PAUL OATES

Hidden Hand: Exposing how the Chinese Communist Party is reshaping the world by Clive Hamilton & Mareike Ohlberg, Paperback, Hardie Grant Books, 2020, 448 pages. Kindle $8.42, Paperback $24.25. Available here from Amazon in Australia

CLEVELAND QLD - Chek Ling (Still the bell tolls: Brisbane’s Kristallnacht) raises an extremely relevant issue.

It’s an issue that Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands need to take an interest in and understand.

The conflation between China and people who identify as Chinese has been used to generate political influence for centuries.

It is similar to any ethnic tribal grouping where ‘us versus them’ arguments are used by those who wish to gain influence and political power. The pressures exerted are all about identity.

This issue is examined in detail in a book published in 2020, ‘Hidden Hand’, which exposes the Chinese Communist Party’s global program of influence and subversion, and the threat it poses to democracy.

The authors effectively demonstrate how the world at large is being progressively deluded into thinking that engagement with Chinese organisations that on the surface may appear innocuous is part of a strategy by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to gain world ascendancy.

From a Western viewpoint, Chinese organisations with familiar names and aspirations may not readily appear to be a threat.

The popular ‘Belt and Road’ initiatives seem superficially to have quite reasonable objectives and present no threat but beneath the superficial blandishments and familiarity, in many cases - as this book explains there may be a complex web of CCP control.

The authors shine a strong light into the darker corners of these relationships to disentangle them and reveal the truth.

There is only one political party in China, the autocratic Chinese Communist Party.

This has been led by 68-year old President Xi Jinping since 2013.

Xi has entrenched his authority and power in those nine years and he has some very powerful predecessors to emulate, Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai being the two most outstanding.

They were not necessarily kind to their own people if there were goals to be attained that the people were actively or passively interfering with.

Any organisation with connections, declared or hidden, to the Chinese government are also integrally connected to the CCP. The party is the central organising principle and it yields to none – even those billionaires who seem to have more similarity with the West than with China.

Xi brings them to heel from time to time if they show signs of striking a pathway of their own or behaving in ways discordant to the party.

This tight knit, controlling relationship is something many Australian people of Chinese origin know and understand.

It is not something that many people in the West and the Pacific Islands understand.

Either that or, transfixed by some lucrative arrangement, corrupt or otherwise, they are induced to turn a blind eye to that which lies beneath the surface.

We have more than a few political and business types like that in Australia. So far only a small number have had their reputations trashed. More are likely to follow in their footsteps.

What would you say about a minister who made a decision in favour of some Chinese organisation, then later resigned to be soon employed by that same organisation?

Yet this has happened in Australia. It seems that as soon as dollar bills are flashed our political system suddenly becomes vulnerable.

In Australia, in PNG and in the Pacific Islands the Chinese understand how to use influence and how to use graft.

Politicians and bureaucrats need to pick up their game on such matters. Likewise the Australian Federal Police and our many security services.

COMMENTARY BY CHRIS OVERLAND

The first Great Game - but this time Chine is on the front foot

ADELAIDE - The CCP not only draws no distinction between itself and all of the instruments and institutions of the state, but applies the same logic to anyone of Chinese origin.

From the CCP’s perspective, all ethnic Chinese are ‘theirs’, regardless of their place of birth or nationality.

By this reasoning Chinese Australians, irrespective of their wishes, are seen as ultimate servants of China and its rulers.

The CCP will use whatever means necessary to secure their ‘cooperation’ to achieve strategic or shorter term tactical ends.

This is exactly the same thinking exhibited by Putin, who has said that Ukraine is not a real country but an organic part of Greater Russia.

This is the racist, ultra-nationalist rationale for using warfare as a means to compel obedience and submission to the dictates of the state.

We have seen this rationale in use before. History is replete with examples going back to ancient times.

Authoritarians always resort to this thinking and the CCP and Putin and his fellow gangsters are no different.

As for Solomon Islands, it is merely a pawn in The Great Game.

Its self-interested ruling elite fancies it is peopled by cunning operators, manipulating the Chinese and bending them to their will.

They are completely wrong in this but, by the time they become aware they have been deceived, they will be hopelessly compromised and susceptible to a combination of threats and bribery.

This is standard practice amongst gangsters: take the money, be grateful for it and do as you’re bidden or look forward to exposure and a sudden and permanent ‘retirement’.

In The Great Game, the pawns are expendable. The West is not without sin in this regard and there are already many pawns in politics, in business and elsewhere.

Our loathsome Liberal National Party government lacks any capacity to respond intelligently to this crisis.

A crisis of subornment with serious implications for our sovereignty, our democracy and our soul.

Even if the foreign affairs department had a sensible plan, Morrison and his flunkies would find a way to stuff it up.

I almost feel a bit sorry for foreign minister Marise Payne who, I believe is basically competent, but she is part of a dishonest, corrupt and ineffectual government.

As such, she must share the blame for how badly we have stuffed up relations with the Pacific Islands nations that until recently the United States thought we were exercising responsibility for.

If (and it’s a big if) Labor Senator Penny Wong gets the job after next month’s national election, we may see some improvement.

But, with the Solomons now China’s bestie just a two-hour plane ride to our north-east, that improvement will need to be vast.

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE - History can be used to justify all sorts of things - if you select the bits of it you want to reference, that is.

Selective quotation is a tactic used by both the left and the right of politics to justify their positions on a range of issues.

Sometimes the same facts are reinterpreted to justify diametrically opposed things.

History almost never offers a clear and simple explanation of events and is subject to constant revision as new facts come to light.

The historic truth is invariably much more complicated and nuanced than most people understand or even want to accept.

This gives ample scope for people like Vladimir Putin – the Beast of Ukraine - to put their desired ‘spin’ upon historic events.

In this era, where ‘alternative facts’ (also known as lies) are stock in trade of ruling elites, what Putin is doing is neither unusual or original.

It is a sad to note that Australia’s political class, especially the conservatives, have been exceedingly successful in presenting ‘spin’ as fact.

I see no difference in the approach to truthfulness in most parts of the Papua New Guinean political elite.

In Australia, the entire political class, right across the spectrum from crazy left to lunatic right, has contrived to persuade the Great Australian Public that governments actually ‘manage’ the economy.

Economists know this is not true, and even have a term for it – ‘bullshit’.

At best, governments can influence the economy by the way they handle matters like budgets, taxation and major infrastructure spending.

When we look for other significant players in our economy, we notably see the banks (which have the ability to create money through the extension of credit), the export sector and, probably of greatest importance, what is happening in the economies of related overseas economies

An institution of great eminence, the Bank of England, long held the view that banks do not create money, now concedes that they do.

It is even willing to explain how that works: ‘If you borrow £100 from the bank, and it credits your account with the amount, ‘new money’ has been created. It didn’t exist until it was credited to your account’.

So, whenever a bank lends you money, it simultaneously creates a matching deposit in your bank account, thereby creating new money.

The belief that banks can only lend money if they have enough deposits to lend from is, in fact, a myth.

If you want to know more about money creation, Wikipedia has a good explainer here.

Another myth:  the persistent comparisons by politicians of the national budget as like the family budget are false and misleading.

Unlike you and me, governments never die and can ‘print’ as much money as they like, the only proviso being that they need to stop once inflation takes off.

Which is exactly where the world, and soon Australia, is right now.

“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system,” said Henry Ford. “For, if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

EDDIE TANAGO
| Campaign Manager | Act Now

PORT MORESBY – News that the bank accounts of 30 logging companies operating in Papua New Guinea have been closed have been welcomed by advocacy organisations Act Now and Jubilee Australia.

The PNG Forest Industry Association complained to The National newspaper that Bank South Pacific (BSP) had closed the commercial loggers’ bank accounts to comply with its anti-money laundering responsibilities.

We welcome any move by PNG banks to restrict finance to the logging sector, which has been identified as representing a high-risk for money laundering.

Of PNG's four commercial banks, now only Kina seems hesitant about applying similar restrictions to logging companies.

In December 2021 a report by Act Now and Jubilee Australia, The Money Behind the Chainsaws, detailed how PNG’s commercial banks had provided at least K300 million since 2000 in available credit to the country’s five largest exporters of tropical logs.

The report provided evidence of illegal activity and human rights abuses in the sector and called on commercial banks in PNG to commit to ending all financing to companies involved in tropical forest logging.

Over the past decades, Act Now and its partners have published numerous cases of illegal activity in the sector which has led to the theft of vital forest resources from customary landowners.

When banks provide services to logging companies, they help to prop up this destructive industry.

No bank should be providing financial support to companies engaged in tropical forest logging.

The move by BSP to close the logging companies’ accounts places the spotlight on PNG’s second largest bank, Kina.

Kina Bank has yet to confirm if it is taking action to exit its logging company customers or to rule out offering its services to new logging clients.

The two other commercial banks operating in PNG – Westpac and ANZ – have policies or practices that restrict their financing to the logging sector.

We call on all banks to ensure they do not accept new customers involved in tropical forest logging, and take steps to close the accounts of existing customers in this sector.

Kurt Campbell (AFP). China says the US is pushing Australia aside to intervene more directly in the Pacific Islands region

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA – It seems Kurt Campbell, the United States Indo-Pacific coordinator, will still visit the Solomon Islands this week even after the country declared it had already entered into a security pact with China.

A last ditch effort by Australia failed to change the mind of the Solomons leadership as the Morrison government was strongly criticised for its ineffectual Pacific Islands policies that it is claimed, not altogether credibly, to have enabled China to gain a military foothold in the Solomons, just 2,000 km from mainland Australia.

It will be fascinating to see if the White House’s Campbell and Daniel Kritenbrink, the State Department's top East Asian and Pacific official, and their delegation of defence and development aid experts can induce a change of heart.

Chinese sources have commented that the severity of the US and Australia reaction shows that they “use the South Pacific region as an ‘arena’ for competition with China and try to contain China's peaceful development”.

Yang Honglian, senior researcher at the Pacific Islands Research Center in Liaocheng University, who is based in Fiji, told Global Times that “in the US and its follower Australia's Cold War mentality, South Pacific countries have always been, and must be, their ‘backyard’.”

Global Times, billed as “China’s most belligerent tabloid”, is owned by the Chinese Communist Party’s favourite organ and “paramount mouthpiece”, the People’s Daily.

The Global Times dismisses US attempts to counter China's rising influence with the words “history shows that US promises are often hard to deliver and such cooperation rarely delivers real benefits to ordinary people”.

There is a view in China that the US is stricken by a psychological condition known as projection – where a person projects their negative traits or view onto others.

“They (the US) believe that controlling the island nations through military deployment can maintain their influence in the region, so they speculated China would also take the same step even if China does not have any military activity in the region,” was Yang’s analysis.

“They have been hyping a ‘possibility’ and ‘sense of urgency’, trying to guide the local sentiment to be more wary of China,” he said.

Another Chinese official, Wang Wenbin of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, yesterday stated:

"The US Embassy in Solomon Islands has been closed for 29 years. The most recent visit to Fiji made by a US Secretary of State was 37 years ago.

“Several senior US officials now fancy a visit to some Pacific Island countries all of a sudden after all these years.

“Are they doing so out of care for Pacific Island countries or do they have ulterior motives?”

“"Sensationalising an atmosphere of tension and stoking bloc confrontation will get no support in the region.”

Which, given US and Australian inattention in the region over all the years they have known of China’s ambitions was fair comment indeed.

And Wang made another good point. “Rather than becoming someone's backyard or pawn in a geopolitical confrontation, Pacific island countries need diversified external cooperation and the free choice of their cooperation partners,” he said

A Chinese businessman in Honiara told Global Times that the Chinese community greatly supports cooperation on security.

He said that the police in the Solomons lack professional training and their equipment is outdated. "We hope their police force can improve after cooperating with China,” he said.

Meanwhile the US State Department’s Ned Price sought to play down the diplomatic flurry.

“US policy toward the region is about ensuring countries understand the benefits of engagement with Washington and not about China or any other country,” he said.

“We'll leave it to them [the Pacific Islands] to contrast what we offer from what other countries, including rather large countries in the region, might offer,” Price said diplomatically.

Australia’s defence minister threw another can of kerosene on the fire, commenting that China hopes to gain a military foothold in the Pacific Islands, including a ‘military port’ in PNG.

That can’t be in Manus because Australia already grabbed that back in 2018 when China offered to redevelop the old Lorengau naval base.

So could Dutton have been referring to all the kerfuffle about Daru?

Or maybe he was just keeping the anti-China fire burning steadily in the hope it may wedge the Labor Party during the current election campaign.

China believes that Washington sees the Pacific Islands as an important ‘fulcrum’ against China and that is why “the US now leaves Australia aside and intervened more directly in the region.”

And what does the Solomon Islands government think.

“Australia wants the Solomon Islands to just follow what it says,” states Frank Sade Bilaupaine, policy consultant in the Solomons’ foreign policy advisory secretariat.

“But it's the US behind all this pushing,” he told Global Times.

He said the security agreement “came about because of the riots in Honiara for the past years and Chinese businesses were always the victim.

"So the Solomon Islands government views it as, since we have diplomatic relations, maybe China can assist in building the capacity of the Solomon Islands police.”

Local scholar George Balau said: “China has always insisted its eyes are firmly fixed on mutual economic progress - a win-win situation - rather than military contest or a zero-sum game.

“In other words, China is asking that Australia and the US set aside their Cold War mentality to prevent unnecessary stand-offs based on assumptions of strategic malevolent calculations.”

So there, simples.

Main sources: Nikkei Asia, Global Times

Cartoon - Fiona Katauskas

MICHAEL KABUNI
| Academia Nomad

PORT MORESBY - Despite visits past and planned to Honiara by Australian ministers and United States officials, Solomon Islands went ahead to sign a security deal with China.

Details remain sketchy, but a leaked draft says it will allow Chinese security forces to assist Solomons security forces when needed, including protecting Chinese businesses.

Australia had sought the Papua New Guinea and Fiji governments’ assistance to prevent the deal, but it appears both Pacific Island countries didn’t offer much help.

To understand the Australian failure to persuade Solomon Island to abandon the deal, one must take a broader view of Australia’s engagement in the Pacific and, in the Pacific, specifically the Melanesian region.

The China-Solomons deal is a culmination of Australia’s policy failures in the region in general.

It’s not an isolated incident and, unless Australian changes its approach, it is bound to face similar challenges in future.

First, no Pacific Island country will condemn another for a deal with China.

This is because most, if not all, of these countries have some form of arrangement with China, which has been offering loans to Pacific Island countries for years now.

In the Solomon Islands’ case, there has been direct funding to constituency funds.

Australia didn’t get much of a response from PNG because PNG has China-funded projects underway.

Cartoon - Alan Moir

Fiji knows precisely how Australia uses Pacific Islands countries against another Pacific Islands country, after being kicked out of the Pacific Islands Forum following the last coup.

Furthermore, there is not much people to people connected between Australia and the Melanesian countries.

Compared to Polynesians in Australia, the Melanesians community in Australia is very small.

Melanesian countries have the largest populations, land mass and economies in the Pacific Islands, but are the most excluded from Australia.

It is very difficult for Melanesians to get a visa to travel to Australia, and it is near impossible for them to get citizenship.

The last really close connection Australia had with Melanesian countries was with the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels who assisted Australia’s war against the Japanese, and with those natives who fought against the Japanese alongside Australians.

I had grandfathers who spoke highly of Australian soldiers.

I don’t hear anything like this these days from their grandchildren.

Almost all the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels have passed on.

Australia is asking for help from countries that have no sympathy for Australia.

It won’t happen.

The irony of Australia’s decision to purchase nuclear powered submarines from the US is not lost on Pacific Islands’ peoples.

If that decision can be defended by Australia as a sovereign country conducting its foreign affairs, why shouldn’t the Solomon Islands defend its decision for a security pact with China as a sovereign country engaging in a deal with another country?

This is another reason why neither PNG nor Fiji would support Australia.

If PNG and Fiji help stop the Solomon Islands deal, what happens in the future when both of them engage in a deal Australia does not approve of?

The Australian submarines deal was important for the Pacific because the region has maintained a non-nuclear policy since the Cold War days.

Australia is buy nuclear powered submarines, not a nuclear armed submarines.

But the decision comes with risks nevertheless. Greens leader Adam Bandt referred to the boats as “floating Chernobyls.”

Finally, when was the last time Australia sought Pacific Islands opinions about its deals?

Cartoon - Hudson

AUKUS (Australia, UK, US) and QUAD (Australia, India, Japan, US) surround the Pacific but the Pacific Islands have no part in these the deals, and neither were they consulted.

AUKUS and QUAD are deals Australia entered into as a sovereign country. It did not have to consult with the Pacific.

Ta-daaaa. Why cannot Solomon Islands do the same?

Australia’s assumption that the Pacific is its ‘backwater’, ‘backyard’ or ‘family’ is a very patronising view.

It’s unsustainable, and needs a change.

Making his mark for the nation - a voter ponders his ballot paper at the 1997 national election - one of Dr Joe Ketan's two favourites (ABC)

NOOSA – Academic and entrepreneur Dr Joe Ketan has stated that Papua New Guinea has had only two credible national elections since independence — in 1992 and 1997.

And he’s afraid that, in the election coming up in June, the government will not repeat this slender history of well conducted polls.

The reason: senior politicians have ‘hijacked’ the system, are not providing adequate funds and need to take steps now to ensure an election with integrity.

Dr Ketan, who is now general manager of Divine University’s business and research arm, Diwai Pacific, was speaking about electoral governance at a seminar in Port Moresby.

He said only two elections had “some semblance of credibility” and that governance “was the worst when it comes to forming a new government”.

There have been nine elections since PNG independence in September 1975.

The first of those ‘credible’ elections in Dr Ketan’s view was in 1992 (an election that had a splendid 81.2% voter turnout) when Paias Wingti won for the People's Democratic Movement.

In the book, ‘The 1992 Papua New Guinea Election: Change and Continuity in Electoral Politics’, editor Yaw Saffu noted that prior to the election, under Sir Rabbie Namaliu’a leadership, the economy had recovered from recession through fiscal discipline, new gold mines and foreign aid.

Observing the election, academic Ron May concluded that it completed the transition from traditional bigman leadership to a new class youthful, Western-educated politicians.

May also noted how “there has been little progress towards an integrative, ideologically-based party system”, an observation that still holds good 30 years later.

The election was held against the background of violence in Bougainville, where an armed secessionist rebellion had closed the Panguna copper mine, on which PNG depended for 40% of its annual foreign exchange earnings.

A survey around the time of the election showed that the main issues were law and order, corruption, unemployment and ‘attitudes’ thought to be holding back the young nation.

May pointed out the “massive 60% re-election failure rate of MPs, 10% more than the preceding average, with all that such high failure rates entail for non-accumulation and non-consolidation of experience in governing, and for the likelihood of extreme self-regarding behaviour on the part of insecure, essentially one-term MPs.”

In 1992, Joe Ketan was a PhD candidate and research fellow at the PNG National Research Institute and conducting field work in Mt Hagen.

May wrote of his observations as “the most relentless exposition of the traditional community vote thesis” in PNG.

Ketan showed that, far from being driven by party platforms and ideological contests, politics at all levels was “organised along traditional structural lines” and national elections were anything but national in character and “really separate electorate competitions”.

The 1992 election, said May, confirmed “that elections in Papua New Guinea continue to be free and fair, at least as far as government control and manipulation are concerned.”

And he reinforced Ketan’s finding that elections “also confirm the continuity of the two fundamental features of PNG elections: the relative unimportance of political parties in the electoral process and the essentially local character of electoral politics.”

The second of Joe Ketan’s two ‘credible’ elections was that of 1997, which was a victory for Bill Skates’ People's National Congress.

The five years leading to that election saw great political instability.

Wingti went out on a vote of no confidence in 1994, Chan came in (defeating Bill Skate) and the civil war on Bougainville continued, defying interventions by PNG’s police and military and steering Chan into secretly recruiting the Sandline mercenaries.

This resulted in PNG’s most serious crisis since independence and it was still burning when the country held its fifth post-independence election in June 1997.

On 22 July 1997, Skate won the ballot for prime minister defeating Somare 71 votes to 35, thus becoming the first prime minister from the Papuan Region.

Chan, the intractable Bougainville war and the Sandline debacle hanging around his neck, lost his seat.

In ‘Maintaining Democracy: the 1997 Elections in Papua New Guinea’, Ron May remarked that “there were a number of disgruntled unsuccessful candidates and isolated instances of post-election violence[but] the overall result was popularly accepted.

“Like all of PNG’s elections, the 1997 election was held on schedule,” he said.

There were 55 women candidates for the 109 seat and two were elected: former Papuan separatist leader, Dame Josephine Abaijah in Milne Bay and Dame Carol Kidu in Port Moresby

So they were Dr Joe Ketan’s two ‘credible’ elections.

And he’s still around to see what 2022, 25 years later, will yield.

“The country’s election processes are intact. However, the system is being hijacked,” he told the seminar in Port Moresby.

“The state-owned enterprises are struggling, many essential services have collapsed, and the security agencies of Royal PNG Constabulary, PNG Defence Force, PNG Correctional Service and National Intelligence Organisation have all lost integrity.

“The security agencies lack discipline, have low morale and have issues with funding.

“We need to take extra steps to ensure that the 2022 election is credible,” he said.

The 2017 election was strongly criticised by most observers who reported many cases of vote rigging, ballot box tampering, bribery, fraudulent counting and violence.

“In 2007 and 2012 it was equally bad with political instability between both former prime ministers Peter O’Neill and Sir Michael Somare,” Ketan said.

“While we look into the future, the government will repeat history.”

Dr Joe Ketan

Sources:

Story by Marjorie Finkeo in the PNG Post-Courier; 'The 1992 Papua New Guinea Election: Change and Continuity in Electoral Politics' (Yaw Saffu, editor); 'Maintaining Democracy: the 1997 Elections in Papua New Guinea' (Ron J May and Ray Anere, editors); Election Results from Papua New Guinea website; PNG Elections Database; ANU Pacific Institute Digitisation Project

Loudmouth tearaway Marise Payne has gone missing leaving commentary on the Solomons to shy, demure Penny Wong

BERNARD KEANE
| Crikey

MELBOURNE - The debacle of the now-formalised agreement between China and the government of the Solomon Islands has forced Morrison onto the defensive.

And this on what was supposed by the press gallery ahead of the campaign to be a source of unique and irrepressible strength: his tough-guy act on China.

Every day that passes seems to confirm that not only is it pretty much just an act, but it’s an act where the performers don’t know their lines.

That’s why Morrison has left entirely unclear the issue of whether the government knew – or didn’t know - that the Solomons deal was coming.

If it didn’t know, of course, would be a staggering indictment of our alleged foreign intelligence service, ASIS.

Junior minister Zed Seselja said on Wednesday that the government found out at the same time as the rest of us, on 24 March.

But also yesterday, Morrison said the deal “is no surprise to us”.

Today he was asked to reconcile those two statements, and notably changed his language.

“We have known for some time the risk of a deal such as this coming about,” he claimed (emphasis added).

He then vaguely alluded to “security matters” to explain why he wouldn’t say any more.

But between Seselja’s statement yesterday and Morrison’s parsing of words today, it’s clear the government had no idea.

Where is foreign minister Marise Payne in all this?

Certainly not in Honiara, making Australia’s case to the Solomons government.

Nor, it seems, will she be darkening the door of the National Press Club in Canberra.

Payne has refused to debate her opposite number Penny Wong during the campaign, according to Laura Tingle.

This is a surprise since the bold, eloquent and dominating Payne would surely have bested the reserved and reticent Wong in any one-on-one.

Indonesia is leaving no stone unturned in applying pressure on West Papua

SRI KRISHNAMURTHI
| Radio New Zealand | Pacific Digital Journalist
| Edited

AUCKLAND - West Papuan students are facing a difficult time in New Zealand after Indonesia terminated their scholarships and ordered them home.

Master of Communications student Laurens Ikinia told RNZ Pacific said he his dreams of a brighter future have been shattered by the Indonesian government.

He has been ordered home just before the completion of his studies at Auckland University of Technology.

"The government has terminated the scholarships of 42 students here in Aotearoa who are the recipients of Papua provincial government scholarships," Ikinia said.

Laurens Ikinia with West Papua governor Lucas Emembe

“I am one of the students who was terminated, and this is worrying me.”

West Papua's struggles began in 1962 when the former Dutch colony was controversially and forcibly annexed by Indonesia.

"We are just surviving and do some part-time jobs as long as we can but, unfortunately, some students cannot work because of their visa conditions,” Ikinia said.

Of the 42 students, 27 are close to finishing their degrees.

The unconvincing reason given by Indonesia is that they are failing in their studies.

"I am determined to finish my study this month," Ikinia said.

"We don't see there will be a good future when the concerned students go home."

“Most come from low-income families. Some parents cannot afford to send their children to pursue education up to tertiary level.

"We have tried our best through various channels to communicate and negotiate with the Indonesian government and the Papua provincial government, however there is no positive response.

Some of the West Papuan students in New Zealand

"The provincial government stated they will no longer support the students on the list.

“We have provided the complete data of the concerned students to clarify the data that the provincial government has, but they still stick to their decision to repatriate the concerned students.

"We are so heartbroken by this decision," he said.

Green Party MPs Ricardo Menendez March and Teanau Tuiono met with the West Papua students last week.

The Greens have asked the government for a scholarship fund to support West Papuan students impacted by the defunding decision.

Bush hails ‘sheriff Australia' (BBC News). Every day looking more like the Sheriff of Nothingham

DAN McGARRY
| The Village Explainer
| Courtesy Asia Pacific Report

“If we can’t respect the equal standing of nations, we can’t protect their integrity” – Dan McGarry

VILA - If the coming election goes to Australia’s Labor Party, Senator Penny Wong is very likely to become foreign minister.

So when she speaks, people across the region prick up their ears.

Without the least disrespect to her recent forebears, she could be one of the most acute, incisive and insightful foreign ministers in recent history.

Whether she’ll be any more effective than them is another matter.

Australia has a long tradition of placing prominent frontbenchers into the role, and then pointedly ignoring their efforts, their advice and their warnings.

It’s as if government leaders find their greatest rival and send them trotting off around the globe, more to keep them from making mischief at home than to achieve anything noteworthy while they’re gone.

In Australia, it seems, foreign policy is domestic policy done outdoors.

If she achieves nothing more, Wong would be well served to look closely at the people supporting her, and to spend considerable effort re-organising and in fact reinventing DFAT – the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Its disconnection from other departments, especially defence and the prime minister’s office, has created an internal culture that spends more time feeding on itself than actually helping produce a persuasive or coherent foreign policy.

Ensuring foreign policy’s primacy at the cabinet table is a big ask, but it will be for naught if the department can’t deliver. There are significant structural matters to be dealt with.

Rolling development and aid into the department was a significant regression that hampered both sides.

Volumes can be written about the need to distinguish development assistance from foreign policy, and many of them could be focused on the Pacific islands region.

The two are mostly complementary (mostly), but they must also be discrete from one another.

It’s far more complicated than this, but suffice it to say that development aid prioritises the recipient’s needs, while foreign relations generally prioritise national concerns.

The moment you invert either side of that equation, you lose.

Exempli gratia: Solomon Islands.

It’s well known that Australia spent billions shoring up Solomon Islands’ security and administrative capacity.

Surely after all that aid, they can expect the government to stay onside in geopolitical matters?

Applying the admittedly simplistic filter from the paragraph above, the answer is an obvious no.

Aid is not a substitute for actual foreign relations, and foreign relations is definitely not just aid.

So is Penny Wong correct when she calls the China-Solomons defence agreement a massive strategic setback? Sure.

Is she right to call Australia’s Pacific affairs minister Zed Seselja “a junior woodchuck”, sent in a last minute attempt to dissuade prime minister Manasseh Sogavare from signing the agreement?

The idea of a minister responsible for the complex, wildly diverse patchwork of nations spanning such a vast space has value.

But in terms of resources and policy heft, Seselja rides at the back of the posse on a mule.

Senator Penny Wong (ABC). Shaping up to be "one of the most acute, incisive and insightful foreign ministers"

There are good reasons to devote an entire office to Pacific affairs.

There are also blindingly good reasons to keep the foreign minister as the primary point of contact on matters of foreign policy.

That means the role—and yes, the existence—of the Pacific affairs ministry needs a ground-up reconsideration. Notionally it fulfills a critical role. But how?

It’s fair to say that Wong is more insightful than those who describe Solomon Islands as a flyspeck in the Pacific, or a Little Cuba (whatever the F that means).

But in the past, Labor’s shown little insight into the actual value and purpose of foreign policy.

For the better part of four decades, neither Australian party was fussed at all about the fact that there had been few if any official visits between leaders.

Prime ministers regularly blew off Pacific Islands Forum meetings.

In Vanuatu’s case, the first ever prime ministerial visit to Canberra was in 2018. Why aren’t such meetings annual events?

Australia is rightly proud of its pre-eminence in development assistance in the Pacific islands.

But that never was, and never will be, a substitute for diplomatic engagement.

And you can’t have that without a functioning diplomatic corps whose presence is felt equally in Canberra and in foreign capitals.

But even that’s not enough.

Penny Wong has yet to show in concrete terms how she plans to address what could accurately be called the greatest strategic foreign policy failure since World War II: Leaving Australia alone to guard the shop.

In 2003, George W Bush was rightly vilified for characterising Australia’s role in the region as America’s sheriff.

But the Americans weren’t the only ones who walked away, leaving Australia alone to engage with the region.

The United Kingdom and the European Union (minus France in their patch) rolled back their diplomatic presence substantially.

Even New Zealand agreed to restrict its engagement in large areas in deference to its neighbour.

The most enduring presence was provided by organisations without any meaningful foreign policy role: UN development agencies and multilateral financial institutions.

Since the beginning of the War on Terror, there has been a consistent and often deliberate draw-down on the capital provided by democratic institutions, multilateral foreign policy, and indeed any collective course-setting among nations.

Post Cold-War democratic momentum has been squandered on an increasingly transactional approach to engagement that’s begun to look alarmingly like the spheres of influence that appeal so much to Putin and Xi.

This hasn’t happened in the Pacific islands alone.

The United Nations has become an appendix in the global body politic, one cut away from complete irrelevance.

ASEAN and APEC are struggling just as hard to find relevance, let alone purpose, as the Pacific Islands Forum or the Melanesian Spearhead Group.

Australia has ‘led’ in the Pacific islands region by being the largest aid donor, blithely assuming that all the other kids in the region want to be like it.

But that ‘leadership’ masks a massive gap in actual influence in shaping the agenda in a region that’s larger and more diverse than any other in the world.

The data’s there if people want it.

These views are not particularly contentious if you’re among the far-too-small group of people who actually live in and care about the future of the region.

In a regional dynamic defined and dominated by transactional bilateralism, China holds all the aces.

The only hope anyone has of slowing its growth in the region is through meaningful multilateralism that treats Pacific island countries as actual nations with national pride and individual priorities.

Instead of silencing them, their voices should be amplified and defended, not by Australia alone, but by every other democratic nation with the means and the will to do so.

If we can’t respect the equal standing of nations, we can’t protect their integrity.

Scott Morrison may indeed be one of the worst exemplars of this blithe disregard for actual foreign policy engagement.

He’s certainly won few friends with his world-class foot-dragging on climate change.

Oz-Sheriff (Pastiche by Dan McGarry). A sheriff that looks like being run out of the Pacific on a rail

America’s suddenly renewed interest in the region is an indication that they’ve woken up to the Bush administration’s mistakes.

It’s also clear they don’t trust Australia to play sheriff any more.

Kurt Campbell’s upcoming visit to the region is just the latest in a series of increasingly high profile tours of the region.

So yes, Penny Wong is justified in saying that China’s advances in the Pacific derive at least in part from Australia’s lack of a coherent and effective foreign policy.

But foreign policy is not made at home. It’s not Australia’s interests alone that matter.

Subjugating Pacific nations in compacts of free association isn’t a substitute for actual policy making.

Pacific Island nations will not defend Australia’s national interests unless they share those interests.

The only way that Australia—and the world—can be assured they do is by actively listening, and by incorporating Pacific voices into the fabric of a renewed and revitalised global family.

Dan McGarry

Dan McGarry was previously media director at Vanuatu Daily Post and Buzz FM96. The Village Explainer is his semi-regular newsletter analysing and providing insight on underreported aspects of Pacific society, politics and economics

Stretcher bearers in the Owen Stanleys (William Dargie, oil on canvas, 1943). That their legacy is bogged down in bureaucracy dishonours them

CHARLIE LYNN
| Kokoda Treks | Edited

SYDNEY – In 1990, on the 75th anniversary of the Gallipoli campaign in World War I, Australian prime minister Bob Hawke allocated $10 million so a group of 52 veterans and their carers could visit Anzac Cove in Turkey to commemorate the occasion.

25 years later, prime minister Tony Abbott allocated $100 million to establish the Sir John Monash Centre at Villiers-Bretonneux to honour the centenary of the Anzacs landing on the shores of Gallipoli.

In 2017, on the 75th anniversary of the Kokoda campaign of World War II, prime minister Malcolm Turnbull chose not to attend the Anzac dawn service at Bomana War Cemetery.

Nor did the Department of Veterans Affairs make any provision to support veterans who wished to return and pay a final tribute to comrades left behind.

Australia’s interest in the Kokoda Trail lay dormant for 50 years after the war.

The few hardy trekkers who crossed it each year witnessed Australia’s apathy towards its wartime heritage.

There was not one official memorial or plaque along the 130 km trail to signify its importance in the histories of Australia and Papua New Guinea.

Awareness increased after Paul Keating became the first prime minister to visit Kokoda when the 50th anniversary of the campaign was commemorated in 1992.

And it was reinforced when a significant memorial at Isurava was opened by prime ministers John Howard and Sir Michael Somare for the 60th anniversary in 2002.

In 2006, a Frontier Resources’ proposal to mine the southern section of the trail after the discovery of a $3 billion (K7.6 billion) gold and copper deposit caused the Australian government to develop a ‘Joint Understanding’ with a $14.9 million (K38 million) grant to:

“….assist the PNG government in its efforts to improve the livelihoods of local communities along the Track, and establish effective management arrangements so that the Track is protected and delivers increasing benefits to local people. Those funds will also be used to conduct a feasibility study into a World Heritage nomination.”

DVA, which is responsible for commemoration, was not included in the drafting of the Joint Understanding.

Responsibility for the project was delegated to the Australian Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts (DEWHA) which had responsibility for overseas sites of historic interest.

‘Heritage’ was later removed from its title and it was rebadged as the Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities.

It was soon apparent that DEWHA officials dispatched to PNG to help ‘save’ the Kokoda Trail had little understanding of pilgrimage tourism, lacked expertise in commercial management and were unfamiliar with Melanesian culture.

As a result, the multi-million-dollar Kokoda tourism industry developed since prime minister Paul Keating’s visit declined by 46%.

The cumulative loss for subsistence villagers along the trail since then is in the region of $19 million (K48 million) in foregone wages, campsite fees and local purchases.

In retrospect the Joint Understanding was a hasty response to a mining threat on the Trail.

At the time AusAID was responsible for the aid projects in PNG and a ‘Kokoda Development Program’ was patched onto the responsibilities of the Australian High Commission in Port Moresby.

The Kokoda Track Authority (KTA) was legally responsible to PNG’s Minister for Provincial and Local Level Government, however PNG Tourism assumed an active role as the Trail was emerging as PNG’s most popular tourism destination.

For some inexplicable reason, DVA, despite being responsible for ‘commemorations, memorials, war graves and research’, was excluded from the development of a plan to protect and enhance the Trail’s wartime heritage.

This led to a nonsensical situation where DVA was responsible for World War I heritage at Gallipoli, while DSEWPC was responsible for World War II heritage at Kokoda.

For several years, the Kokoda Development Program and KTA operated at odds with each other as they worked on separate projects, issues and agendas related to the Trail.

In August 2011, a former Australian Assistant Secretary for International Heritage in Canberra was assigned as ‘management advisor’ to PNG’s Conservation and Environment Protection Authority (CEPA).

Soon after, a ‘Kokoda Initiative’ was added to the mix and embedded within CEPA, which was responsible to the Minister for Environment and Conservation.

CEPA then assumed responsibility for the KTA in managing the emerging Kokoda tourism industry, in addition to its responsibilities for oversight of six acts of parliament relating to the environment.

The result was dysfunction, causing the environment minister to establish a ‘ministerial oversight committee’ within CEPA which was made responsible for the world heritage aspects of the Joint Agreement.

None of the members of the oversight committee had ever trekked the Kokoda Trail and none had previous experience in business management or pilgrimage tourism – apart from the management advisor.

He was appointed committee secretary and his title upgraded to ‘strategic management advisor’.

This effectively meant that responsibility for Kokoda pilgrimage tourism was quietly transferred from the provincial and local level government minister to the DFAT-Kokoda Initiative within CEPA.

The PNG tourism minister, who should have responsibility for the Trail, was thereby excluded from the chain of command.

Around this time a bitter dispute erupted between the DFAT strategic management advisor and the Papua New Guinean CEO of the Kokoda Track Authority.

The strategic management advisor was declared persona non-grata and barred from the KTA office.

The reverberations were felt along the Trail and led to threats to close it because the CEO was also a wantok landowner.

In 2014 the Kokoda Initiative commissioned a review of the Understanding.

The review, which confirmed the CEO’s concerns, was leaked by the CEO to Kokoda trek operators.

It confirmed the impossible situation faced by the CEO in meeting the demands of ill-informed Australian officials while trying to meet the needs of trekkers, trek operators and landowners along the Trail.

It was now evident that the management system imposed on the KTA had failed and that the DFAT-Kokoda Initiative was operating in a parallel universe without any real understanding of the reality of the Kokoda tourism industry.

For example, none of the five key strategies and none of the 33 objectives in a KTA strategic plan developed without consultation with trek operators or landowners was achieved.

The review was quietly shelved and has not been replaced.

Another deficiency was the DFAT-Kokoda Initiative master plan published in August 2016 that ignored the significance of pilgrimage tourism despite this being the primary reason that the Kokoda Trail was an important destination for the 54,623 Australians who trekked it over the past 16 years.

A preliminary review of the master plan was submitted, and ignored.

The master plan had also ignored landowners along the trail, who remain suspicious of it, believing they were deliberately excluded from the process.

According to the Trip Consultants firm, their master plan addressed the “medium and long-term development priorities which support the identified Kokoda Initiative vision and goals and highlights key roles and institutional requirements for support implementation”.

For those closely associated with the Kokoda tourism industry, local landowners and their subsistence communities along the Trail are more interested in short term needs – particularly for food, medicine, schooling and cash flow.

It is therefore a mistake to assume traditional owners concur with a master plan which is incomprehensible to them and irrelevant to their short-term needs.

In early 2016 a ministerial reshuffle in PNG coincided with the transfer of responsibility for Australian aid projects from AusAID to DFAT.

This had no impact on the Kokoda Initiative as its officials were simply transferred to DFAT but it did increase their influence.

The PNG environment minister was one of the most astute and influential members of parliament.

During his time as an MP, he developed extensive personal business interests and now he not only had the struggling tourism portfolio but had the climate change authority handed to him.

The latter obligation required his attendance at numerous international forums.

The effective management of the Kokoda tourism industry continued to decline.

In 2017 prime minister Peter O’Neill became aware of the dysfunctional management and ordered a review of the Kokoda Track Authority.

Around the same time a KTA board meeting was convened to resolve the standoff between the DFAT strategic management advisor and the CEO of the KTA.

The CEO did not attend the meeting but announced his intention to resign.

However, on the following day the board was reconvened by the CEO with his Trail wantoks in attendance. The decision of the previous day’s board meeting was overturned and the CEO retained his position.

Behind the scenes negotiations continued and, soon after, the CEO accepted a ‘lateral promotion’ as a tourism executive with the National Capital District Commission in Port Moresby.

He was replaced by the deputy secretary of the Department of Provincial and Local Level Government, Julius Wargiral, in an acting capacity until the review ordered by the prime minister was completed.

Mr Wargiral is an experienced PNG bureaucrat but had no experience in business, pilgrimage tourism or trekking.

Soon after Wargiral’s appointment as acting CEO, the DFAT strategic management advisor was embedded back in the KTA office.

Trek operators were taken by surprise when they learned that one of the first actions of the acting CEO was to donate K350,000 of their trek permit fees to an Australian NGO, supposedly to distribute as “educational supplements to villagers along the Kokoda Trail and beyond”.

This accounted for a large slice of the K1.1 million the KTA had received for trek permit fees in 2018.

There was no consultation and there does not appear to be any record of KTA board approval for the donation, which contravened KTA rules relating to the disbursement of trek fee income. It also exceeded the authority of an acting CEO.

The donation was particularly galling for Kokoda trek operators who for many years had been calling for the Kokoda Initiative and KTA to spend money on hygienic toilets and campsite management to meet the needs of trekkers.

The refusal of Kokoda Initiative-KTA to publish annual financial reports added to these frustrations. The bureaucrats now seemed to be unaccountable.

Poor governance practices that would not escape scrutiny in Australia now seem to be normal practice in the DFAT funded Kokoda Initiative in PNG.

Australian officials quickly learned their PNG counterparts would agree to any proposal with Australian aid dollar attached to it.

This allowed them to deflect criticism with what has become a cliché: “This is what PNG wants!”.

That trekker numbers have declined by 46% translates into a cumulative loss of $19 million (K46 million) for subsistence villages along the Trail in foregone wages, campsite fees and local purchases.

During this time, the responsible Australian agencies (DFAT and DVA) have failed to invest funds in the development of significant military heritage sites, to enhance the value of the pilgrimage, or in campsite development and hygienic toilets.

As a result, the Kokoda Trail has been prevented from reaching its potential as a world class pilgrimage tourism destination.

There are numerous activities to be undertaken to correct this situation:

Staff employed by KTA require professional management qualifications and commercial management experience

The KTA must publish regular financial reports to account for trek permit fees and other government funding

Implementation of a ‘tour operator license system’ that ensures compliance with the PNG Investment Promotion Authority Act

Development of a ‘campsite booking system’ to enable Kokoda tour operators to secure campsites for groups they lead across the Trail

Identification of sites for camps along the length of the Trail to meet the demands of trek itineraries especially during peak trekking periods

Development of a standard campsite plan (including dining hut, kitchen, drying hut, sleeping accommodation for support crews, hygienic ablution facilities, etc) to meet the needs of various trek group sizes

Train campsite owners to develop individual sites to meet the needs of trek groups

Develop a proper certification program for each campsite

Develop a trek itinerary management system to ensure the integrity of a campsite booking system

Implement a campsite audit program to ensure campsite owners are paid the full amount due from each trek group

Develop and implement an environmental management program for the Trail

Identify the names of landowners along the Trail

Conduct village-based workshops to identify basic and future needs of communities

Provide regular employment for villagers in a maintenance program to keep the Trail clear and safe

Develop a registration system and logbook for individual guides and carriers

Protect the welfare of guides and carriers by limiting the weight they are authorised to carry to 18 kg, ensuring they are provided with a trek uniform, sleeping bag and mat, paying a minimum daily rate of K70, paying a day’s bonus payment at the end of each trek, paying a K250 walk home allowance after the trek, and paying a minimum of eight-days’ pay for treks of shorter duration as they have to work longer hours covering the same length of the Trail

Invest in any military sites along the Trail to enhance the value of the pilgrimage for paying customers

Invest in signage along the Trail to identify trees, plants and geographical features

Obtain Indigenous names of geographical features, rivers and creeks

Until these matters are addressed, and the PNG government reclaims ownership of the Trail, the potential of PNG’s most popular tourism destination will never be realised.

Charlie Lynn on the Kokoda Trail - committed to ensuring the legacy is honoured

When grass roots Papua New Guineans were asked about Australia and China, the results were not too flash for PNG's former colonial master

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA - On the back of Australia's disastrous drubbing by China in the Solomon Islands, new research from Papua New Guinea has delivered more bad news for the Morrison government.

In 2021, a coalition of Papua New Guinean researchers embarked on an unprecedented endeavour.

They asked hundreds of ordinary people, including those living in a remote part of PNG, about the strengths and challenges of their country.

What they discovered was both fascinating and astonishing.

For example, people expressed concern for Australia’s ‘lack of respect’ for PNG sovereignty and culture.

And they thought China trumped Australia in its investment in infrastructure in PNG

The researchers also asked about people’s hopes for the future and what they thought the relationship between PNG and Australia.

This research, initiated by the Whitlam Institute, captured a wide cross-section of perspectives and experiences from grass roots citizens - voices rarely heard in official forums.

Overall, respondents were largely positive about Australia, widely praising Australia’s role in supporting PNG financially.

However, concerns about Australia’s perceived lack of respect for PNG sovereignty and cultural norms, were also expressed.

Significantly, China won out over Australia as the country perceived as investing the most in infrastructure in PNG.

On Thursday 28 April, a Zoom conference will be held to discuss the outcomes of this research and its implications.

The conference will start at 5pm, and you can register to participate at the Whitlam Institute here: info@whitlam.org

Papua versus New Guinea c 1963 - in the 1960s the biggest event on the PNG sporting calendar

WARREN ‘WAZZA’ TURNER

PORT MACQUARIE – I came across ‘The hard men of the Papuan rugby league’, a brief memoir PNG Attitude ran in 2007 and it locked me into 20 minutes of going down memory lane reflecting on rugby league in Port Moresby in the 1960s.

I played for Kone Tigers in 1963, '64 and early '65 before the Education Department posted me to Kerema.

A bloke couldn’t get much of a game down there but, in any event, I was intending to go pinis towards the end of that final year.

I’d always been a fan of Kone Tigers, mainly due to my Dad, Fred (‘Fearless Fred’) Turner, who at various times probably held every position on the committee from the late 1950's to his death in 1977.

During my first year of competition in the Papuan League, I thoroughly enjoyed my Reserve Grade exploits with players like Geoff Drake, Dada Toka, Mick Duffy, Cliff Southwell, Bernard, John Wood, Wara Wele, Bruce Fields, Graham Corling and Dick Gilbert (before he went up to glory in First Grade).

Theirs are the names I recall among many others who’ve slipped my memory.

I do remember – and with trepidation – the day in 1963 when I was called up to First Grade to fill in for the injured No 7, the famous Eddie Bampton.

I think the game was against DCA and I was marking David ‘Darby’ Hibbard, who passed away here in Port Macquarie some years back.

It was the first of three occasions for me in First Grade that year. The second was against Hawks, where I filled in for Mick Eaton against John Oberdorf and the third time I was playing five-eighth against Paga, I think filling in for an injured Dale Gooding.

In that encounter I recall coming up against a school mate of mine, Willie Luk (son of the famous Koki tailors, the Luk Poy Wai family.

I was lucky enough to play most of the 1964 season in First Grade alongside Geoff Drake, Eddie Bampton, Dale Gooding, John Kaputin, Brian King, Wara Wele, Alua Mana and Ron Julien.

As a youngster, I’d been fortunate to have a number of mentors in the hurly-burly of Moresby rugby league, primarily Mum & Dad, Zena and Fred, as well as Bev & Eric Baumgartner (he’d been a former Queensland junior representative and premiership winning player with Kone in 1959 and 1960).

Joan and Eddie Bampton, Ron Hawthorne, Mick Duffy, 'Speed' McLeod, Merv McGregor, Dick Gilbert, Ron Southwood and Ian Skinner also assisted me along the way.

I remember well the infamous Friday night riot when we played an undefeated Paga.

A scuffle broke out under the goal posts and suddenly hundreds of spectators ran onto the field, believing my second row team-mate, Alua Mana, had been on the brunt of unfair treatment from Paga fullback, Cliff Hopper.

Linesman Ron McDowell was trying to use his little wooden flag to dispense justice and disperse the now milling hordes.

It was all in the dark, as the PRL in their wisdom felt it best to switch off the ground lights.

Anyway, the game was called off, which was disappointing as we were leading 10-nil at the time (and likely to go to 12-0 if Eddie converted Alua's try under the posts).

It looked highly likely that we would inflict Paga's first defeat for 1964. Not to be.

Program cover for the 1964 Papua versus New Guinea matches

In 1963 I travelled to Lae and in 1964 to Rabaul for the two-yearly Papua v New Guinea clashes.

They were definite highlights for a youngster – travelling for representative matches with plane loads of players, support staff and supporters.

Another highlight was the end-of-season trip with DCA to Mareeba in North Queensland.

And I remember distinctly, although I probably shouldn’t, a pub crawl in Cairns with the two DCA props, one of whom I think was Billy Baker, a brewer at Moresby's famous SP Brewery.

Anyway we survived and I don't know how many of the possible 32 pubs that Cairns boasted at the time we managed to have a beer in, but I vaguely remember falling in love the daughter of the owner of the Criterion Hotel.

Upon my return to Moresby, Dad was not very happy with rumours circulating that I was going to accept an offer to join DCA the following year.

A highlight for many people, and especially the Kone Tigers fraternity, was the presentation to Eddie Bampton on 31 July 1964 to mark his 100th appearance for Kone, the first time it had happened in the history of the Papuan Rugby League.

During those years, a number of younger players from all the clubs formed a team of Papuan Colts and played a similar New Guinea team in Popondetta.

The following year we played a team of secondary and high school league players, the Southern Mustangs, students who were back home on holidays from down south.

Three tests had to be played. The Colts won the first and the Mustangs the second.

I was contacted in Kereme to fly in and give the Colts a helping hand and this was reported in the Post-Courier, although I think it was still the South Pacific Post then, that I was flying from Kerema to join the Colts line-up.

As luck would have it, the article was read by one Bernie Westmore, a senior administrator in the Education Department.

Evidently he’d seen my leave application and I was instructed to attend his office as soon as I landed in Moresby.

Dad saved my skin by explaining to Westmore that I had gone through the correct channels and my leave approved by the District Education Officer in Kerema, Nev Dachs.

Nevertheless it was an unnerving experience to be carpeted by this articulate, fearsome, balding bow-tie wearing post-war administrator.

Crowd at a 1969 game - grounds were always packed wherever rugby league was played

As I mentioned in a comment yesterday, my wife and I were honoured to have dinner with Leila and John Kaputin here in Port Macquarie in 2017. He was a top athlete and became a prominent diplomat for Papua New Guinea on the world stage.

If you can add to my store of memories drop a line in the Comments section below. I’m really looking forward to reading some of your rugby league stories from those grand old days.

Manasseh Sogavare, Kurt Campbell and Lieutenant General Stephen Sklenka, deputy commander of the US Indo-Pacific command

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA - Following what he described as a friendly and productive meeting on Friday, Solomon Islands prime minister Manasseh Sogavare said his country and the US were committed to strengthen their relations by working together on issues of mutual concern.

Sogavare said he had warmly welcomed Kurt Campbell, the United States coordinator for Indo–Pacific affairs, and his delegation and welcomed the US decision to re-establish an embassy in Honiara.

Campbell reassured Sogavare that the US is back in the Solomons and that it “will do better” while committing to do more in the country.

But a White House statement warned that Washington would have "significant concerns and respond accordingly" to any steps to establish a permanent Chinese military presence in the Pacific island nation.

The delegation had noted that "if steps are taken to establish a de facto permanent military presence, power-projection capabilities, or a military installation, the United States would have significant concerns and respond accordingly."

“We have no say on the Solomon Islands-China agreement,” Campbell said.

“We respect Solomon Islands sovereign decision. There is no misunderstanding.”

Sogavare said that talk of a military base had been misinformation promoted by critics of his government.

He said the Solomon Islands–China Security Cooperation agreement is not about China establishing a military base in Solomons but about supporting the state to address internal security threats.

“It is not directed at any external security interest,” he said. “The security pact complements other bilateral and regional security arrangement Solomon Islands is a party to.”

The South China Morning Post commented that, despite Sogavare's reassurances, "the security pact is seen as a major inroad for China in the Pacific – where the Solomon Islands occupy a strategic position – and troubles other Pacific powers as well.

'These include Japan, New Zealand and especially Australia, which pressed the Solomon Islands to scrap the deal."

Sogavare also acknowledged the recent signing of the US Millennium Challenge Corporation threshold program which is a major measure that will assist Solomons become eligible to enter a compact with the US to provide large five-year grants to reduce poverty through economic growth.

Campbell also said the US will provide more assistance to assist remove unexploded World War II ordnance, provide medical support and Covid vaccines and reopen the Peace Corps program.

It will also look at expanding the $US25 million Strengthening Competitiveness, Agriculture, Livelihoods and Environment (SCALE) program to provinces beyond Malaita.

These programs had been under discussion for some time and there had been anxiety in the Solomons that the US would renege on them.

Campbell acknowledged Sogavare’s outstanding leadership through the many challenges facing the young nation.

The two states said their officials will meet in September to advance identified areas of cooperation.

Source: Solomons Prime Minister’s Press Secretariat; Reuters; South China Morning Post; US White House, Washington

Markham Valley, New Guinea, 5 September 1943. Screened by dense smoke, paratroopers of 503 US Paratroop Infantry Regiment and gunners of 2/4th Australian Field Regiment with 25 pounder guns land unopposed at Nadzab during the advance on Lae by the 7th Australian Division

COLONEL ARTHUR BURKE

BRISBANE - ‘Jump, you bastards, jump!’ Ian George (Robbie) Robertson exited badly and plummeted head first downwards.

Then he heard a loud crack and was wrenched upright and upwards. His parachute snapped open and blossomed in the cool air.

For only the second time in his life, this young soldier experienced the exhilaration of floating above the earth.

For several minutes, it was difficult to believe he was in the middle of a war.

“And this is my first time into action,” he mused.

Gunner Robbie Robertson (VX 50978) had just jumped into history -- one of 31 young Australian artillerymen who parachuted with two artillery pieces into New Guinea’s Nadzab airstrip in support of the 503rd US Parachute Infantry Regiment’s advance to secure the landing ground to support the Allied advance eastwards to capture Lae.

But this was no time to be daydreaming. Two hundred meters was not that high and now the ground was rushing up to greet the young paragunner.

Stop any oscillation, grab the shrouds and turn into the wind, feet together, knees slightly bent and –‘Oh, what the hell were the other two steps?’ he muttered.

Then he was down, rolling, smacking the release buckle and lying still - it was over. He leapt to his feet and was guided through head-high kunai grass by Lieutenant Pearson’s voice on the megaphone.

Johnnie Pearson gathered his flock around a cane pannier from which they drew their weapons then allocated search arcs to find the pieces of the guns and other equipment.

Only Gunner Lidgerwood had been injured in the drop, unfortunately landing in a tree and hurting his shoulder.

Sixty years ago this was the Markham Valley on Sunday, 5 September 1943.

At 10.15 am, six squadrons of US Mitchell B–25 strafers led an armada of 302 aircraft.

Each aircraft’s eight .50–calibre machine guns swept the carpet of kunai grass ahead of their bays disgorging 60 fragmentation bombs.

Six A–20s then obscured the scene with smoke and at 600 metres 96 voices screamed, “Stand up! Lock up! Check your equipment! Stand in the door… jump!”

The C–47 transports (better known postwar as DC3s) spawned three battalions of US ‘Sky Soldiers’.

On each side of the columns of C–47s and about 300 meters feet above, fighters hugged their protégés whilst brother aircraft at 2,000 meters provided an interim umbrella below the top cover boys up in the sun, staggered from 4,500 to 6,000 meters.

The securing force had been launched for the 7th Australian Division’s air landing.

Sergeant Wally Murnane and his detachment were the first to find a complete set of gun parts.

Their squat little baby 25-pounder Short was quickly assembled and brought into action.

“Hit the ground!” somebody screamed as an ammunition box that had broken loose from its parachute load hurtled over their heads and crashed into the grass nearby.

It was 3.15 pm and two Fortresses were delivering 192 rounds to fuel the hungry guns.

It was hard to believe that less than a month ago, Lieutenant Pearson had approached Gunner Robertson, his friend from the reinforcement ship that had taken them both to join the 2/4th Field Regiment AIF in the Middle East in September 1941.

“Robbie,” he confided, “There’s a delicate mission coming off… I can’t tell you about it, but would you like to volunteer?”

The duo had arrived in Syria too late to see action. The months of waiting on the Brisbane Line when their unit had been recalled to Australia had whetted their appetites for their slice of the war.

Robbie was a good signaller and visions of a submarine drop behind enemy lines began running through his mind. “OK!” he said, “Count me in.”

Back at Nadzab strip, a new challenge faced the 2/4th’s Light Section - fire.

The Americans, desiring to enlarge the airstrip quickly, had chosen to burn the kunai grass rather than cut it by hand.

Fanned by the breeze, this was soon out of control and only the bushmanship of some of the Gunners saved their position from being destroyed.

In truth, the Gunners were quite disappointed that the landing had been unopposed by the Japanese and their Shorts had not been called in to support.

In response to General Thomas Blamey’s 30 July 1943 instruction for the capture of Lae–Nadzab, Lieutenant General Edmund Herring, commander of New Guinea Force, ordered the 9th Division to capture Lae from an amphibious landing east of Lae whilst the 7th Division was to establish itself in the Markham Valley west of Lae by an overland and airborne operation.

The 503rd US Parachute Infantry Regiment was to secure Nadzab for the 7th Division’s 25th Brigade to air land then advance east to Lae.

On 8 August 1943, the commanding officer of the 2/4th Field Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Alan Blyth was ordered to support 25th Brigade.

He approached Major General George Vasey commanding 7 Division and proposed parachuting a two–gun section of the new 25 Pounder Shorts to support the 503rd Regiment. Since the Americans did not have any guns suitable for para-drops, Vasey agreed.

That first night all the para-gunners gathered around Murnane’s gun and stores. (The second gun’s parts had been scattered about a mile away and it was not until the second day that Sergeant Jimmy Thompson and his crew brought it into action.)

Robertson describes their utter exhaustion by nightfall and how they “slept like the dead in silken parachutes” after enjoying the luxury of American rations that night.

Early next morning Robbie and Lieutenant Frank Ross joined a forward US company and they moved into the hills to Gabsonkek as a blocking force against attack from the north.

“We only fired two gun rounds at a Japanese pill box,” Ian recalled.

Lieutenant Frank Faulkner and a signaller joined the 2/2nd Pioneer Battalion protecting the southern flank.

When Robertson reported to his battery headquarters as directed by Lieutenant Pearson, he was part of a group “coming from all directions… even two of the blokes from my own tent were there, but none of us had disclosed our secret orders,” Robbie recalled.

The Commanding Officer had selected four lieutenants (Johnnie Pearson, Frank Ross, Frank Faulkner and ‘Puck’ Evans) and invited them to choose about ten “good all round men” from each of their batteries.

Then began a week of tough physical training - forced marches, running along the beach, climbing ropes, tumbling.

Next the men were told to parade with their gear and were spirited off in trucks.

Only as they entered the lines of the 503rd US Parachute Infantry Regiment did they begin to realise what might be in store for them.

Ross and Robertson’s company north of Nadzab began patrolling.

Captain Don Moorhouse had arrived overland with the 2/2nd Pioneer Battalion and supplies of signal cable.

Robbie was flat out laying miles of line back to the guns when a cheerful officer walking by made a remark to him about Short 25 Pounders.

Ian looked straight up into the eyes of the 7 Division commander. General George Vasey told him he was “doing a good job”, encouraged him to “keep it up” and then wandered off along the track, completely alone.

When Lieutenant Pearson reported to Colonel Kinsella, commander of the 503rd Regiment, the latter was amazed that the Gunners did not know their mission.

He insisted on addressing them and offered an ‘out’ for anyone to withdraw. “Not one man took a pace out of the ranks,” Robbie recalls proudly.

Twenty-four hours of hard training later, 33 would-be para-gunners made their first jump from 360 meters at the 30-mile airstrip outside Port Moresby.

“An horrendous feeling” crept over Gunner Robertson and he “had to pluck up his utmost of courage” as he moved into the doorway in acknowledgement of ‘Stand in the door!’ yelled by the jumpmaster.

The battery commander and observer parties from 54th Battery and E Troop guns arrived on 8 September and 25th Brigade stepped off for Lae.

The Light Section of para-gunners did not take part in this advance but remained in support of 503rd Regiment who continued to maintain a secure perimeter around Nadzab as it built up into a major base. Lae fell to the 7th Division on 16 September 1943.

Three men, including Lieutenant Evans were injured in the one and only practice jump at the Port Moresby Airfield.

Lieutenant Alan Clayton volunteered to replace Evans and jump straight into action with the other 30 ‘experienced’ para-gunners.

Their journey to the intermediate Tsili Tsili airstrip on ‘Z’ Day was uneventful. Their frustration mounted during a two–hour wait for a call forward which did not eventuate until the 2IC of the 503rd landed in his light aircraft and said, “What are you doing still here? -- GO!”

The Douglas transports roared into life and during the ten–minute hop to Nadzab climbed to 180 meters.

The red light came on above the jumpmaster. “Stand up! Lock up! Check your equipment! Stand in the door!”

The light went green…. “Jump, you bastards, jump!”

Retired Colonel Arthur Burke was Honorary Historian of the 4th Field Regiment RAA. He dedicated this article to the four officers and 27 soldiers who were the first Australian Gunners to parachute into action in the South-West Pacific theatre of World War II on 5 September 1943

Japanese troops manhandle a field gun along the Kokoda Trail (Painting by U Ikara)

ROB BARCLAY
| Writer, Artist, Former Patrol Officer

MELBOURNE – For eons the 96 kilometre Port Moresby to Kokoda bush track was used by the superbly fit local people who, encountering difficult terrain obstacles, climbed right over them.

The patrol post at Kokoda was established by Captain CAW Monckton (1873-1936), the “tough, efficient, quick-witted and ruthless” magistrate and explorer.

New Zealand-born Monckton spent 12 eventful years (1895-1907) in Papua, then a British colony, never hesitating to use force to subdue warring tribes in the process of bring peace and justice to the region he administered.

It was a mission to protect miners in the Yodda Valley goldfields that resulted in the establishment of the Kokoda patrol post.

Monckton’s task was to investigate the disappearance without trace of 50 miners walking to Yodda from Moresby.

Bleached bones were found scattered about in the jungle, but Monckton found no evidence of cannibalism.

He also didn’t stop attacks on miners, as others vanished later in similar circumstances.

Some contemporaries admired Monckton as a “fearless fighting man”; others deplored his readiness to use a gun

In 1906 Monckton made the first recorded ascent of Mt Albert Edward, at 3,990 metres one of Papua New Guinea’s highest peaks.

He also had a mountain named after him – Mt Monckton in Oro Province, estimated elevation 2,561 metres.

It was this same area and on the same track Monckton tramped that was the scene for the second of Australia’s most memorable military exploit – Kokoda.

Going to war shorta everything

At the outbreak of the war with Japan in 1941, the Australia was Shorta - shorta money, shorta ships, shorta planes and shorta trained soldiers.

Australia had sent 20,000 troops to North Africa to fight the Germans and Italians (3,000 were killed) and, while recruitment and training were proceeding apace, there were scant numbers left to deploy when the Japanese attack on New Guinea began in January 1942.

Sergeant Bruce Kingsbury VC charges the Japanese line (Painting by Rob Barclay)

But Australia had to defend its two northern colonies of Papua and New Guinea.

So a makeshift force comprising Melbourne’s 39th militia and Sydney’s 53rd militia sailed for Port Moresby and in June 1942 joined the Papuan Infantry Battalion to form Maroubra Force.

It was said that the Australian units were so ragtag that some were forcibly signed up on Sydney’s streets and frogmarched to a waiting ship.

Most of these militia men were under 20 years old and derided as ‘chocolate soldiers’ by the battle-hardened AIF troops who later joined them from North Africa, brought home as the Japanese Imperial Army with little resistance ploughed across New Guinea.

Arriving from North Africa and the Middle East, the troops were dressed in lightweight khaki and had only basic weaponry.

But the Australian commander, General Thomas Blamey, seemed unconcerned that they froze in the rain and were easy targets in the jungle.

And the Japanese weren’t the only enemy; dysentery and malaria were also to claim many casualties.

Landing of the Japanese marines at Gona with Japan's South Seas Force commander, Lieutenant General Tomitaro Horii, and his horse Colonel Tojo  (Painting by Rob Barclay)

On 23 July 1942, not long after Maroubra Force had been formed in Port Moresby, 2,000 crack Japanese troops landed at Gona, about 200 km from Moresby over the Owen Stanley Range and the Kokoda Trail.

The Japanese troops were equipped with specialised heavy jungle weaponry and heir green-camouflage made them almost invisible.

As they advanced, the Australians fell back, torching Kokoda – but later retaking the town.

Although knowing their troops were surrounded, headquarters in Brisbane initially refused to airdrop supplies, forcing the garrison to be abandoned again.

When the commanders came to their senses two days later, it was the Japanese who were grateful for the parachuted supplies. It had been their turn to reoccupy Kokoda.

That bloody, muddy Kokoda trail

Corporal Sanopa of the Papuan Infantry Battalion (Painting by Rob Barclay)

Corporal Sanopa of Buna led 75 troops to safety in the black jungle night. He was awarded the Loyal Service Medal.

His ex-police Papuan Infantry Battalion, numbering 300, officered mainly by former patrol officers, won one Military Cross, 4 Military Medals, one Distinguished Service Order, and 24 Loyal Service medals.

Sergeant Bruce Kingsbury charged into the advancing Japanese, killing 30 with his Bren gun and scattering the rest. A sniper shot him.

He was later posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross, and is remembered with a monument at the start of Mt Dandenong’s ‘1,000 Kokoda Steps’ walk.

Generals Blamey and Douglas MacArthur in Brisbane wondered why the Kokoda Gap wasn’t sealed off for good. Apparently nobody told them the Gap was three miles wide.

There was much suffering and many unnecessary casualties caused by trying to run the campaign by remote control from Brisbane.

The track soon degenerated into glutinous mud – some of the exhausted troops collapsed, became trapped and had to be helped out.

Any attempt to bypass the mess by struggling through the adjacent impenetrable undergrowth met with disorientation and myriads of ferocious biting insects.

Maggots were routinely left in soldiers’ wounds so they could eat away the putrid flesh.

Dysentery was rife, causing the troops to rip off the back of their shorts in an effort to ignore the constant streams of blood and mucus, their underpants long since discarded in an attempt to avoid the maddeningly-itchy groin fungus.

Manically scratching insect bites caused gaping tropical ulcers that could only be cured by antibiotics, which had just been invented and were unavailable, or scraping out. Untreated these ulcers would eat their way to the bone.

Feet and boots rotted in the steamy conditions. It was not uncommon for half the foot tissue to come off when boots were finally removed.

Virulent skin funguses were made worse by troops too exhausted to wash regularly in streams.

The incessant cold rain caused pneumonic complaints, impossible to treat in the field. The virtual starvation of troops in the nine-week campaign caused massive weight loss -  an average 76 kilo soldier lost 30 kilos.

One soldier had most of his leg blown off. The stump was tied with dressings and a copra sack, and crawled for three days refusing all help. “There are many worse off than me,” he said. He was tough and he survived.

Imita Ridge was the final titanic struggle. The troops who had been condemned to fight along the Kokoda Trail threw everything at the Japanese in this initially indecisive battle.

Fortune favours the brave

So three months later, in September 1942, the Australians’ luck changed.

By now the capacity of the Japanese force was failing because over-stretched supply lines had robbed it of munitions and other supplies. Some units were starving.

The Japanese were ordered to withdraw and establish defensive positions on Papua’s north coast.

The Australians harried them all the way back across the Owen Stanleys. Cannibalism was suspected amongst some Japanese.

A much reduced force made it back to Gona; few of the troops ever saw Japan again.

And during the retreat, the commander of the South Seas Force that had taken New Guinea, Lieutenant General Tomitaro Horii was drowned when a raft he was using to get to Gona faster was swept out to sea.

It is said that many of his staff and his prized stallion, ‘Colonel Tojo’, had already drowned trying to cross the Kumasi River.

A campaign desperate & vicious

Kokoda Memorial Monument, Ferntree Gully, Victoria (Photo - Graeme Saunders)

The Kokoda campaign came at heavy cost to combatants and non-combatants alike.

Some 625 Australians were killed, 1,600 wounded and more than 4,000 were afflicted with disease. More than 150 Papua New Guineans died as members of the Papuan Infantry Battalion or as porters along the Kokoda Track.

The toll on the Japanese invaders was much worse – over 10,000 died.

Of the 550 Australians in the 2/14^th Battalion, only 73 remained. And Melbourne’s 39th militia, which had done such magnificent work but had been heavily criticised by General Blamey, was disbanded with no recognition or battle honours.

Only seven officers and 25 other ranks remained of the original 1,666 members. The primeval tropical rainforest and its diseases had accounted for as many casualties as combat.

Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Honner was awarded the DSO and Military Cross for turning the mainly teenage boys into an effective fighting force.

And it is recognised that the campaign could have been lost without the help of the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels. That is a debt that can never be repaid.

And a brief return to the present

These days, enterprising villagers have turned the endless stream of Kokoda pilgrims into a lucrative cottage industry, with many comfort stops and rest houses along the way.

The track has been upgraded, although not nearly enough and with little regard to facilities as Captain Charlie Lynn has often observed to deaf bureaucratic ears.

At every landmark along the 96 km track, the guides these days provide harrowing accounts of the detail of war and suffering.

Obliging porters, descendants in spirit if not in bloodline of the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels, carry backpacks, and offer piggyback rides across the many streams.

War cemetery, Bomana near Port Moresby

A recent pilgrim reported that those trekkers tired of the sweaty trudging and huffing and puffing, can - by making a substantial donation – be borne triumphantly along the track like medieval potentates in makeshift sedan chairs.

Back then, wounded soldiers crawled along that track. But this is the 21st century, and the real Kokoda was 80 years ago.

John Guise - "The first Papuan to make a political mark and a true pioneer of nationhood"

DON WOOLFORD
| AAP Archive | 28 August 2012

SYDNEY - A little-known role of the most remarkable Papuan of his generation should be recalled during the commemorations marking the 70th anniversary of the battle of Milne Bay - Japan's first defeat on land in World War II.

John Guise, the first Papuan to make a political impact, didn't mind a bit of boasting, especially if it involved cricket and the unbeaten 253 he once smashed which was, and may still be, a record for Milne Bay first grade.

When profiled after he became speaker of the House of Assembly in 1968, he didn't want to talk about his war.

He did, however, suggest speaking to Ian McDonald, who was then chairman of the territory's Copra Marketing Board.

McDonald had been Guise's boss in the Australia New Guinea Administrative Unit (ANGAU), which Guise joined as a signals clerk soon after it was set up in 1942 to provide a skeleton civil administration in the unoccupied parts of PNG. It also had quasi-military responsibilities.

On the night of 25 August 1942, the Japanese began their invasion of Milne Bay.

Guise was sent, in an open dinghy, through 32km of heavy seas, to tell the bayside villagers to douse their lights.

He then safely returned through the ships and landing barges of the advancing Japanese.

"The Japs were relying on the village lights to guide their attack," McDonald said.

"But John had done his job well. They landed three to four miles (5-6 km) off course and this made a big difference to us."

After the war Guise, who was born in 1914, went from strength to strength.

He was elected to the first House of Assembly in 1964 and became speaker after his re-election.

He was a cabinet minister during the self-government period and, at independence in 1975, became PNG's first governor-general. He died in 1991.

Michael Somare, with whom he had a testy relationship, is regarded in PNG as the father of the nation.

But Guise, 22 years older, was, as the first Papuan to make a political mark, a true pioneer of nationhood.

And his exploit 70 years ago in the dark waters of Milne Bay is a reminder of the hugely important role played by civilians in the New Guinea campaigns.

The ANGAU officers operating and dying behind enemy lines, the extraordinary Coastwatchers and the thousands of Papua New Guineans recruited, and in some cases press-ganged, as bearers.

It was much more than a soldiers' war.

WITH THANKS TO ARTHUR SMEDLEY FOR PROVIDING PNG ATTITUDE WITH DON WOOLFORD’S WORDS ON SIR JOHN GUISE

The Guise Interview

The following undated interview with Sir John Guise, probably broadcast by the ABC in conjunction with Independence Day in 1975, stands as a testament to Guise's perceptiveness and understanding of the new country and its governance. In it he says: "What is necessarily good for Australia cannot be necessarily good for Papua New Guinea and I think that we should have a system of government which is suitable to the needs of the country in order to create political stability" - KJ

Battling nature to serve – a true leader

New prime minister Michael Somare and new governor-general John Guise, PNG Independence Day, 1975

JACK McCARTHY

“McCarthy’s credentials establish him at once as one of that now vanishing breed, a New Guinea ‘Old Timer’. He arrived in 1935, tried his hand at all kinds of work, fought the Japs at Milne Bay, Nadzab and Kokoda, and has since become, through the medium of Papua-New Guinea Times-Courier, an ‘expert’ on everything New Guinean” - Chris Ashton, The Bulletin, 3 July 1971. This article by McCarthy dates to about this time - KJ

PORT MORESBY - Take a sprawling mass of mountains, mainland and islands with settlements and villages tucked away in difficult spots; mix it with 10 times more ocean than land and turn loose all the wind, water, rain and heat, that’s possible.

This is typical of the Alotau electorate, a rough, undeveloped area, similar in many respects to most electorates, and one which calls for the dedicated services of a House of Assembly Member to represent it.

Dr John Guise is the elected Member for Alotau, a man of 57 who has been faithful to his trust as a people’s representative since his first election way back in 1961 for the old Legislative Council.

He has now completed 10 successive years as a parliamentarian and although he has been elected Speaker, his greatest responsibility is still to the people who have continued to elect him.

“Ever since my election in 1961, it has been my solemn duty to visit the whole of my electorate and all the villages,” he said recently.

“I have kept to this philosophy and will continue to do so.”

Asked if his position as Speaker affected his movements as an elected Member, he replied: “No. Not to any great extent. I have certain commitments, but I have maintained visits to my people as regularly as possible.”

This is a record that not all Members can claim.

In 1968 he was able to make only one complete visit; in 1969 he made six trips; in 1970 there were eight, and this year, during January, he has just returned from his first visit for 1971 and will be doing two more within the next four weeks.

Each visit, depending on the weather and the time available, takes from two to three weeks.

He charters his own boat which is an expensive affair.

“If a Member carries out his duties to the electors and visits them regularly and conscientiously then he will be out of pocket,” he said, although each Member receives an allowance.

“It becomes an expensive business when you have no private resources.”

For John Guise, it is a full-time job one can make only a rough estimate of the cost as he receives only an open Member’s allowance and has no occupation other than Speaker.

He was the one man who didn’t benefit in the recent increase of Ministerial salaries.

On this last trip, I accompanied him intermittently – initially in an 18ft, diesel-powered launch which bobbed about like a cork; then, for two days, at Alotau during the Whitlam visit, and finally at Samarai; as he was preparing for his second leg.

The determination of the man to complete what was an extremely tight schedule was obvious and travelling in a small, rather uncomfortable boat, showed his sincerity of purpose.

“I have sent word ahead to meet the people and see the leaders and I cannot fail them,” he told me looking tired after many late nights and a rough passage, sailing in the moonlight to meet small groups on outlying islands and setting off again at first light.

“It got rougher outside and we were almost swamped twice,” he said, mentioning a patch of water between Basilaki Island and East Cape which is wide, open ocean, but he said little of other discomforts.

This is travelling pre-war style — small boat, small engine, a lot of hope that the weather holds good, a bush house to camp, rice, meat and fish for food, meetings to hold, advice to the people, then tie your sleeping mat together and off to the next island.

“I want to talk to as many people as possible, meet the councillors in their villages, hear their hopes and troubles, advise and help and explain what work we are doing in Port Moresby to aid them,” he said.

Here is a mixture of grassroots politics and saltwater flavored with endurance and hardship.

But he likes it that way.

One can judge its effects from the reception he gets all along the route.

At Gurney we got out of the plane and he was surrounded by people wishing him well.

At Lavian, in a moonlit setting of a forest clearing with 400 people gathered to greet Mr Whitlam, he was listened to with respect.

In Alotau, there were talks and discussions and people waiting to see him.

At Garuwau, where he attended an arts festival of the people and chaired a meeting on social-political development, they greeted him as a brother.

The north-east coast is John Guise’s home ground — he was born at Wedau — and the language of his people, Tavara, is spread over most of Milne Bay.

You hear it on the islands of Sidea and Basilaki and all along the north-east coast.

He has clansmen, brothers and warawaras in abundance, with everybody a relative or friend, and he is most interesting when time permits him to talk of old traditional relationships, the clans and individuals who form, by birth and marriage, one homogenous group whose members turn up in unexpected places.

This is the real John Guise, a man of the people, a connection he has never forsaken, and they respond to him more as a brother than as their political leader.

He is one of the handful of native leaders whose influence has been sustained for more than quarter of a century.

It extends throughout the whole of the country from the muddy delta regions of the Fly and Sepik Rivers, along the north New Guinea coast, in the central backbone of the high mountain country, out in the islands and all along the soft, lush littoral belt of Papua.

A lot of his reputation has been built through his political activities, but in the Central, Northern and Milne Bay Districts his name stands as something that represents solidity and is accepted by the mass of people with reliance in one who can voice their unspoken desires.

Each day he receives more than 100 letters, the majority from his constituents, and invariably they start with, “My brother”.

He remains constant to his clan associations.

“We are the family whose duties were the Master of Ceremonies to the office of the Chief,” he tells you, and when he is moving among his own people you can see that, imperceptibly, this station is recognised.

They acknowledge him as a member of substance in their own society, unrelated to his present position in ours, and this will never alter because the clan system is too entwined in tradition to be brushed aside.

It is this, as well as the obligations of public office, that commands him to visit his peopleregularly, a summons which he always heeds, and in this lies his strength.

Two days back in Port Moresby and he is going out again to open a new local government council at Daga, to consult with another sector of his people, and then back to town once more to prepare for another electoral round.

This time it will include the farthest Western points of his electorate, Gadaisu, Konemaiawa, Dahuni, Bona Bona,. Fife Bay, the Engineer Group, and will end with the Milne Bay District Council Conference on February 25.

By-then, he must prepare for the next sitting of the House, to handle the demands from his own people, to send personal replies to all who have written him, which he insists on doing, and to officiate in the Assembly.

When he formally closes the sittings he will have until June to organise another itinerary, charter another boat, send word ahead to those who are waiting for him, and sail off into the Coral Sea — a solitary voyager obedient to his principles and the wishes of his people.

Dawn Service at McClaren Vale, 2014

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE – With Anzac Day in Australia drawing to a close for another year, I want to make an observation on the public attitude towards it.

I attended the dawn service at McLaren Vale today, along with about 500 others. As many people did, I wore my father's medals with a sense of pride and gratitude.

Dad's war service had been a mixture of sometimes quite intense comradeship interspersed with moments of extreme terror and distress.

Incredibly, he and his aircrew mates survived no less than four crash landings precipitated by a Japanese fighter attack, two catastrophic engine failures and a terrifying bomb 'hang up' which resulted in an explosion that severely damaged the plane.

There was no glory in this, just terror and an astounding amount of luck.

About 15% of the McClaren Vale population turned out for the service, suggesting that Anzac Day is still seen as important enough to be commemorated at a very inconvenient but symbolically significant early hour of the morning.

British, New Zealand and Australian flag bearers, Dawn Service, McClaren Vale,  2014

The service itself was simple and respectful. Those who spoke stressed not the supposed glory of war, but the self-sacrifice and suffering it entails and the gratitude we should all feel for those who have fought and died for our freedom. It was conspicuously devoid of even covert nationalist rhetoric.

I agree with Phil Fitzpatrick’s view that at least some people, notably politicians, have to some extent fetishised and hijacked Anzac Day, investing it with hyper-nationalistic symbolism.

I doubt this was the intent of those who originally came up with the idea, notably amongst them General Sir John Monash, who was anxious that the sacrifices and suffering of so many Australians during World War I, the so-called 'war to end all wars', not be forgotten.

For Monash it was not an event designed to foster nationalist feelings.

The Anzac landing has now faded into the distant past and has been mythologised to a great degree.

It was, in truth, never a significant battle and is as much a tale of heroic Turkish resistance to invasion as it is of the undoubted courage and endurance of the Anzacs.

The battle on the Kokoda Track is well known but its significance is largely misunderstood, probably because, at the time, it was regarded as a defeat.

Indeed, in an especially shameful performance, General Sir Thomas Blamey, castigated the survivors for “running like rabbits” and dismissed their commander, Brigadier Arnold Potts, for his alleged failure to prosecute the battle aggressively enough.

This was an act that was, at a minimum, unfair, churlish and ignorant.

It appears to have been done to placate United States General Douglas McArthur who, despite having no idea about the conditions or circumstances applying to the campaign, formed the view that Australian soldiers were poor types who could not fight.

Later, of course, both men would learn some ugly lessons about fighting in mountainous tropical jungles and swamps but they should not be spared severe criticism for their deplorable early behaviour towards men who, in fact, had fought one of the most brilliant and heroic fighting withdrawals of the entire war.

Anyway, that is all history now. But it seems to me Kokoda was a hugely more important battle than the attempted invasion of the Dardanelles by the Anzacs.

The result of the Dardanelles campaign was an unambiguous and costly defeat for the allies, with Turkey fighting on for the remainder of the war.

On the Kokoda Track, the Japanese were fought to a standstill and then driven back the way they had come. Never again would the Imperial Japanese Army haveny significant victory against allied troops.

Paul Keating has always argued that Kokoda ought to be the focus of Anzac Day, but few others seem to share his view.

I suppose that, in the end, it does not matter greatly. The troops involved in both battles suffered and died on our collective behalf and it is to their sacrifice that we owe our ability to live in a free and democratic society.

As the current war in Ukraine (Slava Ukraini!) is demonstrating, sacrifice in war is not something we can ever take for granted.

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA – Baka Bina has become the first author from Papua New Guinea to be shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize.

The Prize is awarded annually for the best piece of unpublished short fiction from any of the Commonwealth’s 54 member states.

Baka’s story, ‘Wonem Samting Kamap Long Mama’ (‘What Happened To Ma?’) was written in Tok Pisin and translated into English by the author.

It’s one of 26 stories shortlisted from 6,730 entries by an international judging panel that will now choose a winner from each of the five regions: Pacific; Africa; Asia; Caribbean; and Europe/Canada.

The five regional winners will be announced on Monday 23 May and the overall winner in June.

The other Pacific regional finalists are ‘Sarah Walker (Australia), Eleanor Kirk (Australia), Mary Rokonadravu (Fiji) and Shelley Burne-Field (New Zealand). Mary was a regional winner in 2015.

Baka's literary wall - designed for motivation and inspiration

Baka’s is one of two stories written in a language other than English; the other being written in Bangla, the national language of Bangladesh.

All the regional finalists’ stories will be published in adda, the online magazine of the Commonwealth Foundation, which features new writing from around the globe.

Baka Barakove Bina, 60, was born in Goroka and is the Assistant Registrar in Common Law working for the National Judiciary.

He is a Bachelor of Laws from the University of PNG and has a Diploma in Secondary Teaching (majoring in English) from Goroka Teachers College.

Baka is also a prolific author. His first short story was published by Oxford University Press and he has self-published a number of works on Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing.

“Bang, dammit!” Baka exclaimed when he opened the email and read that he’d been short listed.

“I was about to do my whoop,” he told me, “but I couldn't because the missus supposed to do the accompaniment wasn't there.

“And the girls in the outside office would have no idea of why Highlanders do whoops.

I was glad he didn't whoop, I'd previously been a victim of the whoop.

“But it would have been nice to rattle some of the many papers strewn around the office."

Rattle. I doubted rattle. It would have sent them flying - writs, subpoenas, summons, disclosures, judgements - as if swept along by the laurabada.

“I settled for a cup of coffee to fill up the bladder bag.”

Having recovered from that question, I asked Baka whether his story was related to a real life experience. I’ll let him take up the narrative.

Baka Bina on the art & toil of writing

Baka Bina and publisher Jordan Dean. Two of the anchors of PNG literature - snubbed by government, no money in it except your own but productive nonetheless

There is a backstory. As a child it never occurred to me why my mother would sometimes go away to live on her own at either the garden house or the pig's house.

Our garden at Sogopex is only a 10 minutes breezy walk away from the village and yet she would regularly stay a week or two away living in the garden house while Dad and we children would stay in the village house.

As kids, my sisters and I took it for granted that Ma would stay and at times sleep there so we organised our afternoons around that. It was just normal.”

It was only much later I realised what had been happening.

Ma stayed away from the village and away from people so she could manage her menstrual cycle.

The pads that we now know were non-existent in her time. Tradition dictated Ma self-isolate, self-quarantine, and live by herself for a few days.

So I thought, ‘What if she was not there in the garden?’ Is that a story?

I sat down to write and tried to infuse conjecture and imagination and came up with some scenarios I was able to capture in the story. This is how it went:

The kaukau in the fire hearth, that happens plenty of times as Ma knows we would visit her for our share of 'hauslain kaukau'. 

She would have cooked and roasted the kaukau ready for us when we visited her in the afternoons to pick a bilum of kaukau and firewood for the village.

The burnt-to-cinders kaukau and that there were no recently harvested kaukau for us were reasons enough to be worried.

Pigs on tethered leash were normal for us as we raised 'free ranging' pigs. However they were not tethered to be left out in the heat of the day so, if they had not moved, where was Ma?

The bloodied cloth was something a boy was never schooled in and that was a bit strange and confronting, although the shock to my sister-girl would have been less as she was being schooled in village biology lessons about women.

Aagh, the consequent upturned earth meant something was buried there….

Gosh, I'm telling a complete story to the back story – don’t want to do that!

I write a lot and always have plenty of ideas, drafts, storylines and even planned sequels to my novel ‘Sweet Garaiina Apo’ and second and third volumes of ‘Antics of Alonaa’.

I’ll still be writing for evermore in the future, if I can find the time.

Currently I am toying around with three works and they have been on the books since last year but I cannot find enough time to complete them.

I’ll tell you something about them:

‘A Farmer Buys a Wife’. I have a manuscript of 184 000 words and this story is epic, detailing the traditional process of parents’ involvement in finding a bride for their son - the Goroka way. 

It is a narration rather than an anthropological study and the aim is to take the reader for a walk through the process from start to finish when the bride is installed as a wife.

I wrote it - hand scribbled in four diary-type note books, snapped each page and sent it to my friend, Ed Brumby, in Melbourne who typed it for me.

Now I’m going over each page and rewriting it as a self-edit. It is sheer hard work when your vocabulary is limited.

How have I progressed on the self-edit bit?  At this time, only 20 out of 502 A4 pages so I'm not sure if I can ever complete this to send to my editor for his final look see before I decide to publish.

Tasol mi traim. It is eight years in the making and still going on.

Baka Bina yesterday - excited, exhilarated, a bit tired, and seeking more time to write

‘Jumo Jama Jumae Zymur’. This is the complete and unedited version of ‘Zymur’ - my first published work from Oxford University Press some 25 years ago.

This new version is print ready, waiting for drawings to be inserted before I publish it hopefully this year.

‘The Kutubu Run’.  A modern short story of misplaced scientific exploratory zeal in a dark traditional world where superstitions of 'sanguma' and 'stonmahn' reign. This I also hope to publish later this year.

Next: Baka’s shortlisted story, ‘Wonem Samting Kamap Long Mama’ (‘What Happened To Ma?’) and more on the Commonwealth Short Story Prize

Ishmael Toroama and James Marape sit at the top table as the PNG and Bougainville governments move a step closer to determining Bougainville independence

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA – The Papua New Guinea and Bougainville governments endorsed the Era Kone Covenant at a special meeting of their joint supervisory body in Port Moresby on Friday.

And Bougainville president Ishmael Toroama has spoken of his “moral responsibility to the people of Bougainville to ensure political independence is granted to Bougainville”.

The covenant brings together the outcomes of last year’s summits between the governments in Kokopo, Wabag and Port Moresby.

The covenant sets out the mechanism that the national parliament will adopt to ratify the results of the 2019 Bougainville referendum in which there was an astounding 99.7% vote for independence.

Friday’s meeting was attended by Toroama, prime minister James Marape of PNG as well as ministers and departmental heads of both governments.

Toroama commended the Marape government for its “unwavering support of the Bougainville peace process” and its “great foresight in understanding the historical context and the current political processes on the independence aspirations of the people of Bougainville”.

He said the meetings had “jointly developed a decisive path on the future political status of Bougainville”, nominating the agreement on timing (not before 2025, not later than 2027) and the roadmap for the ratification of the referendum results being pf particular importance.

Toroama said constitutional regulations will now be drafted to chart the course for the ratification of the referendum by the PNG parliament.

“I am hopeful that this will commence as soon as the conclusion of this special meeting,” he said.

Marape gave his assurance that his government will continue to work within the spirit of the peace agreement.

“I just want to assure Bougainville that it doesn’t matter who sits in this chair in three months’ time, the work for Bougainville has been set and the work we have set will continue on,” Marape said, alluding to imminent elections in PNG.

President Toroama showed he was ahead of the game by tabling draft constitutional regulations to be used as a baseline for further discussion.

“I would like to propose that our technical teams use my government’s proposed draft to immediately begin work on the constitutional regulations,” he said.

“I have a moral responsibility to the people of Bougainville and the 20,000 lives lost in the Bougainville Crisis to ensure political independence is granted to Bougainville.

“However, I understand that you also have a responsibility to the people of PNG to preserve the sovereignty of the nation.

“In spite of our differing views on Bougainville’s future political status I am grateful that we share a mutual respect for each other and our own views.

“I believe this trust and respect is the foundation of the progress we have achieved in the last 19 months.”

Baka Bina with fellow award-winning writers author Daniel Kumbon and poet Jimmy Drekore on an excursion to Gembogl from a literary convention in Kundiawa in the PNG Highlands, 2016

BAKA BARAKOVE BINA

NOOSA – Yesterday Baka Bina was announced as one of five Pacific regional finalists in the prestigious Commonwealth short story prize, the first Papua New Guinean to be thus honoured and chosen from 6,730 entries before the international judging panel. The original story is in Tok Pisin and PNG Attitude is delighted to be able to present this English version, translated by Baka himself, for our readers - KJ

________

'Iyeno!'

The afternoon chills followed the depression up and the sun was slowly setting to the west.  Soon it would sink behind the mountains to go to sleep.  I was very hungry when I looked down to see if I could find where mama would be.  I was wondering if she would be near here or at the far end of the garden. It was time to find out.

'Mama, Iyeno!' I also called out in Tok Ples.

I stood at the edge of break going down to the garden and called out softly.  I knew that you just needed to call softly and the call would float down the gully to where mama would be and she could discern my voice. 

There were no replies back up to me.  My stomach was now growling.

Where I was, it was the head of the garden and looked down the length of the garden in the depression.  I tried to think where will I find little things to eat to hold up my empty stomach.

I thought about the laulau trees and fruits across the fence in my cousin's garden.  I did not want to create any angst against me and Ma gets angry when we try to go there to help ourselves to the ripe laulau fruits.  I looked towards where the guava trees grew.  It was guava season but I knew there would be a few off seasonal ones out of sight amongst the leaves.  I will check out the tree.

There would be a lots of bananas trees and a lot of them would bear fruits but mum harvested and hid them in the bushes for them to ripen.  She kept of moving the spots she kept because I would get to them and each a good proportion of them.  I feel sorry for her.  When she wanted to market the bananas, she would find that she would not have enough to take them to the markets.  But we had plenty of banana trees and most times she would never run out of them.

I thought of the orange tree but there were not many on the tree.  I did count about fifteen fruits last week and I think Papa brought some home so I don't think any would be ready now.

At the bottom of the garden, there were some more guava trees and I will look them up with my pineapple plot.  I did see some heads of pineapples but I am not sure if they will be ripe now.

I moved down the track a bit more and I called out for mama again.  This time I raised my voice a bit higher.

'Mama!'

I waited a little and stared down the garden.  At the bottom of the garden I noticed a whiff of smoke go up.

Ah, there now, mama must be making a garden at that bottom side of the garden.  That was the area where dad had extended the fence for her to make the apa vegetable garden following the drain dip.

When the school ended, the three of us went to the village and Ma was not there, we knew that she was still at the garden house where she also kept pigs.  It is nearly a week now and she has not come to the village house.  When she has a lot of garden work she stays at the hauspik and tries to finish off all these gardening.  If it is not garden work, she will be stringing a new bilum. She would stay up all night to make bilums.

My name is Taluo and my two sisters are Dahne and Lottopesa.  I am in grade four and Dahne in grade two and Lotto in grade one.  We were all hungry as Ma did not send up our cooked kaukau in the morning.  Dahne tried cooking out breakfast on the open fire but they were all half cooked which we ate for breakfast.

I did not wait for my two sisters.  They were looking for pitpit canes as firewood  and when they have collected enough, they will bundle up and leave them by the side of the track and then follow me down.  That is part of their work to look for firewood for our house.

My job is to fetch water for the house.  We have two twenty litre containers for that.  I made a quick job of them from the stream where we collect water from a spring.  I fetched water in both of them and have brought them to the house.

I came past them and heard them talking in the bushes that were there on the way to our garden.

I ran down to the guava as looked amongst the few there but they were not ripe yet.

I cast my eyes towards Dad's sugar cane garden but I was scared to go pull out one cane of sugar.  Dad is always adamant that he will be the only one to cut any of his sugar canes.  That is his garden and he is always angry with any of us children wandering around there.

Pity me, I was famished but I must hold on.

I walked and search amongst the marretta trunks and spindly legs.  I checked the passion fruit vines to see if someone would have pulled on them to get at their fruits. 

I searched and collected five fruits that had ripened and fallen to the ground.  There were a few more still on the vines and I left them there.

I planted the passion fruit vine and made a law that we were not to get at the fruits still on the vine.  Every ripe fruit had to fall to the ground and then we collect them.  In this way the vines remained for a long time and bore many more fruits.  The fruits tasted better if they had fallen off the vines.  If they were harvested off the vines, they had a stinging pungent taste.

I opened up one of the fruits and ate the contents.  I wanted to get another one more but I thought of the two girls and left them there.  They will be pleased to see the fruits and won't feel bad towards me.  Besides they may be tempted to throw sticks at those ripe fruits still on the vines.

I looked up my small garden.  This was a small plot where I was practising my garden making skills.  I planted a few sugar canes, taro kongkongs and ginger.  At the edge of the few drains, I had lined them with apa vegetables.

Ma did not weed my garden and the grass was growing plentifully and faster.  I am thinking, come Saturday, I will not play in the village but come down to weed this garden.  I realised the end of the drains were also water logged.  It meant that I have to deepen the drains.

It would be much better if I asked Pa to help me.

I went down to the house.  The back of the house was inside the garden and the door was set outside.  I jumped over the fence to get out of the garden.

I called out again for Ma.

'Iyeno!'

The banana leaves used as a secondary door and curtains and called mehe was still in place on the door.  Ma had not yet come to the house.  I looked up at the sun.  It has gone past the time when Ma is usually at the hauspik.  When she is there we know that she will be preparing dinner in her motona wooden drum oven.

I saw that whiff of smoke at the bottom of the garden.  Ma must be there.  I jumped back into the garden and I also heard the two girls run down the incline inside the garden.

I went past the coffee garden when I heard them call out for Ma and me.

'Mama!'

'Taluo!'

'Oi', I replied

'I am standing next to the fence and was eating tree tomatoes.  I had three fruits only as they went sour on me so I left the rest on the trees for you two and am waiting.'

They knew where the tree tomato plants grew and ran towards it looking for me.  They held their passion fruits in the hands.

'Who said you could have a passion fruit first.  When you do that, the tree tomatoes will go sour and you will not like it.  You see, we are still holding onto our passion fruits.'

'I know but I have a very hungry stomach and I forgot.  I have left some fruits still on the tree for you two girls.  You two get them and then we go looking for Ma.'

The girls picked of the ripe fruits off the tree and put them in their bilums before we ran down.

We went over to the cleared spot and looked around.  There were no signs of Ma.

'Mama!'

We all called out at the same time.

There were no replies.  Ma, a lot of times would not reply.  Instead if she had a spade or Amuto digging stick, she would bang them against stones or whack the kaukau mounds.  We called one more time and then kept quiet to see if we could hear her queer replies.

There were no noises and the bigger of the girls, Dahne left to check the tree stump where the smoke was coming out from.

Ma had piled on all the roots of trees and had burnt them.  Dahne dug a stick into the ashes and tried to see if Ma had put any kaukau into them.

I went over to my pineapple plot and found a pineapple head that was half ripe.  I broke this off and held it in my hands.

The little Lottopesa went up onto the ridge line next to the garden and in a loud voice call for Ma this side of the garden and over the ridge.  It was the time of the year when the moson tree sent up new shoots and she would be there harvesting these new shoots.

'Mama!  Mama O!'

There were no replies.

She slid down the incline.

I stood with Dahne and watched her pull out eight kaukau from the ashes.  Two of these were burnt black like the back of saucepans.  There is no way we could eat those kaukaus.  The other six, the other half of each of them, one side of them were burnt but the other side was a bit okay.  Dahne gave us two each to Lottopesa and me and we tried to have these.

I was worried a bit that Ma was not there in the garden. It has been nearly a week now that she was sleeping at the hauspik.  She said she wanted to put in some more effort in this new garden that we were standing at.  It looked like she must have pushed the kaukau into the warm hearth of the ashes.  We could not tell if she shoved the kaukau there yesterday or this morning.

The kaukau did not settle well in the stomach.  Half of it was burnt and the bit that remained tasted like fire smoke.  I did not like my burnt kaukau and held it to give to the pigs.

Ma regularly digs our kaukau and Pa brings them up for us at the village.  Currently we do not have any more in the house.  She must have prepared something for us and then went walking to someplace.  I sent Dahne over to one kaukau plot and Lottopesa to the next; Ma has two kaukau garden plots where she usually harvests her kaukau from.  Sometimes when she harvests a lot, she will have some of them covered in the drains.

We broke up and I left to return to the hauspik.

Dahne came back first to say there was no dug up kaukau there in the drains.  Lottopesa came back with the same result.

I removed aside the banana leaves mehe and pulled out the planks and entered the house.

'Eh, you twos, that is alright.  Ma has left a bilum of kaukau here in the house for us.'

We were glad but where was she?

Lottopesa said she was still hungry and Dahne quickly collected some dried sticks for her to start up a fire.

They threw in some raw kaukau over the fire.

And I heard the pig call out.

Dahne went out to call for the pig and it called her back.  She found her and called up to the house.

'Taluo! The pig's rope is all twisted and the pig is in a sorry state.  You find a knife and come cut the bush that has the pig's leash embroiled in.'

I looked for a bush knife inside the house and found one behind the centre post.  Lottopesa knew where Ma kept her knife and pulled out another knife.  I compared them for their sharpness, selected one and took that outside.

Ma keeps three sows.  One, she tied near to the marshes but it lacked shade and the sun had beaten down strongly there.  The pig must have suffered the heat and it was panting terribly.  It lay down with froth foaming over its mouth and it was really gasping for air.  I did a quick work of the bushes and Dahne pulled the pig down to the small creek for a bath. It however wanted just to drink the water.

I made grunting noises again for the other two pigs and another sow made some noises.  I went down to it and saw another twisted leash.  This pig was a bit lucky as it was in the shade of moson tree so it was a bit okay.  But it was frothing heavily at the mouth too and it was panting terribly.  I cut down all the grass that had tangled the leash and when it was free, pulled it down to the creek.

Dahne held onto both of them at the creek whilst I went to look for the third sow. 

I called out for a while and did not hear any return wail or grunt.  I nearly gave up and listened out.  It was then I heard a meek grunt.  I felt sorry for this pig.  Ma had tied it at the edge of the pitpit cane shrubs way back down there.  It was a bit far into the bushes.  I waded through.

It was then I remembered where I had harvested and stored some bananas.

'Lotto!'

'What is it?'  she replied from inside the house.

'You go to the stinging nettle salat bush cluster and you will see a lone one growing on the side.  Underneath it, you will find some bananas.   Bring a brunch or two for us to eat.  I forgot about these bananas.'

I walked past a spot where there were a lot of blue flies and there was a strong smell.  I looked and thought that perhaps they were buzzing around pig's excreta and I walked past it.

I found the pig and it too was tangled up on its leash and was lying there sorrowfully and panting.

I looked down on its front legs.  The knot looped around the wrists and had eaten into the skin to the bones.  The white of the bones were very clear.  I was scared but I tried to remember what Pa would do in such situations.  I was thinking that he would cut the leash around that hand.

I tried to cut the leash right beside the hand of the pig but it screamed it loudest and it made me scared.

I tried to calm the pig down.  I played with the mane whilst I talked to it.  I rubbed its cheeks and its stomach.  A little while later, it was calm enough to breathe slowly.

I tried unravelling the tangled leash but it was very much tangled in the many grass, sticks and small tree branches.  It was also covered over by soil the pig had dug them over.

I heard Dahne call for me.  I looked up and I watched her come looking for me.  She must have brought the two pigs up to the house.

'Dahne,’ I called out to her.

'Where did you leave the two pigs?'

'Both of them are at the house.  Lotto is giving them kaukau and is getting them some kaukau leaves too for them.'

'Okay, tell her to leave some for this pig too.  The leash has eaten into the hands of the pig and I have had to cut the leash.'

'You must know that Pa will be very angry with you about cutting the leash.'

'I know but the leash was all tangled up and I will have a hard time.  Besides I felt sorry for the cut flesh of the pig.'

'It was my fortune that she did not scream much when I cut the leash next to that hand.'

'The pig is standing on its three wheels and is trying to come out of this place where she was in jail.'

I looked up Dahne who was standing at the spot where the blue flies were teeming.

'Dahne, do you not see the flies and you don't smell the excreta, do you?'

I called out to her but she does not reply.  She was standing there, leaning against a piece of stick and was looking with some fixed stare up into the clouds at the mountains.

I scrambled up to her.

'Dahne, Dahne!'   I shook her but she does not move.

I looked down at the end of the stick and immediately I jerked my head up.

The stick was resting on Ma's blouse.  And it was all covered in blood.

I felt nauseas and held my nose at the terrible smell.

I quickly cut some bushes and tree branches and leaves and covered up the blouse.

Dahne was standing transfixed at the clouds and tears were now rolling down her cheeks.

Delicately, I held Dahne and turned her around and pulling her by her hands, we returned to the house.

Lotto saw the tears on her sister and berated me for it.

'Why did you hit her?'

I did not reply.  I too was on the verge of tears.  I went and sat down Dahne on the bed in the house and called the pigs into the house.  I got each of them into their pens and blocked off the entrance to them.  I then threw in a few kaukaus each.  I let the three legged pig in last and put in a few more extra kaukau into its pen. It can feast on these extra kaukau and forget about the nasty cut on its hand.

Lotto tried to distribute her cooked kaukau to each of us.  Dahne did not speak but indicated with her nose she would not want them.

I took both our kaukaus and put them into Dahne's bilum.

I then distributed the raw kaukau in the bilum and measured it up to something that I could easily carry.  It was a bit heavy and I took some out and placed them in a spot where the pigs could not get to them.  During other times, Dahne could easily carry a bigger loa  but I assessed that she was in no condition to carry any big bilum today.

I put outside the kaukau bilum.  I then fixed up the fire with a few more sticks that were cut to size.  The fire flared up to warm up the house.  I found two pieces of stronger wood that I threw into the fire.  These would burn slowly through the night.

We were now ready to move.

Lotto readied her bilum with the pineapple and one brunch of banana.  I took the other brunch and filled it inside Dahne's bilum.

I went and sat down with Dahne and held her tight.  Lotto was glad that I was apologising to Dahne.  Dahne said nothing.  She saw her mother's blouse and she must be worried.  I too am very worried.  At this time, we had no clue where Ma would be.  Also I have not told Lotto what Dahne saw.

The fire had burnt through and I fixed and threw in the end pieces in case rats moved the end sticks and start a house fire.  When the fire was fixed, I told the two girls we were leaving now.

Lotto then asked.

'How are we trying to leave when Ma has not come yet.  And where is Pa too?'

I did not reply.   My throat was going to break soon.  My tears were ready to fall.  I looked out the door and replied in a soft voice.

'I do not know where they went but we must return to the village.  Otherwise the rains will come or darkness will find us.'

'Why are you forcing us to go back.  You are not the boss and also darkness will not rush in on us.  Can we wait for a little while?'

I felt like crying.  I pulled at Dahne's hand to make her stand.  I slowly coaxed her to go outside.  While she was standing, I took her bilum and placed it on her back and swung the handles onto her head.

Lotto got her bilum onto her back and turned to the road.  When she did that I saw the tears come streaming down her cheeks.  I am not sure, if she is sorry about her sister or is she angry about me forcing them to return to the village or is she sorry about Ma and Dad.  I was having the same problems; I was finding it difficult to hold back my tears.

The two girls started walking and I turned back to the house.  I checked the fire again to see if it was burning right.  I then took to the planks for the house door and fixed them into place just like Ma does and they fitted into place.  I then pulled over the banana leaves mehe.  I then made criss-crosses with pitpit sticks to keep the mehe in place.

I was glad with my little handiwork on the door to the house.  I hoisted my bilum of kaukaus onto my shoulder.  I followed the track up the mountain.

I started up the pathway and I noticed some red soil on the ground on the path way.  I went a little bit more and noticed that the red soil moved off the track to one side of the garden.  I followed the traces on the leaves and garden debris.  I knew the area was Ma's special for raising her pumpkins there.  She trailed the runners over this red patch as nothing grew there.  The end of the pumpkin grew at an end of a tree stump where the soil was black and she trailed the runners over the dry patch

I went over to the end of the pumpkin vines and saw somebody had done some work digging up the red soil.  The soil was broken.

Now the hairs on my skin were all standing.  My thoughts are all in a jumbled mess. 

I tried thinking.

Ma is not here.

Pa came down last night looking for her.

Both of them are not here.

The kaukau in the fire ashes were all burnt through and through.

The pigs must have slept outside last night for them to be all knotted up.

There is Ma's blouse covered with blood in the bush.

I now see this turned red soil.

I turned with my head down.  My tears started falling down slowly as I left.