KEITH JACKSON
ONE of the most senior district administration officers to serve in colonial Papua New Guinea, Harry West, died in Sydney yesterday.
Harry’s humility and a gentle manner belied his underpinning achievements and leadership qualities which were demonstrated on many occasions as PNG moved from the rigours of World War II, in which Harry served as an Army officer, to eventual independence.
His interest in PNG started in 1937 when, as a young teenager, he knew David Lyall, a patrol officer who worked in remote parts of Papua under arduous conditions and unfortunately met an early death.
In 1944, during the war, the Australian Army sought applicants to attend a school for aspirant patrol officers and Harry, who had joined the Army in 1942 and been deployed to PNG, volunteered.
He was interviewed in Cairns and sent to Duntroon Military College to face a bewildering array of notable Australian figures associated with PNG, including Ian Hogbin, Camilla Wedgwood, Theodore Strehlow, James McAuley, Ida Leeson, Alf Conlon, John Kerr and others.
“After five grueling months,” Harry wrote later, “18 of the 40 were returned to their units, six were sent to Borneo and the remaining 16, including me, to Papua New Guinea.”
Harry was promoted to Lieutenant in the Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit and, when the war ended, was discharged in Lae on 1 March 1946.
In October 1945, the Territories of Papua and New Guinea – administered separately under military rule – had been returned to civil administration. Upon his discharge, Harry became part of this and was soon in the Highlands where, with Assistant District Officer Jack Costelloe and medical assistant Gray Hartley, he was responsible what is now Simbu Province, at that time mostly classified as ‘uncontrolled’ and the scene of rampant tribal fighting.
In 1948-49, he undertook further training at the Australian School of Pacific Administration in Sydney before being posted as Assistant District Officer to the remote outpost of Telefomin in the Sepik District.
Here he led contact patrols to bring the rule of law to the fierce tribes in the Oksapmin and May River areas involving long and dangerous expeditions across mountainous terrain, out of radio contact and beyond airdrops.
Harry was subsequently transferred to Aitape in 1951 and in 1952 to Kainantu in the Eastern Highlands. Here he argued for the vital road link through the Kassam Pass linking the Highlands to the coast. He assessed that the route chosen by his predecessor was impractical and decided on an alternative. The first motor track into the Highlands became a reality.
In 1956 Harry, by then a District Officer in Goroka, assisted Eastern Highlands District Commissioner, Bill Seale, inaugurate the now celebrated Goroka Show and, in the following year, he was promoted to Acting District Commissioner of the Southern Highlands.
In 1958-59, he served as the first Australian liaison officer in Netherlands New Guinea, based in Hollandia at a time of serious conflict between the Indonesians and the Dutch, whose administration was collapsing.
In 1959, he was transferred to Rabaul becoming District Commissioner and he remained there for over 10 years.
His period of office encompassed a time of tension over land that culminated in the Mataungan uprising, during which he was regarded as a cool and competent administrator in an extremely difficult period of civil unrest.
It was during this time that, as a journalist at Radio Rabaul, I had much to do with Harry, discovering his deep-seated understanding and sympathy for the problems experienced by the Tolai people.
Fred Kaad has written of this period: “Possibly Harry’s greatest contribution was those six years in Rabaul during the Mataungan period where he had to try and fight for the commonsense of people on the ground against orders from Moresby and Canberra.”
Towards the end of his PNG career, he was promoted to First Assistant Secretary in the Department of the Chief Minister, before leaving PNG in 1973.
Back in Australia, Harry West became a most distinguished secretary and president of the PNG Association of Australia, serving for 16 years until his retirement in 2009 and becoming an honorary life member for outstanding and meritorious service to the Association.
In 2009 he was also awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for his service to the Association.
Harry William West: 23 July 1922 – 12 July 2015