Keith Jackson & Friends: PNG ATTITUDE

Kami Raymundus of Torembi - mankimasta & friend

DAVID WALL

“I HAVE NEVER KNOWN FINER GENTLEMEN than some well-born Malays whom I am proud to call my friends.” Thus spoke Warburton, one of Somerset Maugham’s characters in his story, The Outstation.

Replace ‘well-born Malays’ with Sepiks and the above quotation exactly reflects my thoughts.

A story of mine, The phone rings, tells of the reappearance of my late brother, James, in a dream.

He talks to me of the afterlife and mentions, “Oh, I almost forgot to tell that your houseboy [mankimasta], Kami, from Papua New Guinea wondered how you were.

"He was telling me he had received a lot of credit for the thousands of cups of tea he had made for you. Anyhow, he’s doing well now. But he is a bit worried about his family in Torembi, a village in the Sepik.”

Jan Saave, medico, malariologist, maestro & mentor

DAVID WALL

IN 1999 AND 2000, after many years, I was to meet up again with my much admired former boss, Dr Jan J Saave OBE, medico extraordinaire, malariologist, maestro, mentor and linguist.

The years we served together in Papua New Guinea enhanced the respect I had for Jan and in our meetings in Sydney, so well captured in these photos, you can see clearly the deference and respect I felt towards him.

The joyous story of the wonderful Mr & Mrs Kenny

DAVID WALL

IT’S A FUNNY THING IN LIFE how past doings and friends long since forgotten suddenly return to your consciousness.

Well, the other early morning, when I awoke from my night’s sleep, my thoughts suddenly turned to Jim and Madge Kenny.

It would be getting close to 50  years since I’d seen or heard of this captivating couple.

It was in Maprik, in the then East Sepik District, in 1964-65 that I became acquainted with them.

We were then employed by the Public Health Department. Madge was a trained nurse in charge of maternal and child health, and Jim was an EMA (European Medical Assistant) at Maprik Hospital. I was with the Malaria Service.

The Gordon Steege story 2 – Air war in Papua & Libya

AIR COMMODORE GORDON STEEGE DSO DFC
As told to Bill Brown

NEW TO THE SEAGULL flying boats, I first took a couple of local flights around the Port Moresby area.

These included the hairy experience of flying Commander Hunt, who headed a small naval surveying detachment, delivering some mail to Yule Island at low level over offshore reefs in a strong south-easterly, when the Seagull appeared to be going as fast sideways as forward.

Then my CO, ‘Alex’ Alexander, asked if I would like to take the Seagull down to Samarai.

I jumped at this, and with a Sergeant Navigator, Wireless Operator and Engineer Fitter we had an enjoyable straight and level flight on a beautiful day, perhaps three hours at 90 knots, along the coast to Samarai.

The Gordon Steege story 1 – Flying boats in Papua

AIR COMMODORE GORDON STEEGE DSO DFC
As told to Bill Brown

IN SEPTEMBER 1939, HAVING GRADUATED from Point Cook in Victoria in June 1938, I was a Flying Officer in No 3 (Army Cooperation) Squadron at Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Station Richmond NSW, doing my tour as Adjutant.

I was in the officer's mess with other colleagues when the mess president came in. He was a Wing Commander, perhaps in his early forties. The RAAF was more formal in those days and we all stood for him.

It turned out the occasion was to hear Australian prime minister Robert Menzies “melancholy duty” announcement on the wireless that Australia was at war with Germany.

Next morning I was told to go to Station Headquarters and report to a Flight Lieutenant Alexander, then on the staff of the station commander, Group Captain Hipolyte Ferdinand de la Rue.

Kawandah – more than just another youth on the street

EMMA WAKPI | Supported by the Rob & Meg Parer Writing Fellowship

HE WAS NOT SOMEONE you would notice right away. Just an average teenager doing average teenage things.

You know - the one side of his jeans rolled up to the knee the other pulled down, a hint of facial hair that he takes so much pride in stroking every now and then, riding his bike in lazy loops up and down the street whilst engaging in hip Pidgin talk with his mates from across the street and getting his weekend rugby fixes all the while trying to get through high school.

It was a Saturday morning and I was at home fiddling around when I heard rapid footsteps ascending to my flat. A short sharp knock and the door opened to reveal an emotional teenager.

My Story – From arse tanget to corporate sales executive

15 - CORNEY KOROKAN ALONE

IF THERE WAS A COMPETITION for the best arse tanget, I would have taken the prize year after year.

My arse tanget always had the best leaves, shined to perfection, with small pieces of cloth in front. That was the way it was until I received my first pair of shorts in grade 7. The shoes followed in grade 9.

You can be forgiven into thinking that this is a story set in the 1950s or 1960s. But it was between the years 1975 and 1989 when I became old enough to wear tanget just like my father and older brothers.

Kokoda foundation appoints Ian Kemish as patron

THE KOKODA TRACK FOUNDATION has announced that its new patron is Ian Kemish, until recently the highly respected Australian High Commissioner to Papua New Guinea.

“[Ian] is a passionate advocate for the continual flourishing of the relationship between PNG and Australia,” the Foundation said in a statement. “Both he and his wife, Ms Roxanne Martens, are long-time supporters of the Foundation.”

Mr Kemish is replacing outgoing patron Major General Michael Jeffrey.

The Foundation has also appointed Kokoda veteran Captain Bede Tongs, 92, as its third ambassador, joining Will Genia and Charles Lepani.

“Bede is already planning his next trip to Kokoda to meet the descendants of the people of Papua New Guinea who helped him and other Australian soldiers in 1942,” the Foundation said.

Long-time PNG supporter to be awarded Logohu medal

KEITH JACKSON

PNG ATTITUDE READER and occasional contributor, Trevor Shelley (Snr), is flying to Papua New Guinea today, his 66th birthday, on what he says is “my shortest visit”. But it seems certain to be one of his most pleasant.

The purpose of the three-day excursion is to attend Government House to receive PNG’s national honour, the Logohu Medal, for his services to rural development over many years.

Brisbane-based Trevor says he’s spent “years trying to help those dedicated, under-resourced people all over PNG who are always struggling to provide some services in the bush or just being a conduit for them to the outside world.

“This award is the icing on the cake for me and I will wear it with pride,” Trevor says.

Elizabeth Dapore & the Sipuru forestry project

LEONARD FONG ROKA |  Supported by the Jeff Febi Writing Fellowship

ELIZABETH DAPORE, who I photographed among her trees, is from the Tumpusiong Valley of the Panguna District.

A Buin secondary school leaver of 2011 who did not secure a place in a tertiary institution, she is now engaged with Sipuru Forestry, an initiative of the Deumori Parish in the mountains of Paruparu, Central Bougainville.

“One of the fundamental reasons of the Bougainville conflict was the environment carnage the Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL) was doing on our island for the benefit of not us,” Elizabeth Dapore told me.

“Our project is now working to uphold that mission of protecting and promoting the preservation of our environment.”

My Story: Resting in God; committed to a life of service

14 – EMMA WAKPI

Emma Wakpi is one of Papua New Guinea's most talented young writers. She won the 2012 Crocodile Prize for her essay, 'The Haunting'....

I WAS BORN ON 19 APRIL 1979 at Angau Hospital in Lae where my father was a civil engineering student at the University of Technology. My mother worked for the Evangelical Brotherhood Church in its small print shop.

Having waited with suppressed hopefulness that his first born would be a boychild, dad was keenly disappointed to hear that a healthy baby girl was to be his.

However as soon as he saw me (so he tells me now), he wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Jack Doonar – Rabaul’s wild colonial headmaster

BARBARA SHORT

JOHN CHARLES (JACK) DOONAR was born in Ipswich in 1913 and trained as a teacher at Brisbane Teachers’ College, where GT Roscoe, a future Director of Education in the then Territory of Papua and New Guinea, was on the staff.

Jack taught in Queensland from 1932-36 and in March 1937 was loaned to TPNG by Queensland and made head teacher of the European school in Rabaul until December 1938.

His students had outstanding success in the Queensland Scholarship Examination. He was teaching in Rabaul during the eruption of Tavurvur volcano in 1937.

In 1939 he was transferred to the European School in Wau, and was there when, on 22 January 1940, he enlisted for the war effort. He joined an Anti-Tank Regiment and embarked for the Middle East in May 1940, serving in Crete and North Africa. He returned in August 1942.

My Story: The wartime child becomes a peacetime kiap

13 – BOB CLELAND

I WAS BORN IN 1931 IN PERTH, Western Australia, into the Great Depression of the 1930s. My brother Evan was born in 1935. Life was tough, I’m told, but I thought it normal – it was all I knew.

When I was old enough to know a bit more about life, Dad, Donald Cleland, went away to the Middle East in February 1940, with all those other Aussies of the Seventh Division, 2nd AIF, to help our ‘mother country’, Great Britain, fight a war against Germany.

I was just nine years old and I didn’t really understand Dad’s words to me just before he left – ‘You have to be the man of the house now. Look after your mother and your brother.’

I grew up a bit then, but it wasn’t until I was about 11 or 12 that I started being the responsible ‘man of the house’.

My Story: Dreams and ambitions shattered at the prime

12 - FRANCIS NII | Supported by the South Pacific Strategic Solutions Writing Fellowship

AN ISOLATED AND SHATTERED JOURNEY is probably the best way to describe my life.

As a child, I was rarely allowed to go out to public gatherings on my own or go out and play with other children.

My parents would allow other children to come to my home and play with me. Whenever I sneaked out, I had to return early.  If I didn’t, my parents would look for me. If it was my father, a slap was the pay.

Well, it is natural for parents to have concern for their children but it was a bit too much on the part of my parents, particularly my father. Even when I was old enough, he was still exercising control over my life until I went to school.

My Story: A life that progresses & dreams that clarify

11 - BERNARD YEGIORA

I WAS BORN IN KUNDIAWA general hospital on the 29 September 1983. I believe the night I was born was just an ordinary night: there was nothing significant, meaning no bright moving stars or fireworks.

At the time of my birth my father was working as a senior business development officer with the Commerce Department in the Simbu provincial government. My mother was a high school teacher who taught home economics and science.

My father was of mixed origin. His father was from Harua in the Kubalia district of East Sepik and his mother was from the Nimai tribe who lived in Koge in between the Tabare, Kere, Dinga, Dom, and Gunagi people in Sinasina, Simbu.

My grandfather joined the police force during the colonial days. He was able to see the evolution of the force from the Khaki to the Zulu era and beyond. Under the colonial administration, he was part of the team led by the Kiaps who brought civilisation to the highlands of PNG.

Goya Henry: One-legged flier & PNG trawler skipper

DAVID WALL

WAS GOYA HENRY (1901-74) the first person to fly a plane under the Sydney Harbour Bridge?

I strongly suspect that he was – but, for me, more than that he was a truly outstanding man and a friend.

The remarkable thing about the old Papua New Guinea was that you were given the opportunity to meet people like Goya.

The Oxford Companion to the High Court of Australia recalls him as a “particularly colourful litigant in the 1930s” and as “the first person with a wooden leg to be granted a flying licence - who delighted in stunt-flying under Sydney Harbour Bridge.

My Story: a creative life of teaching, singing & writing

10 - BARBARA SHORT

I WAS BORN ON ANZAC DAY 1939, near the start of World War II, in the Poplars Private Hospital Epping, in the northern suburbs of Sydney.

If I had been a boy my father said he would have called me Digger. My mother was glad I was a girl!

I grew up in a nice old Federation house in Epping, with a big garden full of vegetables and flowers, surrounded by loving parents and relatives.

My Dad’s sister, Aunty Emm, looked after her mother, my Neasmith grandmother, and ran a Nursing Home in a fine old house with large gardens, some bush and near a creek, not far from us in Epping. We spent most weekends there.

We all belonged to the Epping Presbyterian Church and Mum’s brother was one of the elders. 

Mum’s mother, whom I called Nana, lived with us until she died, when I was about 12 years old. I had one brother, Donald who was born three years after me and we became the best of friends.

Old Custard Cock – mastarot & bridge-building isolate

JOHN FOWKE

THERE HAS BEEN SOME CHAT in PNG Attitude on Ludwig Schmidt of New Guinea. Allow me to cast some additional light on the subject.

The Schmidts were father and son, both Ludwig. The first Ludwig came in the gold rush days to Wau-Bulolo and then followed the interest created by the first flyover of the Wahgi Valley in 1932.

In 1933, a number of individuals or partnerships, all prospectors, applied for permission to enter what was then known as the Upper Purari.

As the only government presence then was the semi-permanent patrol camp established at present-day Kainantu, this was equivalent to that part of the Eastern Highlands east and south-east of the Benabena River.

Among the 33 applicants who received permission and who did enter the Upper Purari was Ludwig Smith Snr and his teenage son, known as Wiggy.

My story: No man could, but the Viva led me to PNG

9 - ROBIN LILLICRAPP

I WAS THE FIRST-BORN of dairy farming parents and my childhood years were spent in northern Victoria in a generation recovering from the rigours of World War II.

From an early age, we children were engaged with many workaday tasks.

Our district was populated with returned soldiers and their families eking out a living from former wheat and sheep lands adjacent to the Murray River.

This source of irrigation water eventually transformed the area into a virtual food-bowl.

Books were an outlet for me in those pre-TV times. I loved reading and entered readily into the world presented by each author.

I think I was a precocious child.

My Story: From greenhorn planter to a true man of PNG

8 – DAVID WALL

“Ah, little woman, you little know the strain it puts upon a man to be an empire builder”
- W Somerset Maugham in ‘Before the Party’

THE ACCOUNT OF MY BIRTH in the accompanying image is in my mother’s handwriting. I was born at home in Melbourne, and the doctor looking after my mother was not present.

Not that it mattered much, as my father – also a doctor - stepped into the breach, as it were, and delivered me. According to Mum, he was joking with her throughout the process.

Not long after, my family moved to the Riverina region of in New South Wales – first to Narrandera and, after a number of years, to Leeton. In both towns my father practised medicine until he died in 1965.

My full name is David Andrew de Bérigny Wall. After leaving St Ignatius’ College Riverview in 1954 I worked on plantations and for the Department of Health in Papua New Guinea for 18 years.

My Story: Just a peripatetic piece of a very lot more

7 - PETER KRANZ

I WAS BORN IN BRISBANE in 1953, at the Women's Hospital. Don't worry - I was a boy.

The next year, after a brief time at Strathfield, my Dad was asked to work in England, and off we went (I was too young to remember).

So I grew up in Blighty, settling first in Greenford, then Finchley.

My first memories are of watching the milkman arrive with his horse-drawn cart and Dad rushing outside with a shovel to collect the dung for the garden.

I always remember the garden, smelling of roses and germaniums and hearing the blackbirds singing. Dad paid me one penny for each snail I could collect (we waged wars against snails).

My Story: I am Simbu. I am Mosbi mero. Read, son, read

6 - MICHAEL DOM

I AM A SIMBU. My parents were born in the foothills of Yoba Kogul, at Ninal Village, Sinesine.

Yoba Kogul is part of the massive limestone structure that dominates the entrance into the Simbu from its Eastern Highlands border all the way to Kundiawa town where it falls steeply before the mighty Wara Simbu.

The modern Okuk highway has tried for decades to wind its way around this massive geological formation, but so far has had poor success in straddling the cliffs. The earth slides and shifts beneath the machinations of man. Strangely enough, I am proud of this.

My ancestors harvested the great trees that towered above those white topped cliffs and hauled them down from the rugged slopes to serve as the massive centre posts for our hausman. Our fathers have for centuries planted karuka trees (Pandanus jejunum) in its foothills for their sons to harvest.

My Story: Sketches from the empty and hopeful years

5 - KEITH JACKSON

THE EARLY MORNING sun creeps across the brown room, eventually arriving at a bed upon which slumps a skinny 10-year old boy with a weak chest and bad eyes.

He is staring glumly at a sprung mousetrap on the floor, which he himself has set off thinking in the gloom it might have been a gift unexpected.

He had hoped it was something more than the contents of the pillowcase hanging at bed’s end.

Striped handkerchiefs, grey school shorts, a book by Robert Louis Stevenson and a packet of raisins and muscatels, already consumed.

Another Australian Christmas Day had dawned in Nowra.

Moses Summa, goal achieved, walks above the clouds

LEONARD FONG ROKA | Supported by the Jeff Febi Writing Fellowship

ON THE INSIDE COVER of Moses Summa’s notebook is the line: The more difficulties one has to encounter, within and without, the more significant and the higher in inspiration his life will be—Horace Bushnell.

I read these words as I sat alongside him, eager to find out a little more about Bougainvillean Moses Summa, who was sweating with joy.

On 3 March, Divine Word University (DWU) held its 31st graduation ceremony for more than 1,000 students from around Papua New Guinea and a few from the Solomon Islands.

After the ceremony, fellow Bougainvilleans marched into my room where I accommodated them, their joy at graduating burning as magnesium.

Australia’s new high commissioner arrives in PNG

THE MASALAI BLOG

AUSTRALIA’S NEW HIGH COMMISSIONER to Papua New Guinea, Ms Deborah Stokes, arrived in Port Moresby on Monday. Ms Stokes replaces Ian Kemish.

“I am delighted to be in PNG at a very exciting time,” Ms Stokes said.

She said she wanted to meet people from all walks of life to gain an understanding of the opportunities and challenges facing Papua New Guinea.

Ms Stokes said that Australia and PNG have a very strong bilateral relationship, based on a shared history, strong people-to-people links, and deep trade and economic ties.

My Story: From Baimuru via bullying to blogging

4 -MARTYN NAMORONG

LIFE IS FULL OF STORIES that may never be told. So, as Keith asked me and some other writers to tell our own stories, I was quite lost about where to start. So here’s a superficial version of My Story.

I was born in Baimuru 27 years ago. My mum and dad met at that muddy out-station where it rains 600 days a year. My mum was a community school teacher and my dad a forest officer. My mum’s from the Western Province and my dad is from Madang.

I don’t remember much about Baimuru except for the rain and the mud. Oh, and I should mention the hospital. I was this really good kid who didn’t have a foul mouth like I do today, but the only time I was moved to say the ‘f’ word was when the nurses at Baimuru were sticking a needle in my backside.

I had a deeply religious upbringing so it’s sort of ironic that I don’t do God the way I was brought up.

My Story: The making of a young patrol officer

3 - PAUL OATES

WHEN I WAS YOUNG and lived in the outer suburbs of my Australian city, most of our requirements except meat were delivered by horse and cart.

It was only in the mid-1950s that the first supermarket opened. Refrigerators were either not obtainable or too expensive.

Most of my primary school days were spent at the local school my mother also attended which, during World War II, doubled as a casualty dressing station.

My mother made her way as a Voluntary Aid Detachment person when the Japanese attacked Sydney Harbour. She met my father during the war. He was a country boy, an officer in the Army.

The high school where I obtained my Leaving Certificate was the semi-modern equivalent of a 19^th century English public school. We wore a 19th century military uniform and cadet service was of course obligatory.

There I learned to use a .303 rifle which was handy later working with the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary.

My Story: Out of war, the passion & power of writing

2 - LEONARD FONG ROKA

MY FATHER WAS FROM UNEA (commonly referred to as Bali) Island in the Witu Island group of the West New Britain Province of papua New Guinea.

As an auto-mechanic apprentice in the Panguna Mining School and in his work at Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL) Light Vehicles Workshop, he had many Bougainvillean friends.

Dad met my mother (a blood niece of Bougainville leaders, the brothers Martin Miriori and the late Joseph Kabui), an Arawa High School student, in the late 1970s.

They married and I was born in 1979 at Arawa General Hospital. A young man, Leonard Fong from Hoskins in West New Britain, decided I should inherit his name.

The survival of my island and people was this gun

LEONARD FONG ROKA | Supported by the Jeff Febi Writing Fellowship

“WHEN WE WERE KIDS our parents used to tell us don’t wander near the road for the erereng (Nasioi for redskin) are bad people and will kill you and throw you in the bush,” Saul Korai tells me.

“We took that to heart and never wandered towards the main road but kept in the safety of our villages and watched the erereng expand their slums further inland. This is why I went to fight the thieves that were destroying my island, Bougainville.”

Saul Korai hails from the Kapanau area near the Aropa airport in Central Bougainville. He joined the guerilla group, the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA), as a teenager in early 1989.

In late 1988, New Guinean squatter settlers at Aropa raped and murdered a local woman returning home from the garden and his people attacked them. “I had to join the fight.”

My Story: Arresting cannibals sure beat banking

1 - PHIL FITZPATRICK

First in an occasional series in which PNG Attitude's most prolific contributors profile themselves and their backgrounds....

MY FATHER CAME FROM Waterford in the southeast of Ireland.  He was a bootmaker and cobbler in the family tradition.  My mother was a country girl from Suffolk in England.  They met and married in England at the end of World War II. 

I was born in Oxford in 1948 where my father was working at the Morris Motor Factory.  We then moved to Suffolk, where my maternal grandparents were farming.

We migrated to Australia in 1956, partly because of my poor health and after a brief stint in a migrant hostel settled in Elizabeth, a new ‘satellite’ town just north of Adelaide in South Australia.  Elizabeth was full of ‘ten-pound poms’ who were encouraged to live there to provide workers for the new factories like General Motors Holden.

Society of the Divine Word – what a band of men!

DAVID WALL

WHAT AN EXTRAORDINARY BODY of men were the Divine Word Missionaries (SVD) in Papua New Guinea – Americans, Germans, Dutch and others.

Fr Mike Clerkin was one of them. He came to Wewak before World War II and was interned by the Japanese during the war years – staying on after. Wherever he was posted, he was liked and respected.

He told me that when he arrived in Wewak around 1938 he gained a reputation as being a great drinker who was exceptional in his ability to hold his liquor – quite unjustified according to him. 

It came about, he said, when early in his time in Wewak he was asked to a party. He was sitting on the verandah and drinks were flowing freely, in fact the host would not allow anyone’s glass to be any way empty, filling each up with neat Scotch.

Enoch Sasieh: a great ambassador for his university

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN QUEENSLAND

USQ SPRINGFIELD INTERNATIONAL STUDENT Enoch Sasieh loves his university.

He loves it so much in fact; he has become a USQ voluntary ambassador when visiting his Papua New Guinean home and has already encouraged two students to enroll in 2013.

As a third year Bachelor of Accounting and Sustainable Business student, Enoch enjoys speaking to prospective students about his experiences studying at USQ and encourages them to consider the university as an option in the future.

Enoch, who studied a Diploma of Accounting in PNG said he initially chose to study at USQ as his application was processed so efficiently by the university.

“I’d heard about USQ through my brother who was studying at the Toowoomba campus,” Enoch said.

Bernard Lomiki's unquenchable thirst for education

LEONARD FONG ROKA

IN THE MIDST OF HUNDREDS of Papua New Guineans, Bernard Lomiki was one of a tiniest fraction of Bougainvilleans to graduate from Divine Word University’s main campus on 3 March under Madang's merciful sun.

The Siwai man from Hiruhiru village flew back home, to Bougainville with jubilant heart and a Diploma in Health Services Management that he attained through the Faculty of Flexible Learning. A

As a father, he had something positive to bring home to his five children and a supportive wife.

Born in 1964, Bernard Lomiki did not go through the formal education system of the classrooms. He made his way through the expensive College of Distance Education, passing in 1986 with a mere letter of attainment and not a certificate.

The Bougainville war for independence engulfed this South Bougainvillean in an air of nothingness. But the later stability created by the New Zealand peace effort brought him hope of employment in the unpredictable post-conflict Bougainvillean environment.

Indiana Jones and PNG's 'lost tribe of Israel'

DEBORAH O'NEIL | Florida International University

PROFESSOR TUDOR PARFITT, the scholar known as the 'British Indiana Jones' was in Australia a decade ago lecturing on the Judaising Lemba tribe of southern Africa when a strange call came.

The man identified himself as a leader of the Gogodala  tribe of Papua New Guinea.

He told Parfitt: You’re the guy who proved the Lemba are really Jews? We are the same as the Lemba.

A few days later the Papuan man showed up in Parfitt’s hotel with a hat full of hair plucked from fellow tribe members. He asked Parfitt to test the strands to see if the Gogodala were a Lost Tribe of Israel.

Out of anguish born an invincible foundation of wonder

FRANCIS NII | Supported by the South Pacific Strategic Solutions Writing Fellowship

THE YOUNG MAN WATCHED at his mother’s hospital bedside as she succumbed to the nefarious disease tuberculosis before his eyes.

The woman that bore him, nurtured him and worked so hard as he grew up and was educated to be able to live an affluent modern lifestyle had died without fully realising the benefits of all she had invested in him.

The man was devastated. He was mentally torn to shreds. Worst of all, his mother had died of a disease that, according to medical science, is curable. Why?

The young man pondered. As he stood there, anguished and perplexed, his tearful eyes caught sight of many other souls, young and old, lying motionless in their beds waiting for their time to come or recuperation.

His heart went out to them. And he promised, ‘I will never leave this hospital’.

Merelyn Aruke: celebrating one of many inspiring women

PETER  MACDONALD

YESTERDAY WAS INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY and, as president of Australian Doctors International, I want to highlight our team member and eye nurse Merelyn Aruke, a positive and enthusiastic woman who works tirelessly on patrols, never turning away a single patient.

We applaud the positive impact being made by exceptional women just like her throughout Papua New Guinea, especially in the areas of health, legal justice and violence against women.

Merelyn grew up in New Ireland and is the mother of three children. ADI’s integrated rural health patrols have taken her to places she’s never been to before.

She is a registered nurse who completed a Certificate of Eye Care at Divine Word University with the support of the Fred Hollows Foundation.

Hellman’s story: The yellow convoy arrived at dawn

LEONARD FONG ROKA

ON THE AFTERNOON of 3 July 1989, a troop of Kupe men and a kid were returning home after a day of boozing in the Siae area.

As they reached Kaino, dusk covered them and the child could not move on so they found a deserted house on the fringes of Kaino and spent the night under it.

At dawn the next morning, 4 July 1989, one of the Kupe men got up to pee and discovered the arrival of a convoy of yellow Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL) vehicles that were used by the PNG Defence Force (PNGDF) in its operations.

He woke his men and they disappeared into a nearby cocoa plantation, leaving behind the bales of rice and tinned fish they were supposed to camel home to Kupe.

As the men descended through the Kaino brae towards the Bovong River, Karebu, a Bakabori man married in Kupe, was making his way to Bakabori village to finalise the harvesting of his cocoa plot.

Robert Cowan Mackie, the recruiter of the Sepik

DAVID WALL

BY ALL THE RULES OF SAGES and psychologists, Bob Mackie should have been a dejected and unhappy man, living a life of futility and worthlessness.

To claim that Bob experienced no deep night of the soul would confound moralists and theologians, but perhaps the truth lies at the bottom of a well. Bob would have agreed that at least it lay at the bottom of a bottle.

Robert Cowan Mackie was born sometime after the end of World War I on one of the Scottish islands to people of good Presbyterian stock. Soon after his family emigrated to South Australia.

It would be an understatement to say Bob had come a long way since his 6^th Division days in Greece and then in Papua New Guinea during World War II.

The highlight of the Greek campaign for Bob was making love – if that is not a too elaborate a word to describe what went on – with a Greek girl within sight of the Acropolis.

Whatever Bob’s faults, many people agreed that his attraction lay in the way he squandered the treasure of life with seeming disregard for the future.

PNG's Facebook wars - Dr Merrell & her detractors

SONJA BARRY RAMOI

DR SUSAN MERRELL, a prolific social media commentator and blogger, was the daughter of a grocer in Wales before she moved to Sydney, Australia.

After years of studying at the University of NSW and the University of Sydney she received four degrees and a doctorate, a PhD in political science from UNSW.

Dr Merrell recently said on Sharp Talk, Papua New Guinea's largest social media group, that she is a member of the prestigious Golden Key Club - membership of which is by invitation only and limited to the top 10% of Sydney University students.

Instead of praising and respecting her accomplishments, however, more than a few people criticised her.

You see, Dr Merrell has become, in her own words, "the white woman Papua New Guineans love to hate". 

Grade 8 dropout is chef & literary prize sponsor

JEFF FEBI

THIS IS THE STORY of Joe Yagama, 38, whose mother and father are from Sinasina and Bundi respectively. He lives in his mother’s village and is happily married with a son who was born recently.

Many a tale of success pops up now and then. This one strikes a chord I am familiar with and to a certain extent I feel I should claim it. Anyway, here’s the story.

In 1991, while still in Grade 8, Joe dropped out of Kundiawa’s Catholic run Kondiu Rosary High School. Like many young and vulnerable people in the harsh world outside of school, he roamed the streets until 2005, when he got a job as a kitchen hand at the Airways Hotel in Port Moresby.

After nine months and numerous secret lessons from other kitchen staff, he managed to grace his boss’s radar and was promoted to trainee pizza chef.

His success at Airways enabled him in 2008 to apply for and secure a new job at the Shady Rest Hotel in Moresby. But after only a few months he found himself on the streets again – thanks to workplace lies, deceit and jealousy.

Valedictory interview: Ian Kemish bids PNG goodbye

RADIO AUSTRALIA | ABC

AUSTRALIA'S HIGH COMMISSIONER to Papua New Guinea Ian Kemish departed PNG today after a drama-filled three-year stint.

The pidgin-speaking diplomat's posting coincided with some of the most tumultuous events in PNG's short history as an independent nation.

Among them were the constitutional crisis sparked by the leadership dispute between Peter O'Neill and Sir Michael Somare, an attempted military mutiny, and last year's national elections.

Despite the drama Mr Kemish told the ABC’s PNG correspondent Liam Fox that he's optimistic about the country's future though it faces serious challenges.

The interview began with Mr Kemish relaying the event he says most sums up his time in PNG getting stuck during the long drive up the east coast of Bougainville.

Norm Liddle, engaging, likeable, occasionally stoned

DAVID WALL

IN THE COURSE OF OUR LIVES we meet people who are readily forgettable but a select few we never forget. In this category I put Norm Liddle.

Norm was that type of Australian, particularly Queenslander, now pretty thin on the ground – a man with a wide and varied experience of life who was readily adaptable to whatever circumstances he found himself in.

A friend of mine described Norm as "accomplished musician, skilled taxidermist, reptile hunter, ex-serviceman in both the army and the air force and pioneer forestry surveyor". That sort of man.

Whether in the Australian outback, cutting bush timber, fixing machinery, serving in RAAF and AIF or living on the Sepik River and in the Highlands, he took all in his stride.

I first met Norm in 1966 at Angoram. He was living in what was known as the Ex-Service Camp at the far extremities of the town boundaries on the banks of the river. It was there he had the beginnings of a sawmill.

A picturesque farewell present from a grateful nation

KEITH JACKSON

ON THE EVE of his departure as Australia's high commissioner in Papua New Guinea, Ian Kemish called on PNG prime minister Peter O'Neill this afternoon to be handed a rather large token of appreciation.

Mr Kemish is concluding was has been a tumultuous yet effective three-year stint in PNG.

His was an inspired appointment which has significantly consolidated Australia's relationship with our nearest neighbour.

It never ceases to surprise me just how much of the art of diplomacy is still personal, not national, in nature. And just how much of Australia's diplomacy falls down because it lacks the relational touch.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the Pacific, where people understand the full value of relationships.

Go well, Ian Kemish, knowing that you have done well.

Catch up with Gram Bomai – member of the first House

KEITH JACKSON

ONE OF THE MANY pleasures I have in publishing this page each day (I’ll enumerate them all sometime when I have 30 seconds to spare) is the catch-up moment.

More often than not, the catch-up occurs by email when a figure from my past blasts through the ether to say g’day.

Most recent of these has been Graham Pople (pictured here as a young man) – ex-kiap, member of the first PNG House of Assembly (1964-68, campaigning as Gram Bomai, ‘Graham of the South’) and businessman - including a stint as mine host of that noted Port Moresby hostelry, the Weigh Inn (below).

Graham and I first ran into each other in the 1960s when he was an occasional contributor to a local newsletter published by Murray Bladwell and me, the Kundiawa News – its 50 issues now at repose in the National Library of Australia.

After something like 60 years, Graham ‘came South’ in 2012 requiring medical treatment for cancer and now – in recovery – he’s living with his wife on Brisbane’s Redcliffe Peninsula, three of his kids close by, another two in Cairns and one still in Papua New Guinea.

Graham was awarded a most deserved MBE for the work he did with the rural communities in PNG, including the establishment of a number of local government councils.

He recalls that he assisted his great friend the late Barry Holloway to set up the Agarabi council, which was the first in PNG. “Barry was my senior officer and I was fortunate enough to work with him.”

Earlier in his career as a kiap, in 1956, Graham took part in a pioneering patrol with Gus Bottrill from Kiunga through to Telefolmin during which they first contacted the Bolivip people.

Later, he was posted to Laiagam, from where he patrolled the lands to the west, and observes today that the present claim of ownership by the Tari people of the richly-mineralled Mt Kare area could not have happened 50 years ago.

“When I patrolled through there on a medical patrol in 1959 we met up with only the Paiela people from Enga Province.

“They used to harvest the pandanus nuts in season and the owner of each palm was known and there were no Huli owners.

“But the Huli people are a forceful group who push their claims whichever way they can and the Paielans are easy going and do not challenge their more forceful neighbours.

“I only hope that this information does not die with me,” says Graham, “and the Paielans can get some benefit out of Mt Kare.”

Of such precious nuggets of information is history composed and, now Graham and I are back in touch, I hope he’ll be able to share a lot more with us.

Sibidiri people benefit from Crackers' PNG passion

LIAM PARSONS | The Cairns Post

CRAIG ‘CRACKERS’ HAND is Far North Queensland's accidental humanitarian.

After setting out on a solo voyage to Papua New Guinea in his trusty 4.5m boat four years ago, Crackers has turned the journey into a regular trip to donate much-needed equipment to a small tribe in the country's Western Province.

"My first trip, I left Cape York and ended up going to PNG and met a tribe there," Crackers said.

"I was the first tourist they had ever seen."

During his three visits with the Sibidiri tribe, the self-described jack-of-all-trades has brought with him everything from mosquito nets and fishing reels to building materials and reading glasses.

The founder of non-profit group Friends of PNG said he had happily shrugged off the lure of a big payday at the mines to continue his charity work.

"It just gives them a bit of hope," Crackers said.

"The coastal areas tend to get aid from Australia but some of the inland tribes get forgotten."

During his second trip Crackers also helped set up a VHF aerial, climbing a 130m tower to install the device.

The aerial helps provide vital emergency communications.

"It means that if there was a medical emergency they can let people know they were coming or that they needed help," he said.

'Woman of integrity’ mooted as Solomon Islands envoy

THE PAPUA NEW GUINEA government is seeking to appoint a woman of exceptional integrity as PNG’s High Commissioner to the Solomon Islands, foreign minister Rimbink Pato has said.

The post has been offered to Justice Catherine Davani of the PNG National and Supreme Courts.

Pato said that the High Commission in Honiara had been plagued with controversy for several years, which had brought disrepute and tarnished the image of PNG.

Justice Davani has had 28 years of legal experience in PNG and was appointed as a judge in 2001 after practicing law at both the public and private bar for 18 years, mostly in the civil litigation area.

During her career, she has shown a keen interest in the development of the law and how it can or should change to suit PNG’s needs.

She was a member of the Council of the PNG Law Society for 10 years and is also is president of the PNG Judicial Women’s Association.

She has sat on major trials both in the National and Supreme Court and deliberated on major decisions affecting the political and social lifestyle. She presently also serves on the Court of Arbitration for Sport which has its seat in Lausanne, Switzerland.

A tribute from 'PNG Attitude' to Ian Kemish AM

KEITH JACKSON

IAN KEMISH, WHO’S TENURE in Port Moresby is about to conclude, proved to be the right person in the right place at the right time for both Australia and Papua New Guinea.

His three years as Australia’s principal man in PNG turned out to be tumultuous ones. In future years, I’m sure he’ll look back on them with his wife Roxanne, herself a contributor of note, with feelings of both awe and satisfaction.

Ian Kemish also proved to be right for PNG Attitude and some of our major projects. Indeed, if it wasn’t for him, an important initiative that is proving to be of immense significance in PNG probably would never have got off the ground. More of this later.

The legacy of the Howard-Downer years was still overhanging the Australia-PNG relationship when Kemish was handed the reins three years ago.

Australia as deputy sheriff in the south-west Pacific never played well in Port Moresby nor was it a role that the Yankophilic Australia of the time either understood or, when it came to PNG, was particularly interested in.

In these conditions, PNG’s “look north” policy was invented and the relationship with China began to blossom. The Melanesian nations combined and began to exert some diplomatic muscle as an independent regional bloc.

Australia’s attitude was epitomised by the notorious incident in which prime minister Somare was unceremoniously divested of his footwear by immigration officers during an official visit to Australia; giving offence that was still stinging when Kemish took over the high commissioner’s office.

The England-born Kemish had gone to PNG at a very young age. His father Len worked for Elcom in the 1960s and early 1970s and the young Kemish completed his primary schooling in Moresby.

So the connection was there.

As a diplomat, prior to his PNG appointment, Kemish had already spent time in Indonesia, worked on secondment in New Zealand with special responsibility for Melanesia and spoke fluent Tok Pisin, an attribute not to be underestimated.

As evidence of his competency, Kemish had also been made a Member of the Order of Australia for managing the Australian government’s response in the aftermath of the 2002 Bali bombings.

You can be sure a higher honour and more senior appointments await him after the acumen he has shown during his most recent time in PNG.

His lack of arrogance, ability to go the extra mile, willingness to engage with ordinary Papua New Guineans wherever they were (even opening a Twitter account in the last few months!) and coolness in crisis were all noticed and appreciated in PNG.

Within a couple of hours of the news spreading that Kemish was about to depart, the expressions of regret had already begun to pour in.

One of them was mine.

When we were working to get the Crocodile Prize national literary awards up and running at the end of 2010, Phil Fitzpatrick and I were in desperate need of a strong, credible and resourced supporter in PNG.

Step forward Ian Kemish of the Australian High Commission with a commitment of finance, materiel and personnel – although the doughty Ruth Moiam proved to be much more value than the mere term ‘personnel’ might suggest.

I know not what Kemish had to contemplate or argue in throwing his weight behind a couple of blokes with no corporate or institutional backing who were trying to flog what they saw as a good idea.

Certainly we’d been studiously ignored by AusAID and by DFAT in Canberra who just didn’t want to know. Still don’t.

I can only assume that Kemish sniffed the air, rubbed his hands, rolled his eyes and decided to back his judgement.

The result has been a successful Crocodile Prize (now into its third year), the PNG Society of Writers, Editors and Publishers (which transferred administrative responsibility to PNG) and an annual anthology of PNG writing (print run 3,000).

There are now hundreds of Papua New Guinean writers who are conveying their own experiences and affairs from a distinctly Melanesian perspective and gaining public recognition, publication and funding.

There are thousands of readers who have the opportunity to read about their own country and its issues and stories as brought to them by their countrymen and women.

Phil and I are proud of this achievement, every PNG Attitude reader who supported it (and there have been many) should feel proud and that pride can certainly be shared by Ian Kemish.

An Australian who understood Papua New Guinea.

Photo: Kemish, Fitzpatrick and Jackson at the 2011 Crocodile Prize awards

23 years on Charles weeps for his wife & daughter

LEONARD FONG ROKA | Supported by the Jeff Febi Writing Fellowship

OPERATION TAMPARA WAS THE PNG government effort - including riot police and Papua New Guinea Defence Force (PNGDF) elements - to quell the Bougainville uprising of May 1989 to early 1990.

Tampara is a Nasioi word that means ‘good’, so the military code name stood for ‘Operation Goodness’ or ‘Operation Bringing Goodness to Bougainville’.

But it was damning for old Charles Bangki (pictured) of Mosinau village in Panguna who had fled as a refugee to the Kongara 1 area of the Kieta District.

For Charles and the other people of Kieta, the name of the operation was a contradiction. In fact, it hardened people’s minds and hearts against the PNG government and against New Guineans and Papuans.

By the end of the operation, the villagers fully supported the militancy led by Francis Ona.

The PNG government’s brutality against the Bougainville people, who were fighting against PNG and Bougainville Copper Limited’s exploitation of their island, was fierce. The government and BCL supported each other to suppress the militancy for once and for all with every measure available.

The government security forces, as they were known, torched villages and looted gardens; used airborne machine guns, deployed mortars against civilians and killed innocent people.

Two of the many victims were Mrs Maria Bangki and her two-year old daughter, Joyce Bangki.

Upon their arrival in May 1989, the PNGDF concentrated their energies in the areas surrounding BCL’s Panguna mine in the hope of arresting rebel leader Francis Ona.

They began their unlawful acts of torching villages from the west of the mine site, in the Tumpusiong Valley.

When Australia donated four Huey helicopters, the PNGDF took the inaccessible villages of Widoi, Poaru and Mosinau in the Toio River valley, east and south-east of Panguna.

The PNGDF attack on the Toio Valley was overwhelming for the war-primitive militants who had no high-powered guns or mortars.

With mortar platoons perched on the Guava-Kokore ridge shelling the valley below and hovering choppers raking heavy machine gun fire upon the jungles, the government troops torched villages alongthe Toio Valley.

It was then that Charles Bangki and his wife Maria decided to flee for safety with their children to the Bougainvillean highlands in Kongara 1.

In the Kongara area, the family were refugees but safe.

But in October 1989, the PNGDF choppers began routine daily visits into the highlands of Bougainville. Government troops began visiting Sipuru and Kakusira villages in Kongara 2 by road, blocking off Kongara 1.

On a late October morning, the government forces raided the village of Tairima that was a few minutes’ walk from the Bangki family at Dopari. Stunned villagers watched from a distance as the soldiers burned down their homes.

By midday, mortar platoons engaged Dopari village. The Bangki family and the people fled into the inhospitable jungle. Here they erected makeshift shelters to hide from killers and looters.

From the safety of the jungle, they watched as Dopari village went up in flames. People wept for their assets. Then helicopters opened fire on the jungle, keeping the people on the run.

The gods have red hair: Olowei - an affair to remember

MARK BAKER | The Age

THEY BURIED HIM ON AUSTRALIA DAY on a windswept hillside in north-eastern Tasmania, far from the land he fell in love with, that he helped transform and that came to adopt him as one of its own.

But Barry Holloway brought Papua  New Guinea home with him to the little timber church with the peeling paint and rusting tin roof at Kimberley, near Sheffield.

It was there in his children, in the readings in the Pidgin and in the haunting strains of 'Rock of Ages' sung in Motu, the language of the coast.

The journey had begun here, in the house across the valley where his mother was born and where she gave birth to him in 1934, and in the nearby school where a boy dreamed of a life of adventure far away.

That journey was to take 60 years and it would traverse the modern history of PNG - from colonial trust territory, to self-government and independence and beyond.

It began with a teenage cadet patrol officer trekking through the remote and untamed territory  of New Guinea and ended with a distinguished political career, a knighthood and the deep affection of a generation of Papua New Guineans.

At each step, Barry Holloway made a special mark. He was, probably more than any other  Australian, instrumental in the making of modern PNG, and his death closes a circle on Australia's engagement with PNG's coming of age.

He was one of the first expatriates to advocate independence for the Australian trust territory in the 1960s. He helped found Pangu, the country's first political party, and ran the numbers that saw a brash young journalist named Michael Somare become its first leader.

He chaired the committee that drafted the constitution and, at independence in 1975, he was one of the first white men to take citizenship of the new nation, happily surrendering his Australian passport.

He became speaker of the first parliament after independence, then a senior minister in several governments. He was a reformer, a champion of the ordinary man and a campaigner against corruption, the issue that many believe drove him to an early death.

After finishing secondary school, Holloway moved to Melbourne and was working as a labourer when he saw a newspaper advertisement seeking young men with ''initiative, imagination and courage'' to work as patrol officers in the UN-mandated Territory of Papua and New Guinea.

Between 1949 and 1974, more than 2000 Australians aged between 18 and 24 were recruited as patrol officers, or kiaps - Pidgin for captain, from the German kapitan - and sent to bring the rule of white law to the often lawless outer reaches of the territories.

Liz Holloway pays a loving tribute to the late Sir Barry

KEITH JACKSON

IN AN EMOTIONAL NOTE to PNG Attitude, Elizabeth (Liz) Holloway, Sir Barry Holloway’s first wife, has paid a loving tribute to her late husband.

“As his first wife and mother of three children, I can attest to the energy and inventiveness, the adaptability and the inspiration of Sir Barry Holloway,” Liz Holloway wrote.

“I wish I had been strong enough and good enough to keep up with him,” she said.

Writing that “we remained strong friends till his death,” Liz Holloway said “I never stopped loving him.”