Australians in Papua New Guinea 19601975

Ceridwen Spark is a Research Fellow in State, Society and Governance in Melanesia at the Australian National University. Since completing her PhD in Gender Studies at Monash University, Ceridwen has held two part-time postdoctoral fellowships, one at Monash University and the other at Victoria University. During these fellowships, she researched cross-cultural interaction in PNG; the medical investigation of kuru; gender and education in PNG; and international adoption. In recent years, Ceridwen has focused on investigating the experiences of women leaders and educated, urbandwelling women in PNG. She has published articles about this work in various refereed journals. In 2011–12, Ceridwen sought and gained AusAID funding for the Pawa Meri project, which involves making six films about leading women in PNG. These films will be released in PNG and elsewhere in the Pacific.

Seumas Spark is an historian attached to Monash University. His PhD, undertaken at the University of Edinburgh, focused on the collection and burial of the Second World War British military dead and the profound social consequences of that treatment. Battlefield to Grave, a monograph based on his thesis, will be published by Manchester University Press. Seumas is interested in the social history of war, and PNG history.

Christina Twomey is Professor of History at Monash University and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. She is the author of three books, including Australia’s Forgotten Prisoners: Civilians Interned by the Japanese in World War Two (Cambridge University Press, 2007) and, with co-author Mark Peel, A History of Australia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). Christina has also published widely on the cultural history of war and humanitarianism, and has been particularly interested in issues of imprisonment, captivity, witnessing and photography. In 2012, Christina was the Distinguished Visiting Chair of Australian Studies at the University of Copenhagen, and is currently co-editor of Australian Historical Studies.

UQ ePRESS PACIFIC STUDIES SERIES

Tax Havens and Sovereignty in the Pacific Islands

Anthony van Fossen

God’s Gentlemen

A History of the Melanesian Mission, 1849–1942

David Hilliard

The Samoan Tangle

A Study in Anglo-German-American Relations 1878–1900

Paul M. Kennedy

White Women in Fiji 1835–1930

The Ruin of Empire?

Claudia Knapman

The Chiefs’ Country

Leadership and Politics in Honiara, Solomon Islands

Michael Kwa’ioloa and Ben Burt

Church and State in Tonga

The Wesleyan Methodist Missionaries and Political Development, 1822–1875

Sione Latukefu

Race and Politics in Fiji

(Second Edition)

Robert Norton

Managing Modernity in the Western Pacific

Mary Patterson and Martha MacIntyre

Grass Huts and Warehouses

Pacific Beach Communities of the Nineteenth Century

Caroline Ralston

Workers in Bondage

The Origins and Bases of Unfree Labour In Queensland 1824–1916

Kay Saunders

They Came for Sandalwood

A Study of the Sandalwood Trade in the South-West Pacific, 1830–1865

Dorothy Shineberg

Papua New Guinea

Initiation and Independence

Don Woodford

CONTENTS

SELECT ABBREVIATIONS

TOK PISIN GLOSSARY

FOREWORD

Stories about Australians in Papua New Guinea from the 1960s to Independence in 1975 are not often told despite the wealth of people who were a part of that time. Australian public servants, teachers, missionaries, medical researchers, doctors, nurses, botanists, coffee plantation owners and commercial entrepreneurs were among the many who went to PNG. And because they were there, so too were their children.

When Ceridwen, Seumas and Christina approached me to write a foreword to their book, I jumped at the chance. Ceridwen, Seumas and I are the children of people who lived in PNG during this era, one which saw the birth of a young nation after decades of Australian ‘colonisation’. In 1960, my father went to Bougainville as a kiap, a Government Patrol Officer. My mother, a teacher, joined him later. My parents left Goroka 36 years after my father had first arrived in PNG. My sister and I were both born in the country. Along with Ceridwen and Seumas, we grew up in Goroka in the Eastern Highlands, where I was fortunate to have been taught by their mother, Helen, at the International Primary School. At the school, children from over one hundred different nations were brought together as a result of their parents’ shared interest in living in PNG.

There is nothing I enjoy more than listening to my parents’ stories about their time in PNG. My mother, a young city slicker from Melbourne, had to learn to wash her clothes on a rock in a river. My father recalls the coronial inquiry he chaired which found that a ghost had caused the death of a drunken man who fell off a swing bridge one dark night. Another of his stories involves a young man who, having broken taboos by sleeping with a menstruating woman, was saved thanks to a couple of multi-vitamin pills.

While I do not remember the years before Independence (I was three in 1975), my parents discuss how foreigners approached living and working in another people’s country. Some respected the cultural differences and were fascinated to learn of another society, while others wanted to be part of some colonial past, ringing bells for house boys or girls to meet their needs.

In order to progress, it is important to know your past. This book will enable many people in PNG to understand their recent history, trigger memories for those who lived it, and expose other Australians to the lives of our nearest neighbours. In her interview for the book Meg Taylor states: ‘Papua New Guinea gets under the skin and it holds you to her’. This is true. My passion for PNG, and that of Ceridwen and Seumas and many others, lives on. Through this book, so too do the stories.

The Hon. Lara Giddings, MHA

Premier of Tasmania, 2011–14

Introduction

LIVING ON THE EDGE OF THE WORLD

Ceridwen Spark, Seumas Spark and Christina Twomey

A few years ago Seumas was reading about the Stolen Generations. Among the Australians who raised awareness of Aboriginal rights and issues from the 1950s to 70s were people he associated with Papua New Guinea. Charles Rowley, for example. An advocate for Aboriginal rights and author of seminal works on indigenous Australia, Rowley had a close association with PNG over several decades, including as Professor of Political Studies at the University of Papua New Guinea from 1968 to 1974. His book The New Guinea Villager has long occupied a place on the Spark family bookshelves. Two more familiar names were Ronald and Catherine Berndt. In the 1950s these pioneering anthropologists conducted research in the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea, where Seumas and Ceridwen grew up.

Other prominent and successful Australians who had lived and worked in PNG soon came to mind: Fred Chaney, politician and university chancellor; Ross Garnaut, ambassador and government adviser; Alan Gilbert, historian and university vice-chancellor; Michael Jeffrey, soldier and governor general; Alan Morris, senior public servant and international consultant; Drusilla Modjeska, author and editor. What took these people to PNG? What did they hope to gain from living there? How did the experience influence their lives and careers? The idea for this book was born.

Subsequently, we decided to focus on the 15 years before PNG became independent in September 1975, in part because there is a lack of writing about the country during this period. Historian Hank Nelson believed that people have been deterred from writing about this crucial time in PNG history because of the country’s post-Independence difficulties. We hope the reflections written for this book, and the interviews undertaken for it, contribute to filling this gap. With the timeframe settled, all that remained was to invite Papua New Guineans and Australians resident in PNG during this period to reflect on their experiences. How do they remember this time? What are their perspectives on the Australian influence from 1960–75? As for many Australians, these years proved fruitful in the lives and careers of many Papua New Guineans.

There had been a British or Australian presence in PNG since the late nineteenth century. Prior to the Second World War, there had been two distinct territories: Papua and New Guinea. Queenslanders, in particular, had watched nervously as Germany annexed the northeastern part of the island in 1884. In response, largely at Australian insistence, Britain annexed Papua, or the southeastern quarter of the island, territory contiguous to German New Guinea. In 1906 control of the Territory of Papua passed from Britain to the newly federated nation of Australia. One of Australia’s first actions during the First World War was the successful capture of German New Guinea. Thereafter, Australia retained possession of the Territory of New Guinea, under a League of Nations mandate. According to the Covenant of the League of Nations, the mandates system was directed at ‘peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world’ (Article 22, Covenant of the League of Nations). This effectively transferred former German and Ottoman colonies to Allied control. Australia, as a beneficiary of the mandates system, was charged with the ‘well-being and development’ of New Guinea as a ‘sacred trust of civilization’ (Article 22, Covenant of the League of Nations). The mandates system instituted a system of Australian colonial control in New Guinea.

While the Japanese invasion of both Papua and New Guinea during the Second World War temporarily interrupted Australian governance, the coming of peace restored it, albeit in altered form. The colonial overtones remained. Henceforth, Papua and New Guinea would form one administrative unit, the Territory of Papua and New Guinea. From 1949 Australia was the administering power of Papua and New Guinea under an international trusteeship system created by the United Nations. Papua, that is, was no longer immune from international oversight. Trusteeship, a direct descendant of the mandates system, more clearly articulated a purpose for ‘progressive development towards self-government or independence’ (Charter of the United Nations). Other trust powers included New Zealand in Samoa, Britain and France in the Cameroons, and Belgium in Ruanda-Urundi. Many of these United Nations trust territories gained independent nation status in the 1960s. By the 1970s, PNG was one of the few remaining trusts. ‘The whole world believes that ... we run one of the world’s last colonies’, Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam told a gathering in Port Moresby in 1971 (Murray-Smith 1984, 281).

This book focuses on the final 15 years of Australia’s period as the administering power in PNG. In doing so, it traces the end of a colonial regime, not through violent overthrow, revolution or coup, but via a voluntary relinquishment of power. Its contributors reflect on the challenges that the transition to independence posed for Papua New Guineans, and for the Australian officials and administrators charged with effecting the change. They also consider the legacy of the connection between Australia and PNG that has existed for over a century, and the relationship between power and responsibility.

In his interview for this collection, Ken Inglis discusses whether or not independence came ‘too early’. Reminding us that it is necessary to consider the alternatives, he asks: ‘Would there have been terrible violence if PNG independence had been delayed? ... Did the country have enough skilled and highly educated people, public servants, and politicians ... to run a country? ... [W]as the alternative thinkable? Who knows?’ Charles Lepani comments that while ‘things probably didn’t go as we had expected and hoped ... a delay would have made things worse’. Despite the doubts that may have arisen since, most of the contributors recall the optimism and excitement of the times. Bill Gammage, for example, is certain that it was appropriate to pursue independence.

Another topic common to the essays is the relationships of Australians with Papua New Guineans. There are diverse perspectives. Some see their relationships with Papua New Guineans in terms of a ‘shared humanity’ (Michael Alpers). Others, Margaret Smith for example, remark that there were limited opportunities to interact with local people and that this was not ‘discrimination but a recognition of difference’. Meg Taylor, one of our contributors, is the daughter of Jim Taylor, an Australian-born patrol officer and explorer, and Yerima Taylor, a New Guinean woman from the Wahgi Valley. Having grown up acutely aware of the distinct groups of people that lived in and near Goroka, Meg makes clear that while racism was for many a normal and accepted part of everyday life, some Australians had equal and mutually respectful relationships with Papua New Guineans. One thing seems clear; those who lived in villages and hamlets were in a better position to appreciate indigenous perspectives. Michael Alpers, Ian Maddocks and Carol Kidu are remarkable Australians (or former Australian in the case of Carol Kidu) who have benefited from their openness to this experience. As Isi Kevau notes, the intimacy created through sharing life in the same place made a difference to the everyday practice of medicine, not least because people trusted doctors not to use medical samples to perform sorcery.

The relationship between Australia and PNG is based on a unique shared history, yet many Australians see PNG only as the biggest recipient of Australian aid. Given this, and the experiences and insights of the contributors, it is helpful to read the opinions of several on the subject. Charles Lepani, who has reviewed Australian aid to PNG on several occasions, wonders whether Australia’s provision of aid produces a dependency relationship that ultimately is detrimental to bilateral relations. Ken Clezy has a different view, arguing that we ‘must hang on for the long haul’, while Inglis wonders whether arguing to cut aid is mean-spiritedness disguised. Their perspectives are reminders of the value of looking back as we continue to negotiate the complexities in the Australia-PNG relationship.

As this collection is precisely about looking back, it is apt that the title of this introduction is taken from Ken Inglis’s contribution. With characteristic poeticism, he reflects on his family’s experience of being in PNG: ‘The experience of living there gave us a temporary foothold in a world that wasn’t our own – a glimpse into a world that was exciting, alien, and constantly challenging our understanding. And that continues even to this day. That sense of having lived on the edge of another world has stayed with all our kids, as with us.’ We concur. PNG was home for Seumas and Ceridwen in the 1970s and 80s. Since our return to Australia, it has dwelt within us, providing a constant source of memory, inspiration and awareness of cultural difference for which we are grateful.

***

The book is divided into three sections, the first of which is ‘Medicine and Science’. This field has a long and distinguished history in PNG, testament in part to the many Australian doctors and scientists who have been attracted to the country.

The memories of several are recorded here, as are those of Isi Kevau, for whom PNG is both home and a place to practise medicine. We trust that Robin Radford, historian, social worker and archivist, does not mind her contribution, co-authored with her doctor husband, appearing in this section. The second section, ‘Policy, Governance and Justice’, contains the reminiscences of public servants who played important roles in building the political, legal and administrative framework of independent PNG. In Charles Lepani’s case, his public service to PNG continues 40 years on. His chapter is one of four in the book that is an edited transcription of an interview conducted with one of the editors. Also in the second section is the contribution of Bill Brown, of whom a special request was made. In the belief that the book should include a chapter on Bougainville – the island’s troubles have been central to PNG history – we asked Bill, who was stationed on Bougainville for several years, to focus his writing accordingly. The third section is ‘Education, Race and Social Change’. In the 1960s and 70s UPNG was served by a number of visionary scholars who, in the best traditions of education, sought not only to gain knowledge but also to share it. The memories of two of these scholars are followed by the thoughts of three women, each devoted to PNG, on colonial life, social change and the future of the country. In the conclusion Jonathan Ritchie of Deakin University places the contributions into context and discusses themes raised in the book.

References

Article 22, Covenant of the League of Nations. avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/leagcov.asp#art22.

Charter of the United Nations, Chapter XII: International Trusteeship System, Article 76 (b). www.un.org/en/documents/charter/chapter12.shtml.

Murray-Smith, Stephen (ed.), Dictionary of Australian Quotations, (Melbourne: Heinemann, 1984).

MEDICINE AND SCIENCE

1

MEDICAL RESEARCH IN THE HIGHLANDS: BEING PART OF THE COMMUNITY DOES MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Michael P. Alpers

I went to the Territory of Papua and New Guinea in October 1961 to study kuru, a fatal neurodegenerative disease found only in a remote corner of the Eastern Highlands (Alpers 2007; Collinge & Alpers 2008). I was a young medical doctor from the University of Adelaide and my original intention had been to come on a fellowship arranged through the University. Early work on kuru published in 1958 had suggested that the disease had a genetic basis, and the Administration decided to restrict the movement of the Fore people and other groups who suffered from kuru, in order to prevent the spread of the putative deleterious gene. It was not long before the authorities realised that, whatever the ethics of it, this plan was not feasible and it was quietly scrapped. The only outcome was the proposal to place, in compensation, a full-time research medical officer in the Okapa Sub-District (now District) of the Eastern Highlands District (now Province) to study the disease. The Administration approached Professor H.N. (Norrie) Robson, my Professor of Medicine, to see if by any remote chance he could find somebody to fill the position. Since I was there, poised to go, he was able to put my name forward before the authorities changed their mind. So I arrived as a medical officer on the government payroll and was assigned to the small Research Division of the Department of Public Health. My boss was Dr Frank Schofield, but I did not meet him until about five months later.

My airfare and those of my wife Wendy and eight-month-old daughter Kirsten were paid to Port Moresby, where I signed a few papers, and we were promptly sent on to Goroka. By serendipity a six-week linguistics course run by the Summer Institute of Linguistics was about to start in Goroka at exactly that time. By a stroke of genius on the part of someone in the Public Health Department I was assigned to attend this course. It was open to all members of the public service in the Territory and to patrol officers from Netherlands New Guinea (now the Papua Province of Indonesia). There were not many from our side of the border but the Dutch officers were keen students and good company. For me the course was a revelation. I had no knowledge of linguistics and no understanding of how to learn and analyse an unwritten language. What I learned about phonetics and phonemics and the structure of language was intellectually exciting; moreover, these new skills and insights proved to be very useful in the work I was about to undertake. We also learned a little Gahuku, the language of the Goroka people. I am not sure how often the course was held or whether the Department of Native Affairs ever showed more interest in it, but the fact that it was held at all showed that someone, somewhere in the Administration was thinking straight. On the Dutch side of the border the district staff were clearly much more engaged with the local people on their own terms than was the case on the Australian side. Nevertheless, on both sides there was the prevailing belief that the process of pacification and modernisation of the ‘natives’ had only just begun, and ideas of independence were completely premature and could be deferred for a generation or two. So I learned a lot during the course, from my teachers and my fellow students, about the Melanesian people among whom I would be working and the colonial world which I was entering. My political education, however, soon became outmoded when the prevailing belief was challenged, firstly by the recommendations made by the 1962 United Nations mission to the Territory, led by Sir Hugh Foot, and secondly by a Dutch program to prepare rapidly for local independence. This was thwarted by the Indonesian colonial takeover in 1962 (Langdon 1971, 42–59).

I also learned about pigbel. There are three diseases which are peculiar to PNG and have made the country famous in medical circles: kuru, pigbel and swollen belly syndrome. I had come to work on kuru. During my time in Goroka, before I had set foot in the kuru-affected area, Wendy, Kirsten and I stayed with Tim Murrell and his family. Tim was an old school friend and was working as a medical officer at the Goroka Hospital. He was just beginning his work on pigbel, a serious gangrenous disease of the small bowel in children which was associated with large pig feasts, and naturally he told me about his ideas (Murrell 1984, 3–10; Walker 2003). I occasionally went with Tim to the hospital and thus it happened that I saw a patient suffering from pigbel before I had seen one with kuru.

From my linguistics course I learned how complex and sophisticated the local languages were, which gave me a deep respect for their speakers. During the course we would go to the Goroka market, where large numbers of people, all in traditional dress, arrived on Saturday from surrounding villages. We had to make an effort to speak to them in Gahuku. This was my first real contact with Papua New Guineans, and I was struck by their friendliness, patience with my bumbling talk, and beauty – especially of the young women. Relations were easy within the market itself but the local people were not allowed in the town after dusk, and I did notice that once they had left the comfort of the crowded market place they slunk away quickly through the town streets to make their way home. One of the most striking changes in PNG after Independence was that when the local people came from their village to town, they came in modern dress and walked about proudly as if the place belonged to them.

Once my course was over it was time to go out to Okapa. We had a house assigned to us on Okapa station. We were in touch with the kiap in charge of the sub-district and we flew by charter to Tarabo, where there was a Lutheran Mission airstrip that served the Mission and the government station about 15 kilometres away. The plane buzzed the station to announce our arrival and then flew to Tarabo and landed. The Assistant District Officer, Mert Brightwell, was already there to meet us. On the road to Okapa he had the driver stop the car on several occasions so that he could get out and ‘berate the natives’, usually for not properly maintaining their section of the road. It was clear that this was done largely for my benefit. I was not impressed. I was struck by the beauty of the countryside we were driving through and excited by the new and challenging tasks ahead of me. I realised that I had a lot to learn and I was eager to get on with my work. My first lesson was clear: I should not throw my weight around or behave in an arrogant, superior manner. When we reached Okapa we were met by Dr Andrew Gray, who was the medical officer in charge of the hospital on the station, and taken to our house. I had met Andrew in Adelaide, where he had come for further obstetrics training, and he immediately made us feel welcome. Our house was made of bush materials and was situated on a knoll above the tennis court, along the road that ran between the station office and the new houses built for senior administrative staff.

Okapa station had been built on a grassy hill with magnificent views in all directions. It had been beautifully laid out and the trees were beginning to grow. Originally the patrol post was to have been located down by the pine forest, which was a well-known part of the sub-district since seed had been gathered there for the pine plantations in Bulolo. However, when the station was being established it was