is leading to the establishment of a permanent memorial in Canberra, to be unveiled on 1 July this year.

A couple of years ago, Hank wrote: “Since living in Papua New Guinea for seven years I have had a consistent interest in the history and current politics of Papua New Guinea and in Australia-Papua New Guinea relations.”

Hank was the author of many books, his contribution to Australia’s relationships with PNG was immeasurable and his work to ensure a better understanding of Australia’s role in certain aspects of World War II in the Pacific and beyond was a of great importance.

He was a good man and he will be missed.

Hank Nelson, BA, MEd (Melb), PhD (UPNG). Emeritus Professor and Visiting Fellow, School of Culture, History & Language; Chairman, State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Project; Adviser, Rabaul & Montevideo Maru Society

It’s always a bad day when a good man dies

BY MURRAY BLADWELL

ON A SAD NOTE, I had a phone call late this afternoon from Tony Caselberg's wife Lorraine saying Tony died early today from heart disease – the doctors were unable to replace a failing heart valve.

Tony worked for the Department of Public Works in Goroka, Kundiawa and Port Moresby.

He was a good mate and a gentle soul whose wonderful wit and zest for life will be sadly missed.

My Louise - A final goodbye to a beautiful wife

BY REGINALD RENAGI

WE WERE YOUNG AND FULL OF LIFE when we met in the seventies. We became good friends at high school and stayed that way for 41 years when it all suddenly ended for me and my beautiful wife from Yule Island.

My marriage came to a terrible end when my wife and 27 other passengers perished in an air crash in Madang province last October.

We had been together for 39 years, 3 months and 13 days until that fateful day.

On Saturday 7 January 2012, I said my final goodbye to a beautiful wife and friend in an emotional memorial service as a tribute to her.

After the funeral service I took her remains in a small casket (that was all that remained of her) to the Funeral Home to be cremated.

Once there, a brief prayer was said over her casket and I hugged and kissed her casket before leaving it with the funeral attendants.

I did not immediately leave as I hesitated a while longer with tears running down my cheeks.

I felt so sad and did not want to leave her alone with strange people who did not know her.

I hated the thought that in a matter of a few hours she would be reduced to ashes for me to collect the next day.

I cried the whole weekend and brought her ashes back to the family home on Monday.

Yes, she was my best friend for 41 years and God took what was all alone his until the day I am called by him to join my loved ones in heaven.

Goodbye my darling, Louise Toto Miria; and I will forever be grateful to you for making me very happy during your short time on earth.

May your beautiful soul rest in eternal peace.

Sinake Giregire, one of the real big men, dies in 80s

BY JOHN FOWKE

ONE OF THE GREAT MEN of Papua New Guinea has died.  Sir Sinake Giregire was an intriguing, humorous and likeable man; highly intelligent, although with only the most basic formal education.

He was very definitely an ideas man, and a person with a lifelong enthusiasm for agricultural development.  Even in his eighties, Sir Sinake was lucid and full of life and innovation.

He was a pioneer in Eastern Highlands business as a gold miner, coffee planter, coffee factory owner and entrepreneur. 

He was also a politician - founder of the PNG Country Party which was formally recognised on the floor of Parliament in March 1974, before independence.

As early as 1957 he was a councillor and first president of the Asaro-Watabung local government council, later serving as a Member of Parliament from 1964-77 including terms as Minister for Agriculture Stock & Fisheries and Minister for Posts & Telegraphs.

Photo: John Fowke and Sinake Giregire, November 2010

Bill Bergen, teacher & businessman, dies at 71

BY BILL WELBOURNE

I'VE JUST RECEIVED NEWS from Helen Bergen that her father Bill died this morning. Her text reads: “Dad just died at 11.20. It was truly peaceful. He did it so well.”

Bill and I were great mates and this is confusing to some of our 1962-63 ASOPA colleagues. We were different in many ways but this made our friendship all the more interesting.

I was the athlete and  Bill loved his music. He had a strong Roman Catholic faith and I was Anglican.  Bill met his wife Joan when they sang in the church choir, prior to ASOPA. My late wife Pam and his wife Joan became firm friends after we married while at college. My wedding was in December 1962 and his was September 1963.

At college we often dined together, played Canasta and sometimes saw a movie. We convinced our wives to enroll for the 6 month E Course for teachers to commence in Rabaul in February 1964. Our wives actually arrived in Rabaul a day ahead of Bill and me in November 1963.

They were met by Father Franke and the were temporarily accommodated in Wanlis flats. We were then posted... Nodup T School for me and I think Rabarua for Bill. The following February our wives started the E Course but they could not cope as they were both pregnant.

Bill and I had to confront Frank Boisen, the District Education Officer, to tell him the news. Frank mumbled as strode off hitching up his pants, “'That's the trouble with Wanlis...There's  not enough room to bend over or swing a cat.!'”

In May my son Tony was born and around the same as Joan gave birth to Helen. 

We often dined together in Rabaul. At home one evening in 1966 we were enjoying a fondue and listening to some grand music on Bill's huge state-of-the-art tape deck. The newly constructed terrace houses were built close together and were known as the European Compound.  Some were rented privately.

A German group was carousing noisily and even played their national anthem. Bill was fed up with this and taped it and played it back at twice the volume. There was some muttering, then silence followed. Later on Bill was posted to Bougainville and I went over to the Lands Department in Port Moresby. But we always kept in touch. 

We left PNG after after Independence in 1975. Bill and Joan decided to live at Bathurst even though parents lived in Sydney. They wanted to settle in an area with four seasons and one that had good cultural and education facilities.

Bill taught in the convent schools for a while and then became a businessman. He had a electrical shop selling lights and he ran a laundromat. He sold these after he built his rental units in Durham Street, Bathurst.

I would visit them and we would have eggs Florentine for breakfast  at their son Chris's reaturant in central Bathurst. Bill and Joan were practicing musicians and, right up to his death, Bill was in charge of the Bathurst Orchestral Group.

Music great Anthony Soru Subam dies

BY SALLY POKITON

 

ANTHONY SORU SUBAM, the head of University of Papua New Guinea creative arts music section, a pioneer advocate of local contemporary music and a founding member of the famous Sanguma band, has died.

Subam, in his mid-50s, died at the Paradise Private Hospital on Sunday after a short illness. He had been rushed to hospital by his colleagues.

Subam, of Kairuru Island, in East Sepik and Yabob, in Madang, was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital  around 7.45am. A post-mortem examination is yet to be conducted.

Barleyde Katit, a colleague of Subam, said he was ill for a week but had not taken proper medication although he showed symptoms of malaria.

“He was sick on and off for a week but did not take proper medication until Sunday morning when we rushed him to the hospital between 7.45 and 8am only to have doctors pronounce him dead on arrival,” Katit said.

Subam was a pioneer student of the creative arts and a member of the eight-man Sanguma band formed in 1978. Other band members included Sebastian Miyoni, Thomas Komboi, Raymond Hakena, Buruka Tau, Aaron Murry, Apa Saun, Paul Yabo and Leonard Taligatus.

Subam had been engaged with the university’s creative arts strand from 2000 and was the head of the music section until his death. He is survived by his two wives and five children.

Source: The National.     Spotter: Peter Kranz

Phillip Harold Lewis: New Ireland anthropologist

AS A CURATOR IN THE ANTHROPOLOGY DEPARTMENT at the Field Museum for four decades, Phillip Harold Lewis, who has died aged 89, made several trips to the village of Lesu in New Ireland.

There he did extensive fieldwork in the study of Melanesian culture and art and collected hundreds of items — including tribal masks, woven baskets and musical instruments — many of which are on exhibit at the museum.

"Phil embodied the fieldwork ethic, embedding himself in another culture to fully study and understand it," said Patrick Ryan Williams, chairman of the anthropology department at the museum. "His exhibits were impressive and continue to serve as a legacy of his life's work."

Mr. Lewis was the longest serving curator at the Field Museum and, during his 40-year tenure, oversaw the installation of Pacific Hall, a permanent exhibit on Polynesian, Micronesian and Melanesian cultures.

"He was our only curator of primitive art from the Pacific Rim back then," Williams said.

In the early 1950s, Mr Lewis set off on his first research expedition from the US to New Ireland.  "They kept stopping to refuel," said his daughter Betty Lewis. "It was an extremely arduous journey."

Once there, Mr. Lewis was assigned simple living quarters with no running water or electricity, his daughter said.  "The outhouse had spiders the size of his hand and a fruit bat kept stealing his bananas," she said.

Mr Lewis came to love the Melanesian people and their culture, making two more trips to New Ireland in the 1970s and '80s. "It was a beautiful place with people who lived a very peaceful existence," his daughter said.

Following his military discharge in 1945, Mr. Lewis attended the University of Chicago, where he earned bachelor's and master's degrees, and later a doctorate in anthropology. It was there he met his wife of 54 years, Sally Rappaport, a fellow anthropology student. She died in 2003.

Source: Joan Giangrasse Kates, Chicago Tribune

Brad Ellis, son of prominent journalist, dies at 43

BRADLEY (BRAD) ELLIS (1968-2011), eldest son of David and Gwenda Ellis, passed away on Friday 11 November after a lengthy battle with cancer of the bowel, liver and lung.

David Ellis was the ABC’s regional journalist at Rabaul in the 1960s and Gwenda worked at Clarke’s Pharmacy in the town.

Brad was born at Nonga Base Hospital on 25 July 1968 and died at his home in the NSW Southern Highlands surrounded by his wife Emma, David and Gwenda, his sister Kimberley, brother-in-law Andrew, brother Steven, sister-in-law Stephanie and several close friends.

Brad was diagnosed with cancer 2½ years ago and was told at the time that he had “six months.”  His doctors said his extraordinary tenacity and willpower helped him in his fight, and he worked in his tiling business until just two months ago despite fortnightly chemotherapy treatment.

His condition deteriorating rapidly in the last few weeks.

Brad is survived by Emma and his two daughters by a previous marriage, Abigail (8) and Naomi (6.)

Brad and Emma lived in a cottage on the same block as David and Gwenda at Burradoo near Bowral in the Southern Highlands.

David and Gwenda can be contacted by email here or on (02) 4861 7321.

Jeannette Leahy, matriarch of Zenag, dies in Sydney

BY KEITH JACKSON

JEANETTE LEAHY, widow of the renowned Papua New Guinea explorer, Mick Leahy (1901-79) died this afternoon in Sydney, to where she had only recently retired, at the age of 90.

Jeanette, then 19, married the much older explorer and gold prospector, Mick Leahy, then 39, at St John's Church, Darlinghurst in Sydney, on 5 March 1940.

Jeannette Gwendolin Best, originally from North Queensland, was an alumna of Sydney Church of England Girls' Grammar School.

At the wedding, equally famed explorer Jim Taylor was best man and Margaret Dovey (later Whitlam) was bridesmaid.

The Leahy brothers had found their own El Dorado at Kuta in the Western Highlands and Mick was already a man of means.

He and Jeanette had five children who went into professions and business.  According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Mick could not acknowledge three mixed-race sons at Mount Hagen, who came under the patronage of his brother Danny and thrived.

After World War II, Jeanette and Mick built up the Zenag Farm business, a major chicken and beef supplier in PNG, situated at Mumeng, halfway along the road between Bulolo and Lae.

Apart from the war years Jeanette lived in the Morobe Province since 1939 until coming to Sydney earlier this year.

Thanks to John Pasquarelli for notifying PNG Attitude of this sad event

Excerpts from an interesting and varied life

IRENE WALKER, who spent time in Papua New Guinea between 1975 and 1983, has died in Ireland at the age of 91.

Irene had been a ‘short-termer’ with Wycliffe Bible Translators in the 1970’s, but, in 1975, at the age of 55, Irene made the decision to use the freedom of retirement to go to PNG with Wycliffe.

So she volunteered, providing important teaching and administration skills and returned home after three years, but soon felt that she should resume this work.

Her letters home tell of some of her amazing experiences:

December 1980.  November 1st was a very special day for the people of villages on the banks of the Sepik river for on that day their own Yessan-Mayo New testament was dedicated!…  The previous day some of us had flown out from Ukarumpa and then travelled upriver in two canoes joined by planks of wood, enjoying the beauty of the river, the birds and foliage, and the little villages on the bank.  It was a wonderful experience to rejoice with the people in song and prayer and reading from their own New Testaments.

March 1981.  I have acquired a car; bits of it are held together by tape but all vital parts work and it successfully negotiates mud, a flood, a plank bridge and herds of water buffalo between the centre and the aviation department.

November 1983.  This will be my last circular from PNG!  I expect to leave here on 29th December, spend some time in Australia and London, and reach home towards the end of January.  I shall be sorry to leave the many friends I have made here but look forward to renewing friendships at home.  Several very dear ones have gone to be with the Lord during my time here; I shall miss them but know there will be a glad reunion in Heaven.

When Irene eventually returned home, she volunteered with the Wycliffe office in Northern Ireland, representing Wycliffe at churches and helping in the office. All in all, Irene’s short-term work lasted more than 14 years.

Source: Wycliffe Bible Translators, 5 November

Kwila-post Morobe leader, Utula Samana, dies

BY MALUM NALU

FIREBRAND FORMER Morobe politician Utula Samana died at his home at 6-Mile outside Lae in the early hours of Sunday.

Lae-based medical doctor Mosey Sao confirmed the death of Mr Samana, from Saigara village in Morobe Patrol Post,

Sao said the cause of death was not known, but added that Mr Samana had been suffering from the debilitating effects of Parkinson's Disease for the last couple of years.

He was a graduate in arts from the University of Papua New Guinea (1974) where he majored in politics and public administration.

Following his work as provincial planner and then premier of Morobe Province, in July 1987 he moved into national politics when he unseated Boyamo Sali for the Morobe Regional seat.

He was Morobe Regional MP until 1992, when he was defeated by his longtime rival, Jerry Nalau.

Mr Samana later became Secretary for the Department of Agriculture and Livestock and PNG Ambassador to the United Nations, among other positions.

Longtime friend and supporter, Paul Itama, said all of his friends and supporters were saddened by the sudden death.

"He was a kwila post for all of us in Morobe," he said."He was a very-decisive leader."

Samana is survived by his two wives and children Yaungtine, Nuki, Cher and Galiki.

Keith Jackson writes: I was at UPNG with Utula – always a cheerful, strong and outspoken figure. Around the same table in Prof Rex Mortimer’s politics honours class were the quiet and thoughtful Rabbie Namaliu, the acutely intelligent Bart Philemon and the elegant figure of the late Paul Pora amongst a handful of others.

In my own time I also sought a political career, but, unlike each of my my erstwhile classmates, I never succeeded at the polls.  We’ll miss Utula, and his robust and infectious humour.

Photo: Utula Samana with the late Mike Manning of Transparency International

Margaret Olley – artist had a PNG connection

NUMEROUS AUSTRALIAN ARTISTS travelled to Papua New Guinea following the end of World War II.

Natalie Wilson has written: "William Dobell [previously covered in these columns], travelled with close friends Frank and Thelma Clune and the writer Colin Simpson to Nondugl near Mount Hagen in the Central Highlands in 1949 as guests of the zoologist and philanthropist Sir Edward Hallstrom.

"Margaret Olley [who has just died in Sydney at the age of 88], made her first excursion to PNG in 1954, when she spent time with Cecil Abel at Kwato.

"Later, between 1967 and 1968, she made three further trips to PNG and many of her still life paintings are filled with objects which she collected at that time."[ Natalie Wilson, 'Focus on Oceanic Art', LOOK, AGS, Sydney, October 2009, pg. 32-33]

She also spent some weeks in Angoram, and Peter Johnson, in a letter to former kiap and artist John Pasquarelli, has recalled that visit:

I know you were quite close friends with Margaret, and am sure you are, as I am, saddened by the news today of her death.

I am in your debt for causing me the pleasure of hosting her at Angoram for several weeks, she was a delight to know and a good cook too!

I was really a dumb young bloke then, as I wouldn’t sit for her – in too much of a hurry to get to the late lamented Angoram Club.

I never saw her again, but closely missed her on several occasions when she had left notes for me – it was always just too late!

Her biographer wrote about her Angoram stay “that she stayed in a riverside house with some patrol officer.”

I took the liberty of writing to her with a bit of a whinge and she sent me a copy of her book with the passage crossed out and the note:“No, I stayed with my friend, Peter Johnson.” Written in, in her own hand. This is now something to treasure!

Images: (top) Mt Hagen Woman, oil on board; (lower) Susana of Angoram, oil on board, 1968

Donald Ramsay – soldier and “a grand chap”

COLONEL DONALD RAMSAY OAM, former commanding officer of the 2^nd Battalion of the Pacific Islands Regiment has died in Sydney.

Colonel Donald McInnes Ramsay, was born and educated in Scotland and commissioned in The Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) in 1943, seeing active service during World War II in Italy (including the Cassino battles) and Greece.

He transferred to the Australian Regular Army in 1952 and served with the Victorian Scottish Regiment and the Royal Australian Regiment, including with the 2nd Battalion in operations against the communist terrorists in Malaya (1955–57), initially as adjutant and then as a company commander.

He served with the Pacific Islands Regiment twice. From 1960-62, he was a company commander and then second-in-command of the Regiment, at the time a single battalion. From 1965-67, he raised the 2nd Battalion and became its foundation commanding officer.

The battalion was based in Wewak with responsibility for the border with Indonesia. He retired from the Army to lead Papua New Guinea’s largest community-owned export-import company until independence in 1975 and subsequently served on the administrative staff of the Scots College in Sydney until 1994.

He was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in 2001 for services to international relations, recognising his contributions to both PNG and “gap year” exchange programs between British and Australian youth.

Tom Hungerford – writer & commando

NOVELIST, POET, playwright and autobiographer Tom Hungerford has died in Perth, aged 96.

He served in the army during World War II, joining the commandos and attacking the Japanese in guerilla raids behind enemy lines in Papua New Guinea.

He drew from his war experiences to write the 1952 novel The Ridge and the River, which Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop called "the essence of jungle warfare as it was fought by Australians".

His best-known work, Stories from Suburban Road, made into a play and a television series, described his youth growing up during the Great Depression in the semi-rural outskirts of Perth.

Speaking to The Australian in 2005, he played down his achievements.

"I'm a hardworking professional writer who has been on the job for 60 years, has some wonderful friends and wonderful memories," he said.

"I'm proud of what I've achieved, which isn't a hell of a lot, but it's something."

Source: The Australian

Murray Groves – anthropologist and scholar

EVEN THOUGH HE was born in Melbourne, Murray Groves, who has died in Canberra at the age of 84, was always influenced by Papua New Guinea, where his parents met, where they lived for more than 20 years and where he lived for two years and visited frequently.

His father was Bill Groves, an educational administrator in the Pacific and a long-serving Director of Education in PNG, who was very influential in the post-war Administration and laid the foundations of the nation’s public education system.

Murray Groves entered Melbourne University in 1944 to study history and law, but moved to Port Moresby for two years (1947-48), where he completed his law subjects by correspondence.

He was greatly influenced by these two years in Moresby, where he worked as a judge’s associate in the Supreme Court and taught English in Hanuabada.

In 1952 he did a diploma of anthropology at Oxford and then studied social anthropology for his doctoral research. He made a comparative study of three Motu villages where traditional life had been affected by their varying distances from Port Moresby.

Groves was considered a scholar of well-disciplined, forceful and original mind, an imaginative teacher and an able administrator. Groves was to display these qualities as he served various institutions in his academic career.

When he retired in 1988, Groves re-engaged with his Motu fieldwork, which he regretted not having published earlier. This reconnection focussed on Manumanu, 50 km from Moresby and the most traditional of the three villages where he had worked.

These further studies took place in the context of what he saw as the pernicious influence of post-modernism on contemporary social anthropology. He wrote two articles on fishing and fishermen in Manumanu.

Having been appointed a visiting fellow at the Australian National University in 1994, he made the occasional visit to PNG, but suffered continuing health problems from the late 1990s.

Source: The Saturday Age.   Spotter: Ross Wilkinson

Fr Bill Liebert - drug fighting missionary

BY MAUREEN O’DONNELL

EVEN ON THE hottest days of summer, the Rev William “Bill” Liebert wore a coat. After spending 49 years as a missionary in PNG — where the coldest night might dip as low as 73 degrees — it was understandable he’d find August in Chicago relatively cool.

Father Liebert, whose drug-fighting work on the other side of the world got him slapped around by thugs from PNG’s raskol gangs — and earned him the enmity of Chinese mobsters — died of kidney failure on 6 May at the Divine Word Missionaries house in Techny, Illinois, where he had lived since 2006. He was 81.

Though he was director-general of PNG’s National Narcotics Bureau from 1992 to 2001, he considered his most important work to have been his effort to keep boys out of adult prisons, where they might be sexually exploited and graduate to more serious levels of criminality.

He not only represented them in court, but also helped create Boys Town, an institution in Wewak that fed, housed and educated juveniles accused of crimes. The children there called him Pata Bill.

Father Liebert grew up about as far from PNG as you can get, in Kansas. His family owned a farm that grew corn, wheat and soybeans. He always wanted to be a priest, and after he was ordained “he wanted to do something exciting,” said Rev Donald O’Connor, a fellow missionary who served 35 years with him in PNG.

In 1957, Father Liebert was sent to PNG and, as the country became more westernised, modern-day scourges took root, including AIDS, gun violence and drugs such as crystal meth and marijuana dubbed “New Guinea Gold.”

One of Father Liebert’s finest moments occurred around 2003. Smugglers were trying to route ephedrine through China, India and crime-ridden Port Moresby to make “ice” — crystal meth. Through his many sources, “Bill got wind of that,” Fr O’Connor said. “He made the authorities aware of it.”

He was “working against the Chinese mafia,” O’Connor said. “He was really what I would call a modern-day St Paul. He was chased and even beat up by people.” He also represented the prime minister of PNG at United Nations anti-drug conferences in Vienna and other major cities.

A pipe smoker, he developed throat cancer about 20 years ago. At first it silenced him, but he learned to speak again despite having to have surgery on his throat. His letters home were lyrical, his nieces said. He wrote about the island’s big snakes, including a python that became a pet.

The distance and expense were so great that he could come home only about every five years. When he visited Kansas, he couldn’t get enough fried chicken. When you asked for fried chicken in PNG, he’d say, you never were sure just what you were getting. He always brought his nieces beautiful seashells, or bags made of New Guinea vines.

Father Liebert will be buried in the grounds of the Sacred Heart Monastery in Wewak.

Source: Chicago Sun-Times

 

John Herbert – policeman & advocate

BY MAX HAYES & PETER CAHILL

EDWARD JOHN HERBERT, who has died at the age of 85, was a popular policeman, and latterly industrial advocate in PNG and Queensland.

A former rear gunner in an RAF Lancaster bomber flying sorties over Europe in World War II, he was appointed to the Royal Papua and New Guinea Constabulary in Port Moresby in 1949 as an assistant sub-inspector of police.

Later transferred to Rabaul as sub-inspector and later inspector, he undertook sensitive special duties.

After serving briefly in Lae, Wau and Kundiawa he studied at the University of Queensland and earned a BA and a Diploma of Public Administration. He returned to Port Moresby as Licensing Inspector with the Liquor Licensing Commission before joining the Department of Labour as an Industrial Relations Officer.

John represented PNG, and also mentored trainee local officers, at an International Labour organisation conference in Switzerland in 1970. After training his local successor, he retired as Chief of Division (Industrial Relations) in 1976 and left PNG. 

In Australia he was appointed Industrial Officer for the West Australian Colleges of Advanced Education, and later to a similar position in Brisbane where he became Industrial Advocate for Queensland Colleges of Advanced Education.

Retiring again, he joined  a writers’ group in Brisbane and entertained members with thinly-disguised tales of his life in pre-World War II London and post-war Rabaul.

He is survived by his wife, Kath, daughters Carla and Cherry and their families, son Tony and his family, and son Kieran. He had six grandchildren and one great-grand-child.

John was unique, a one-off, respected and trusted by friends, colleagues and villains, always willing to help and advise.

“Novice coppers could not have had a truer friend” a colleague wrote; nor could the Papua New Guineans he guided into their pre-and post-Independence careers.

Gary Scully – foreign correspondent

FORMER FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT and long time reporter at ABC-TV News, Gary Scully has died at his home on the Gold Coast.

His wife Lorrie said her old love and mate died on Friday at about 7.30pm, possibly of a stroke, at the age of 77.

It was a gentle passing. He had been having a few breathing problems and had a hospital visit that day. They went home and Gary had half a beer and, when Lorrie came back into the room, Gary had passed away.

After a long and distinguished career in journalism, Gary had retired to the Gold Coast. He first went overseas to Singapore in 1963, later reporting other countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

Once asked about the work of a correspondent, he replied “Accuracy is so important, and that I think sums, more than adequately the work of a foreign correspondent, because their stories very often are the history of tomorrow. Well sometimes you're lucky enough to meet people that make history themselves.”

Gary's funeral is at 2pm on Thursday 12 May at St Monica's Catholic Church, 485 Golden Four Drive, Tugun, on the Gold Coast.

From Ian Macintosh and Bob Wurth

Bill Eichhorn – entrepreneur and politician

THE HON WILLIAM EICHHORN MBE has died in Angoram Hospital. He was aged about 75.

Bill was a former Member of the House of Assembly, Speaker of the East Sepik Provincial Government and a well-regarded entrepreneur in the Sepik region.

“There was a service in Wewak and Bill was then taken to Korogopa for burial amongst his ancestors,” reports Peter Johnson.

There will be many with memories of Bill and stories to tell. A more detailed tribute will be published in the near future.

Photo: Bill at Korogopa, on the banks of the Keram River, 2009

Spotter: David Wall

Neville Barnes – trader and entrepreneur

IF ONE WORD could sum up the life of Neville Barnes (1929-2011), who has died in Caloundra, Queensland at the age of 81, that word would be colourful.

At one time he was a big name in pearl production in PNG and his business, N E Barnes Trading Company, which had branches across the country, imported a vast array of products from Wedgwood china to prefabricated bridges.

Although born in Sydney, he spent his youth in Queensland. At the age of 21 he moved to Brisbane, where he spent his spare time at the Broadbeach Surf Lifesaving Club during the birth of the Gold Coast's beach culture.

He later moved to Rabaul and set up the trading company that was to become a well-known name in PNG. At first Neville concentrated on importing goods from Hong Kong, but soon expanded to many other countries.

In the 1960s, when China first opened its doors to western economies, Mr Barnes was one of the first businessmen to attend a trade fair in Canton, securing agencies for Chinese textiles, clothing and light industrial goods.

His company was also importing prefabricated bridges from Japan on behalf of the PNG government, and a wide range of clothing, trade store supplies and luxury items from Europe, Britain and elsewhere.

Before long the family moved to Port Moresby, which became the company headquarters, while Mr Barnes opened additional offices in Lae, Madang, Goroka and Mt Hagen.

His venture into the pearl trade began when he was approached to oversee the establishment of a cultured pearl farm at Idumava Point in Fairfax Harbour. This was a massive task in Port Moresby, which still had limited infrastructure. It involved taking electricity and town water across the harbour, underwater to the farm, and building staff quarters and operating rooms.

It was a highly successful venture for many years before water pollution from shipping and problems with polychaete worms forced its closure. So then Neville turned to marketing pearls and set up offices in Brisbane, Sydney and Singapore. His son Bruce still carries on that business in Hong Kong.

After selling his business to Breckwoldt and Co, Neville moved back to Australia where he retired to Pelican Waters in Caloundra.

He was a gregarious man who was great company and an excellent cook, and he maintained his colourful lifestyle in his new home. Unfortunately, for the last six years he had Alzheimer's disease.

Neville is survived by his wife Jan, sons Bruce and Dominic, and grandchildren Rebecca, Erica, Dominic, Adam, Mallory, Allegra, Conor, Ryan and Daniel.

Source: Brisbane Courier-Mail.     Spotter: Murray Bladwell

Benn Selby – friend of Montevideo Maru

BY KEITH JACKSON

MY LAST EMAIL from Benn Selby, whom I met but once and then briefly and who has died in Melbourne at the grand age of 97, came one morning last January.

“I suspect I must be one of the first to comment on the January issue [of Memorial News],” he remarked with characteristic whimsy. “According to my computer it arrived at 2.01 today and, although it is Saturday, a normally low message day, I did happen to look.”

Benn and I communicated frequently by email and, on this occasion, he was thanking me for my review of his compilation of the writings of his brother, Tom, Dr NX 22.

Tom had visited PNG as a ship’s surgeon and elder brother David commanded the Anti-Aircraft Battery in Rabaul and escaped the Japanese invasion to write Hell and High Fever, “the story of that horrendous three months”, as Benn put it, and later returned to ANGAU in PNG.

Benn died peacefully last Saturday, a week after his 97th birthday. He had not been well for most of this year, in and out of hospital with breathing problems.

“I do think he had probably achieved everything he had set himself to do over the last few years,” said relative Libby Albert, “not the least of which being the two books he had reprinted / published, of his two greatly revered older brothers.”

Benn devoted his life to scientific support and scientific excellence and made an outstanding contribution to the promotion and development of science in Australia and beyond.

He graduated in Science from the University of Sydney in 1935 and from 1936 onwards, apart from a period of absence on military service, during which he was mentioned in despatches for distinguished service and rose to the rank of Major, served H B Selby Australia Ltd as Managing Director and Deputy Chairman until 1982.

His commercial life showed a passion for science and for community service. Among his many contributions he was a member of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute for over 40 years, a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Management and a Trustee and Executive Member of the Committee for Economic Development of Australia.

I will miss his gentle humour and his huge support for the Rabaul and Montevideo Maru Society.  Benn Atherton Selby was a great Australian.  And I'll also miss those witty emails.

Ulli Beier, respected arts mentor, dead at 88

BY PETER KRANZ

ULLI BEIER DIED YESTERDAY in Sydney. Born in Austria in 1922, his father was a medical doctor and an appreciator of art, who raised Ulli to embrace the arts.

After the coming of the Nazi party to power, the Beiers, who are non-practicing Jews, left for Palestine. There, while his family were briefly detained as enemy aliens by the British authorities, Ulli Beier was able to earn a BA as an external student from the University of London.

He later moved to London to earn a degree in Phonetics. A few years later, after his marriage with the Austrian artist Susanne Wenger, he was given a faculty position at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria to teach Phonetics.

Ulli Beier is known for his effort in translating African works and was the linguist behind the Osogbo Art Movement. He emerged as one of the scholars who introduced African writers to a large international audience for his works in translating plays of dramatists such as Duro Ladipo and Modern Poetry an anthology of African poems, published in 1963.

Beier left Nigeria in 1968 to work in PNG, intermittently returned to Nigeria for brief periods. While in PNG, with Georgina Beier, he organised the country's first art exhibition at the University of PNG’s Centre for New Guinea Cultures.

Ulli Beier created the literary periodical Kovave: A Journal of New Guinea Literature, which reproduced works by Papua New Guinean artists including Timothy Akis and Mathias Kauage. His efforts have been described as most influential in facilitating the emergence of Papua New Guinean literature and promoting the recognition of PNG creative arts.

While in PNG, he encouraged Albert Maori Kiki to record his autobiography, which Beier transcribed and edited. The book, Ten Thousand Years in a Lifetime, was published in 1968 and has since become a classic.

He will be remembered fondly by many PNG artists, writers, scholars and students.

The Arts complex at the main campus of the University of PNG is named in his honour.

Peter Kranz was Director of the Information Resources Centre  at the University of PNG

Nancy Eastick MBE, guide leader, dies at 90

NANCY (KEMP) EASTICK was born in Sydney in 1920 and dedicated her life to the Girl Guides organisation, including playing a seminal role in the development of guiding in PNG.

She became a member of the Guides International Service and, in March 1947 went to Germany, which was still devastated from war and under Allied occupation. She joined Displaced Persons Camp 131 at Einbeck, working with displaced people from eastern Europe whose homes were now behind the Iron Curtain.

Eastick returned to Australia in 1951 and wrote about her experiences in her book, Guides Can Do Anything. Back in Sydney, she worked at Guide House as a typist and also a voluntary trainer.

In 1953, she was appointed camp adviser for NSW, becoming a full-time trainer, and in 1955-56, she was seconded to PNG as a travelling trainer, returning full-time in 1958, living in Port Moresby.

Initially, she taught eight indigenous women who were to become Guides and Brownie trainers. On completion of their one-year course, the women returned to their villages, where they set up units.

Through 1960 and 1961, she repeated this process in Rabaul, returning to PNG in 1965, where she found rapidly improving education levels had changed her training role. She wrote training manuals and also an unpublished history of guiding in PNG.

In 1967, Eastick married Frank Eastick and worked out of the Guides' head office in Port Moresby. In 1972, the couple moved back to Australia and lived at Mudgeeraba on the Gold Coast.

Her book Let's Go Camping, first published in 1966, is still used as a guiding manual. In 1980, she was awarded an MBE for her decades of indefatigable service.

Nancy Eastick died on 20 February, Frank having predeceased her.

Read the full obituary here

Source: ‘Guiding hand took on world’ by Robert Cooksey, Sydney Morning Herald

Creator of Mista Grasruts, Bob Browne, dies

BY DAVID INGRAM*

AN ERA OF SORTS came to an end last week with the death of cartoonist Bob Browne [pictured] in Port Moresby General Hospital.

He was the creator of Mista Grasruts (Grass Roots), perhaps PNG’s most loved comic character, which the magazine Islands Business once called “the social conscience of PNG”.

Browne’s life and work could almost be read as an allegory of change in PNG. Browne arrived in PNG as a British volunteer in 1971 when the country was preparing excitedly for independence and he stayed with his adopted homeland through thick and thin until his death.

It is tempting to write that he saw the country change beyond recognition in the intervening 40 years but he also witnessed its failure to advance in some important ways, especially in areas of social justice and the fight against corruption, both issues which he and his sidekick Grass Roots cared deeply about in their own ways.

Roots became the Papua New Guinean Everyman, the knock-about character with a heart of gold, a belly full of beer and a thick skull where his long-suffering wife, Agnes, berated his foolishness with her famous sospen.

Through Roots – who started as a character called Lu promoting Isuzu trucks – Browne was able to reflect on PNG life through an eerily indigenous perspective and criticise its shortcomings in a gentle but incisive way.

Browne could easily have been a success in the much larger media ponds of Britain or Australia, but instead in 1990 he chose to become a PNG citizen and re-joined the National Arts School as Head of Visual Arts as it was being integrated into the University of PNG.

He and Grass Roots continued to tilt at the windmills of a declining public service, the waste of abundant national resources and escalating lawlessness which he felt were largely fed by corruption and greed amongst leaders and others in authority who should have been setting a better example.

While many expatriates “went finish” disillusioned, Browne threw himself into even more practical works in an attempt to stem the tide. He worked as a church pastor, teacher, counsellor, overseas missionary and manager of Port Moresby City Mission, all the while keeping up his love of cartoons.

In 2006, he developed a tumour on his neck which proved to be cancerous and although he underwent a number of operations and drew on the prayers and support of an international network of friends and admirers, it finally overwhelmed him and he died in Port Moresby General Hospital in the early hours of 2 March 2011.

Bob Browne leaves his wife, Segana, their 15-year-old son, David, and a multitude of friends and fans in Papua New Guinea and around the globe.

The world is a poorer, less interesting place without him and one can only wonder what Grass Roots might have said about it all.

*David Ingram is an independent journalist, co-author of The News Manual, and a former lecturer in journalism at the University of Papua New Guinea.

Read David's full tribute to Bob Browne here  

Spotter: Martin Hadlow

Yerima Taylor dies in the Eastern Highlands

YERIMA, THE WIDOW of famous New Guinea explorer Jim Taylor, has died in the Goroka. She was 79.

Jim Taylor (1901-87) was most noted for leading patrols into the Highlands in the 1930s: in particular the 1933 patrol in the Wahgi Valley with Dan and Mick Leahy and surveyor Ken Spinks and for the Hagen-Sepik patrol with John Black in 1938-39.

After World War II, in which he reached the rank of Major with Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit (ANGAU), Taylor married Yerima and settled at Goroka where he became a prominent coffee grower.

Yerima had two daughters and an adopted son. Her daughter, Dame Meg Taylor was an adviser to Michael Somare in his early days as prime minister and later Ambassador to the United States, Mexico and Canada.

Dame Meg, now a senior officer with the World Bank in Washington, flew back to PNG for the funeral.

Peter Johnson remembers Yerima as perhaps the first woman in the Highlands to drive a vehicle. “She drove a Landrover at speed,” he recalls.

Source: ‘Explorer’s wife dies’ by Noel Pascoe,  Post-Courier.   Spotters: Peter Johnson, David Wall.   Photo: Meg Taylor

Dieter Idzikowsky, 72, community stalwart

BY PETER JOHNSON CBE

TO MANY PEOPLE he was just Dieter. Perhaps most did not know his surname; but some loved, most were fond of and all respected him and acknowledged his helpful ways and engineering skills. We are the richer for having known him; the poorer for his passing.

Dieter was my very good friend for over 30 years. His sudden and totally unexpected death has been devastating. It is certain that last Saturday Dieter had no intimation that his time was running out.

He died mercifully quickly and painlessly after collapsing whilst playing on the Wewak golf course. As his friend Steve Taylor said, “He was where he liked to be, and doing what he liked best to do!”

Dieter Erich Paul Idzikowsky was born on 23 February 1938 at Grunberg-Schlesien, Germany, shortly before the outbreak of WWII. After leaving school he served an apprenticeship as a toolmaker and motor mechanic. He then served for a brief period in the army.

Life was not easy for the Idzikowsky family in Russian occupied East Germany, and in 1956 Dieter, moved to West Germany where he worked as a motor mechanic. Then, in 1963, Dieter, with his younger brothers, Klaus and Peter, emigrated to find a new and more rewarding life in Australia.

In 1970 Dieter came to PNG to help his brother Klaus, who had established Pedford Constructions, a civil engineering company engaged in road building and maintenance in the Lumi/Nuku area of the Sepik District.

Following the sale of Pedford Construction and departure of Klaus from PNG, Dieter worked for the Sepik Coffee Producers Association, managing the large workshop at Maprik, then for Sepik Coffee/Sepik Construction in Wewak.

It was Dieter’s great desire to become a PNG citizen and he held a glowing recommendation from Sir Michael Somare, a friend and golfing partner. Unfortunately the timing was wrong and no citizenship committee meetings took place for some years, so Dieter decided reluctantly to leave New Guinea to meet the residency requirements for Australian citizenship.

Dieter married his bride and long-time partner, Priscilla, in Cairns in 2003. And awaiting naturalisation, he worked in Cairns for English Engineering from 2004-06 as training manager. Mr English constantly tried to lure Dieter back to his job in Cairns.

Immediately following his naturalisation, Dieter volunteered for work as manager of the Bishop of Wewak’s mechanical workshop which he has brought from chaos to good order.

Dieter in his day was a fine sportsman, playing top grade soccer with Perth United and boxing to Commonwealth Games standard. He showed his sporting endurance by twice appearing at the Sepik Ironman Challenge as a swimmer and oldest competitor. 

Dieter not only took part in events, but also took major responsibility for organising and promoting them. He was a founder member and life member of the golf and yacht clubs, vice-president of the former and commodore of the latter for eleven years. He was deeply distressed at the alien and deceitful manner in which this position was usurped – the long term result of which is only too obvious today!

Dieter was a genuinely honourable man who spoke his mind, and spoke the truth. (He also spoke four languages.) He disliked falsehood and sophistry. To declare a false golf score or engage in shonky business deals would be complete anathema to him. He deplored such traits in others.

Dieter was a humble, decent, hard-working and life-loving man, a good friend to many; a wonderful friend to me, for which I give thanks.

I offer sincere condolences to his young widow, Priscilla, to all his relatives and friends and to the people of the East and West Sepik Provinces whose lives he touched in some greater or lesser way.

Dieter Erich Paul Idzikowsky:   23 February 1938 – 22 January 2011

Main photo: Dieter [left] with Peter Johnson, Sepik Iron Man Contest 2009

Ern Schubert: visionary & teacher educator

ERNEST SCHUBERT, who died in Melbourne last July at the age of 87, arrived in PNG as a teacher in September 1960.

By the time he undertook the orientation course at ASOPA earlier in 1960, Ern had already spent six years teaching in Queensland followed by a posting to Pitcairn Island as Education Officer and Government Adviser under the then British Colonial Office in Fiji.

After a brief posting to Idubada Technical College, Ern, accompanied by wife Betty and two young sons, spent 1961 as headmaster at Sohano on Bougainville.  Then from 1962, Ern lectured and trained primary school teachers at Port Moresby Teachers College for the rest of his time in PNG.

During these 13 years, he not only influenced a generation of teachers, he encouraged Papua New Guineans to become writers, lawyers and - to his occasional embarrassment in later years - political leaders. He strongly encouraged them to become whatever they were best inclined to be and, in doing it, to be the best they could possibly be.

Ern had contributed to the Pacific linguistic text The Pitcairnese Language and written for Pacific Islands Monthly and educational plays for ABC Radio in Queensland. So it was almost natural that he produce his own reading books for PNG school children, Peoples of the Pacific.

This series was about PNG and other Pacific Island peoples and their cultures and was compiled and edited from material provided by colleagues, friends and other contacts in PNG and the Pacific.

In an era where there was little (often no) relevant material for PNG students, these books enabled them to become aware of other people’s lives: vital for the great nation building task in PNG.

Ern was active in the Papua New Guinea Society, one of the few places in the 1960s where expatriates and Papuan New Guineans met to discuss issues vital to an emerging nation.

He edited the Society’s journal for a couple of editions in the early 1970s and was forever encouraging, with modest success, Papua New Guineans to contribute to its pages.

In this same spirit, Ern helped his student teachers organise themselves into their cultural groups to host fellow students, staff and the community to experience their respective cultures.

He also helped the trainee teachers organise themselves to raise money and, with the help of the Australian Union of Students and community groups along Australia’s east coast, to travel from Canberra to Brisbane by bus so they could begin to grasp some of the world outside PNG looked like.

Beyond teaching, Ern was very concerned that student teachers had the capacity to deal with problems that the Western part of their lives increasingly threw at them. He recognised very early that “my job in this country is to do myself out of a job; and the better I do my job, the quicker I won’t have one.”

In December 1975 after Independence Ern and Betty returned to Australia. It was a migration they never really adjusted to. Ern never returned to the classroom.

In the late 1970s, he began working as a business migration consultant, his particular focus being Taiwan.

In more recent years, until his death, he and Betty worked hard to find ways for PNG landowners to raise money to use their forest resources without feeling the need to have them logged.

It was very a difficult endeavour, confronting corporations with concern only for forests as logs and with no concern for the people who have lived in those forests. 

Ernest Schubert died on Saturday, 24 July 2010 after a three year battle with cancer, something he thought, in his typically determined manner and with his positive attitude, he could and would overcome to live for another 15 years. 

He is survived by his wife Betty, sons Paul and Mark, and three grandchildren Dominique, Adam and Sabrina.

Rabaul defender Bill Harry dies at 94

BY KEITH JACKSON

CUTHBERT OSWALD (Bill) Harry AM OBE (VX24800), who escaped from the Japanese invasion of Rabaul and became a leading figure in the Returned Services League, died in Victoria on 4 January at the age of 94.

Bill was a quiet man with a wonderfully dry sense of humour. He was a committed Christian and churchman, and a devoted family man.

After joining 2/22nd Battalion on 10 June 1940, Bill was sent to defend Rabaul in 1941. After Rabaul fell on 23 January 1942, he was one of the comparatively few who escaped, spending some time in the jungle before being rescued. During this time he coordinated escaping stragglers into larger groups.

Bill was subsequently posted to ANGAU, being discharged with the rank of Warrant Officer (2nd Class) in March 1946. After the war, as a passionate believer in the people of PNG, he made around 20 return visits - including the Return to Rabaul 50th anniversary commemoration in 1992.

Bill was State Honorary Treasurer of the Victorian State Branch of the RSL for 38 years from 1956-94 as well as a member of the State Council from 1951-94 and the State Executive from 1954-94. He was one of the longest serving office bearers in the RSL’s history.

He had joined the RSL in September 1947 and was on the staff of the Victorian Soldier Settlement Commission. He held the position of Deputy Chairman until 1981.

His central role in the 1956 appeal ‘Operation Gratitude’ raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for the building of hostels and independent living units for war veterans and war widows. At the same time the RSL War Veterans’ Homes Trust and the RSL Widows’ and Widowed Mothers’ Trust were formed with Bill as the Honorary Treasurer of both until 1994.

He also performed considerable voluntary work with the Salvation Army Red Shield Citizen Committee, the Corps of Commissionaires, Anti-Cancer Council Appeal, Springvale Necropolis Trust, Winston Churchill Memorial Trust and the Mlebourne Lord Mayor’s Fund.

Bill was awarded RSL Life Membership with Gold Badge in 1963 and the RSL’s highest honour, the Meritorious Service Medal, in 1983.

Spotter and additional material: Max Hayes

Death of Ken McKenzie, ex PIR commander

BY DONALD HOOK

A FORMER commanding officer of the Pacific Islands Regiment, Colonel Ken McKenzie DSM OAM, has died at the age of 85.

Kenneth Stuart McKenzie was born on 28 September 1925 into a military family. His father, Colonel Kenneth Alan McKenzie DSO, was constantly on the move as reflected in Ken’s schooling – Sydney Grammar, Canberra Grammar and Melbourne’s Scotch College.

Ken graduated from the Royal Military College, Duntroon, in December 1944 and was posted to the 6th Division, taking part in the Wewak-Aitape campaign. He then served with BCOF – the British Commonwealth Occupation Force in Japan.

He was commanding officer of the PIR in 1962-65, headquartered at Taurama Barracks near Port Moresby. From there, he was posted to Washington DC as assistant military attaché at the Australian Embassy.

In 1969-70, he was deputy commander of the First Australian Task Force based at Nui Dat in Vietnam.  He acted as commander on several occasions.

Headhunted out of the army, Ken McKenzie returned to PNG as manager of employee and community relations at the Bougainville copper mine from 1971-76.

He was twice married. First to Lynette Ariel Lee in 1948 and then to Judith Ann Forsyth in 1979.

Ken was an advocate for the RSL’s Queensland branch and a member of the RSL National Executive.  He died at Greenslopes Hospital, Brisbane, on 21 November 2010.

Gail Burke – educator & author - dies in Qld

BY KEITH JACKSON

Gail Burke (nee Pukallus), highly regarded lecturer in mathematics at Port Moresby Teachers College and editor of Meeting the Challenge, died of a heart attack on New Year’s Day. Her funeral will be held at Toowoomba on Monday.

Gail was born in Laidley, Queensland, where her father had found work during the Depression. The family moved to Toowoomba, where she grew up. She completed her secondary schooling in Brisbane and went on to train as a teacher at Kelvin Grove Teachers College.

Gail taught in Queensland primary schools for three years and in London and Hamburg during a period overseas. Back in Australia in 1960 she decided to teach in Papua New Guinea.

After working in a number of primary schools in Port Moresby she moved to Port Moresby Teachers College, lecturing in mathematics and drama for a number of years. During this period she also gained an MA (Education). Her main hobby in Port Moresby was amateur theatre.

Gail and husband Clarrie returned to Australia at the end of 1975, where she joined Education Queensland working in policy and financial areas until her retirement in 1995. She maintained her interest in theatre.

Gail suffered a debilitating stroke in 1999, but continued with her enduring interest in Family History, which had previously led her into research and writing a number of books on the history of her family.

She also edited Meeting the Challenge – an important book on Australian teachers working in PNG before Independence.

“Gail’s collection has been put together … without personal agendas to interfere with the simple record of the lives of those teaching in PNG from 1955 to 1975,” Henry Bodman later wrote. “It is an enjoyable record of real life at the coal face of colonial administration.

“The result is a collection of very human experiences which contrast beautifully with each other in suggesting the aura of the times and the commitment of the story tellers to the job of educating a people to embrace the task of self government.”

A celebration of Gail's life will be held at the T S Burstow Chapel, 1020 Ruthven Street (south), Toowoomba, commencing at 12.30 pm on Monday 10 January.

Friends can contact Dr Clarrie Burke at 70/119 Sugarwood Street, Bellbowrie Qld 4070.

Catalina pilot Vic Hodgkinson dies in UK

VIC HODGKINSON, who flew Catalinas around PNG and the Solomons in World War II, has died in the United Kingdom at the age of 94.

He was born near Sydney on 17 October 1916 and educated at Sydney Technical High School. After becoming a pilot with the RAAF he was posted abroad for flying boat training. He was in Britain when the Australian government ordered 10 RAAF Squadron to assist the war effort.

He flew his first operations in England in March 1940 and was particularly busy during the evacuation of British forces from France in June 1940.

In April 1941, Hodgkinson was returning from a patrol short of fuel and in dense fog when his Sunderland flying boat crashed into the sea killing six of his crew. The survivors spent 10 hours in a dinghy before they were rescued.

After his tour of duty in Britain, for which he was mentioned in dispatches, he returned home and joined 20 RAAF Squadron, flying Catalina flying boats. Based in the north of Queensland, he attacked Japanese shipping around New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. The Catalina was also used to drop supplies to Coastwatchers in flights that could be of 25 hours' duration.

After completing 44 long-range operations in the south-west Pacific, Hodgkinson was awarded a DFC and sent as chief flying instructor to a flying boat training unit. Towards the end of the war he formed and commanded 40 Squadron from Port Moresby.

He left the RAAF in 1946 and returned to England, where he joined BOAC as a pilot. He was one of the early Comet captains and finished his flying career on the Boeing 707. He retired in 1971, having amassed 19,300 hours, including some 4,300 hours on flying boats, and settled in Hampshire.

Source: ‘A thrilling life spent flying by the seat of his pants’, Daily Telegraph, London, 31 December 2010

'Chief Warrior' Hargesheimer dead at 94

 

ASSOCIATED PRESS - FRED HARGESHEIMER, a World War II Army pilot whose rescue by New Britain villagers led to a life of giving back as a builder of schools and teacher of children, died yesterday. He was 94.

 

 

 On 5 June 1943, Hargesheimer, a P-38 pilot with the 8th Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron, was shot down by a Japanese fighter while on a mission over the Japanese-held island.

He parachuted into the trackless jungle, where he survived for 31 days until found by local hunters.

They took him to their coastal village and for seven months hid him from Japanese patrols, fed him and nursed him back to health from two illnesses. In February 1944, with the help of Australian Coastwatchers working behind Japanese lines, he was picked up by a US submarine.

After returning to the US following the war, Hargesheimer married and began a sales career with a Minnesota forerunner of computer maker Sperry Rand, his lifelong employer. But he said he couldn't forget the Nakanai people, who he considered his saviours.

The more he thought about it, he later said, "the more I realised what a debt I had to try to repay."

After revisiting the village of Ea Ea in 1960, he came home, raised $15,000 over three years, "most of it $5 and $10 gifts," and then returned with 17-year-old son Richard in 1963 to contract for the building of the villagers' first school.

In the decades to come, Hargesheimer's fundraising and determination built a clinic, another school and libraries in Ea Ea, renamed Nantabu, and surrounding villages.

In 1970, their three children grown, Hargesheimer and his late wife, Dorothy, moved to New Britain and taught the village children themselves for four years. The Nantabu school's experimental plot of oil palm even helped create a local economy, a large plantation with jobs for villagers.

On his last visit, in 2006, Hargesheimer was helicoptered into the jungle and carried in a chair by Nakanai men to view the newly found wreckage of his World War II plane. Six years earlier, on another visit, he was proclaimed Suara Auru, ‘Chief Warrior’ of the Nakanai.

"The people were very happy. They'll always remember what Fred Hargesheimer has done for our people," said Ismael Saua, 69, a former teacher at the Nantabu school.

"These people were responsible for saving my life," Hargesheimer told Associated Press in a 2008 interview. "How could I ever repay it?"

Besides Richard, of Lincoln, Hargesheimer, a Rochester, Minnesota, native, is survived by another son, Eric, of White Bear Lake, Minnesota, and a daughter, Carol, of Woodbury, Minnesota; by a sister, Mary Louise Gibson of Grass Valley, California; and by eight grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.

Spotter: Bill McGrath

Dave Argent: teacher, footballer, anecdotalist

BY KEITH JACKSON

FEW OF OUR READERS would have known Dave Argent, who died last night and who lived at Smithton in Tasmania. But if you had known him, you would have liked him. Dave was 67.

He was a big man with big liquid eyes. He could sing in tune and play the piano with panache. He was as quick and good with an anecdote as he was quick and strong on the rugby field.

He was also a man of ideas, none of which provided much by way of material wealth. But his idea to marry Kerry was always a good one, and that gave him as much love and companionship as any man may have wished for. He also had mates - good mates - who loved him like a brother.

Dave was a cadet education officer at ASOPA in 1962-63. He was not what you would call an assiduous student. And nor was he a natural born teacher, or even one able to acquire skills. But he had a warm and conspiratorial, in the best sense, personality that allowed him to skate around problems, if not always with ease then usually with success.

Bob ‘Moose’ Davis dozed off in an Educational Philosophy lecture and Dave decided that a piece of grass thrust in a nostril would bring him to life. It did - with a massive grunt that served to draw a question on Aristotle from lecturer Norm Donnison, who knew better than to be disappointed at Bob’s response.

“To pass first year Physical Education, we male students had to complete a ropes course. When I arrived for my first PE event towards the end of term in a late attempt to qualify for a mark, I was offended when lecturer Les Peterkin asked who I was. It got worse because, having been advised, Les responded “Keh?” The great ropemeister had never in his life seen me before.”

Contempt for authority was always Dave’s Achilles heel.

“That and my IQ meant I didn't reach the dizzy heights. I knew my IQ and, not wanting the notables to know, I ripped up The Great ASOPA IQ Test bringing froth to (psychologist) Brian Ross’s lips and nearly a trip to principal CD Rowley for a quick exit. It was put around that the average IQ was 137. Just as well mine was not included. Needless to say I failed the final Educational Psychology exam.

“But my IQ wasn't the lowest at ASOPA. Phil Ralph and others of us were wont to duck lectures and go to Balgowlah Bowl where, as students, we received a discount. When he was challenged about his student status, Phil asked the proprietor to phone ASOPA and check it out.”

At ASOPA, Moose Davis owned a green ‘55 Morris Minor that totally outperformed Dave’s clapped out ‘47 Morris Ten.

“Moose would wait for me to depart up the ASOPA hill each evening and take delight in passing me, chuckling as he sped by. This finally got the better of me so I headed out to the Parramatta Road and bought a ‘58 Morris 1000 that took the beep-beep out of Moose for the next 18 months.”

Somehow Dave managed to graduate from ASOPA and his first temporary posting was with his great mate Rory O’Brien to Utu near Kavieng, to teach an in-service course.

“Our house was split-level, the kitchen daunbelo complete with fuel stove and gaping holes punched through the bottom of the wall. We soon discovered the reason for the holes. Whenever it poured, we were up to our knees in water. The holes were to let it out”.

His first permanent posting was to the Primary A School at Namatanai.

“I didn't have a clue and lasted about three months. The kids were all Chinese whose parents taught us the game of five card stud poker. Very grateful to them, too.”

He was soon after posted as head teacher of Wapenamanda Primary T School, 2½ hours out of Mt Hagen.

“Five thousand feet above sea level, beautiful days, very cold nights. In those days anyone with a hint of football prowess was highly sought after. So every Thursday the District Commissioner’s Landrover arrived to take me to Hagen for training, which then ran into the weekend of the match and more training on Tuesday. Back for one day at the school and repeat the process. Needless to say my first inspection report was not all that good.”

On one of Dave’s infrequent teaching days at Wapenamanda, he encountered a most obnoxious smell, a teaching hazard never mentioned at ASOPA. Dave set out to identify the person responsible.

“Was it you, Yeusef? ‘No, not me, him’ (pointing to Wakup). Was it you, Wakup? ‘No, not me, him’ (pointing to Bambi). So it went on right round the whole 30 of them until one bright lad called Joseph came up with a solution. ‘I know,’ says he, ‘smell their arses’.”

Dave remembered those exotic names. Umpit, Redcross, Tinmeat, Elbo, Want, Yokomo.

“At Hagen Primary T, an expat teacher renamed his entire class and the names stuck - Burt Lancaster, Mick Foley, Tony Curtis…”

Dave’s next assignment was a more serious bush posting at Keltiga.

“Kerry and two kids and not another white face for miles. To make matters worse we had no transport and I started to read the works of Robert Ruark (Uhuru) well into the night. Hair raising stuff and I was quick to buy a car.

“I became a liklik kiap with the local community, having to adjudicate all sorts of problems. I had a lot of respect for the bush kanaka and got on very well with the local MP, Pena Ou, who would share the odd beer with me and let me prattle on in awful Pidgin and reply in very acceptable English.

“Paias Wingti (in those days spelt Pius and pronounced ‘Puce’) was at my school at Keltiga. I never suspected he would become Prime Minister. Roman Catholics prevail around Hagen, thus Pius and they would tramp off to lotu on Sunday where the incumbent priest would revel in the full attendance at each Mass at 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 o’clock.

"The only thing the priest wasn’t aware of was that it was the same congregation that came out of 6 o’clock mass that went back in for 7 o’clock and so on.”

We are going to miss Dave ‘Kurt’ Argent – and we are going to miss his rich fund of wonderful stories.

Paul Pora: a great leader who loved the land

BY KEITH JACKSON

MORE THAN 500 people attended Paul Pora’s government-funded memorial service in Port Moresby.

And at Kagamuga Airport outside Mt Hagen, thousands of mourners turned up to greet his body, covering the casket with mud - welcoming home a favourite son for the last time.

It’s been said that Paul Pora, who died of asthma last Friday aged 66, was the Highlands first multi-millionaire.

But I knew him as a quiet, thoughtful and ferociously clever political science student at the University of PNG in 1975.

We shared Prof Rex Mortimer’s politics honours class with Utula Samana, Ben Sabumei, Rabbie Namaliu, Sinai Brown and a guy who went on to be prime minister of the Solomons. It was quite a team. I was the only one never elected to Parliament.

Paul rarely said much, unlike the rest of us, particularly Utula. But what he did say was always insightful, expressed eloquently, and presented with humility. He had a charm and charisma that were understated, and the more potent because of that.

The last time I saw Paul was when we graduated in our light blue UPNG gowns in 1975.  But despite the many years in between, it was with a sense of great loss that I learned of his death.

He died with four wives, 17 children and many grand-children. As best I am able, I share their grief.

His son Allan said Yamuga Paul Pora, as he was known, was a wonderful father and a great leader, who loved simple things and was passionate about land.

“He left his family with a legacy of determination, drive and that ‘never say die’ attitude that he has instilled in us,” Allan said. “I appeal to all fathers and husbands today, hug your wife and babies because one day, we will all go down the same path.”

After leaving UPNG, Paul worked for the Reserve Bank of Australia, rising to be registrar of the savings and loans division, before becoming council clerk of Mt Hagen where he developed the council’s business arm, the still successful Wamp Nga group of companies.

He then went into business himself, establishing a prudently diverse enterprise - the Dobel Farming and Trading company. He was made the first chairman of Air Niugini and, in 1987, entered politics where he was elected three times as Member for Hagen Open, serving as Minister for Finance and Minister for Civil Aviation.

His political comrades speak of his honesty, loyalty and calm demeanor in the midst of PNG’s worst financial crisis in late 1980s when he was Finance Minister. “He was the ideal man to pull PNG out of financial strife when PNG’s biggest mining project, Bougainville Copper, prematurely closed,” said Sir Rabbie Namaliu.

“The task was on [Paul] to immediately design a rescue package for PNG that would minimise the impact of loss of revenue from BCL and stabilise the nation’s economy which he succeeded in achieving.”

Ben Sabumei recalled the business aspirations of the man who became the Western Highland’s first multi-millionaire. “He was a brilliant strategist and a visionary who forecast years back that PNG politics would change based on the discovery of oil and gas which would influence the political direction of the country.”

There are many stories of Paul Pora’s strength and courage.

I read a report that, when he lost his Hagen seat to William Duma in June 2002, Yamuga tribesman were angry. They had good reason. Three boxes from Pora’s stronghold areas remained uncounted when the returning officer declared Duma elected.

Hearing of the people’s anger, Pora sent word to the Yamuga men to gather at his Tega village. “The elections have just ended,” he said. “We have a new member for Hagen Open. Something happened that I do not agree with, but there is a due process. It is not for you to take any action. It is for me to take this course of action.

“I want all of you to return to your jobs and your homes. Everything must run as normal. The airport is a national airport and it must remain open. The highway is a national road and it must remain open. Mt Hagen town is ours. It must not be touched ...”

And, with that, he stepped out of politics.

Paul spent his last ten years in retirement at his Kuriva farm outside Port Moresby.

His last journey was on the open tray of a utility - led by a Seventh Day Adventist brass band and surrounded by many thousands of people -  as it made its way from Kagamuga Airport to Tega village.

The boy who had walked from Tega to Chimbu to get a school education had come home.

Paul Pora was a great Papua New Guinean.

The tragic loss of evangelist Joseph Kingal

BY MALUM NALU

PAPUA NEW Guinea is in mourning after the sudden and tragic loss of evangelist Joseph Kingal.

Kingal, in his early 40s and from the Western Highlands, was the head of The Word, The Spirit and The Cross evangelistic ministries based at Omili in Lae.

He was seen as the flag bearer of hope and redemption in a country racked with social problems.

The graduate accountant turned preacher and his wife, Susan, registered the evangelistic movement in 1996 and went on nationwide crusades wooing thousands to their nightly sessions.

Their Bible-based messages at week-long crusades hit a chord with thousands of people at all levels of society.

Many people from the streets and settlements of Lae, Port Moresby, Mt Hagen, Goroka, Madang and Rabaul were shocked upon learning of Kingal’s demise in a nasty traffic accident on a bridge in the Markham Valley while returning from a crusade in Madang.

Susan was admitted to Angau Memorial Hospital requiring surgery, but she and her children are said by doctors to be in a satisfactory condition.

Outside his ministry at the old Tanubada ice cream factory at Omili, hundreds of mourners and well-wishers were prevented from gaining entry.

Members of the ministry barred the public, only allowing pastors to enter where Kingal’s body lay, having been transferred from Angau Memorial Hospital.

Mourners flocked by road from Madang and the highlands provinces. Traffic officers at Air Niugini said many more were travelling from Port Moresby, Kimbe and Rabaul.

In Port Moresby, a prayer vigil was held by fellow evangelist Pastor Joseph Walters and was attended by hundreds of mourners.

Pastor Kingal’s death has gripped a nation. Public office holders, including Governor-General Sir Paulias Matane, and settlement dwellers were sending condolences to the media.

http://malumnalu.blogspot.com/

Paul Metzler, World War II aviator, dies at 96

BY ROD MILLER

I FIRST CAME ACROSS the name Paul Metzler when I was researching Australian nurses who were captured by the Japanese during the invasion of Rabaul New Britain in 1942.

Paul was the captain of Catalina flying boat A24-8 that radioed the position of the Japanese invasion fleet steaming towards Rabaul on 21 January 1942. With this warning, the small and ill-equipped military contingent on the Gazelle Peninsula, Lark Force, was alerted and, as best it could, made ready for the invasion.

Paul has just died in Sydney at the age of 96.

Paul had flown off the small island of Gizo in the northern Solomons and managed to locate the invasion fleet. In 1963, he wrote of his mission:

Writing this now I shudder far more when I think of it than I did 21 years ago. Tropical skies often offer little or no cloud cover, a Catalina’s top speed never was much over 150 knots, its defensive armament consisted of a few World War I Lewis guns and it carried no less than 1,460 Imperial gallons of fuel contained in non-self sealing and highly exposed wing tanks. All this amounts to a high degree of vulnerability.

Fortunately in 1942 my thoughts were directed almost completely towards such purely offensive aspects as accurate navigation, precise ship-recognition and precise sighting reports. There’s no doubt about it, you can’t beat being young.

After reporting the fleet’s position, Paul was ordered to shadow it until he and his crew were finally shot down by Zero fighters launched from the carriers. Paul and the surviving members of his crew were picked up by a Japanese cruiser and taken to Rabaul.

From Rabaul, he was then transported to Zentsuji POW camp in Japan for the duration of the war. There he met the officers of the 2/22nd Battalion and 1st Independent Company who had been captured in the New Guinea Islands and shipped from Rabaul in the Narita Maru.

The servicemen, non officers, and the civilians were shipped on the Montevideo Maru – and all died when the ship was torpedoed in what is still Australia’s greatest disaster at sea.

Paul Meltzer’s survival was very much against the odds: he was shot down in flames without a parachute and rescued by the invasion fleet that went on to take Rabaul.

After the war, Paul stayed in the air force rising to the rank of Group Captain until his retirement in 1975. He is also an accomplished tennis player and author having written 7 books on tennis which he still plays today at the age of 92. 

He was a true gentleman and a good bloke!

Kokoda hero Stan Bisset MC OAM dies at 98

BY PATRICK LINDSAY

STAN BISSET (1912-2010), who died on the Sunshine Coast yesterday, was one of the heroes of the Kokoda campaign in WWII, and Australia’s oldest Wallaby rugby international.

I’ll never forget watching Stan as he stood in front of his beloved brother Butch’s grave at Bomana War Cemetery outside Port Morseby. It was August 1998, during what Stan and his fellow Kokoda Diggers called ‘The Last Parade’, their pilgrimage to say a final farewell to the mates they left behind.

It was the first time Stan had visited the grave since Butch had died in his arms on the Track 56 years earlier. He stood there silently for a long time. I could see the emotions surging through him.

As always, he stood ramrod straight but tears welled in his noble eyes as the memories flooded back.

There before him lay Butch, his life cut short by the terrible random selection of war like so many others on the Track. Stan had vowed to lead a good and productive life to honour Butch’s sacrifice.

And he had been as good as his word. He had raised a fine family, forged a long and successful career and had done all in his power to keep Butch’s memory and the story of Kokoda alive.

While I watched, Stan gently wiped the tears from his eyes with his powerful hands and then brought them to his side. He squared his shoulders and paused. Then he swept his right arm up in a crisp, practised salute: an homage from a warrior, a farewell from a brother.

Stan had a deep-rooted sense of duty and an unshakeable sense of honour. He had star quality: that indefinable amalgam of physical presence and character that sets the remarkable ones apart. He was a genuine sporting hero who blossomed into a military hero in the cauldron of war.

I vividly remember when I met him for the first time, doing interviews with the veterans for a documentary. My immediate thought was that they’ve ordered a hero from Central Casting and they’ve sent the perfect specimen.

Stan’s former commanding officer and lifelong friend, the late Phil Rhoden, told me that Stan had no time to grieve for Butch during the battles along the Track and took many years to recover from the loss.

Like so many other Kokoda veterans, the campaign was one of the defining experiences of Stan’s life. Somehow, Stan dealt with the blows and got on with his life.

Stan Bisset is quite simply one the finest men I ever met. I was privileged to call him a friend and a mentor for twenty years. He personified so many attributes of the Digger to me: courage (both moral and physical); compassion; selflessness; independence; loyalty; resourcefulness; devotion; coolness; and humour.

He carried himself with the bearing of a natural leader and a champion sportsman. Even as he neared his century, he continued to inspire me and all those who know him with his dogged refusal to surrender any ground to Father Time.

Since the rediscovery of the Kokoda story about 15 years ago, barely a day would go by without someone wanting to contact Stan and meet him. Without fail, he gave his time and his support.

In 2000, Stan was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for his service to veterans, particularly through the 2/14th Battalion Association.

Stan is survived by Gloria and his children and grandchildren

Stan Bisset, like his story, is timeless.

Patrick Lindsay is an author and Chairman of the Kokoda Track Foundation. This obituary appeared earlier on the Foundation’s website - http://www.kokodatrackfoundation.org

Vic Parkinson, ASOPA registrar, dies at 93

BY MALCOLM BROWN

SMH - IT WAS AN awful thing for Mosman Council when a group of visiting New Guineans became a bit raskolish on Friday nights in the early 1960s and started tearing up shrubs on the nature strips.

The council could have come down very heavily but decided to call on someone who had real insight into the people, Victor Parkinson.

At the end of World War II, Parkinson had joined the Australian School of Pacific Administration, run from Middle Head, to train teachers and patrol officers, including one Michael Somare.

He had started as a law tutor and taken over the position of registrar. Parkinson found the riotous lads were students at the school. He packed them into a vehicle, took them off and settled them down.

Parkinson took his civic spirit with him when he became the mayor of Mosman from 1965 until 1970, making him the council's second-longest serving mayor.

In World War II, Parkinson had joined the army education unit and served in Queensland and the Northern Territory. At the end of the war he joined the School of Pacific Administration.

In the early 1960s, Parkinson became interested in local government and was elected to Mosman Council in December, 1962. He became the mayor in 1965 and also joined the council of the National Trust.

He was committed to preserving historic buildings and extended that interest to trying to regulate development in the area, though powerful interests were arrayed against him.

In 1975 Parkinson and his wife retired and bought a property, Gowan Green, near Wellington in central western NSW.

Victor Parkinson is survived by Marjorie, his children John and Lindy, daughter-in-law Karen, eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Read the full obituary here

Source: ‘A thorough gentleman with a dedication to preserving history’ by Malcolm Brown, Sydney Morning Herald, 30 September 2010

Bill Conroy, top agriculturalist, dies at 88

BY KEITH JACKSON

THE LOCAL NEWSPAPER, struggling for a parochial angle, headlined the story ‘Avalon expert on ticks dies’.

The expert in question was Wilfred Lawrence Conroy CBE, who in fact was far more than a local entomologist.

He was better known to the many people who encountered and respected him as Bill Conroy, a pioneering agriculturalist in PNG during and for many years beyond World War II.

After training as an agricultural scientist, Mr Conroy commanded a malaria control unit in the Australian Army in PNG during the war.

He stayed on after the war, eventually becoming Director of the Department of Agriculture, Stock and Fisheries. He remained in PNG until 1978 after training his successor and acting as an adviser to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Four of Mr Conroy’s five children were born in PNG.

While serving in PNG, Bill published many articles including Swampland agriculture, Native agriculture in PNG, Some land use problems in PNG, The evolution of the agricultural environment in PNG, The effect of fire and Tradition and trends in agriculture.

After moving to Avalon many years ago, Mr Conroy and fellow entomologist Bernie Hudson got involved in the Tick-Borne Diseases Research Unit at Royal North Shore Hospital.

I bumped into him in 1983 when, as a Labor party candidate in the election won by Bob Hawke, I door-knocked his home in north Avalon. We spent the afternoon yarning about PNG - electoral matters the furthest things from our minds.

Sydney Morning Herald journalist John Huxley wrote of him in an article a few years ago: “Small, wiry and smelling pungently of a powerful insect repellent, which he has sprayed from the top of his felt hat to the toes of his battered leather boots, 81-year-old Bill Conroy emerges bedraggled from the bushland above Avalon on the northern beaches.

He looks like a long-lost fugitive, or a Civil War soldier, waving what seems to be a large, white flag of surrender.

In fact, Bill is neither lost nor defeated. And his flag - an old, cheesy-smelling towel attached to a long, wooden pole - is not a symbol of surrender, but a weapon in his long-running battle against an almost invisible foe that spreads disease and, in some cases, death.

The paralysis tick, or, to give its scientific name, Ixodes holocylus. Blind and, even in its adult form, no bigger than a watermelon seed, the tick is described by leading Sydney University parasitologist Henry Collins as ‘basically, little more than a balloon attached to a hypodermic syringe’.

Conroy is fascinated by ticks - has been for several years. They can climb. They can jump - "six inches: must be a world record for bugs". And their legs and heads are covered with hundreds of minute sensors. These enable them to identify the animal hosts, including humans, on which they drop, usually from overhanging branches, when questing for the blood that sustains the parasites through the various stages of their life cycle.

What's more, Avalon is the tick capital of the empire," says Conroy proudly, as he sweeps his smelly towel back and forth, hoping to pick up ticks from the bosky under-storey of bushes. "This is ideal habitat," he says, pointing off the path. "Semi-cleared, close to human traffic, on the margins."

Conroy admits that his wife, Marie, who has never forgotten "a particularly nasty time she had with a tick many years ago", tends to attack the ticks with metho. "She likes to hear them die screaming." But, surprisingly, perhaps, he follows almost all of his own advice: covering up well; tucking pants into socks; spraying everywhere on the body, especially round the neck, waistline and ankles, and on hat and clothes; checking after each outing that none of the little buggers has penetrated his defences.

It might be imagined that after so many years of collecting ticks he would have enjoyed immunity from their bites. "Not so. I went through that state a long time ago," he says, before striding back into the bush with his white flag. "I'm now highly sensitised. A tick bite could kill me."

In 2001, Bill Conroy added to his CBE the Centenary Medal for his service to military medical entomology.

One tribute in the local media said: “This scientist was a good man and my heart goes out to his family. He worked- for free - and was a great, decent, honest man who loved animals. Bill I thank you - as I know many others thank you - for your tireless work on trying to make this country a safer place for pets and mankind”.

Former Bougainville District Commissioner, Bill Brown MBE, adds:

Bill Conroy was a lecturer at ASOPA in 1949, on secondment from Papua New Guinea.

Another lecturer and Bill's compatriot, Jim McAuley, was a lifelong friend, and two of Jim's odes, one in song and one in verse, figured largely in the funeral service at Avalon today.

Bill's life had many highlights. One was in Bougainville, in August 1969 - after the Rorovana disaster - when he led the Administration's team in the Arawa land negotiations.

Conroy never lost his cool. He puffed his pipe, and he and [Public Solicitor Peter] Lalor controlled the play.

Research: Robin Hide

Aloysius Nase – Bougainville radio pioneer

BY KEITH JACKSON

I SPENT NEARLY three years between 1970 and 1973 as station manager of Radio Bougainville.

The station was run by the TPNG Administration, its studios were in Kieta and I quickly discovered it was seriously disliked by most of its audience.

Even before I arrived in Bougainville, I understood that District Commissioner Des Ashton had a powerful influence over the station.

In fact, he had unknowingly lent his name to it. Throughout Bougainville it was known as ‘Radio Ashton’.

Which was better than ‘Radio Des’. But only just.

It was so-called because the District Commissioner was in the habit of directing the radio station as to how it should report the news. Especially news about the establishment of the Panguna copper mine.

Soon after arriving as manager I did two things: stopped Des' influence over our broadcasts and ran a contest for a new station identifier.

Maus Bilong Sankamap was the result. It's still in use.

When I arrived with the injunction that I should “sort it out”, I assessed the staff who would be assisting me to "sort it out".

There was Aloysius Sahoto, the senior broadcast officer from Sohano. A wonderful man. Never saw him rattled, even when he rolled the station vehicle.

There was Sam Bena, the smoothest, most complete radio announcer. Sam told me once, after he’d been in the bush on a recording patrol, “I went into this village and they laughed at me.” I expressed surprise and Sam said: “No, no. They looked at me and said, ‘How can such a big voice come from someone so scrawny!’”

There was Tom Kathoa, a real tearaway back then, well settled 40 years later I understand, who is still doing great service at New Dawn FM on Buka.

Perpetua Tanaku, from inland of Kieta, was a beautiful black pearl who married a rebel leader and died of malaria, toothless and too young, after years in the bush.

And there was Aloysius Nase [NAR-say] of Nissan Island, a faraway place then as now, hardly part of Bougainville. Aloysius was a tall, quiet, good looking man of moody disposition and with eyes that flashed  a challenge.

I was 25 with just three years radio experience under my belt and only a few months in management. In my anxiety as a neophyte manager I assessed Aloysius as ready to explode. But he never did. Nor did I, much. And certainly we never exploded at each other. When I think of Nase, the word than first comes to mind is ‘reliable’. The second is 'solid'.

Nase was a man to depend on. And I depended on him, as I did on Sahoto, to keep my youthful enthusiasm in check and to give me guidance about how one should deal with the big issues of Bougainville. And there were a lot of them.

Aloysius Nase died on Monday at the Buka General Hospital.

After Bougainville he became an Assistant Director at the head office of the National Broadcasting Corporation in Port Moresby before serving as Station Manager of Radio Madang and Radio Goroka.

At the time of his death, he was employed by the Ministry of Bougainville Affairs.

Aloysius Nase was a very good man.

Mrs Roma Bates, a former member of the Legislative Council of the Territory of Papua and New Guinea, died in Sydney yesterday at the age of 100.

Mal Miller – a good guy of PNG education

MALCOLM ERSKINE (MAL) Miller had a 20-year career in PNG education, during which he contributed greatly to an explosive era which lay the foundations for the careers of many Papua New Guineans.

Mal was born in Leongatha, Victoria, in May 1935 and trained at Toorak Teachers College. His first posting was to a one teacher school in Uanmite South, near Shepparton.

He later applied for a teaching job in PNG and from 1957-59 taught at Daru and Kiunga primary schools, moving to Port Moresby and teacher training in 1960.

By 1962 he was acting principal of Port Moresby Teachers College. But more importantly he had met his future wife, Rosemary, who was teaching nearby. They married in 1963.

Their daughter Jenny was born in Port Moresby in June 1964 and, ten weeks later, the family moved to Wewak where Mal had been appointed District lnspector of Schools.

In 1965 Mal was transferred to Sohano in the Bougainville District as District Inspector. His son, David, was born in Sohano in May 1965.

In 1968, the family moved to Goroka where they spent eight wonderful years. Mal was promoted to District Superintendent Grade 2.

In June 1976, Mal's 20 year career in PNG education came to an end when he took his “golden handshake” and moved back to Australia.

The family initially settled in Armidale, NSW, but soon moved to Brisbane, where Mal worked at the Kelvin Grove College of Advanced Education as Admissions Officer.

When the colleges were being amalgamated with the universities, Mal took the opportunity of early retirement at age 55.

It was fitting that, when he retired on the 4 May 1990, his colleagues awarded him an honorary degree - a ‘Master of Admissions’, with majors in Punning and Malorisms.

The first ten years of retirement were spent travelling around Australia in a Volkswagen campervan, with trips to Poland, Turkey (Gallipoli), China, Bali and Komodo.

Mal's life changed dramatically at the end of October 1999 when he suffered a massive stroke. Fortunately he did not lose his sense of humour and coped remarkably well with his life, now confined to a wheelchair.

During the nearly 11 years Mal spent in a wheelchair, he managed assembled four grandchildren and played a significant part in their lives.

The last six months were more difficult and it was a blessing that Mal passed away quietly in his sleep last Monday.

Sources: Ian Robertson and Murray Bladwell

Robin McKay, planter and coastwatcher

ROBIN MCKAY, who had been a Coastwatcher on New Britain in 1942 and also served in Wewak with Z-Special Force, died last Saturday at the grand age of 93.

He lived in PNG from the mid 1930s to 1964 and was well known in Bougainville. He managed Aropa Plantation after World War II, taking over from the original owner WM Greer.

With his wife Laurie, who died in 1997, Robin established a beautiful home and the couple were known for their great hospitality and keen interest in the RSL and other community activities.

Later, the McKay's home in Alstonville NSW became a popular port of call for many former PNG residents.

Robin McKay had taken over Aropa Plantation fromWM Greer who first tendered for Aropa from the Expropriation Board in 1927.

He eventually sold the plantation to the New Guinea Biological Foundation.

His funeral, with RSL involvement, will be held in Lismore tomorrow.

Jack Lusby Burns, 92, soldier and accountant

BY KEITH DUNSTAN

JACK BURNS [14.4.1918 – 20.7.2010] was a country boy who survived one of the great tragedies of the war in the Pacific, as well as the horrors of being a prisoner of war in Japan.

His parents had a general store at Bruthen, but they lost everything in the depression.

He attended a 10-pupil school in Avoca and rode a horse almost five kilometres to get there each day.

When the family moved to the city, he won a scholarship to Melbourne High and another to Wesley, where he played football and was a prefect.

Burns volunteered for the AIF in 1939, was selected for one of the first commando units and promoted rapidly to lieutenant.

In July 1941, he embarked with No. 1 Independent Company for New Guinea and Kavieng, New Ireland. They were attacked and overwhelmed by 5000 troops and swarms of bombers.

Burns' last job was to blow up 84,550 litres of fuel, before escaping with his company on an 80-ton schooner. But they were soon sunk by a Japanese float plane; he was picked up by a Japanese destroyer and made a POW.

The Japanese separated the officers and the non-commissioned officers and men, whoembarked on the Montevideo Maru. This quirk of fate saved Burns's life: an American submarine sank the Montevideo Maru and more than a 1000 Australian soldiers lost their lives.

Burns was on another ship, the Narita Maru, that went first to Yokahama, then to Zentsuji on Shikoku Island, where he stayed for three years.

He and his fellow POWs were starved and had only the clothes they had worn in tropical Kavieng. They made wooden clogs to protect their feet, and many men froze in the winter. Along the way, Burns had his teeth knocked out by a guard.

The day the Japanese surrendered, American aircraft dropped goodies in 40-gallon drums. "I never forget getting an eight ounce stick of Hershey chocolate,'' Burns said. ''I scoffed the lot and was so sick I couldn't eat for two days.''

On the way home the pilot of the C47 Dakota diverted over Hiroshima. ''The devastation was horrifying, not a house standing, just a mass of ruins,'' Burns said. '' There were extraordinary red and black lines at right angles which showed how the blast had moved.''

When he arrived at Clark Field, Manila, Burns, a large man, had shrunk to only 43 kilograms. Within a month he had more than doubled his weight.

When they arrived in Melbourne they were bussed to Heidelberg Hospital for rehabilitation. But he took off home to be greeted by his surprised parents. When he recovered his health, Burns returned to the accounting firm Manning Watson & Co., and on May 1, 1946 he married Leline Staley, sister of colleague Blyth Staley.

Burns rose to be managing partner of the firm, which was to become Manning and Perry. He left the firm in the early 1970s but never really retired. He was practicing and giving financial advice almost up to his death.

Burns did the daily crossword, and there was bridge. A good memory and skill with figures made him an outstanding bridge player with the Victorian Bridge Association.

He is survived by his wife Leline, children Andrew, Robert and Deborah, and five grandchildren.

Source: ‘Figures fell into place in harsh lottery of war’ by Keith Dunstan, The Age, 6 August 2010