Several traumatic and dramatic incidents occurred on the tiny, insignificant island of Emirau during World War II. Emirau is situated in the St Matthias group, less than 1½ degrees south of the equator. Overshadowed...
We were treated in 1970 while in Maprik to a visit from the then Prince Richard, now Duke of Gloucester. Was the Prince making the trip out of personal interest or to show the...
The following is taken from my personal notes I wrote up just four days after PNG’s lndependence celebrations in 1975 at Wewak. It is Saturday afternoon 20 September 1975, and as I sit on...
I arrived in Rabaul in May 1955 having been married two weeks previously to Neville who had been in Rabaul as Brown and Dureau’s agent for the previous 12 months.We left Brisbane at midnight...
Memories: It just takes an old timer to reminisce and tales from the past come flooding back. Masta Lapun! He was the miner in the claim next door (which usually meant two or three...
Tabibuga in the Jimi River was one of the more far-flung patrol posts in Western Highlands District while my father Ian Skinner was DC during the mid-to-late 1950s and, while most of the time...
(Published Una Voce, September 2002, page 33) Jim Toner: Chief Clerk, District Office, Mendi 1957-59; District Office, Rabaul 1960-64; Field Manager, New Guinea Research Unit (ANU), Port Moresby 1965-73 Obligated to report annually to...
Witnessed and written by Marjorie Surtees Kleckham, wife of the district agricultural officer Fred Kleckham At the time Marjorie and Fred Kleckham were living at the Popondetta Agricultural Station. They had three children Fred...
The following is taken from my personal notes I wrote up just four days after PNG’s lndependence celebrations in 1975 at Wewak. It is Saturday afternoon 20 September 1975, and as I sit on...
On Sunday morning 21 January 1951, I was relaxing in the single men’s quarters Lae in what was then the Territory of Papua and New Guinea (TPNG). Actually I was posted to the Finschhafen...
Tabibuga in the Jimi River was one of the more far-flung patrol posts in Western Highlands District while my father Ian Skinner was DC during the mid-to-late 1950s and, while most of the time...
Jim Burton runs regular monthly gatherings, at Toowong Library, Brisbane, titled: ‘Memories of the South Pacific Islands Are Being Recalled’. Each gathering has a guest speaker. The following is an excerpt from an address...
In 1963 I qualified as a health inspector but did not get a job until a year later with the NSW Government. As a newly appointed officer I had to go through an office...
During WW 2, after the Pearl Harbor attack, when Japanese forces were rapidly conquering Pacific islands, the Australian Government decided to evacuate expatriates from its Papua and from its New Guinea mandated territories: but...
I was a Medical Assistant and part of an Anti-TB team that visited the Trobriands to find people with active tuberculosis and to protect susceptible people with BCG vaccine. If my memory serves me...
