Christopher Viner-Smith was named in the 2015 Australia Day Honours list, with the citation: The Medal of the Order of Australia in the General Division, for services to community history particularly through securing recognition...
David Crawley, my father, founded the Royal Papua & New Guinea Constabulary Band. He was born in London on 21 March 1906. At an early age he joined the British Army. During his time...
On a Web site of the Rabaul E-Course, the question was recently asked whether a member of the famous Von Trapp Sound of Music Family were on one of the E-Courses. Yes it was...
“When would you like to hold the interview?” asks the Fijian. He is a large man: ex-Special Forces with active Middle East military duty under his belt. “Well, I’m here now, so let’s go...
Stuart Inder, MBE, was the most authoritative journalist, editor and publisher in Australia of the South Pacific Islands from the early 1950s into the mid 1980s. His contacts were extensive, inside and outside these...
Matt Foley was one of the two remaining former Australian coastwatchers who served in Papua New Guinea during World War II has died. He was 91. Foley lived in Rabaul, in East New Britain...
I read with interest the article in the last edition of Una Voce, “Kiap Tribute Event”, but of more interest to me was the article taken from the speech Nance Johnston made regarding the...
I gave a show-and-tell (PowerPoint) presentation at the annual luncheon of the South Australian Branch of the PNGAA in Adelaide on 31 October. Jan Kleinig and the Adelaide organising committee asked me to convert...
The Daily Radio Sked Arriving at my first Patrol Post in 1969, I was introduced to that slender and sometimes tenuous life line of TPNG outstations, the radio schedule or ‘sked’. In 1969 in...
Richard Kyle Gault(known to all in PNG as “Dick” Gault) was born at Ardmee, 146 Belair Road, Hawthorn (Lower Mitcham), South Australia, to Dr Arthur Kyle Gault (“Kyle”) and Ruth Marjorie Hawker. He was...
“Japanese Grave”. The words on the map record in stark simplicity a man’s lonely resting-place on an obscure island in the Solomon Sea. The Japanese was a pilot who had run out of fuel,...
My first interest in the old “European cemetery” dates back to the late 1980s when fellow-former kiap and friend Dave Henton and I decided to locate former Lieutenant Governor Sir John Hubert Plunkett (“Judge”)...
(“In my name shall they cast out devils;” – Mark 16:17) In 1973/74 the Lake Kutubu area was awash with religious fervor and new found evangelism with the Protestant missions in the area emphasizing...
Those who read Mary Mennis’s interesting article on Maria Von Trapp might like to view a closer photograph of Maria. During the 1960s my wife Helen struck up a warm relationship with Maria. Maria...
Charles Thomas Johnston (“Bill”) Adamson was born on 17 January 1901 between the proclamation of Australian Federation on 1 January and the first Federal election in March. Bill’s father was Charles Adamson, an Australian...
