It’s a hard life in the mountains: Dave Lornie
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...
Category: Transport
Norseman: Rod Noble
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...
The day the horizon disappeared: Graham Egan
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...
Building Nuku airstrip: George Oakes
In early 1957 I did a patrol of many of the villages in the Palei/Maimai region of Lumi Sub-District in the Sepik District. In early February I met up with ADO Frank Jones near...
Aircraft accidents involving kiaps: Paul Oates
1953: Auster on take-off crashed into Vanimo Harbour. The pilot was killed and passengers District Commissioner Ian Skinner and Assistant District Officer George Wearne were rescued from the submerged aircraft. 1955: Dragon on take-off...
Horses on patrol: Chips MacKellar
(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...
Beating the odds at Aseki: Ben Dannecker
Following a telephone approach by a retired senior air safety journalist, the author was prompted to come forward and share this remarkable tale of survival in an aviation incident that occurred in the pre-independence...
Insurance, PNG style: Phil Latz
With reference to Rod Noble’s story in the March 2014 edition of Una Voce about the ‘mighty’ Sepik river and Bam Island, here is another regarding that area. In March 1987, prior to Shell...
Wewak, Vanimo and the Auster crash of 1953: Peter Skinner
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...
Kiaps on bikes: Chips MacKellar
(Published in Una Voce, December 1998, page 5) 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...
From Cairns to Salamaua: Derek Crisp
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...
Last flight: Bob Cleland
As related by Julia Lesley Cleland Our second daughter Kathryn was born at home at Balimo in the remote Western District of PNG on my birthday, 8 February 1959. I had planned to go...
Fifty years ago in PNG: Brian Darcey
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...
