Former President of the Papua New Guinea Association of Australia, Harry
West, has been awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for his service to the Association.
Until he retired from active office last
year, Mr West had served as Secretary of the PNGAA for ten years and President for sixteen years. In April 2008 he was
unanimously voted an honorary life member for outstanding and meritorious
service to the Association, only the third such appointment in its 58-year
history.
His humility and a gentle manner belie his underpinning achievements and leadership qualities as demonstrated in
his handling of one of the most difficult assignments in pre-Independence PNG:
his role of District Commissioner of East New Britain at a time of serious
civil unrest.
Harry West enlisted in the Australian
Army at Paddington in Sydney on 3 February 1942
and was discharged at Lae on 1 March 1946 as a
Lieutenant in the Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit.
His PNG career effectively began in 1944
when the Army sought applicants for aspirant patrol officers to attend the School of Civil Affairs. He was interviewed by
Colonel JK Murray, later the first Administrator of Papua New Guinea, Les
Haylen MP and JR Halligan, Secretary of the Department of External Territories.
With 40 other young men, he was sent to the School, based at Duntroon and,
after five months, 16, including Mr West, were posted to PNG.
In October 1945, the Territories of Papua
and New Guinea – administered separately under military rule – were returned to civil
administration. This transition was to be formally effected by a treaty signed
by Colonel Murray, representing the civil administration, and
Lieutenant-General Sir Horace Robertson and Major-General Basil Morris,
commanding the respective territories. Colonel Murray waited at Salamaua for
Robertson and Morris, but transport difficulties intervened. So Lieutenants
Harry West and Bert Wickham, the only ANGAU officers available, signed these
important historical documents on the generals’ behalf.
Mr West took his Army discharge in Lae in
March 1946 and was soon in the Highlands where, with Assistant District Officer
Jack Costelloe and medical assistant Gray Hartley, he was responsible what is
now the Simbu Province, at that time mostly classified as ‘uncontrolled’ and
the scene of rampant tribal fighting.
In 1948-49, he undertook further training
at ASOPA before being posted as Assistant
District Officer at the remote outpost of Telefomin in the Sepik District. Here
he led contact patrols to bring the rule of law to the fierce tribes in the
Oksapmin and the May River areas, involving
long and dangerous expeditions across mountainous terrain, out of radio contact
and beyond airdrops.
Mr West was subsequently transferred to
Aitape in 1951 and in 1952 to Kainantu in the Eastern Highlands District. Here
he argued for the route – which remains to this day – for the vital road
through the Kassam Pass linking the Highlands to the coast. He assessed that the route chosen by his predecessor was
impractical and decided on an alternative. Thus the first motor track into the Highlands, now a highway, became a reality.
In 1956 Mr West, by then a District
Officer in Goroka, assisted the Eastern Highlands District Commissioner, Bill
Seale, inaugurate the now celebrated Goroka Show. In the following year he was
promoted to Acting District Commissioner of the Southern Highlands. In 1958-59, he served as the first Australian liaison
officer in Netherlands New Guinea, based in Hollandia at a time of serious
conflict between the Indonesians and the Dutch, whose administration was
collapsing.
Mr West was transferred to Rabaul as
Deputy District Commissioner (later District Commissioner) in 1959. He remained
there for over ten years, his period of office encompassing a time of tension
over land that culminated in the Mataungan uprising, during which he was
regarded as a cool and competent administrator in an extremely difficult period
of civil unrest. His period in Rabaul was marked by his deep-seated
understanding and sympathy for the problems being experienced by the Tolai
people.
For two months in 1967, Mr West was assigned
to United Nations headquarters in New York as Australia’s Special Representative at the
Trusteeship Council’s 34th Session during the review of Australia’s administration of the Trust Territory.
Towards the end of his career in PNG Mr West was promoted to First Assistant Secretary for Native Affairs in the
Department of the Administrator, later the Department of the Chief Minister,
before leaving PNG in 1973.
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