Eric Johns writes about ‘that’ photograph: I thought I knew something about that iconic photograph of Raphael Oimbari and George Whittington, until I met fellow PNGAA member John Phillips on 28 April at the...
This is a record of the last days our family (mother Lillian, sisters Zelma, Dawn, Leonie and myself and others) experienced prior to, and after, the evacuation. My father, Clarence, remained in Samarai with...
Kokoda is a powerful word. According to the Orokaiva koko means place of skulls, da is village. The combination of syllables conjures up “adventure” in the minds of sedentary beings. It makes sense. Many...
Edward (Ted) Kenna was born in Hamilton, Victoria, on 6 July 1919. He died there on 8 July 2009, aged 90 years and two days. He was the last surviving Australian Victoria Cross winner...
Bruce O’Reilly sent in these photos of the plaque (above) and frame of the Glider flown into Telefomin to mark Telefomin’s dependence on air transport and the first flight there by Stuart Campbell in...
25 April 2015 marks the 100 years anniversary of the unsuccessful, but often heroic, troop landings, and eventual withdrawal, at Gallipoli in Turkey in the 1914-18 World War. The shared experiences and losses gave...
Continued from Marooned in the Mortlock Islands My colleague, Tom Betitis, had only limited time left for fieldwork, so to complete the second half of our agricultural survey, it was important that we leave...
Graham Egan served in PNG from 1967-81 at Kerema High School, Maprik High School, Mt Hagen Technical College, Administrative College, Rabaul Secretarial College, Goroka Technical College and High School. We had been thinking about...
Jacqueline (“Jacky”) Lawes is a great granddaughter of the Reverend Dr William Lawes, of the London Missionary Society We were 32 passengers in all on two ships (the MV Miss Rankin and the Surveyor)1...
Much has been written lately about the fall of Rabaul in January 1942 and the consequent tragic loss of life when over a thousand prisoners went down in the prison ship Montevideo Maru. These...
One day you’re walking down George Street in Sydney. Next day you’re stranded with a landslide on Daulo Pass on the way to Kundiawa. The stark and sudden contrast is never easy to reconcile....
In May-June this year I spent 28 days with the Collins Brothers as a paying passenger on what was billed as an ‘epic voyage’ from Kiunga on the Fly River to Wewak in East...
Extract from a letter written by Hilda Johnson to a close friend – published Una Voce, December 1997, page 30 and in Tales of Papua New Guinea, page 65. The letter was written some...
(Published Una Voce, June 2002, page 14) This is the story of Gladys Baker’s escape from the Japanese as she described it on Radio 2FC at 7.45pm on Sunday night, 27 August 1942. Glad...
The first time that my parents heard of the impending invasion of New Guinea by Japanese forces was on Boxing Day, 1941. At that time we were at Korandindi Plantation on the Mavulu River...
