Woman resists police during the confrontation at Rorovana, 1969 (Sydney Sun)

BILL BROWN MBE

THE CHRONICLE CONTINUES - On 28 July 1969, Australia’s minister for external territories Charles CE (Ceb) Barnes approved the issue of CRA’s three new Bougainville leases.

The terminology that defined the locations of the areas required was particular.

They were “leases for mining purposes” and the area was “approximately 400 acres of Rorovana land for laydown areas, construction camp and general accommodation …. 194 acres south of Willys Knob for aggregate, and the first section—approximately eight miles—of the east coast road.”

Map - Rorovana-Arawa-Kieta area of east coast Bougainville (Bill Brown)

Papua and New Guinea’s Administrator, David (DO) Hay, granted the leases on 30 July and mining warden Hec (HJ) McKenzie notified the grants in the Government Gazette.

This followed an established routine. Bougainville Copper Pty Limited (BCL)(1) applied for the leases under the Bougainville Copper Agreement, Barnes approved the application, the Administrator made the official grant, and the Mining Warden publicised.

From that day on, the Administration and Government talked about the land that the Company required as either "the recently acquired Rorovana land" or "the former Rorovana land" or "the leased land" or "the land under mining lease."

The Rorovana people agreed with none of this, but were biding their time.

On 7 August 1968, the Secretary of the Administrator's Department, Tom (TW) Ellis, visited from Konedobu headquarters to assess the situation.

He was accompanied by District Inspectors Royce (RA) Webb and Geoffrey (CG) Littler.

The position of Deputy District Commissioner (also known as District Inspector) gave Webb and Littler status but scant authority.

Their duty statement was a powder puff of ideas: they were "to inspect district establishments and projects, assess efficiency, submit reports and take follow-up action, advise district staff on organisation, functions and policy, assist with district planning, and undertake other duties as directed."

Webb went to Buin in the south while Littler flew north to Buka. It seemed to me their main role was to be Ellis's eyes and ears.(2)

Upon their return they reported that the Rorovana confrontation between landowners and police had little or no impact on the Buka or Buin communities.

But, given that Rorovana had come so close to serious violence, I had doubts that people elsewhere in Bougainville were so unperturbed.

Bougainvilleans have always had a powerful sense of identity. This photo from 1956 shows Kieta men listening to a petition to be sent to the United Nations. [National Library of Australia]

The following day, after Ellis's had an early morning meeting with field staff at the District Office, Patrol Officer Max (MW) Heggen drove him and Deputy Police Commissioner Holloway to Aropa airport and they returned to Port Moresby on a Beechcraft Baron chartered from Aerial Tours.

Reporting to the Administrator the same afternoon, Ellis said Holloway had withdrawn the Port Moresby riot squad from Loloho in Bougainville to Rabaul, but the Barapina and Mount Hagen units remained at Loloho.

Ellis felt the Rorovana incident was probably over, although there might be further demonstrations.

Ellis predicted that any early move to take over Indigenous-owned land in Arawa, even by Notices to Treat, would probably result in violent opposition.

My judgement, however, was that the Rorovana incident was far from over.

Five days after CRA's bulldozers and the police riot squads had pushed them off their beach front land and coconut groves, the Rorovana people repossessed the land.

When 40 men armed with bows and arrows appeared on the beach at Rorovana in the early morning of 11 August, and another 200, mainly from the Eivo area, arrived as reinforcements later in the day, District Commissioner Des (DN) Ashton (3) requested CRA to suspend operations on Rorovana land.

The Eivo people, from the foothills on the eastern slopes of the main range to the west of Rorovana, had an established reputation for vigorously opposing CRA's operations outside Panguna.

The district commissioner's house on a ridge above Kieta had a magnificent view across Kieta Harbour to the blue Pacific (Bill Brown)

In June 1967, some of them had trekked the considerable distance to Wakunai to oppose the company's application for a Prospecting Authority.

And in November the same year, Kieta Local Government Councillor Silowi from the Eivo village of Kopani, walked across the Crown Prince Range to help Karato villagers frustrate a soil sampling expedition.

Later, in January 1968, Councillor Tonepa of Atamo village coordinated opposition to soil sampling near his village.

On 12 August 1968, District Commissioner Ashton renewed his request for CRA to pause their work on the land after some 800 armed men held meetings at Rorovana and moved around the contested area.

Public Solicitor Peter Lalor, who was in Kieta representing the Rorovana people, said a pause in operations would reduce the possibility of bloodshed and the CRA Area Manager Colin Bishop agreed.

Meanwhile, perhaps to maintain pressure on the landowners, the Administrator authorised the return of the riot squad from Rabaul to Loloho and confirmed a previous request to Canberra for authority to use Royal Australian Air Force aircraft for police movements.

On 13 August, the Commissioner deployed 74 more police to Loloho, increasing the complement to 140.

In a telex to Rio Tinto's chairman, Sir Val Duncan, in London, Bougainville Copper managing director Frank Espie said he regretted the unfortunate publicity but found it difficult to criticise the Administration except for the unnecessary and ineffective use of teargas.

I wondered about the wisdom of that statement. It was likely that Holloway's tight control and the use of teargas had prevented an escalation of violence.

Sir Frank Espie - 'the Rorovana people can have access to  coconuts'

But I could not be sure, as I had watched the operation from a distant helicopter. That said, Espie had been even further away – in Melbourne, Australia.

Espie’s had asserted that the attempt to take over the land was “no different to similar resumptions by governments for Melbourne's new airport, a city freeway, or a nickel smelter for Western Mining at Kwinana”.

To me, that comparison lacked credence. As did his further remark that “in this case, we have a colour problem and sympathy for an unsophisticated group”.

Even more astounding was Espie’s comment that “the Rorovana people would have access to the coconuts on the land which had not been destroyed”.

I could not imagine a Rorovana woman attempting to harvest coconuts in the groves surrounding the single male workers' accommodation. Or a Rorovana man, traversing the beach where married workers and their bikini-clad wives were sunbaking.

While Espie was rationalising, the top floor of CRA's Melbourne office at 95 Collins Street was in turmoil.

The Rorovana delays were costing $30,000 a day (about K1 million) and disrupting the important planning pathway towards the Panguna mine's targeted production date.

They were also imperilling Espie's negotiations in Japan to sell the Panguna copper and they were casting a shadow over discussions with the Bank of America over loan arrangements for the multimillion dollar mine and its surrounding infrastructure.

CRA’s subsidiary Bougainville Copper was not only developing a huge open cut mine but a port at Loloho, a major township at Arawa, a tailings disposal operation and other facilities in the immediate area.

The company had already spent $16 million on exploration and research and were now facing a $300 million bill to establish the mine and construct the ancillary services and industries – in today’s dollars, a total of $4.2 billion.

Espie’s concern was perfectly understandable.

Adding to the problems was Public Solicitor Lalor’s writ lodged in the Supreme Court and challenging the validity of PNG's mining legislation.

CRA thought the writ, part of an appeal by Teori Tau and other Pakia villagers against their 1968 convictions, might include a request for an injunction to stop all its operations pending the Supreme Court and High Court hearings.

On 11 August, Lalor and acting Crown Solicitor Peter (PJ) Clay (4) flew to Kieta. It was Lalor’s second or third visit in recent months.

Sir Paul Lapun KBE - a man of rare calibre and the first Papua New Guinean to receive a knighthood

On this occasion, he accompanied Paul Lapun MHA to Rorovana to inform the people that CRA was thinking about renegotiating the occupation fee and would not attempt to enter the land over the next two days.

Clay surprised us all when he announced that the company could negotiate directly with the people.

Unbeknown to me, Bougainville Copper’s operations director and general manager, Ray (RW) Ballmer (5), based in Melbourne, had instructed area manager Bishop to discuss the negotiations with Lalor and me - and to advise my recommendations as well as Lalor’s.

Three days later, when Clay and Lalor left a message at the District Office for transmission to Port Moresby, we packaged it into the daily situation report (‘sitrep’).

The message was brief. Raphael Bele (6) and Lapun, who were flying to Australia to seek an injunction to prevent the Administration from resuming the Rorovana land, should be met and told the Administration would defer any action to occupy the land until 26 August.

The date should be firm, give them reasonable time to endeavour to bring an injunction, but not time to procrastinate.

We were having trouble with the sitreps. Moresby demanded they be sent by radiogram each Thursday afternoon but this changed on 8 August 1969 when Australian prime minister Gorton became involved and called for daily updates.

I generally did the drafting and Ashton made changes before Patrol Officer Heggen coded them. But this one was explosive. I don’t recall who put it together, but it was relayed by the Administrator to Canberra as telex 6419, and the District Commissioner’s addition was blunt:

“Imperative we acquire and occupy Arawa plantation without further delay and proceed no further with the occupation of Rorovana land until this is done.

“We have strung out negotiations with [Arawa plantation owner] McKillop for months without appearing to do anything in native eyes but talk.

“No disruption to plantation operation has taken place but we did not hesitate to act immediately in the case of the Rorovana land.”

Prime Minister Gorton’s reaction was swift. He directed his departmental Secretary Warwick Smith and the Administrator to finalise the purchase of Arawa Plantation forthwith.

Acting Assistant Administrator Newman and a PNG team, together with a group from the Department of External Territories, met with Kip McKillop and his advisors in Sydney on 15 August.

After days of sometimes bitter wrangling, the parties settled the terms in a mammoth 34-hour session.

The Administration would pay $600,000 for the plantation in the first instance but adjust the purchase price up or down by the estimated value of the next five years cocoa and copra production. (7)

Kip McKillop - planter & philanthropist who was 'fired by an original vision for tropical plants'

McKillop would cease operating the plantation on 1 September but was allowed to occupy the 18-acre orchid area containing the homestead and the New Guinea Biological buildings until 1 December 1969.  

On 20 August 1969, Administrator David Hay flew into Kieta and, while helicoptering around the area, told CRA’s Colin Bishop he was not convinced the Rorovana land was necessary to the company’s program.

CRA reacted immediately. Within a few hours, Chairman Sir Maurice Mawby in faraway Melbourne flexed his political muscle in a recorded telephone call to external territories minister Ceb Barnes:

“We have been advised that Administrator Hay, during his visit to Bougainville, is looking into possibility of Company relinquishing its claim to Rorovana land.

“As you know, this land essential, repeat essential, for our operations and if above information is correct, these representations may well hinder the progress which we believe has been made by us, and agreed by you, regarding the planting of equivalent area on undeveloped portion their land.”

The day before, on 19 August, PNG parliamentarian Paul Lapun and community leader Raphael Bele, had met with Mawby in Melbourne.

He then accompanied them to Canberra to meet with prime minister Gorton and Barnes.

They were still in Canberra on 21 August when Barnes told the Australian parliament the Administration had purchased Arawa Plantation and the Australian government had relaxed the policy that only the PNG Administration could negotiate with landowners.

The Rorovana people could negotiate with CRA, and those transactions would be undertaken on the same basis as those for the expatriate owned Arawa plantation.

Furthermore, the Australian government would pay for a lawyer and an accountant to help them.

As the leaders of the Rorovana protests, Lapun and Bele had been in disfavour when they left Port Moresby for Australia, but they returned to Port Moresby as heroes and Gorton's protégés.

On 24 August, the Administration chartered a light aircraft to speed their journey back to Bougainville.

Two days later, Lalor and I picked up Lapun at Kuka village and took him to a meeting at Rorovana where he told the people he and Bele went to Australia to get an injunction to stop CRA, but they had found a better way.

The Australian government would assist them in their negotiations with the company, but the people could still seek an injunction if they did not like the idea.

About 200 people listened, sometimes applauding but frequently disagreeing.

Barry Middlemiss - plantation employee joined forces with the Rorovana people as they resisted the alienation of their land

The meeting lasted four hours but decided nothing.

Many of the people were confused. Only the previous week, Barry (BJA) Middlemiss (8) had assured them the government had lost; it could not resume the Rorovana or the Arawa lands. They had been told Bele and Lapun had secured an injunction.

Now Lapun was saying something they did not understand. Bele stood mute, declining to contribute.

Middlemiss was employed as a supervisor at Arawa Plantation when he was co-opted to McKillop's campaign to oppose the compulsory acquisition of land for the port and town.

He embedded himself with the Rorovana and Arawa villagers even before McKillop sold the plantation and played an overt political role as a founding member and secretary of the landowners’ Napidakoe Navitu association and an elected member of Kieta Local Government Council.

The confusion continued on Friday 28 August when secretary for external territories Warwick Smith and his Canberra team arrived in Bougainville together with Administration personnel from Port Moresby and the Australian government-provided advisors, solicitor Don (DG) MacKay (9) and accountant John (JW) Tidex. (10)

District Commissioner Ashton met the Secretary and his team and drove them to Kieta.

Warwick Smith dominated proceedings but had not met people from Rorovana before he departed with five of his party at dawn on Saturday morning.

With MP Paul Lapun in Kieta hospital ill with pneumonia, the Rorovana landowners refused to be involved, possibly because they knew nothing of McKay and Tidex (11). Nevertheless solicitor MacKay opened negotiations on Sunday morning without the landowners.

Ray Ballmer represented CRA, and was reinforced by CRA area manager Bishop and group legal officer Philip Opas QC (12). Representing the Administration was Agriculture Director Bill (WL) Conroy (13), and Peter Lalor represented the landowners.

Bill Granger (14) from the external territories department assisted Conroy. Lalor had pulled in lawyer Talbot Lovering from Pakia, where he was working on compensation claims with patrol officer John Russell-Pell.

Don MacKay, the Administration–appointed solicitor assisting the Rorovana people, insisted $12,000 was the minimum annual rental for the Rorovana land in the initial discussions. Conroy would not budge above $7,000 as it represented the land value which the prime minister and minister had accepted.

Anxious for a settlement, CRA's Ballmer proposed a one-time payment of between $20,000 and $30,000.

Assistant territories secretary Mentz, perhaps blindsided by the dollar amounts or overawed by his first visit to Bougainville, did not contribute.

A rare photo from 1970 shows Bill brown signing lease documents with (from left) Tavora (of Arawa), PNG Director of Agriculture Bill Conroy, CRA's Colin Bishop and Narug (of Arawa) [DIES]

I learned this and more from MacKay when he knocked on my front door at 8 pm on Monday 1 September.

He explained that when he had encountered Lalor and Conroy after Sunday Mass at Tubiana, they told him Lalor usually visited me after 8 pm to feed information into the system, but he had changed his schedule.

MacKay would have the 8 pm slot, Conroy would take 8:30, and Lalor would follow later in the evening.

As a newcomer from Australia, MacKay did not understand that Conroy, a departmental head, was only using me as his letter drop. His visits were quite brief and purposeful; I timed them by the number of cigarettes he chain-smoked.

On the other hand, Lalor, a former kiap, used me as a sounding board, and we discussed our joint problems with a little lubrication.

MacKay turned up again at 8 pm on Tuesday; and was shaking. He explained that driving up the track to my house in the dark terrified him, and he would not be doing it again.

He said that he had spent the morning explaining Ballmer and Conroy's proposal to the landowners. All afternoon he had answered their questions. He said he had been surprised they did not accept the offer.

Ballmer and Conroy had finally agreed $7,000 was the appropriate annual rental for a 42-year lease of 140 acres with options for renewal.

In addition, the company would pay the landowners $30,000 (about K1 million today) damages when they signed the agreement and at each renewal.

The company would rebuild five copra dryers and replace four bush material houses with permanent material ones at locations selected by the owners.

It would also provide 7,000 ordinary shares in Bougainville Copper Ltd at the issue price when they became available.

I couldn't help thinking about how things had changed.

In March, the Administration besmirched the kiap name when it said Rorovana land was rural, worth $4 to $ 10 an acre, and we must convince the people to sell.

On 11 July, in a telex to the external territories department, the Administrator said the land value was $75 an acre plus $2 for each coconut and other economic tree.

On 25 July, assistant administrator Newman thought he was being generous with his $105 an acre infamous ultimatum to landowners.

Now six weeks later, the company acknowledged the land was worth ten times Newman's offer and had added inducements to seal the deal.

Moreover the company had also accepted that 142 acres, one-third the size of the lease approved by minister Barnes, satisfied their needs.

Papua New Guinea Post-Courier of Monday 4 August 1969

Fearful of the journey, MacKay no longer made nightly visits to my place but Conroy continued to swing by sometime before 10, and Lalor would drop by later.

With no settlement in sight, CRA's Ballmer and Opas and Territories' Mentz and Grainger departed Bougainville for Rabaul at 3 pm on Tuesday 2 September 1969. (15)

When Bill Conroy came by, I learned a little more. He knew and respected Bill Granger who had headed the Administration’s animal industry division from 1947 to 1953, and they had lectured together at the Mageri training centre (16) in 1950.

Grainger had vast PNG experience, which was unusual for anybody from Territories. More importantly, his diploma in agricultural economics gained from Oxford University in 1963 added invaluable financial expertise.

The breakthrough came during the weekend of 6-7 September - after the Administration formally agreed it would not attempt to acquire any other Rorovana land without the consent of the landowners and CRA repeated its willingness to hand over $37,000.

The landowners said they would allow access to the land with the proviso that CRA did not disturb any boundary markings until a titles commissioner determined ownership.

The Rorovana No 1 landowners signed the agreement, but five older men from Rorovana No 2 declined to do so because they did not accept Napidakoe Navitu or Middlemiss’s involvement in negotiations.

Land Titles Commissioner Kim (CW) Kimmorley (17) arrived from Port Moresby a few days later to sort out the claims and counterclaims about who were the true landowners.

He was well known in Bougainville, having been the assistant district officer in charge of the Kieta Subdistrict from October 1954 to June 1957, and the Buka Sub-District from then to January 1959.

Kimmorley commenced the formal hearing at Tunuru on 28 October 1969 and concluded it on 10 November.

In addition to his other duties, patrol officer Heggen spent the nine work days in that period ferrying people between Rorovana and Tunuru: five trips to deliver the people to the hearing in the morning and five to return them home in the afternoon.

When he visited Kieta, Bill (WF) Carter (18) was acting assistant administrator for three months while Newman was on leave.

Ashton and I were told by Carter that the Administration was removing the area of CRA operations from the Bougainville District and I would be appointed District Commissioner to manage them.

He said the House of Assembly would be advised of the change during its November sitting, and on the same day the Public Service Board would notify my promotion in the Government Gazette.

Ashton did not like the idea but knew any protest would be futile.

Even though district commissioner promotions originated in Port Moresby, they had to be approved by the external territories minister in Canberra, but the change in the Bougainville arrangements were unique and extraordinary.

The District Commissioner's residence in Kieta was wonderfully located above the town and, among lesser mortals, hosted visiting prime ministers and royalty

So much so that in their formulation they had almost certainly involved a considerable number of stakeholders: CRA, members of the House of Assembly Joseph Lue, Paul Lapun and Donatus Mola, Raphael Bele, Administrator Hay, Assistant Administrators Carter and Newman, Tom Ellis and Bill Conroy.

On 16 June 1969, Newman tabled a white paper, ‘Bougainville Copper Project’, in the House of Assembly.

Carter’s update, ‘Bougainville Progress Report – Period September November 1968’, was later tabled in the House of Assembly on 6 November. It included the following paragraphs:

“19. The Public Service Board has recently approved the creation of a special position to service the general locality affected by the Bougainville mining operation and this position is currently filled by Mr W Brown whose local designation will be Chief Liaison Officer.

“The Liaison Office will be located in Arawa and will be the contact point for the Company and contractors in the field to ensure the area is adequately administered and that the Administration’s activities are coordinated and the appropriate facilities are provided.

“As well, one of the most important tasks of the Chief Liaison Officer will be to have a direct and continuous contact with the village people and the Local Government Councils to ensure they are informed and consulted on all developments.

“20. This officer … will carry the normal functions and responsibilities of a District Commissioner in this small area of Bougainville.

“The importance of the role is such that he will have a direct channel of communication to the Assistant Administrator (Economic Affairs).”

In their book, ‘Compensating for development: the Bougainville case’, published in 1977, Bedford and Mamak took a different view:

“In an attempt to communicate more effectively with the villagers, a special position (Chief Liaison Officer) was created in the District Office.

“Little was achieved by the man initially appointed to this job. However, he had been in the area since 1966 and was regarded by Bougainvilleans as being too sympathetic to the demands of the mining company.”

Bedford and Mamak got it spectacularly wrong. The special position was not designated ‘Chief Liaison Officer’, it was not ‘created in the District Office’, nor was it linked to the survey of the special mining lease.

Their statement - "the man initially appointed to this job" - suggested others were appointed to the position. Nobody was.

The Public Service Board notified my promotion as District Commissioner (Special Duties) Arawa (19) in the Government Gazette of 6 November 1969. Like other promotions, it was subject to appeal.

On my reckoning, I was outgunned. I was junior in seniority to at least 20 other deputy district commissioners, many of whom had wartime experience. Some had served with ANGAU; some even had recent experience in Bougainville.

I don’t know what happened. If there were appeals against my selection, they did not see the light of day.

After Bill Carter departed, Des Ashton and I decided his idea of hard-line borders between the Bougainville District and my jurisdiction of the area related to the mine and its ancillary infrastructure would not be workable.

I did not want to be involved with Kieta town, the overseas shipping wharf or the airport, even though CRA had problems in the first two locations.

But I would continue operate from the District Office until a building became vacant at Arawa.

The pressing problem was to locate and survey a route for the highway from Loloho port to the Panguna mine site and to gain access to the land.

From my perspective, of equal importance was to ensure the Administration made ex gratia payments to the people from whom it had purchased land for the Aropa airport extensions and that I did the same for another group that had leased land near Rorovana for miserly values.

I did not worry about the Wau family of Rorovana, who had sold a 22-acre block adjacent to Loloho to a kiap (name not recorded) for $1,600 on 15 July 1969 as they had joined in the Bougainville Copper Agreement.

Radio Bougainville (Voice of the Sunrise) was used tactically by the wiser kiaps to communicate vital information to the village people

While Assistant Administrator Newman was threatening the Arawa and Rorovana landowners with resumption, Assistant District Officer Chris Warrillow had purchased land described as "essential for upgrading Aropa airstrip (Kieta aerodrome) to Fokker standards" and patrol officer Max Heggen had secured a 42-year lease over 49 acres of land in the mine’s designated industrial area. (20)

At this time, the Administration was taking 12-18 months to purchase land. Warrillow’s purchase took less than two months and, unlike Newman, he did not make threats.

He used Radio Bougainville to contact anybody with an interest, addressed two council meetings and arranged for MHAs Paul Lapun and Donatus Mola to consult the owners.

Warrillow completed the investigation report on 21 June and, working with Don (DT) Smith, a private surveyor instructed by the lands department, finalised the boundaries.

Regional valuer RM Lee, from Rabaul, determined the arable land was worth $15 an acre and the swamp land five dollars. (21) The owners provided the 54 acres required by selling 47.4 acres and exchanging 6.6 acres for an area of Administration-owned land known as Reboine Airstrip.

Heggen's transaction was less noteworthy. When I returned from the Port Moresby of 11 July, I lumbered him with the task of finding a landowner willing to lease a seven-acre area in the industrial area.

Heggen swiftly found a willing landowner, marked boundaries and had the land valued and surveyed.

On 31 July, the Administration paid Katui and his family from Korokoro $5,617 for the 42-year lease of 49 acres of land known as Itakara – eight kilometers along the road from Rorovana towards Panguna.

On 30 November 1969 at Rorovana, after much toing and froing, landowners put their signatures or marks on the 14-page lease agreement. MacKay, John Tidex from Price Waterhouse and CRA’s Don Vernon flew from Australia for the occasion.

The Agreement stipulated that stated that moneys due to the landowners would be paid to three trustees, two appointed by the landowners and one by the Administration.

Paul Lapun, Don MacKay and Barry Middlemiss witnessed the 76 signatures and marks of people from Rorovana No 2 and Lalor witnessed those of six from Rorovana No 1.

Bill Conroy signed the agreement on behalf of the Administration and Tidex witnessed his signature. Colin Bishop signed on behalf of Bougainville Copper, with Crown Law's Peter McKinnon as witness.

On 3 December 1969, after the monthly meeting with CRA and External Territories in Port Moresby, Conroy and I met with Don MacKay to discuss new issues.

Even though a survey had reduced the area of the Rorovana land from 140 to 113 acres, the company agreed to honour the original financial terms. CRA had written a cheque for $37,00O, and I got the job of getting the Rorovana people to appointee their two trustees.

That took about half a dozen visits to Rorovana with much explanation and cajoling required before the people decided to be involved.

They appointed Albert Pesa Binawata and Raphael Atiala Bele as their trustees at a meeting I attended in Rorovana on 21 December.

It was the end of 1969 and the end of a long journey. However it was the beginning of another no less fraught.

Notes

1. Bill's little helper - has been known to write whole paragraphs when the author's not paying attention
   Bougainville Copper Pty Limited (BCL) was incorporated in 1967 with CRA Ltd holding 53.6% of its shares, the PNG government 19.1% and public shareholders 27.3%. Its registered office was at Panguna.
   
   
2. The position of Deputy District Commissioner (District Inspector) gave status but scant authority. Webb and Littler’s duty statement was a powder puff of ideas: "To inspect district establishments and projects; assess efficiency, submit reports and take follow-up action, advise district staff on organisation, functions and policy, assist with district planning, and undertake other duties as directed."
   
   
3. Des (Desmond Norman) Ashton was born in New Zealand in 1916 and became a Patrol Officer in June 1946 after war service as a Chief Petty officer in the Royal Australian Navy. Ashton took over as District Commissioner, Bougainville, at Sohano in January 1968, moved the district headquarters to Kieta in August and thereafter thrust himself into CRA activities. Administrator David Hay must have been confused when he described Ashton as “a rather nervous, tense chap and very inclined to be tough”. Ashton gave orders, accepted them and was tough, but he had nerves of steel. Ian Downs described Ashton as “not easily disturbed by violent situations ... not an imaginative man ... unimpressed by the awesome political and commercial power of Conzinc Riotinto ... [and] prepared to do his duty in any situation to which he was called.” Ken (KA) Brown, Deputy District Commissioner at Sohano, said a fishing expedition on Ashton’s launch was akin to a voyage with the notoriously dogmatic Vice Admiral William Bligh. On one occasion Departmental Director Tom Ellis told Ashton that he had “the couth of a matelot from the lower deck."
   
   
4. Peter Jeaffreson Clay, born in Papua in 1929, joined the Administration as a lawyer in September 1957 and served as Crown Prosecutor and Principal Legal Officer before becoming Assistant Crown Solicitor in February 1969.
   
   
5. Ray (Ray Wayne) Ballmer, a United States mining engineer, joined CRA as Director of Operations and General Manager of Bougainville Copper in mid-1969. He was 43 at the time and an expert in open cut mining employed by the Kennecott Copper Corporation in Arizona and Utah. I found him to be unassuming, pleasant, thoughtful and pragmatic.
   
   
6. Raphael Bele OBE Raphael Bele OBE was a Rorovana landowner, treasurer of the activist Napidakoe Navitu movement and later MP for Central Bougainville. In 1969 he told fellow Bougainvillean, Moses Havini, “Land is like the skin on the back of your hand. You inherit it, and it is your duty to pass it on to your children in as good condition …. You would not expect us to sell our skin, would you?”
   
   
7. The pundits who predicted the final purchase price of McKillop’s Arawa Plantation would top one million dollars were apparently correct.
   
   
8. In 1970 Barry John Aloysius (BJA) Middlemiss was 30 years old. He grew up in Wilcannia in western New South Wales where he was an active in the Young Australian Country Party. In 1963 he was an overseer at Victoria Downs cattle station near Charleville in Queensland before working on McKillop’s Arawa Plantation. Middlemiss threw in his lot with local landowners when Arawa was resumed, becoming secretary of Napidakoe Navitu, established on 6 July 1969 to coordinate Indigenous landowner interests. He later survived a motion in the House of Assembly to deport him moved by Bougainville MPs Joseph Lue and Donatus Mola.
   
   
9. Donald Gordon MacKay was born on 11 March 1931 and educated at Knox Grammar School and Sydney University, graduating in law in 1955.
   
   
10. John William MacLean Tidex DFC, a 45-year-old accountant from Price Waterhouse in Sydney, had spent six years in Fiji before coming to Bougainville. During World War II, aged 22, he joined the Royal Air Force as a navigator in 51 Squadron (Halifax bombers), flying more than 40 operations over enemy territory and being awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.
    
    
11. Lovering was able to put Lapun and Bele in touch with James Coulter, a member of Moral Rearmament (MRA) and journalist. Coulter had flown Sunderland flying boats for the RAAF in World War II and knew prime minister Gorton. Since 1946, he had worked with MRA. Coulter accompanied the two Bougainvilleans to a meeting with Gorton in Canberra as a result of which Gorton, sensitive to their plight, asked that they be enabled to obtain the services of “the best advisors”, which is where MacKay and Tidex entered the negotiations. [See The Bougainville Land Crisis of 1969: The Role of Moral Re-Armament by Nigel Cooper, Occasional Paper Number 1, Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies]
    
    
12. Dr Philip Opas AM OBE QC (1917-2008) was the tenacious defence counsel to murderer Ronald Ryan, the last person to be hanged in Victoria in 1967. Disillusioned and dispirited, Opas left the law in 1968 to work with CRA before returning to the Bar in 1972
    
    
13. Director of Agriculture, Stock and Fisheries, Bill (Wilfred Lawrence) Conroy began his PNG career as a Lieutenant in the Australian Imperial Force in 1942. An agriculture graduate of Sydney University, he commanded several malaria control units. Discharged from the Army in June 1946, he joined the Administration as an Agricultural Officer and was a visiting lecturer in tropical agriculture at the Australian School of Pacific Administration where Bill Brown met him in 1949.
    
    
14. English born William Grainger was 53 and officer in charge of the Department of Territories Primary Industries Section when he became involved in Rorovana. He had served in the Australian Army's Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs from 1944-47 and was employed as Chief of the Division of Animal Industry in PNG's Department of Agriculture, Stock and Fisheries from 1947-53.
    
    
15. CRA's Ballmer and Opas together with the External Territories Department’s Mentz and Grainger flew from Rabaul to Australia in the company's executive Grumman Gulfstream aircraft VH-CRA which had been standing by in Rabaul.
    
    
16. The Department of Agriculture Stock and Fisheries’ 1950 training program for Cadet Agricultural Officers was held at Mageri Agricultural Centre near Sogeri in the foothills behind Port Moresby.
    
    
17. Kim (Corbett William) Kimmorley served in the 14th Australian Field Regiment from July 1942 and, when discharged in March 1946, had attained the rank of Lieutenant. He joined the Administration as a Patrol Officer in October 1946 and became a Lands Title Commissioner in 1966.
    
    
18. Bill (William Frederick) Carter was six years older than Bill Brown but attended the same secondary school. He was responsible for the Australian Postmaster-General’s Engineering Division in Parkes, NSW, when chosen to create PNG’s Department of Posts and Telegraphs in 1953. He was awarded an OBE in June 1972 “in recognition of service to the public and scouting.”
    
    
19. The Public Service Board did not cancel the 1968 promotion, but on 8 October 1970, Bill Brown was again promoted to be District Commissioner Arawa. The duties were unchanged, but the ‘Special Duties’ suffix was omitted.
    
    
20. Treasurer Newman’s threats may have facilitated the Loloho and Industrial Area transactions but were less likely to have affected the landowners concerned with the Aropa airport extension who were from the South Nasioi village of Siromba, more than 40 kilometres from Rorovana.
    
    
21. One Australian dollar in 1969 was valued at $13.70 (K35) in 2022.

Images

1. A woman resists police during the confrontation at Rorovana, 1969 (Sydney Sun)
   
   
2. Map - Rorovana-Arawa-Kieta area of east coast Bougainville. The Panguna mine site lies to the west and Aropa Airport to the south (Bill Brown)
   
   
3. Bougainvilleans have always had a powerful sense of identity. This photo from 1956 shows Kieta men listening intently to a petition to be sent to the United Nations (National Library of Australia)
   
   
4. The District Commissioner's house on a ridge above Kieta had a magnificent view across Kieta Harbour to the blue Pacific (Bill Brown)
   
   
5. Sir Frank Espie - 'the Rorovana people can have access to coconuts' was not one of his more thoughtful statements about people who were angered that their land was being alienated
   
   
6. Sir Paul Lapun KBE - a man of rare calibre and the first Papua New Guinean to receive a knighthood. He believed in independence for both Papua New Guinea and Bougainville
   
   
7. FR ‘Kip’ McKillop - planter and philanthropist 'fired by an original vision for tropical plants' and whose Arawa plantation became the main administrative centre of Bougainville
   
   
8. Barry Middlemiss – the Arawa plantation employee who joined forces with the Rorovana people when they resisted the alienation of their land
   
   
9. A rare photo from 1970 shows Bill brown signing lease documents with (from left) Tavora (of Arawa), PNG Director of Agriculture Bill Conroy, CRA's Colin Bishop and Narug (of Arawa) (PNG Department of Information and Extension Services)
   
   
10. The dramatic front page of the Papua New Guinea Post-Courier of Monday 4 August 1969
    
    
11. The District Commissioner's residence in Kieta was wonderfully located above the town and, as well as lesser mortals, hosted visiting prime ministers and royalty
    
    
12. Radio Bougainville (Voice of the Sunrise) was used tactically by wiser kiaps to communicate vital information to the village people
    
    
13. Bill's little helper - has been known to write whole paragraphs when the author is not paying attention

Singirok had just been sacked and everyone was jumpy when his bodyguard, Corporal Allen, pulled a pistol on a soldier who arrived unexpectedly at Murray Barracks. He said he just wanted food (Andrew Meares)

RAE KATAHA SMART

A Matter of Conscience: Operation Rausim Kwik by Major-General Jerry Singirok, Partridge Publishing, Singapore, February 2022, 636 pages. Available from Amazon: hardcover $100, paperback $72.95 or email Rae Smart here for more information

TEWANTIN QLD – At last the book by Major-General Jerry Singirok on the Bougainville conflict and the Sandline Affair, ‘Operation Rausim Kwik’, has just been released.

Written from the unique perspective of former Army commander Singirok, the book is a no holds barred account of a mutiny.

It tells the story of Singirok's bold response when Sandline mercenaries, engaged by the government of then prime minister Sir Julius Chan who was intent on winning the civil war in Bougainville, were stopped in their tracks, potentially saving thousands of lives.

Singirok tells the story leading up to this event and relates what happened when, as defence force commander in 1997, he defied Chan’s orders, and successfully acted to stop the Sandline mercenaries.

Singirok was dismissed and faced a number of inquiries, one of which reinstated him in 1998.

But, dissatisfied, the government called another inquiry and he was dismissed again in 2000 facing a number of charges including sedition.

In March 2004, he was cleared of all charges except sedition, and his military career was over.

More recently, Singirok has been outspoken against Australian intervention in the Pacific, particularly the deployment of forces to the Solomon Islands.

He has accused Australia of imperialism and also suggested that Papua New Guinea risks becoming a failed state.

As you might expect, his book is well written, revelatory and a real page-turner.

The book also covers other aspects of Singirok’s life, including what influenced as a youth and a young man.

As PNG topples on the edge of a disaster, Singirok briefs his troops

It describes his career as a professional soldier in the Papua New Guinea Defence Force, and what happened when, after the drama of the Sandline Affair, he had to reconstruct his life.

I’m assisting Major-General Singirok pro bono as what he’s written is more than a book to have on your shelf, it’s a real lesson in life.

He has arranged to have a limited number of the first editions in Australia. If you are interested in obtaining a copy, you can also email me here.

Japanese troops parade after the fall of Rabaul, late January 1942. On 4 February 160 Australian Lark Force soldiers who escaped the invasion were captured and murdered in the vicinity of Tol and Waitavalo plantations

GREGORY BABLIS
| Ples Singsing

TOL, NEW BRITAIN - The Lark Force Track is a little-known wartime walking trail with a big history.

Located in East New Britain Province, it runs from the Warongoi River in the north to Tol, Wide Bay, along the south coast.

The track is named after the 2/22 Lark Force Battalion, an Australian force sent to guard Rabaul and its important harbour.

But when the Imperial Japanese Army descended in January 1942, the small garrison was outnumbered and quickly overwhelmed.

The Australian soldiers were forced to escape across the Gazelle Peninsula in fragmented groups.

One group of about 200 soldiers decided to retreat from the Warongoi River and through the northern Mali Baining villages of Arabam, Reigel, Vaingait and Lamengi.

They crossed the rugged Baining Ranges, skirting Mt Bururimea, the highest peak in the province, and trekked to the Balus River, about four kilometers north of Tol Plantation.

On 4 February 1942, pursuing Japanese soldiers captured 158 Lark Force Battalion soldiers and some civilians between Tol and Masarau where they were massacred.

The massacre of these soldiers occurred after one of the great blunders of the Australian Army in World War II when they were not given timely reinforcement in Rabaul and no rescue was organised for them.

The route taken by the Lark Force soldiers is a traditional bush track used by the Bainings moving between villages in the north and south.

The German Catholic priest, Fr Alphonse Mayerhoffer, who was stationed at Lamengi pre-war, was providing support for Australian soldiers and it was he who pointed them to the track.

But the Lark Force Track hides yet another secret that only now local oral history has revealed.

Sometime between 1942 and 1945, Japanese soldiers also massacred Baining villagers at Vaingait.

The villagers were marched to the site and ordered to dig a tunnel into the side of a hill.

They were then told to hide in the tunnel for their own safety from the Allied Forces bombing raids.

A machine gun was placed at the mouth of the tunnel and used to slaughter the villagers.

A conservative number of the villagers killed is 200 but it is suggested that as many as 1,000 died.

Today, locals of Tol, Masarau, Marunga and the Mali Baining villages from Karong to Raigel have come together to acknowledge the history of the wartime track bookended by two brutal massacres – one of Australian soldiers at Toland one of Baining villagers.

Locals recognise the potential for this track to generate something of economic value through the tourism and trekking industries.

With the support of the National Museum & Art Gallery and the leadership of the Indigenous Baining authority, Qaqet Stewardship Council, chaired by Nicholas R Leo, locals have come together to begin revealing the secrets and stories of the events of World War II from a local perspective.

They plan to make the Lark Force Track a viable tourist track, firstly by mapping the route taken by the Australian soldiers massacred in Tol.

A 34 person team made up of locals from the Mengen, Sulka and Baining tribes recently completed a seven-day mapping expedition of the Track which runs a total of 61.4 kilometers from Arabam in the north to Tol in the south.

Baining landowners have also established called RAIMA (Raigel-Marunga), an entity which is envisaged to be the managing authority over the Lark Force Track.

The major sponsor for the important $15,000 project mapping exercise was Angela Pennefather of Melanesian Luxury Yachts and financial assistance was also received from other private sponsors including the Qaqet Stewardship Council.

Papuan Governor Lukas Enembe (centre) meets Russian Ambassador to Indonesia Lyudmila Vorobyeva in Jakarta (Tribun Manado)

YAMIN KOGOYA

BRISBANE - Russian president Vladimir Putin has been invited by Papuan governor Lukas Enembe to visit the Indonesian province later this year.

The invitation was extended when Enembe met Russian Ambassador to Indonesia, Lyudmila Vorobyeva, last week and has triggered heated debate in social media.

Speculation is also rife about whether Indonesia — as chair of the G20 group of nations — will invite President Putin to attend the global forum in Bali later this year.

Enembe is not just any governor in Indonesia — Papua is one of the biggest settler-colonised provinces globally that is seeking independence.

Whether Putin would want to visit Papua is unknown, but Enembe’s invitation has left Indonesians and Papuans confused and wondering about the governor’s motives.

His spokesperson, Muhammad Rifai, said Enembe had expressed deep gratitude to the Russian government for providing a sense of security to Indigenous Papuan students studying in Russia.

He thanked the Russian ambassador for taking good care of scholars who since 2016 have received annual scholarships through the Russian Centre for Science and Culture.

Enembe first sent 26 Indigenous Papuans to study in Russia in 2019 Russian Federation on September 27, 2019 and last year Russia offered another 163 places to Papuan undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Enembe stated education is a foundation for the land of Papua to grow and move forward and said Russia is the only country willing to offer students a free scholarship covering their tuition fees.

Rifai also said the governor wanted to talk about the construction of a spaceport on Biak Island off the north-west coast of Papua.

As part of the initiative, the governor has invited Victoria from the Russian Centre for Science and Culture to visit Papua to inaugurate a Russian Cultural Centre at a local university.

Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay with a Papuan boy, Ahmad, c 1873

Some see Enembe’s desire to establish a relationship with Russia inspired by the story of Russian anthropologist Nikolai Nikolaevich Miklouho-Maclay (1846–88) who he said had tried to save the New Guinean people during one of the darkest periods of European savagery in the Pacific.

Miklouho-Maclay fought to defend indigenous New Guineans against German, Dutch, British and Australian colonists in New Guinea.

The anthropologist took risks in proclaiming equality between different races and standing in opposition to the dominant worldview of the time.

It was a hegemony so destructive it set the stage for future exploitation of islanders and West Papua still bleeds as a result, he said.

Maclay’s campaign against the ‘Australian slavery’ known as blackbirding was driven by a spirit of human equality.

The term ‘Melanesia’ emerged out of such colonial enterprise, fuelled by white supremacy.

It is ironic that Papuans in West Papua use the term in their cultural war against Asian-Indonesian colonisation.

Maclay landed at Garagassi Point in what is now Madang Province in September 1871 and built a strong relationship with the local people.

His anthropological work and his diaries became well known in Russia and have more recently been translated into English as the ‘New Guinea Diaries 1871-1883’.

The translator of the diaries, CL Sentinella, wrote in the introduction:

“The diaries give us a day-to-day account of a prolonged period of collaborative contact with these people by an objective scientific observer with an innate respect for the natives as human beings, and with no desire to exploit them in any way or to impose his ideas upon them.

“Because of Maclay’s innate respect, this recognition on his part that they shared a common humanity, his reports and descriptions are not distorted to any extent by inbuilt prejudices and moral judgements derived from a different set of values.”

In 2017, PNG newspaper, The National, published a short story of Maclay under the title, ‘A Russian who fought to save Indigenous New Guinea’.

Then in 2020, The Guardian, shared a brief story of him under title, ‘The dashing Russian adventurer who fought to save indigenous lives’.

After more than 150 years, these titles reflect the spirit and emphasise the legacy of Maclay.

One of his descendants, Nickolay Miklouho-Maclay, current director of the Miklouho Maclay Foundation in Madang, has begun to establish connections with local people.

Governor Enembe believes Nikolai Nikolaevich Miklouho-Maclay’s writings profoundly influenced the Russian psyche and reflect how the Russian people view Melanesians.

This was what motivated him to arrange his meeting with Russian ambassador Lyudmila Vorobyeva.

The governor believes Russian hospitality towards Papuan students is connected to the spirit of Maclay’s compassion, understanding and brotherhood.

While Maclay’s story is linked to the PNG side of New Guinea, Enembe said Nikolai’s it is now also the story of West Papuans because Maclay fought for all oppressed and enslaved New Guineans, Melanesians and Pacific islanders.

Governor Lukas Enembe -“The old stories are dying; we need new stories for our future” (West Papua Today)

So Governor Enembe has invited President Putin to visit Papua and he plans to build a cultural museum and statue in honour of Nikolai Nikolaevich Miklouho-Maclay.

“The old stories are dying, and we need new stories for our future,” Enembe said.

“I want to share more of this great story of the Russian people and New Guinea people together.”

Yamin Kogoya, a West Papuan academic and anthropologist, is from the Lani tribe of the Papuan Highlands

'My Grandfather is a Canoe' director Marisiale Tunoka (centre) with musicians (from left) Oliver Tafuna’i, Waisea McGoon, Lopeti Sumner and Siaosi Kei

KEITH JACKSON

DUNEDIN - A play of Pacific cultures, voyaging and love, My Grandfather is a Canoe, including the poetry of Michael Dom, has won the prestigious Dunedin Fringe Festival’s Touring Award.

The award means the play will be performed at Christchurch’s Little Andromeda theatre in July and at the Auckland Fringe Festival in September.

First-time playwright Faumuina Felolini Maria Tafuna’i based the play on a book of poetry she published last year.

“We tried to give the community an immersive experience with the music, the colours and vibrancy of the Pacific.

“The award has given us another port for our waka to visit and share our stories, celebrate our ancestors, our artistry and connections.”

The play features eight Pacific languages and includes the poetry of eminent Papua New Guinean poet Michael Dom and Tafuna’i’s son, Oliver, who is one the lead guitarists and vocalists.

Each poem had its own illustration, created by artist Silivelio Fasi, which is projected on stage.

The play encountered a few storms with the Omicron outbreak when Tafuna’i, her Dunedin collaborators Inati Aotearoa, producer Pip Laufiso and musical director Hiliako Iaheto all became sick during the week of the show.

“To get the award despite that upheaval is so gratifying,” said Tafuna’i.

The award provides $1,000, free registration as well as support to deliver the play at the Auckland Fringe.

“The arts sector has been hammered with cancellations but it has also risen to the challenge to find innovative solutions,” said Laufiso.

“Pasifika creatives reached out to each other to offer and provide support and our own whānau/aiga and community pitched in to help cover the bases.”

The final scene of My Grandfather is a Canoe

She said the lessons learnt over two years of contingency planning for events and community wellbeing came into sharp focus.

Hiliako Iaheto, who went from leading the band to mentoring his musicians online, said he was proud of the band

“To have an all-Pacific cast meant we had a more organic process, and we didn’t have to spend time explaining our cultures to each other,” said Dunedin-based actor-director Marisiale Tunoka, who directed the play.

“Prayer, shared meals and having children at rehearsals also made it special.”

Fabric artist Ron Te Kawa designed the costumes, Taylormade Media sponsored the sound and lighting and the 555 Dunedin Motel assisted with accommodation.

“But more than that, manager Justin Hanning looked after our young artists and made them feel welcome,” said Laufiso.

Green shoots nurtured by a hand (Anna Gibert)

ANNA GIBERT | Edited

VILA - From the early 2000s, the established approaches of international aid programs with their externally-led technical solutions have been increasingly called into question by progressive development practitioners and think tanks.

Voices like the Overseas Development Institute, the Thinking and Working Politically Community of Practice, and the Centre for International Development at Harvard University have consistently underscored other approaches.

These include the centrality of local leadership, local politics, and the ‘rules of the game’ of local institutions as deciding drivers in whether constructive nation-building occurs or whether dysfunctional governance and poor social, economic, and environmental indicators persist.

There is also growing evidence that it is the influence of local leaders and coalitions that can either maintain or disrupt injustice and non-reform within sovereign states.

But despite these understandings, donors continue to invest in development modes based on false technical capacity rather than give priority to the lack of developmental leadership and the lack of inclusive power structures.

The progressive argument is that it is not a lack of technical expertise and financial resources that are the main factors behind poor development outcomes.

The main factors behind poor outcomes are insufficient recognition of both local leadership and local internal power dynamics.

Approaches that lack such recognition are counterproductive to Western donors’ stated objectives of inclusive prosperity within a rules-based order.

There is a pressing need for aid programs to acknowledge that these objectives will remain largely unobtainable under the governance systems of recipient aid countries where elitist cronyism and non-representational institutions and leadership prevail.

While there may be broad-based agreement that what is needed is better leadership and better governance, conventional aid programs address these within the prevailing workings of power.

There are, however, examples of development practice funded by external donors that deviate from convention.

These use alternative strategies to support reformist leadership, and this leadership contests the hidden networks of negative power and incentives in order to attain national development goals.

It is these examples, three of which I list here, that provide valuable insights and lessons for broader application.

Strategy 1: Differentiate between status quo leaders and reformist leaders.

While there may be broad consensus that better leadership and better governance are needed, aid programs conventionally address these within the prevailing workings of power.

The standard aid response is to ‘capacity build’ existing leaders, many of whom are part of the systems of elitism and corruption and who have a deeply vested interest in things remaining exactly as they are.

These representatives of the status quo are frequently the recipients of training and leadership programs funded by well-meaning donors.

It is they who appear on the ‘lists of people consulted’ on program design documents.

And it is they who are the prime mediators in high-level meetings between aid donors and governments that reach important development cooperation decisions.

In this way, external assistance can inadvertently perpetuate that which it is seeking to change.

It is therefore important to understand that, in countries with poor governance and development outcomes, the reformist drivers of change (who care deeply about the well-being of their communities and who seek social justice) rarely hold formal authority and are rarely in positions of power in contexts of endemic corruption.

Development programs consequently need to be informed by an understanding of the vast difference that can exist between overt, legitimised leaders and covert, often embryonic, developmental leaders, whose status is not necessarily reflected in their formal positions.

The qualities that define developmental leaders who are motivated to serve and deliver sustainable outcomes are not necessarily seen in the confidence, dominance, and performance charisma that donors associate with good leadership.

Identifying reformist leaders takes much more care and energy.

Strategy 2: Go beyond the ‘usual suspects’ in positions of authority to seek out the green shoots of reformist leadership.

This is not an easy task. As organisational psychologist Chamarro-Premuzic notes in his book, ‘Why Do So Many Incompetent Men become Leaders’, aid donors are biased to equate confidence, dominance and performance charisma with good leadership.

But the qualities that define developmental or reformist leaders – humility, sensitivity, altruism and collaboration – do not correlate with these characteristics.

Such leaders are not easily spotted. They are not skilled in self-serving promotion, but instead are often hidden in communities, churches, schools, and civil society organisations that are focused on the empowerment and elevation of others.

These leaders are often reluctant to be associated with the negative models of formal and institutional leadership prevalent around them.

Because of this, their acceptance of any formal position of power can require a high degree of persuasion and support.

This is where the external development intervention can play a useful role – to encourage and assist these budding developmental leaders to exercise their potential in a sphere of increased impact.

Strategy 3: Build the symbolic capital of developmental leaders who lack access to power sources within the dominant political system.

‘Symbolic capital’ is the authority available to individuals based on recognition of their prestige, achievements or influence and it can be mobilised and adapted for use in institutional and political spheres.

There are ways to assist developmental leaders to amass symbolic capital, including supporting them to come together as coalitions for change and providing them with public platforms to demonstrate alternative models of what ethical governance and effective service delivery look like.

Aid programs have enormous amounts of symbolic capital at their disposal: they can build roads, provide grants, train teachers and deliver vaccines.

If aid programs stepped back from their own desire to claim ‘we built the capacity’ and instead put developmental leaders at the forefront of such activities, they could help these leaders accrue symbolic capital.

If aid programs intentionally shift to working in the shadows, in a role more resembling that of a campaign manager than a star player, they can increase the status and influence of reformists in challenging the dominant norms and practices of power.

Anna Gibert - "The main factors behind poor development outcomes are insufficient recognition of both local leadership and local internal power dynamics"

Developmental leaders who build influential coalitions of reform are the essential factor in strong governance and positive social change.

Aid programs need to choose whether they will help or hinder their progress.

Anna Gibert is an independent development consultant with more than 20 years’ experience in the Indo-Pacific region. She is currently the Australian government’s strategic adviser for the Vanuatu Skills Partnership and the Balance of Power Initiative

Final approach, Omkolai, 1960s (PNGAA)

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA – This photograph and the one below emerged on Facebook not so long ago.

They brought back many memories of a time now long gone in a place dear to our hearts.

Omkolai airstrip is about 20 km south of Kundiawa. It doesn’t sound that far now. But the road from Kundiawa – precipitous and riven with landslides – always made it seem much, much further than that. Still does, I hear.

The strip had a 13.4 degree slope (one in seven gradient) and was a mile, about 1,600 metres, above sea level.

Back then, in the 1960s, when I was a denizen of Chimbu, it was said to be the steepest airstrip in the southern hemisphere.

Regional map showing Kundiawa, Mingende and Kerowagi. Gagl school is located near (and indeed my be the same place renamed) as Bogo school

That’s a very Australian thing to say, our culture needs biggest and fastests and - given the number of tiny strips dotted about all manner of remote and mountainous places in the southern hemisphere - I suppose it’s possible that it was the steepest.

It was constructed in 1952, when there was no road access to Chimbu’s southern tribes – dug out from the side of a hill by hundreds of men and boys using the most basic implements.

This masterpiece of civil engineering is variously claimed to have been under the supervision of an American Lutheran missionary, the Rev Roland Brandt (known to the locals as Bilande), or achieved because of the willpower of a kiap.

I would guess it was most likely the latter, although the story of the missionary family is more romantic.

Rev Brandt and his family lived in a German-style residence built for them nearby.

This was soon followed, in the order of things, by a church and a school for the people of Omkolai and other adjacent villages.

Not long after, there was a report in a church newsletter that the Brandt missionary family “lived a happy life and people visited them providing local food.

“Every Sunday, everyone goes to church to listen to the white man’s voice and to see their little [white] children playing.”

Talair Cessna overflying Omkolai, 1966

Around August 1966, Sue Flatt, who became my first wife and who was completing her teacher training in New South Wales, flew from Sydney to Goroka, where I met her at the airport.

We drove over the Daulo Pass to Chuave, where we overnighted with my dear friends, teachers Murray and Joan Bladwell.

The next morning we motored on to my school at Gagl, up in the clouds maybe 6 km east of Kerowagi and 20 km north of Kundiawa in a straight line. This in a topography which, you understand,  knows no straight line.

To find Gagl you drive west along the Highlands Highway so-called and, upon arriving at the famous Mingende Mission, turn right on to the unsigned goat track leading to Gagl, another 15-20 minutes’ of jarring all going well.

Anyway, enough of time and distance. During Sue’s visit to my remote school with its breathtaking view across the Wahgi Valley to the Kubor Range, she agreed to marry me.

Qantas single-engine Otter parked on the small apron at Omkolai, 1959 (it’s not facing downhill for a reason)

A week later we had the biggest and only engagement party Gagl has ever seen. A dozen vehicles, mainly LandRovers and battered coffee utes hazarded the bush track. The only one to do in a sump was a the Volkswagen; totally unsuited to these wannabe roads.

The next day Sue and I travelled to Kerowagi to return to Goroka, this time by air.

We would say goodbye in Goroka and Sue would fly back to Sydney and try to explain the surprise engagement to her mother.

The Cessna 185 on the strip at Kerowagi was packed to the gunnels with bags of kaukau and other vegetables, a couple of sacks of rice as well as a box of chickens, leaving two narrow seats at the rear for Sue and me.

The aircraft hurtled down the Kerowagi strip seemingly glued to the grass and showing no sign of becoming airborne until eventually the pilot gave up and throttled back, the aircraft slowing enough to wheel around just before reaching a deep stormwater baret inside the airfield perimeter.

“We’ll have another go, I’ll get her up this time,” the pilot yelled with a confidence we hidden at the rear did not share.

On the apron at Omkalai, mid-1960s

This time with an immense roar and amidst clouds of grass and dust, the aircraft lifted off and I could just hear Two Goes shouting through the kaukau and other cargo that we would stop briefly at Omkolai to drop off mail for John Biltris, the kiap at Gumine.

My heart sank. I’d never flown in or out of Omkolai but its notoriety preceded it.

it was a regular topic of conversation in the Chimbu Club after the two most popular subjects – whether the Highlands Highway was open and when the next beer shipment was due.

The steepest strip in the southern hemisphere (maybe the world, I was now thinking) was just 550 metres long and dug out of the side of a mountain surrounded by other mountains.

It was a one-way strip, approached from a narrow valley and ending at an unforgiving ridge-line. On one side it dropped precipitously 450 metres to the Wahgi River.

My late great mate Murray Bladwell and I on leave in Avalon, Sydney, 1965. We are planning what I should say to my future mother-in-law about Sue and my impromptu engagement

At the top of the runway was a small flat square of apron, the only level ground in the Gumine Sub-District it seemed, where the aircraft would dock.

Anyway, young Two Goes was better at landings, especially uphill where physics took over bringing the Cessna to an abrupt stop, causing him to gun the motor violently to gain enough motive power to get the aircraft up to the small apron.

Biltris wasn’t there to greet us so we gave the mail and a couple of boxes of tinmit to a bloke who assured us that ‘kiap i salim mi long kisim ol samting’.

Take-off was a doddle, the 185 moved forward a metre or two from the apron before it rapidly gathered speed and, halfway down the strip, had the ground plunge away beneath it, The now not quite so-overloaded plane took to the air like a bird.

This leg to Goroka passed without event and I saw Sue off in the DC3 to Lae and Moresby and made my way home to my school in the clouds, lonely to be without Sue, excited by the promise of marriage and daunted with the prospect of having to face Sue’s mother when I went on leave in three months.

As for Omkolai, Philip Kaupa told PNG Attitude in 2014 that this “once beautiful and most challenging airstrip is no more to be seen. Today it is another gardening field of kaukau mounds.”

But I’m still able to say, and so is my first wife, Sue, that we once landed on the steepest airfield in the southern hemisphere and, just maybe, the world.

Spectacular view of final approach to Tabibuga, Western Province (Jim Moore)

Men walk across land being cleared by ExxonMobil for Komo airstrip in 2010. The massive LNG project has been a major unsettling influence in the area (Jes Aznar,  New York Times)

BRIAN HARDING & NICOLE COCHRAN
| United States Institute of Peace | Edited

MANILA, PHILIPPINES - In terms of geographical size and population, Papua New Guinea is by far the biggest country in the Pacific Islands, a region increasingly central to United States’ strategic interests.

Along with neighbouring Solomon Islands, PNG is at the centre of a growing geopolitical contest between the US and its allies and China.

PNG has also long been wracked by domestic instability, which has depressed equitable economic growth and limited the country’s ability to play its natural role as regional leader and a bridge between the Pacific Islands and East Asia.

Despite PNG’s potential importance, the US has a light political footprint in the country, particularly when compared to Australia, making PNG’s designation as a focus country under the Global Fragility Action (GFA) an opportunity to dramatically scale up engagement.

The GFA calls for a long-term, whole-of-government approach to preventing conflict and mitigating violence.

GFA priority countries are based on three criteria:

• US national security interests
  
  
• the level of violence or fragility in the country; and
  
  
• the commitment and capacity of the country and the likelihood that US assistance will have impact

Besides PNG, the US State Department has named Haiti, Libya, Mozambique and five West African coastal states as priority countries in which to implement the 10-year ‘US Strategy to Prevent Conflict and Promote Stability’.

PNG is a resource-rich, democratic nation - and no stranger to conflict.

On the surface, state institutions still reflect those of the former colonial administrator, Australia, but their depth and reach are limited, as are understandings and practices of governance.

Today, the highly diverse population of nine million faces several kinds of fragility ranging from community-based violence to the potential secession of Bougainville

As a country already at high risk from infectious diseases, the Covid-19 pandemic has pushed an already fragile health care system to breaking point.

Challenges resulting from insufficient resources have been exacerbated by extremely low vaccination rates. PNG is also at high risk of natural disasters, with frequent and often severe earthquakes, volcanic activity, mudslides and tsunamis.

Formal economic opportunities are limited. The vast majority of the population lives in rural areas and agriculture provides subsistence living for 85% percent of people.

The export of natural resources — namely minerals such as gold, copper and silver; natural gas; oil; and timber — makes up the lion’s share of PNG’s small formal economy.

In addition to causing environmental degradation, natural resource extraction — and the distribution of its benefits — has long been a point of tension and violent conflict.

In 1989, outrage over the Panguna copper mine sparked a civil war in Bougainville. It ended with a peace agreement in 2001.

More recently, elite squabbles over a multi-billion-dollar deal with Total and ExxonMobil for liquefied natural gas prompted then prime minister Peter O’Neill to step down in 2019.

Though a democracy with regular general elections, the robustness and effectiveness of governance institutions is thin.

O’Neill became prime minister in 2011 with a political manoeuvre the PNG supreme court deemed unconstitutional. Despite that he remained in office for eight years.

The 2017 general election was plagued by mismanagement, leading to outbreaks of violence. National elections will take place from 11-24 June.

The future of Bougainville has contributed to anxieties about PNG’s stability.

In 2019, 97% of Bougainville’s population voted in favor of independence in a referendum mandated by the 2001 peace agreement.

Because the referendum was non-binding and subject to ratification by the PNG parliament, there is uncertainty as to whether Bougainville’s clear choice will be honoured.

The prospect of Bougainville’s independence has raised the spectre of more secessionist movements and further breakup of the country, although this is considered to be unlikely.

The prevalence of crime and violence are hindering PNG’s economic growth.

Access to modern weapons and increased urban migration have escalated intercommunal violence. The rate of violence against women is amongst the highest in the world.

Sorcery-accusation related violence is a continuing threat to stability at community level.

Each of the tools envisioned in the ‘US Strategy to Prevent Conflict and Promote Stability’ could be deployed to address the indicators of fragility in PNG.

For example, development assistance and trade and investment opportunities could help to build a more robust, diversified and equitable formal economy, reducing dependence on natural resource extraction and the social tensions associated with it.

Humanitarian assistance would help enhance the PNG government’s capacity to respond to global shocks like the Covid pandemic.

Preventive diplomacy could be deployed to support a peaceful transition to independence in Bougainville and, at a grassroots level, to prevent village-based violence.

Various types of foreign assistance could be used to bolster PNG’s democratic institutions and strengthen traditional structures that support community resilience.

Three principles will be essential for the success of Global Fragility Action in PNG.

Emphasis on grassroots engagement: Conflict-sensitive grassroots engagement at the community level offers the greatest opportunity for creating change.

US funding will go further and will be more effective the closer it is to communities, where the state effectively does not exist.

However, implementers will need to proactively seek to work with church networks, which are key pillars of communities in PNG.

Realism about institutions: The US government should acknowledge that institutions are extremely weak in PNG and that politics centres on rent-seeking.

It should be cautious about forging systemic change, even over a 10-year planning horizon, keeping in mind that Australia has undertaken efforts to build institutions over decades.

Implementers should recognise that the incentives of political leaders may not align with leverage points for change, creating the risk that funds may not reach the right opportunities.

Coordination with partners: The US is fortunate to have its close ally Australia as the most important international actor in PNG, but this will also make early coordination with Australia essential to success.

The US should avoid areas of support where Australia is heavily engaged, such as in police and defence training and basic health and education, and instead find areas of comparative advantage.

Issues related to natural resource extraction, particularly mining, could be one such area.

Expanded US engagement in PNG will be welcomed by the government and its people and has the potential to be an important pillar of US engagement in the Pacific Islands region more generally.

The US retains enormous residual affection from World War II and has a great partner in Australia, while benefitting from not having the burden of being the major outside donor in PNG.

A potential multiplier for US government engagement could be coordination with ExxonMobil, PNG’s largest international investor, on community engagement and policy issues.

For a 10-year strategy to meaningfully contribute to stability it will require investment in education and dialogue in the US where, while increasingly focused on the Pacific Islands region for strategic reasons vis-à-vis China, Pacific literacy remains anaemic.

A deep understanding of PNG’s unique context will be critical to success.

Brian Harding joined the US Institute of Peace in May 2020 as a senior expert on Southeast Asia. He has more than 15 years experience in Southeast Asian affairs in government, think tanks and the private sector. Nicole Cochran is senior program specialist for USIP’s Asia Center

Admiral Samuel Paparo - “I always operate under the notion that there's the potential of conflict within our region within a couple of years"

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA – Australia’s international development minister Zed Seselja flew to Honiara today to discuss the Morrison government’s ‘concerns’ with the Solomons’ warming ties with China.

It is highly unusual for a minister to travel overseas during an election period, especially as Senator Seselja is working hard to retain his Canberra-based seat.

At this point, it is unknown whether Seselja’s mission is because Australia is belatedly responding to United States’ concern about the Solomons’ new alignment with China or whether it is campaign theatre to allow Morrison to once again beat up on China.

This should become clear when the senator returns to Australia later today and public statements are made on the precise reason for the mission and the nature of any outcome.

Last month a document was ‘leaked’ to social media divulging details of a supposed draft security treaty between the Solomons and China.

It claimed that under the treaty China would be permitted to station navy ships and defence personnel to protect billions of dollars in Chinese investment in the country.

Solomons prime minister Manasseh Sogavare confirmed a treaty had been finalised but said there was “no intention whatsoever to ask China to build a military base.

Manasseh Sogavare and Xi Jinping - their relationship has triggered a flurry of visitors to Honiara these days

“Where does that nonsense come from?” he asked, saying comments from politician and media in Australia were “insulting”.

He said a deal was “ready to be signed” and insisted that present security arrangements with Australia would be maintained and there were no plans to allow a Chinese base.

Then last week, United States Admiral Samuel Paparo commented from Washington DC that the treaty was “a concern for all of our partners throughout the western Pacific, and notably Australia and New Zealand.

“Anytime a secret security arrangement makes its way into the light of day, it is a concern," he told the ABC.

Describing the leaked document as a "secret" arrangement, Paparo also warned of growing potential for conflict in the Indo-Pacific.

Also last week, two Australian intelligence chiefs travelled to the Solomons to raise the government's “deep concerns” with Sogavare.

This is being followed today by Seselja’s flying visit.

And later this month the US national security coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, Kurt Campbell, is expected in Honiara to relay America's concerns to Sogavare in person.

Before boarding the RAAF VIP jet to Honiary, Seselja said, “We look forward to ongoing engagement with Solomon Islands, and with our Pacific family members, on these very important issues.

"Our view remains that the Pacific family will continue to meet the security needs of our region."

The “our Pacific family” meme flourishes still in Canberra even though it is beginning to irritate Pacific Islands people themselves.

Perhaps Sogavare will pass on this intelligence to the international development minister.

Meanwhile, Scott Morrison has been lobbying Pacific Island leaders to talk Sogavare out of the treaty – but so far it seems without luck.

Fiji's prime minister Frank Bainimarama has been silent on the matter and PNG’s James Marape has said only that PNG and other Pacific states are “conscious of what's taking place” and have had “conversations” Sogavare.

Marape said Sogavare assured him there were no plans for China to establish a military base in the country, and that the agreement was focused on offering police support.

Marape PNG and other Pacific countries “stand ready to work side by side in upskilling and training police [and] having more police engagements into Solomon Islands if they require help”.

According to the ABC “over recent weeks, numerous figures have publicly and privately warned of the strategic dangers posed to Australia and its allies if China is able to establish a naval presence so close to the Queensland coast.”

But Admiral Paparo is not going to be caught with his cocked hat falling over his eyes: “I always operate under the notion that there's the potential of conflict within our region within a couple of years because of the incredible unpredictability of events," he told the ABC.

Australia’s shadow foreign minister, Penny Wong, who may be in the real job a few weeks from now, accused the government of fumbling a key security concern.

“This is happening on Mr Morrison's watch,” she said. “The warnings have been there for months…. but he has failed to front up and explain how Australia is responding.

“We need to work with the Pacific family and allies to build a region where sovereignty is respected — and where Australia is the partner of choice.”

Well, I suppose that will be up to the sovereign states with ideas and policies of their own that comprise our “family”.

The aged care home - privatisation is privation

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - When you crack the Bible’s ‘threescore years and ten’ something strange happens – you begin to fade from view.

If my elderly next door neighbour is anything to go by, when you progress to your eighties you are all but invisible.

I can see him but no one else seems to.

While I still have control over my life, his life appears to have been taken over by his children and a bevy of medical and welfare types.

This problem of fading from view means you become both irrelevant and powerless in the eyes of society.

Like an old horse, you’re put out to pasture to while away your final days.

It seems to be a purely Western phenomenon, exacerbated by capitalism and its ‘cult of youth’.

Instead of becoming a revered elder you become, to quote former prime minister Bob Hawke’s words to a pensioner who was irritating him, a silly old bugger.

No one comes looking to you for advice. Just as people ignore history, they ignore years of built up experience.

Watching young people make the same mistakes as you did in your youth can be heartbreaking.

As someone who was fortunate to drift between cultures during my working life. I find it ironic to contrast my status in those different places.

In Papua New Guinea in my latter years, I enjoyed the position of respected lapun and, among the Aboriginal people with whom I worked in the bush and desert, I had the title of tjilpi or respected elder.

Loneliness

Not so in mind-numbing hubbub of urban Australia where I am just another silly old bugger.

The contrast is telling and speaks to the appalling way we, in what we regard as the sophisticated West, treat our elderly people.

My neighbour, and those like him, are seen as something of an encumbrance, best locked away out of sight and mind in a nursing home.

He is resisting this fate as hard as he can, and for good reason.

Most aged care in Australia today is far from pleasant and respectful.

As a direct result of misguided government policy which put most of the industry into private hands, my neighbours spirited resistance is born out of pure fear.

The privatisation of aged care sees him as a mere input into a system that is geared first and foremost for profit. It’s that not care which is the main motivator.

And it shows.

The prioritisation of profit ensures the care he will receive will most likely be poor.

His care will be overseen by poorly paid, unqualified carers in an understaffed facility.

He will receive sub-standard food, be given psychotropic drugs to keep him sedated (two-thirds of people in aged care are) and will likely die before his time - departing from a life that has ceased to be meaningful.

Covid-19 has exposed many of the shortcomings of our governments, state and especially federal, to care for the aged, and it has shown the failings of people as individuals.

Society’s general attitude to older people is to park them away somewhere beyond our vision.

The daily pandemic reports in Australia show that deaths from Covid are on the rise again; a string of 30 or so deaths a day escalating to 45 yesterday.

It’s a number most people seem to have accepted as the price to be paid for living a relatively normal life with a serious virus operating in our midst.

What you may not have noticed is that most of these deaths occur among people of advanced years.

The average age of everyone who has caught Covid in Australia is 31. The average age of people who have died of Covid is 83.

And it is now the case that these deaths are seen as acceptable, even necessary, in Australia.

Melancholy

You’ve had your life, now tootle off.

Have we decided as a society that old people are expendable?

We certainly seem willing to stand by silently while our governments put in place policies and rules that hit older people with lethal force.

Has our society now formally accepted the idea that, because people have lived long lives, they’ve had their go and it doesn’t matter whether they die?

If that is the reality, and I suspect it is, then surely it has to be one of the starkest, darkest, most sinister indictments of a Capitalist system and a Selfish society that have both gone horribly awry.

SIMON DAVIDSON

PORT MORESBY - The act of writing is daring and magical as it summons inner courage, latent creativity and sparkling intelligence to form a universe of words.

It is a bold act to put words on a blank page, and then to share them.

It is unnerving especially for first-time writers due to the nagging questions that well up inside the mind.

Questions about finding the right ideas, overcoming the nasty tricks of complex grammar, nailing down the right adjectives and understanding what to do with commas, colons and semicolons bless their heart.

And the rest that must blend together to produce writing that is intelligible, magnetic and satisfying.

It is these and many other questions that can paralyse writers who defer and delay and fail to give wings to their ideas.

Then there is the need to silence the nagging voices inside writers’ minds about the traps and risks of writing.

To begin, to put pen to paper, to take the plunge, to make the first move is crucial. Goethe said, “Whatever you want to do, do it now, for boldness has magic and power in it.”

Reading is also a smart and smooth vehicle to encourage writing by feeding the inner muse and refreshing the creative chambers of the mind with the currency of ideas.

We can go back thousands of years to relish choice gems of ancient wisdom or derive the same pleasure from the present: a sparkling diamond from Virgil; a striking quote from Aristotle; a jarring phrase from Charles Dickens; a newly minted metaphor lifted from the cover of the New York Times; a snippet or two from JK Rowling’s Harry Potter.

These words and insights from our betters will widen perspective, give inspiration and deepen our reservoir of accumulated knowledge that will help us write like a dream.

The literary fare we ingest is absorbed into the subterranean interstices of our subconscious waiting to later resurface as twinkling stars and blazing meteors decanted on to the blank page.

And so we become imaginative creators, writing deliberately or hastily from a palette of just 26 letters to generate words and sentences and ideas which are our own.

And then we have what? An essay, a chapter, a poem, a ridiculous anecdote, perhaps the heft of an entire book.

All of this brought together by our mind on the page.

“There’s something about the physical, muscular, tactile act of holding a pen and transferring thoughts to paper,” Chet Scerra remarked on someone else’s writing in 2015.

“It somehow captures the mental transaction…solidifies it, gives it better scaffolding, better structure, and thoughts solidify as ideas are penned on paper.

“From here, one can look at it again and again…each time redigesting, recalibrating.”

To me there is a magnificent analogy. As God created the chaotic and formless earth and the universe by his words, so writers create a universe by the diligent act of writing.

Writing that can decolonise the mind, create self-belief, bestow self-esteem and “shatter the old shibboleth that Niuginians can only be evoked as objects, but that they can’t write,” as Sir Rabbie Namaliu said long before he was knighted in praising the influence of scholar, writer and mentor Ulli Beier.

To lose the fear of writing is to rise and triumph against colossal odds including self-doubt and lowly social status and even poor teaching.

To master the art of writing and to have writing published that it might be read is a massive victory for the writer.

We writers can soar into the literary universe, perhaps to even taste the rare oxygen of fame and certainly bask in the sunlit uplands of knowing that we can create something of rare and lasting value.

MAEBH LONG
| Ples Singsing

HASTINGS NZ - In the winning essay of the Tingting Bilong Mi 2020 essay competition, Illeana Dom brings her readers into her old school library.

As she walks us past the library shelves, she points out absence: the lack of new works by Papua New Guinean authors in the non-fiction section; and, in the fiction section, the difficulty in finding any works by PNG authors at all, such is the dominance of international writers.

This is not, Illeana insists, what the library in a Papua New Guinean school could look like. There are novels, essays and poetry collections by PNG authors that could adorn the shelves.

With governmental support her old school library could be a PNG school library, one that highlights the achievements of local writers and presents the rich variety of Papua New Guinea’s cultures in engaging, inspiring works.

The more local books that are read, the more local books are likely to be written.

Instead of endlessly scrolling on social media or forlornly traipsing through uninspiring library shelves, Papua New Guineans could be accessing a body of literature that engenders pride in national accomplishments.

But as libraries currently stand, their emptiness is such that the competition’s second prize winner, Mathisah Turi, finds herself silent when she tries to name a Papua New Guinean author.

To counter this silence she writes with passion about the power of imagination and the need to stimulate it, and her piece calls for governmental support for stories featuring the languages and peoples of her home nation.

For Mathisah, these books would not rest on library shelves, but become building blocks enabling the country to enrich the nation in its own ways and on its own terms.

These blocks would become props to local languages, seawalls preventing steady erosion from waves of English.

And they could fill the hands of a generation too used to grabbing blockish smartphones.

For Issabelle Vilau, whose essay won third prize, Illeana’s libraries and Mathisah’s building blocks are transfigured into the core of the nation.

By telling the stories of a thousand generations in nearly as many languages, local literature can unite the different communities and cultures across Papua New Guinea.

Local literature is not simply the heart or the brain of a country: for Issabelle, it is a country’s soul. It is a nation’s interior monologue, its critic, its conscience.

Without it, the nation is simply a body, moving and resting and changing, but without a deep sense of self. Without it, the different parts of the national body will never feel as one.

Vilousa Hahembe reminds us that local stories and poems – the building blocks for libraries that will form a nation’s soul – not only motivate and unite, but serve the important function of opening readers’ eyes to the specific social issues of PNG.

By engaging with local challenges and community worries, readers will learn to think critically about social problems and recognise the work that needs to be done.

A literature written by PNG authors for PNG readers will celebrate and preserve, but it will also confront, head-on and with in-depth knowledge, the challenges ahead, so the public can strive to change the country for the better.

These four writers, brilliant female essayists all, express themselves with insight and urgency.

Metaphors enliven their essays and their references to other writers and thinkers weave their arguments into important national conversations.

Together they dismiss anxieties about the local pool of talent: these four young women show that with the right support, a substantial body of contemporary PNG literature can be made accessible to a new generation of readers.

There are, of course, Papua New Guinean books that could already be placed on library shelves.

Not only books from writers producing material today, but books from earlier bursts of literary activity.

These books, which should be centre stage in libraries, and their authors, whose names should come easily to the tongues of Papua New Guinean readers, could provide a firm foundation for shelves and blocks and souls.

Winners of the 2020 Tingting Bilong Mi Essay Competition

There is a range of wonderful material from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s, with literary journals, the Papua Pocket Poets series, poetry collections and novels published by UPNG students and graduates.

The University of Papua New Guinea was not the only institution that sought to facilitate decolonisation and national identity through writing, art and drama, however.

From 1968 Glyn Davis, at Goroka Teachers College, edited four typescript volumes of a series he called New New Guinea Writing.

The Summer Institute of Linguistics had been printing collections of oral literature since the late 1960s.

From 1969 the Kristen Pres published hundreds of small, inexpensive volumes which were a mixture of Christian reading material and folklore, and for three years ran literary contests.

Glen Bays ran creative writing workshops at the Creative Training Centre from 1970, and he published the work produced there in booklets and in the Nobonob Nius. He also founded the Christian Writers Association of Melanesia, which from 1972 had its own magazine, Precept.

In 1968 the Australian Administration founded a Papua New Guinean Literature Bureau. The Bureau established Papua New Guinea Writing in 1970 and took over the national literature competitions Roger Boschman had started in 1968.

These popular literature competitions were joined by the Waigani Writing Competition in 1969, the Kristen Pres competitions from 1970 to 1973, literary sections in the Port Moresby Eistedfodd in 1970 and, less competitively, a Writers’ Day from 1972.

I do not note this array of material to emphasise loss, or lament the disregard of works that should populate library shelves.

Rather, I give this space to one period in PNG’s literary history to stress that the writers of the Tingting Bilong Mi essay competition are part of a vibrant tradition that over long generations has been expressed orally and in writing.

It’s a tradition that has taken form in hundreds of local languages, that has waxed and waned and changed, but with support can fill library shelves with works new and old. There are so many blocks ready to be used.

The re-flourishing of contemporary writing, a regrowth that needs to occur every generation, could take many forms and spring from unexpected sources.

Perhaps, given that the essay writers expressed concern about phones and online writing styles, this blossoming could draw productively on the language of social media.

Casual, vernacular language use can be clever and witty and fresh, and can enable readers to see the potential in everyday speech.

To take an example from the 1960s and ‘70s once more, before the University of Papua New Guinea was founded, a Commission on Higher Education in Papua and New Guinea was established to consider what form a Papua New Guinean university should take.

Among the recommendations in the Commission’s report were thoughts on the lingua franca of the university.

The Report suggested English rather than Tok Pisin, arguing that while Tok Pisin could be “ingenious and at times delightful”, it could not articulate “even quite simple abstract concepts with elegance, precision and economy.

“Efforts to demonstrate its range, say by translating Shakespearean speeches, fall into the category of literary curiosities – entertaining certainly, but as certainly trivial.”

Yet, when university students in the 1970s began publishing in the literary journal Kovave, as well as Papua New Guinea Writing, they readily disproved this.

Rabbie Namaliu, for example, had two plays in Tok Pisin performed to much acclaim, and these were published in Kovave: The Good Woman of Konedobu (1970) and Maski Kaunsil (1968).

Similarly, John Kasaipwalova’s The Magistrate and my Grandfather’s Testicles (1972) presents excellent, humorous use of slang and non-standard English, as does his award-winning short story, Betel Nut is Bad Magic for Aeroplanes (1971).

I am not claiming that the language of social media is the same as Tok Pisin, of course, but I suggest that language hierarchies which present certain modes of communication as fundamentally more literary than others can prevent us from seeing their potential.

The writers of the Report were wrong when they said that Tok Pisin could only produce trivial curiosities.

Let us see what the inventive use of other languages and other modes of speech in Papua New Guinea can do today.

There are so many wonderful works from Papua New Guinea that could fill the country’s library shelves, act as building blocks for communities, and form part of the nation’s soul.

Given the talent on display in the essays I reviewed, there are so many more works that are ready to come.

As these young women remind us, and we hope the right people are listening, they just need the right support.

Missile cruiser Moskva (121) moored in Sevastopol,  August 2018. Biter was bit by a couple of Ukrainian missiles

KEITH JACKSON

“We are here to help each other through this thing, whatever it is” – Kurt Vonnegut

NOOSA – This memoir extracted from my 2011 scribblings, ‘Private Notes for Understanding Friends’ , covers places of contemporary interest such as Yalta, Sevastopol and Odessa, names from wars past which leap at us from headlines present.

These reminiscences of a cruise that circled the Black Sea take on a special flavour for me today as we mark the sinking by Ukrainian missiles of the cruiser Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet which ventured out of her home port of Sevastopol and came to grief.

Moskva (Moscow), which now graces the bed of the Sea, sustained catastrophic damage after being struck by Ukrainian-made Neptune missiles, never previously used in combat and fired with deadly accuracy from coastal defence forces.

Russia’s unlikely explanation is that the damage was caused by a fire on board after and that Moskva sank while being towed in a storm, the entire crew of 700 abandoning ship.

We had boarded Nautica at Piraeus, the ancient Greek seaport, whereupon the ship’s administration found it necessary to circulate an ‘Important Notice’ prior to our landfalls in Ukraine and Russia.

It stated that the ship's owners wanted to “make sure we set your expectations correctly” and the expectation-lowering statements included these guidelines [my explanatory comments are in brackets]:

“Accents can be strong … a polite mention to speak slower works wonders” [perhaps, with respect to our US cousins, this should read “slower and louder”]

“The guides’ attitude may appear offhand due to inexperience in dealing with guests from the West” [or prior experience in dealing with Americans, perhaps]

“Venues will not be grand (but) the local people are sharing the best they have to offer” [poor sad bastards]

“Buses will not always be the most comfortable or have the strongest air conditioning but we guarantee they will be best available” [ma’am, those oxen are not delaying us, they’re hauling us]

“Facilities may not be up to western standards … please carry with you hygiene items such as tissue paper” [or learn the Mohammedan method of toilet kwiktaim]

“We all travel to see the world and experience the culture and marvels of foreign lands, sometimes this requires patience and understanding” [no sir, overseas is not the US in fancy dress]

_________

TRABZON, TURKEY

Saturday 2 July.  My headline for this section of my diary, ‘Cruisin’, schmoozin’, boozin’ & bruisin’, is just cheap News Ltd pretence that bears little if any relationship to the following content; but I like it because it conspires to sound smart-arsed, which is so Murdochy.

It is why, in real life, I prefer TheGuardian (of London), brought to me each morning on crisp A3 sheets by my shipboard butler, who chases it up if it’s downloaded late from the satellite and always presents it to me formally on a tray.

They’re going to have to drag me kicking and screaming with bleeding fingernails off this ship….

TCG Iskenderun parades past Istanbul

To my untrained eye, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Gemisi (Turkish Republic Ship) 1600 looks like a small ocean liner and Professor Google informs me it’s a transport for troops and heavy armour. 

What would I know of matters military: I would have been in the first conscription call-up in 1963 but missed going to Vietnam because I was in New Guinea. Another story. 

As we finish breakfast just before eight at our preferred location on the aft deck, a colour party of ratings on TNV 1600’s foredeck, who have until now been lolling about gossiping and smoking, suddenly grab their weapons and form a single row facing us.

The officer arrives, replete with dangling sword, followed by a large Turkish flag arrives borne on a cushion.  It is tied, unleashed and hoisted, puffing out nicely in a steady breeze.  A naval moment.

Strolling along Trabzon’s colourful, crowded central pedestrian mall mid-afternoon, I’m surprised to find myself in a state of what I will term existential confusion, which is not entirely due to the heat or absorption of beverages. 

Who am I?  Where am I?  What am I here for?  And why are these people milling around me?  Do they want something? 

They might, but they seem to want for little.  In this fragrant place on this perfect afternoon, the entire world has coalesced into a cheerful pluralism of sect, ethnicity, place and time, and it is shopping like crazy.

This morning, however, on a long walk beyond the boundaries of the business district, passing over two high bridges with dry reclaimed riverbeds beneath them, we reach as far as the perfect green turf of the Trabzon football stadium, and the hospital with an attached medical school where students on break exchange cigarettes. 

At this moment I feel I’m inhabiting a picture book Turkey of men with toothbrush moustaches who sit around smoking, gossiping, playing backgammon and drinking coffee; of women who, when they’re seen, are either working in shops or buying their cheap goods; where the aroma of exotic spices blends with fumes from poorly maintained cars and thick coffee; and every taxi paying tribute to Allah through a stark sign in its rear window.

But now, here, in the afternoon heat, I’ve been whisked to another place some centuries hence.  You will be pleased to know that our descendants are, by and large, happy.  From central casting there is one beggar.  There is a cacophony of sound to match the conglomerate of colour and creed and appearance. 

Women in heavy veils and heavier burqas have daughters who look like they’re from Double Bay.  Pleasant-faced women with light, colourful headscarfs look like they’re from Vogue.  The men shining shoes on the footpath look like their last job was running BHP Billiton. 

There is every imaginable shop and a few you never thought of – the hookah vendor; the nothing but halva provider; the any-olive-you-desire-in-any-quantity-you-want supplier – “would you like a barrel, sir?”

The Turkish language shares roots with Finnish and Hungarian and while, like us, they write in a Roman script, it is a test (unlike when you are in, say, France and Germany) to discern words. 

Street signs are few because, presumably, everyone is supposed to know where they are.  The people are kind and helpful: pull out a map and someone will – without commercial agenda - defy the language barrier to point out where you are and guess where you wish to go.

A most likeable place, Trabzon.  If this is our polyglot, polymorphous, poly-everything future, I find it irresistible.

SOCHI, RUSSIA

Sunday 3 July. Today I pee in Stalin’s dacha.  Murderous Uncle Joe had five identical dachas throughout the USSR, so my micturition could, more precisely, be said to be delivered courtesy of his Black Sea dacha up in the hills behind Sochi. 

While you may have a perception of a dacha as being like a New Zealand batch or an Australian weekender, this one – known as Green Grove (such an old sentimentalist, Stalin) is a compound - green roofs, green walls, green plumbing, green all – comprising four two-storey buildings on each side of a modestly-sized courtyard.

Let me expatiate on Sochi.  Before Stalin it was just a village on the Black Sea.  But in the 1930s Stalin decided that, because of its summer sub-tropicality, sulphurous springs and his own severe arthritis, it would make the perfect place for a workers’ holiday paradise.

Build a few sanatoria (owned by Department of Railways, Office of Greater Productivity, Section for Literary Correctness etc) where the proletariat can bathe in spas, secure inner body cleansing and otherwise dry out from a Vodka diet, have the propaganda film crew shoot them on sandy beaches (shoot them on film, I hasten to add), and show the resultant celluloid to the world as another example of the glory of workers under Stalinism.

(Reality check: our 60-something guide Olga said the only place she danced as a young woman was in the youth camps when Westerners were visiting.)

Soon the petty bourgeoisie of doctors, lawyers and university professors discovered the lifestyle benefits of Sochi.  Whereupon, Stalin became deeply concerned.

So he purged all of them, built Green Grove in 1937 and, after World War II (the devil’s pact with the Nazis having broken down), he turned the whole town (his dacha exempted) into one giant military hospital.

There was, however, a slight problem - malaria. 

And here is the Aussie connection.  To rid the swamps and ponds of the dreaded plasmodium, the Russians imported 12,000 eucalyptus trees from Godzone and these successfully sucked the water from the earth and removed the breeding grounds in true blue Aussie fashion. 

Once again, the world has many reasons to be grateful to our fine country and its great initiatives such as the invention of the gum tree (considered a pest in Uruguay because of their propensity to keel over in a storm).

Thereafter, especially following Stalin’s last visit in 1950 (he died in 1953), Sochi fell back into a long torpor from which it has only just awoken, for reasons I will come to.

In the early morning the Sochi pilot boat makes three unsuccessful attempts to get alongside Nautica with sufficient poise to enable the pilot to leap on board.  There’s a bit of a swell running but, objectively, the early morning sea is calm. (After a week at sea, I know the difference between calm and stay-near-a-toilet.)

Aboard the pilot boat, the main man, by definition a seaman of skill, clings to the bow rail and reacts with exasperation to the skipper’s ungainly efforts at coming alongside, waving a hand at him (cleverly using the other to grip the handrail). 

The skipper tries again, and again.  On his fourth attempt the vessel heads for Nautica not in a neat glide but at a water-churning 45⁰ angle, hitting the ship with a resounding thud that resonates the length of the hull. 

The pilot seizes the opportunity to clamber aboard our ship and, back in the harbour master’s cottage in Sochi, an agitated post mortem is probably still going on.

Stalin's dacha in the sanatorium at Green Grove, Sochi

Why is Stalin’s dacha green?  Why does Stalin hate deep water?  Why is Stalin’s couch bullet proof?  Why does Stalin sleep in a different room every night?  Why does Stalin have Boris try his food first?  Why is Stalin surrounded by three concentric rings of NKVD? 

The short answer, as I’m sure you’ve already guessed, is fear of assassination.  It’s not just paranoia, Stalin really has plenty of people who want to kill him.

And the green?  Well, it’s camouflage.  You cannot see this compound 50 metres away so embedded is it within its surroundings.

Today’s Sochi, host city for the 2014 Winter Olympics, is going through a transformation from slum to citadel.

In the days when I consulted to BHP’s steelworks in Port Kembla, whenever a senior executive from Melbourne head office was due to visit, the warehouses, workshops, lines and blast furnaces would be spruced up, red carpet laid along the VIP trail.

Where there was an unsightly mess that for good practical reasons had to remain an unsightly mess, screens of three-ply would be erected around it.  Sochi reminds me of these fraudulent antics.

Behind the recent and developing veneer (which tomorrow, Monday, Obama and Putin will experience, because they are about to visit) lies a dilapidation and a poverty that represents the truth of 80% of Russia.

The truth about Russia today is that you are free.  You are free to be poor.

The bureaucracy (in most respects unchanged from the bad old days except the word ‘Communist’ has disappeared) still has a heavy, clammy, sour-faced hand on too many aspects of life.

The most apparent impact of this on the visitor is the sheer bloody difficulty of getting into the country – it is the most frustrating and cumbersome to access of any European nation.

But, as we found on an earlier visit to St Petersburg a couple of years back, the Russian people, while free to be poor, are at present free to express their views. 

When our bus runs into a police checkpoint and a burly officer waves us to stop, guide Olga observes loudly: “They have to show they’re the most important people in the world; he’s just showing off his new uniform.”

At lunch later, in our favourite eyrie on the aft deck of Nautica, Ingrid and I compare notes with a German couple whose table we’ve joined. 

The man asks, somewhat sneakily, “How are you coping with the Americans?”  We look at each other around the table for a moment, and laugh.

Get me some day to compare current Russian and American culture and governance.  Be not surprised when I say that, despite the old Bolsheviks, theirs is moving forward as fast as our ally’s is regressing.

YALTA, UKRAINE

Monday 4 July.  The mountains soar 1,500 metres and are so sheer, dark and close they’re difficult to get clear in the head.  Yalta is a spectacularly pretty place and a centre for vacationers.  The petite harbour behind the breakwater is just big enough to accommodate Nautica.

Our guide, Maria Telnova, who I arranged from Australia, insists softly she is Crimean not Ukrainian.  The Crimea, given to Ukraine by Stalin as a gift, has now asserted its autonomy, has its own president and parliament - and insists on speaking Russian not Ukrainian.

Maria is 30 - recently married, dark eyed and intense, she’ll have a child next year she says – and has a husband who earns good money working for a global IT company, the equivalent of $50,000 a year. 

Maria will soon buy a car to avoid having to pay a driver when she conducts tours, and she conveys every indication that, in a place where life is tough and you must be tough to succeed, she has the durability required

4-11 February 1945  -  US president Roosevelt,  UK prime minister Churchill & Soviet dictator Stalin at Yalta to agree their strategy for bringing an end to World War II and forging a post-war Europe

A 20 minute drive from the dock along a narrow winding coast road brings us to Livadia Palace, the location of the Yalta Conference of March 1945 and that famous photo of Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt, who has a blanket covering his legs. 

Now I can say I have been in the room and seen the famous round table where the fate of post-World War II Europe was determined. 

On the ground floor are areas prominent in that conference – the grand reception room where the Big 3 and the leaders of ‘free Europe’ met, the waiting room used as Roosevelt’s bedroom (he being so frail was dead two months later) and scores of contemporaneous photos of what was one of the defining meetings of the last century.

A little over 30 years previously the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II, and his family made their final visit to the palace before their arrest during the Russian revolution and their ultimate sticky end. 

As Ingrid says, we know Nicholas was a leader who should have done better by his people but there is still a vast sadness about this story – accentuated by being in the place where they holidayed - especially the shootings of the teenage princesses and the struggling, haemophiliac prince and their disposal in a mass grave.

For some strange reason connected with organisational inertia, all eight Nautica tour buses have been deployed to visit another palace at around the same time, so Livadia was virtually ours.

Is there a smugness so profound as that which follows gaining an advantage over the mob?  Smug we feel in Livadia. 

When we reach the other palace 10 km away - whatever its name is, Churchill stayed there - crowded to the point of severe punishment by Nautica’s eight buses and at least as many again from other cruise ships, having come and seeing we decided not to conquer. 

Trying to surf a dense crowd of sightseers is not so much overwhelming as demeaning.  So instead we have a pleasant walk in the grounds, our guide constantly and unsuccessfully trying to sneak us into the palace.  Me wishing her ill; I am palaced out.

SEVASTOPOL, UKRAINE

It didn't take the wits long....

Tuesday 5 July.  This large naval city of about 350,000 people is a marinophile’s wet dream.  Pretty well razed during World War II, Sevastopol is now home to the Russian Black Sea Fleet and the Ukrainian Navy and, from where we are berthed amongst grey hulled frigates and other gunboats, we are able to watch the relentless traffic of all manner of vessels up and down harbour.

Our first sight is of a pinnace; ramrod straight sailors forward and aft, boathooks planted on the deck in front of them, ferrying a commodore to work; the forward sailor using his boathook as a long baton to direct the helmsman. 

Russian large landing ship 156, Yamal, alongside Nautica is preparing for sea while a destroyer to its starboard pipes a distorted Reveille on the PA system before repeating the first few bars of what I know as Midnight in Moscow to muster the crew for their orders of the day. 

Ahead of us a small gunboat moves seaward through the breakwater followed, bizarrely, by a canary yellow gondola.  This cavalcade of craft, with often 20 in view at the same time, is to continue for the ten hours we are in port.

There can be no distracting from what is happening on the water – where this constant flow of ferries, floating docks, frigates, destroyers, floating cranes, salvage tugs, patrol boats, petrol boats, coracles, rafts, life vests (and the gondola) is a source of continuing curiosity. 

We have a front row view of this frenetic activity from the balcony of our suite.  I have to be dragged off for our morning walk.

And so we saunter through a town of wide avenues and grandly austere naval buildings, past scores of military monuments (there are no less than 1,800 in the city precinct).

As Yalta was unmistakably a resort, so this is unambiguously a naval hub.  Groups of sailors move rapidly along the streets, the ribbons flopping from the back of their caps, they jump in and out of small buses, busy officers carry petite black attaché cases and scurry back and forth, their serious looks attesting to important business.

This place conveys a sense of purpose.  The military are always very good at that.

ODESSA, UKRAINE

MV Nautica docked at Odessa

Wednesday 6 July.  With one and a half million people, Odessa is easily the largest city on the Ukraine’s Black Sea coast. 

It escaped serious bombing in World War II as the fine stock of elegant early 20th century buildings in the commercial centre attests. 

The buildings nearest the port, and our berth at the passenger ship terminal adjacent to the steep ‘heart attack hill’ Potemkin Steps, have been restored but, if you walk three blocks, the dilapidation sets in – testimony to Communism’s carelessness (or should that be ugliness) about material things, especially object of beauty.

Ingrid’s brother, Evan, who collects languages with the same facility I collect wine labels, would have been a decided asset during our three days in the Ukraine with his repertoire of Ukrainian, Russian and Old Russian. 

The Ukrainian language is a subject of great controversy here.  Linguistically, most of the country has been Russianised, even native Ukrainians, for the most part, are shaky in their own language. 

But after the meltdown of the USSR, the new Ukrainian government determined that Ukraine would be the national language.  But language cannot be legislated for.

In New Guinea in the late 1960s, the Australian Administration decided that the use of the Pidgin word meri, meaning ‘woman’, was offensive.  So it decided to replace it with a new Pidgin word – woman. 

Didn’t really take on despite all the expense and propaganda and 40 years on a woman is still a meri.  Language can be subversive and governments meddle with it at their own risk.

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE - In trying to understand contemporary or near contemporary events in human history, a prudent historian will closely examine and reflect upon the sometimes very distant background of such events.

It is almost never the case that more modern history departs radically from long established patterns of human thinking and behaviour.

It is demonstrably the case, over the very long term, that events in human history tend to proceed in a fairly predictable, or even mundane, manner.

Periodically though, things happen that utterly confound, destabilise and disrupt the established order.

The direction of history can suddenly pivot in reaction to all sorts of unexpected events ranging from the death of a single individual, major scientific discoveries or the cataclysmic impact of a natural disaster such as a volcanic eruption or tsunami.

There is not necessarily any known and predictable pattern into which such events might be fitted. If there is a pattern, it is that they can and do occur and that this can lead to sometimes very profound changes.

For example, the final collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476 ushered in an era of socio-economic fragmentation and decline in Western Europe that is commonly but inaccurately called the Dark Ages.

This ensured that the centre of gravity in human affairs shifted relatively abruptly away from Mediterranean Europe and towards Central Asia.

It would not shift again until around 1500 when the European imperial powers we known today began to emerge.

The re-emergence of Europe as the central player in human affairs was itself the result of an unsuspected capacity for scientific inquiry and technological innovation, especially as it could be applied to organised warfare.

This was probably triggered, in part at least, by the rediscovery of the writings and ideas of the ancient Greek and Roman civilisations.

Ironically, these had been carefully preserved, studied and expanded upon by various Asiatic powers for many centuries, whilst Western Europe was composed mainly of backward, superstitious and perpetually warring mini-states.

Thus it is to Arab scholars we owe the preservation and development of our knowledge of algebra, geometry, modern numerals and a much basic medical understanding.

I think events or developments like these may be described as ‘Great Disruptions’, primarily because they shift, or even overturn, the prevailing world order.

What is certain is that from around 1500 human affairs came to be dominated by the competitive and imperialistic machinations of various European powers.

It was not until 1945 that two successive world wars- just 20 years apart - finally brought about the complete collapse of European political imperialism which arguably culminated in the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Since then the centre of gravity in human affairs has moved steadily towards Asia.

This trend has now reached the point where China feels able to reveal the full extent of its ambitions to resume what it believes is its natural place as the world’s predominant power.

While it’s not yet clear that China is truly the super power that its leaders and many observers claim it is, it is undeniably true that, for the foreseeable future, it will be the predominant power in East Asia.

Of course, China’s ambitions extend far beyond Asia, and its eyes now turn to the hitherto largely neglected South Pacific.

The main strategic reason for this is the need to contest the influence of the USA and its allies Japan, Australia and New Zealand, who view military control of the Pacific Ocean as critical to their defence and security.

The recent treaty with the Solomon Islands which allows China to provide support in areas such as policing, education, training and infrastructure needs to be viewed in this light.

All of China’s recent diplomatic, political, economic and military manoeuvring is straight out of the standard historic imperial playbook, differing little from what was done by the former European imperial powers.

So far, China’s ambitious efforts to become a super power seem to have gone largely to plan but I contend that recent events may massively disrupt that plan.

I believe we are experiencing another Great Disruption in human affairs which may upset the current world order in unexpected ways.

I think future historians will date the beginning of this disruption to 26 December 1991 when the Soviet Union was formally dissolved.

This event left the USA as the world’s sole super power and it set about recasting the world order in ways that accorded with its political, economic and philosophical outlook.

Perhaps the most important consequence of this was that its ideas about how the world’s economic system ought to be managed became the prevailing orthodoxy.

Specifically, the neo-liberal doctrine - advocated by people like Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics, and popularised by politicians such as Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the USA - became accepted as the way the world’s economic affairs were to be conducted.

In turn, the related emphasis on deregulating markets, suppressing the power of organised labour and globalising industrial production triggered a revolution.

The consequences of this are still reverberating around the globe.

However even the greatest proponents of neo-liberalism failed to properly understand its likely consequences.

Indeed, many of its advocates are unable and unwilling to acknowledge the contradictions, problems and perverse outcomes neoliberalism has created.

What can be said with confidence is that China, South-East Asia and South Asia have benefited disproportionately from neo-liberalism, and this is because it has enabled many hundreds of millions of people to be lifted out of poverty.

This has not come without costs.

In shifting the world’s economic centre of gravity to Asia, the USA and Western Europe have greatly weakened their own ability to impose upon others their conception of a just and fair world order.

This has had consequences good and bad: one being the ability of emerging powers such as China and Iran to challenge or ignore international law when it suits them.

It can be argued legitimately that in doing this they are emulating the USA and its allies, who sometimes choose to interpret international law as they see fit.

So far, this Great Disruption has well-suited China and other Asian powers.

But the changes I’ve mentioned are not necessarily the end point.

The events of 2007, when the world’s financial system teetered on the edge of collapse, was a warning that neo-liberalism is a highly unstable way to manage economic affairs.

The crisis generated in 2007 required the world’s central banks to embark upon what has been the largest economic and financial experiment in history.

In essence, the central banks collectively created (through quantitative easing or ‘money printing’) many trillions of United States dollars in various currencies and flooded the world’s financial system with credit.

In so doing, the banks stimulated the world economy to avoid a collapse of the entire international system and what would have been a catastrophic depression.

While, thus far at least, this appears to have staved off immediate disaster, it has created an even more unstable situation where total world debt has reached levels unparalleled in human history.

Quantitative easing has created the largest asset bubbles in history, with the value of shares, real estate and other asset classes having reached absurd and unsustainable levels.

Worse still, while it is apparent that the world’s central banks have no real idea about how to safely defuse the global ‘debt bomb’ they have created, they are now confronted with the urgent necessity to do so as inflation begins to emerge as a problem throughout the world.

The complexity of this task now has been greatly compounded by the continuing Covid pandemic and the unjustifiable and unforgiveable decision by Russia to invade Ukraine.

While many nations are removing public health restrictions imposed to manage the disease, the pandemic has not abated.

In practice, many governments have chosen to prioritise their economies over public health in the hope the worst of the pandemic is over.

This is a tremendous gamble. Even if successful, many people (mostly the elderly) will die prematurely as a direct consequence.

If a new and much more lethal strain of Covid emerges, a public health and economic disaster may ensue in which the damage done greatly exceeds that of the original strain.

Perhaps with this in mind, China is persisting with its rigorous strategy of suppressing the virus, even at considerable cost to its economy.

It seems improbable that this strategy can be sustained indefinitely owing to the highly infectious nature of the Omicron strain of Covid.

If, as seems inevitable, the virus begins to spread exponentially amongst the Chinese population, it seems reasonable to suppose huge numbers of people will become seriously ill or die.

The economic impact will be very severe, with unpredictably consequences for both China and the wider global economy.

The war in Ukraine has revealed strategic understandings previously hidden or unknown.

In particular, it has demonstrated that Russia is not the great power that Vladimir Putin purported it to be and that many people believed it to be.

Also, it has demonstrated that what the USA calls a ‘revolution in military affairs’ is both a real and exceedingly potent new way of fighting wars.

Until the last few weeks it was not commonly known that the Ukrainian military has spent the last eight years comprehensively reforming its Soviet-era military doctrine and organisation. In doing so, it has made extensive use of instructors and advisors, in particular from the USA, UK and Canada.

Its soldiers have been trained in how to harness modern strategy, tactics, logistics, technologies and weapons to hugely increase the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the entire Ukraine military structure.

The result has been the emergence of an extremely agile, innovative and hard hitting military that uses Western military doctrine with some distinctive Ukrainian characteristics.

Somehow, these developments were either unnoticed or ignored by the Russians and they are now paying a heavy price for this error.

While the war is by no means over, it is abundantly evident that Russia has suffered irretrievable damage to its military prestige and to its international political status.

It has been revealed to be a middle ranking power which, although nuclear armed, lacks the economic and military means to project power much beyond its borders.

Also, it is being rapidly economically isolated as the European powers belatedly understand the urgent and pressing need to decouple their economies from Russia’s, especially in relation to energy supplies.

The biggest winner out of this war will be China.

Its Russian ally has conclusively demonstrated the correctness of a comment attributed to Winston Churchill that wars are easy to start but usually very hard to finish.

The number of erroneous assumptions made by Russia has been startling and this will not be lost on the more pragmatic and cautious Chinese leadership.

Xi Jinping and his generals will be very concerned about the lethal impact of new missile technologies that can be carried by individual soldiers, by the impact of unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) and by the way cyber warfare systems have been used to frustrate, mislead and confuse Russia’s military leadership.

Beijing will have been shocked by the speed with which severe economic sanctions were imposed upon Russia by Western countries, as well as their willingness to supply Ukraine with a large and formidable arsenal of weapons and access to powerful intelligence gathering systems.

The commanders of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army will be recalibrating their thinking about any prospective invasion of Taiwan.

At the same time, the Taiwanese will have realised the need to recalibrate their own ideas about how defensive warfare can be conducted.

By the time the Ukraine War comes to an end, the course of international affairs will have irrevocably been changed.

The status quo will not survive the combined impacts of the pandemic, the war in Europe and, potentially, a global economic crisis triggered by the necessity to unravel the ‘debt bomb’ and asset bubbles deliberately created since 2007.

I would contend that the Great Disruption triggered in 1991 has not yet run its course and that many of its consequences are still unforeseen and unforeseeable.

This has created an incredibly fevered environment within which nations, large and small, are being forced to try to navigate their future paths, with the impacts of climate change already felt and known to be worsening.

If history is any guide, the opportunities for error or misadventure will be many.

This means that small nations in particular will need to proceed with great caution, tact and care when deciding with whom they form relationships in the wider world.

Hopefully, this is understood and appreciated by those now governing Papua New Guinea and the small Pacific Island states.

These countries are and will remain vulnerable in the extreme to being collateral damage in any ensuing economic, military or climate maelstrom.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy,  April 2022 - the right man in the right place at the right time (Wikimedia Commons)

PAUL COLLINS
| Pearls & Irritations

CANBERRA - In the last two months we’ve seen hope, and extraordinary leadership, come literally out of left field in the person of the 44-year-old Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Talk about the right man in the right place at the right time, although the ‘place’ is the vicious attack on Ukraine by Putin’s Russians.

Here is an extraordinarily brave man who has laid his life on the line and remained in Kiev, knowing he’s a prime Russian target.

Zelenskyy’s courage motivates Ukrainians to risk their own lives and has strengthened their will to resist.

His leadership has given his people hope that there is life beyond the death and destruction that currently wracks their country.

His approach isn’t ideological, but he has empathy, understanding and the charisma to inspire people. He transcends politics as someone modelling genuine courage.

Zelenskyy personifies something of the leadership that our world desperately needs.

He has appeared via video link in many parliaments, including Australia’s, calling upon leaders to have the courage to confront the violence we humans so often indulge.

In a contemporary sense Zelenskyy symbolises the meaning of Easter, the notion of life rising from death.

In the gospels Jesus challenges the religio-political establishment, hostility to him grows, and he is convicted on trumped-up charges and dies as a common criminal on the cross. His life seems over.

Given the recent massacres of civilians in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere, we can readily identify with innocent people killed.

As a priest I always found it easier to talk about the death of Jesus on Good Friday than about his resurrection on Easter Sunday.

We know about death; we’ve seen others die and we know that we personally will eventually confront it.

But the Jesus story doesn’t end in death.

Mark’s gospel is the primary source of the other resurrection narratives and he has three women – the two Marys and Salome – going to the tomb to complete the burial rituals.

When they get there, the tomb is open and they encounter a young man who says: “Don’t be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here.”

The man asks them to tell Peter and the others that Jesus is going ahead of them to Galilee.

But, Mark says, the women “fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement seized them…they were afraid” (Mark 16:1-8).

Why? Because life frightens them, just as it frightens us.

The distinguished Australian theologian, Reverend Sarah Bachelard, explains:

“The truth is, life can be more threatening than death. We’ve got used to death.

“Resurrection means giving up the undisturbedness of the tomb for the uncertainty and responsibility of an open future.

“It means being stripped of the consolations of cynicism and resignation, catapulted into the pain of continued involvement and growth.”

Eventually the women summon-up the courage to tell Peter and the others about the empty tomb.

“They started risking ridicule and disbelief,” Bachelard writes, “instead of being silenced by death-invested power and the enervating discourse of ‘impossibility’.

“They risked becoming witnesses of resurrection, of God’s inextinguishable life.”

We are so often afraid of life and its challenges.

We’d never admit it, but the truth is that many feel safer in the life-denying, destructiveness of a Putin than in the courageous, life-embracing stance of Zelenskyy.

We take refuge in the security of the safe humdrum of the known.

Sure, we need regularity and predictability to keep going; otherwise, existence would be impossible.

But we also need to move beyond the known and conventional to embrace new challenges if we are to grow, we need to discover new possibilities, to use our imaginations to conceive of and embrace the unknown of new experiences.

For me the Resurrection of Christ is the feast day of the imagination. It says that life can never be extinguished, that there is a fuller life beyond death.

“Where, O death, is now thy sting?” as Charles Wesley asks in the hymn, ‘Christ the Lord is risen today’.

Or, as the Preface for the Mass of Christian Burial says, ‘Life is changed, not ended’ - for life is eternal.

To grasp this, we need to activate our imaginations. Imagination is one of those fleeting, intangible realities that the Shorter Oxford Dictionary defines as ‘the faculty of fanciful thought.’

While the word ‘fanciful’ appeals, I’d rather describe it as the creative facility that enables us to process experience intuitively to form new images, to perceive the potentiality of things, to discover connections, inferences and affinities, as well as the ability to develop theories which explain interrelationships and patterns.

Genuine imagination is driven by a life-force that is indestructible. Theseus tells Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night’s Dream that lovers and madmen “have such seething brains…that apprehend more than cool reason ever comprehends”.

Then, almost as though remembering his own profession, Shakespeare says in Act 5, Scene 1:

As imagination bodes forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them into shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.

"Happy Easter! I hope you’re all safe and taking care of each other" - Greta Thunberg

Another left-fielder like Zelenskyy is Greta Thunberg, who believes in the future of life as she struggles against climate change to preserve the natural world.

Like Thunberg are the eight young Australian students, supported by Sister Bridget Arthur, who claimed in the Federal Court that the environment minister owed them a duty of care when assessing mine proposals; in other words that she owed them life.

They won but lost on appeal, with the judges saying that legally the environment minister didn’t have a duty of care to Australia’s children.

In other words, mines are more important than our young people.

What an appalling commentary on our legal system and on those who administer it.

Dr Paul Collins

It was a decision for death over life and the judges who made it need to recognize that.

It is precisely the opposite of the meaning of the Resurrection of Christ.

Dr Paul Collins is an historian, broadcaster and the author of 15 books. He was a Catholic priest for 33 years until he resigned from active ministry in 2001 following a dispute with the Vatican over his book Papal Power (1997). He is former head of the religion and ethics department in the ABC

KEITH JACKSON

My religion has no name

It’s just the very best in us

Compassion Fairness Courage Love

Honesty Reason Friendship Truth

Faithfulness Kindness Consistency

Candour Tolerance Generosity

(And here’s a space for the best in you)

No material construct ever captured these

Each of us can claim them as our own

MICHAEL DOM
| Ples Singsing

TOK PISIN TRANSLATION FOLLOWS

One day when I opened my mouth to speak
I heard a language I did not understand
I went to the bathroom to take a peek
At my reflection in the sky-roofed mirror and
To my relief the face was my very own

So I said, "Oh it's you,
I thought for a moment you were gone"
And mirror-me smirked back through
The thin looking-glass veneer
"Yes, it's me, you know I'm no voice in your head"

So I replied with a sardonic sneer
"That's ok, come on out, I won't tell till I'm dead"
Then mirror-me smiled and looked back eye-to-eye
When he said, "Back to work boy", his lips moved, not mine

Galas-lukluk igat hapsait istap

Wanpela taim mi laik opim maus long toktok
Mi harim tokples mi nogat save long en
Mi igo long waswas haus na lukim mi iet
Long galas-lukluk i soim skai antap tu
Mi hamamas long lukim pes bliong mi iet

Na mekim nek olsem, “Oh emi yu tasol,
Mi ting olsem yu ronowe igo pinis”
Na mi iet insait long galas sikinim tit
Na bekim tok gen long galas-lukluk olsem
“Yesa, em mi tasol, het blong yu ino paul”

Na gen mi iet bekim long tok kusai olsem
“Yu ken kam autsait, mi ino inap tok aut”
Man long galas i lukluk long ai bilong mi
Na long maus bilong em iet i tok, “Boi, yu wok”

James Marape and Scott Morrison. By the end of June both may be out of a job

MICHAEL KABUNI
| Academia Nomad

PORT MORESBY - Australia and Papua New Guinea head to the polls - in May and June respectively - and Australian prime minister Scott Morrison and his PNG counterpart James Marape risk losing their grip on power.

If PNG appoints a new prime minister, it will be our fourth since 2002. If Australia gets a new PM, it will be it sixth over the same period.

That’s Australia six changes in 20 years compared to PNG three.

This could give the impression that Australia is more politically unstable than PNG.

But diving deeper, PNG’s instability is more pronounced than just counting how many times the PM changes.

In Australia, even though the PM changed more times, only two political parties - Liberal National (which I will refer to here just as Liberal) and Labor - held power.

From Howard (Liberal) to Rudd (Labor) to Gillard (Labor) back to Rudd (Labor) and then to the Liberals when Abbott was elected until toppled by Turnbull (Liberal) who was himself felled by Morrison (Liberal).

So in Australia we see the prime ministerial post alternating between the two major parties and revolving within the same party.

This has meant only two major shifts: from Liberal to Labor in 2007; and from Labor to Liberal in 2013.

In Australia there have been more changes of prime minister but only two changes of party

Prime ministers change but the core party values remain.

It is also the case that, because there are two dominant parties, even when the PM’s post goes to another party, voters know what to expect - it’s always Labor or Liberal.

In PNG, with every change of PM in the last 20 years, a PM from another party was elected: Somare (National Alliance) from 2002–11; O’Neill (People’s National Congress) 2011–19; and Marape (Pangu) 2019-22.

And each time, the executive was replaced in its entirety.

So as PNG and Australia go to elections, we know that the next Australian PM will come from Liberal or Labor.

In PNG, on the other hand, our PM will come from one of 44 political parties currently registered.

And what is worse, you don’t know what any of these parties stand for. You don’t know what you are voting for.

So even though Australia replaced more PMs than PNG, the changes of PNG PMs caused more uncertainty than in Australia.

In PNG, voters don’t vote based on party policies. Parties do not have distinct ideologies or policies.

Furthermore, across these many parties, MPs switch very easily from one to another.

For example, in the most recent parliament of 2017-22, the PNG Registry of Political Parties & Candidates reveals that no less than 45 MPs switched parties, even at the highest level of prime minister.

If this seems bewildering it’s because the whole process is just that.

Ding Chee's shop was attacked and looted by a racist mob, which rampaged for four hours. There was little hindrance from police

CHEK LING
| Pearls & Irritations | Edited extracts

MELBOURNE - It happened 133 years ago. Yet the Chinese Question remains, having now mutated to the China Question.

Meanwhile the burden upon the Chinese as scapegoats, at the altar of racial purity in the first instance, cultural cohesion a century later and more recently the issue of national sovereignty continues unabated.

One Saturday night in May 1888, a white mob of up to 2,000 threw stones at premises occupied by Chinese in Brisbane city. 

As glass shattered, the Chinese hid in fear of their lives.

Towards midnight the mob was dispersed by police.

One white person was charged, but a few months later he was declared not guilty by an all-white jury.

A fictitious edict indicated Chinese were planning to conquer Australia (cartoon from  Queensland Figaro and Punch,  1888)

The Chinese asked for compensation for their loss. The Queensland government refused.

The incident occurred on election night in Brisbane.

The Opposition Leader had won by an unprecedented margin and was on his way home to Toowong after delivering his victory speech to a rapturous crowd.

Ding Chee was seen chasing a white youth who had taken goods from his shop without paying.

Ding was wrestled to the ground and relieved of his wallet but managed to get back to his shop.

At that moment a stone broke his shop window. Many more followed. The attackers then looted the shop.

The rampage went on for four hours, with little hindrance from police.

Why did that incident lead to attacks on all Chinese premises in Brisbane?

The Chinese Question has been festering for decades and political opportunism played a big part.

In the lead up to that election, Opposition Leader Sir Thomas McIlwraith campaigned for the “total and immediate exclusion” of Chinese in Queensland.

The newspapers cheered him on.

Sir Thomas McIlwraith called for the “total and immediate exclusion” of Chinese in Queensland

On the morning of the election a cartoon appeared depicting Sir Thomas on horseback wielding a whip at weird, cowardly-looking Chinamen.

And on election morning, the last instalment of William Lane’s serialised novella, White or Yellow, was published in his weekly newspaper, The Boomerang.

That last chapter described white vigilantes killing the evil Chinese characters and throwing their bodies into the sea.

Over the previous year or more, Lane had published in the Brisbane Courier a series of ‘investigative’ articles vilifying Chinese concentrated in a poorer part of the city, Frog’s Hollow.

The articles claimed they ran hostels and opium, and gambling dens, and attracted white prostitutes.

The die was cast. The population was primed for an attack upon the Chinese.

 All it needed was a little incident at the wrong moment, and the unthinkable took off.

The bell tolls.

In 2020 the Chinese in Australia were treated as the harbingers of the Covid pandemic.

Once more, the White Australia virus emerged in a polity weakened by corruption and political opportunism.

That visitation has now mutated into China’s threat to Australia’s sovereignty and the dubious trustworthiness of Chinese-Australian loyalty to Australia.

It seemed a khaki election campaign was being hatched for a second Morrison miracle and we have seen elements of that in the first week of campaigning in relation to Solomon Islands.

The Australian Natives' Association created the White Australia badge to identify the wearer's racial loyalty (1910)

Yet the disparate leaders within the Chinese diaspora in Australia are deaf to the tolling of the White Australia bell.

Most know little about the history and even less about how to be effective in our political system.

Amongst the huayi leaders, born and bred in the ex-white colonies of Asia, the comprador outlook persists.

See no evil, hear no evil, do no evil. Be good docile boys and girls and get rewarded with medals, seats on advisory committees and even sinecures in State upper houses.

It is among the more recent arrivals where people talk of calling out discrimination, human rights violations or misinformation about China.

Sadly the current batch of leaders does not see or dare not face the need to reform the political culture of Australia, the chosen homeland for our children and grandchildren.

What can Chinese Australians do?

Stand up. Stand up for Integrity in public life.

It was lack of Integrity in public life that led to Brisbane’s Night of Broken Glass in 1888: the Chinese Question was politicised for electioneering purposes.

In 2020, the Covid Question was politicised.

And there are signs that the government might well continue to politicise the China Question for the May 2022 election.

Through these political manipulations, the Chinese in Australia have suffered with little protection, just as those Chinese suffered in Brisbane’s Night of Broken Glass in 1888.

How are they to stand up?

They should wage a campaign to urge fellow Chinese Aussies, and all Aussies, to vote for Independents and to Vote Below-The-Line for the best candidates rather than in accordance with the wishes of the parties.

Corruption, policy paralysis and sundry afflictions upon our body politic are well-known: sports rorts; climate policy bogged down in ideological jousting; still no anti-corruption commission; no significant action beyond platitudes to redress the abuse of women; no end in sight to right the wrongs done to the original inhabitants of this land.

Trust in our politicians is at an all-time low. With each new poll, trust in the old Liberal and Labor duopoly is eroding.

For the first time we will see a significant number of ‘Voices of Community’ candidates, unaligned to any party or group, offering themselves at a Federal election.

Loyalty in question: 1 In 3 Chinese Australians faced discrimination in 2020

So far, compared with the average quality of our current MPs, all are outstanding: well educated, with professional experience, age and maturity, and commitment to reform in critical areas of our afflicted polity.

This is a moment Chinese Australians should seize, for the sake of their descendants and indeed for the descendants of all who inhabit this land.

Why do this?

We desperately need a Disruption to reform our political culture.

If the polls are reliable it is likely we will end up with a minority government requiring the support of Independents, and the Greens if they are lucky.

We should grasp this moment and make it happen by supporting Independents at this critical time.

It is not inconceivable that when Independents hold the balance of power, they will insist on the adoption of proportional representation in the Lower House, as has been successfully adopted in New Zealand.

Given our winner-take-all political culture, that would be a new dawn. The quality and diversity of MPs would change, almost overnight.

The mafia-like grip of factions would wither over time and parliament itself would become more civilised. Then our democracy would breathe with decongested lungs.

Chinese-Australian leaders should stand up and do what is good for our country, the homeland of our descendants, in what is likely to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Identify one or more Voices of Community candidates who Chinese-Australians can support materially in each State.

For me, as a Chinese-Australian, it’s like going to a restaurant. We choose what we think we would like. Voices of Community candidates would inject a much-needed tonic into our afflicted body politic.

The entire focus will be on reforming the political culture of this homeland of our heirs.

In 1998, against the conventional wisdom of petitions, the Queensland Chinese Forum launched a public rebuke of the State Liberal Party, then in government, for directing its preference to the Pauline Hanson Party in the coming State election.

The subsequent media release achieved success unprecedented. For weeks we were reported in the media: broadsheets, tabloids, radio, even a live appearance on a Saturday national TV program.

I feel confident that this time Chinese Aussies can not only succeed but can in fact leave a legacy that all Australians would be proud of for all time.

Most of all, it would change the cultural and political outlook of Chinese-Australians forever.

Chek Ling

It’s time: well past time in fact.

After arriving in Melbourne in 1962 to study electrical engineering, Chek Ling spent his career in the oil, water, and electricity sectors. In 1984 Geoffrey Blainey sparked his interest in the place of the Chinese in Australia

Simon Jackson - Productivity as a songwriter is vast. He also has quality of musicianship and writes lyrics of intense social substance

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA – My eldest child Simon, now old enough to be my father, was born at Taurama Base Hospital (as it then was) in Port Moresby in the middle of the night in October 1967.

I well recall that midnight hour because I was a participant in a new scheme - the presence of fathers at childbirth - but had been shooed away because of some medical complication just as the tip of Simon's head appeared .

So I strolled the darkened grounds of Taurama growing increasingly worried, especially when the lights of the birthing suite were extinguished.

Eventually I summoned the grit to find out what had happened, to be told simply that I had been forgotten.

Fair enough, more important matters had to be attended to.

I was working for the ABC then and lived on its Wonga Estate, not far from the hospital and not far from Korobosea at whose primary school Simon was to begin his education.

We all (Sue, Simon, Sally and I) left Papua New Guinea in 1976 after I got into a nasty squabble with Michael Somare about radio advertising, but Simon was to return to PNG briefly, I think it was the early 2000s, as an employee on a Highlands' gasfield until he reckoned that, if you wanted to waste your life, there were better ways to do it.

These days, and for many years, Simon works for Microsoft in Auckland as a software expert and trainer, his beat covering much of Asia and the Pacific.

What I write about me here, though, is his other passion.

Union Pacific Big Boy

UK Prince of Wales

By night, Simon is a prolific songwriter and musician of the Sand Spiders clan – whose output is reminiscent of the gates of hell opening and the first to exit being Johnny O’Keefe and Johnny Rotten amidst a melodic cacophony that leaves the air shaking as if a US Union Pacific Big Boy has collided head on with a UK LNER Clan Class on the Bridge Over the River Kwai.

If you get my meaning. (Foregoing metaphor valid only for readers ancient enough to recall and young enough to still draw breath.)

On reflection, I think the word ‘prolific’ may be an understatement as a description of Simon’s musical output.

His productivity as a songwriter and musician over the last half dozen years has been vast, his musicianship is of high quality and his lyrics of intense social substance.

This is due to its increasing focus on politics and its traitors, two-bit self-seekers like Scott Morrison, and what these dysfunctional oxygen burners fear most – which is the public exposure of their selfish souls.

Let’s face it, who is it that can expose perfidy and slovenliness better than songwriters, artists, dramatists and poets.

No wonder, when Australia’s prime minister Morrison handed out free billions in 2020, he left out in the cold stone penniless broke Australia's creatives even as he threw needless largesse at others who neither threatened his worldview nor alerted the masses to his corruption.

Others like Qantas ($700 million),  Crown Resorts ($200 million), Flight Centre Travel ($150 million) and Seven West Media ($33 million). 

And of those writers who are journalists, who should be amongst our heroes, we can dismiss too many of them as toadies to power and shaman (glasman) seeking to persuade us that lies are truths.

Representatives of a profession that has lost any claim to our esteem, or the right to legitimately speak on our behalf.

But for the truthtellers - said songwriters, artists, dramatists and poets - who know that only the truth can save us, not a zac. Let them rot.

Amongst this group of truthtellers, protected by his day job from unemployment, was Simon and the Sand Spiders, a musical force of great talent and good ethic and who, because of that, are generous in sharing their work, words and ideals.

Which means in practical terms that there’s plenty of Sand Spider composition of real substance online – you can link to it here.

I’d estimate this treasure trove offers around a couple of hundred original tracks covering a spread of genres in which rock and punk (60%) predominate.

I don’t know what you think of punk – I was no fan when The Clash let London’s Burning escape in 1977 – but a meditative view has it that punk was a cleanser, that it “revitalised culture”.

John Lennon said of the Sex Pistols, who he far from detested, “That’s how we used to behave at the Cavern [Club] before Brian [Epstein] told us to stop throwing up and sleeping on stage and swearing”.

My view is straightforward, punk really suits the mood of our times and in the brains and hands of the Sand Spiders it both punches above its weight and dukes every exploiter and hypocrite whose head pops above the parapet.

Simon’s rang of composition is more far eclectic than just punk. His music embraces rock, pop, folk, country, soul and reggae, so there’s real versatility at play in his melodic composition and in the poetry of his lyrics. Slam poetry, I speak of.

There’s also a remarkable talent for creating out of thin air striking melodies which are then stoked with pulse-soaring rhythm all of which frames the agitprop lyrics: political in inspiration and purifying in impact.

Here’s a grab from the lyrics of Commodity, a song on the chattelisation of modern day workers:

do what your told
don't answer back
watch your attitude
you can't afford the sack
you're just a piece
of my machine

And from the earthy, stick it up your jumper rant, Journoganda, a polemic on the treachery that is modern churnalism:

note taker
spectator
fourth estate
take it down like a waiter
making air space
for traitors
playing it back
just like they paid ya

And his lyrics also take to task the ol bighet nabaut, those pretentious oafs inhabiting the bubbles of power and who, full of self-entitlement, consider the rest of us to be a lesser class, without clout and without prospects.

Well, Bad Dog reminds us that we can all be empowered if we choose to be:

they think they got me
under control
kicking me down
is good for their soul
bad dog
one day I'll bite back
bad dog

born wild
nobody owns me
my neck don't fit on your lead
bad dog
I'm not your pal
bad dog

And The Empire lyrics rotate from the focus of Bad Dog to offer both an indictment of statist power and an acute insight of who our real enemies are:

the empire feeds on war
bloody hands
live by the sword
parade on
fields of white crosses

the empire builds a wall
to purge its race
of the hordes
but the enemies
are all on the inside

And so I come to The Sand Spiders’ newest bun from the oven, Sayonara Sucka - released perfectly baked just on Sunday.

As in sayonara, Japanese for goodbye, and sucka, spiderese for sucker = mug = dumbo.

Sayonara Sucker is not just a roof wrecker, or rafter rattler if you prefer not to demolish the entire house.

The song is all the musical things you would want but, more than that, it’s Simon’s well-aimed headkick at the corruption, and in all likelihood criminality, of the Morrisonian (Scott, not Jim) style of politics and governance.

The lyrics are aimed precisely at Scotty ‘Moskva’ Morrison and his ilk. With the accuracy of a Ukrainian missile they do not miss their target, the sinking warship of a corrupt, self-serving government.

sayonara sucka
sayonara sucka
move over loser
you're gonna suffer
you did the crime and now
you're going inside

arrogant bully
brain the size of a flea
said you were the greatest
but you're just a wannabe
goodbye good riddance
you don't fool me

you thought you were smart
but stupid is hard to hide
got your kicks getting high
on your own supply
you're the runaway winner
of the booby prize

liar liar
you wouldn't know the truth
well I got some for ya
nobody's gonna miss you
oh no hey dude
you're getting the boot

That’s what we want.

And one more time, this link giving you access to a musical bounty (scroll down a wee bit for the full lyrics – believe me, they’re a big part of the deal.