Whenever I hear the words Vanimo, Auster or John McInerney, I have almost instant recall to Wewak, March 1953, and being told by my distraught mother, Marie, that the single-engine Auster owned and piloted...
(Published Una Voce, June 1997, page 6) Malcolm (Chips) MacKellar 1953-1955 CPO Daru and Lake Murray (Western District) 1955-1956 P.O. Mount Hagen (Western Highlands District) 1957 ASOPA Long Course 1958-1964 PO at Madang and...
It is 1950, the Second World War in which I flew as a pilot has been over for five years. I am now in Lae, capital of New Guinea, one of Qantas’s two bases,...
In 1951 a decision was made to open a new patrol post in the Tari valley of the Southern Highlands of Papua. A suitable site for an airstrip had earlier been located by Sid...
When I got married in 1969, the idea was to have a year doing something interesting before settling down to kids and suburbia in Sydney. A shipmate from Jardines was Master of a coaster...
In 1976 I was teaching at Mt Hagen Technical College. My three years at Kerema had ended in December 1969 and I was curious to see what the old town looked like. So, during...
The first set of wheels that I acquired in PNG, soon after I arrived in my first posting, was a bright red Honda 55 trail bike with an upswept exhaust. I think it cost...
Back in the early 1960s, when I returned to Lae in a marketing capacity, I was visiting Goroka and naturally my first call was to again meet Denis Buchanan who had taken over Territory...
In 1955, I had just returned to Sydney from a trans-Tasman crossing to New Zealand in Kylie, a steel ketch which had taken up the previous two years of my young life as we...
Copy of E.D. Crisp’s report on flight from Cairns to Salamaua, 16 February to 2 March 1938. The following narrative is also shown as slides in the Photo Gallery under reference “One of the...
George Oakes’ article in Una Voce, December 2011, mentioned one of the Gibbes-Sepik pilots, Peter Manser. The previous year, 1954, whilst I was at Wewak and Angoram I got to know him and the...
I’ve been waiting, bored and restless, since 8 am at the remote Simbai airstrip for a plane to take me back to Mt Hagen. It is now late afternoon. There’s not a lot to...
A PATAIR DC3, on charter to TAA, registration VH PNB, left Madang for Mendi on a government charter with building materials (no passengers) and on approach to land discovered it had no brakes and so...
Toward the end of 1969, beginning a new tour of duty, I found myself at Wewak on the mainland of Papua New Guinea, again flying a two passenger Bell G3B1 turbo charged machine. This...
In January 1964, as a licenced helicopter maintenance engineer, I was sent to PNG for the first time. One of the first tasks I remember took place in the Western Highlands when we flew...
