PHIL FITZPATRICK
TUMBY BAY - Before independence in Papua New Guinea what are now the provinces were called districts. Each district was headed by a district commissioner, who pretty much had free reign to run it as he saw fit.
Each district was divided into sub-districts within which were several patrol posts. The sub-districts corresponded to what are now called provincial districts and electorates.
The sub-districts were under the charge of assistant district commissioners who also had a lot of freedom to decide how they ran things as long as they kept the district commissioner informed and on side.
However, the relationship between the districts and headquarters in Port Moresby was a different matter.
The apparatchiks in Moresby had to please their bosses in Canberra and more often than not what those bosses wanted was not what the district commissioners wanted.
As a result, a lot of what happened in the districts, sub-districts and patrol posts often ran counter to what the boffins in Canberra thought was happening.
Everyone from the district commissioner down was aware of the chasm that existed between the district and Canberra and Canberra’s acolytes in Port Moresby.
Out in the districts people did what had to be done. If that conflicted with the views of Canberra and headquarters so be it.
If there was a need for subterfuge, a bending of rules and the careful wording of reports it was done willingly.
When you were running a district on a very mean budget, creative thinking was the order of the day.
I was reminded of this recently when a researcher who had been reading some of my old patrol reports and comparing them to other things I had written queried whether one of my reports was actually missing from the archival record.
As it turned out, and as I explained, I had used poetic licence to conflate information from several reports into the one event that I wrote about to keep the narrative simple and cohesive.
That was well and good, but it also reminded me that I had also conducted several patrols for which I never actually wrote reports.
These mostly had to do with rescuing refugees from West Papua who were fleeing the Indonesians.
Canberra was very specific that we had to turn back border crossers and bar them from obtaining refuge in Papua New Guinea.
The boffins in Canberra, of course, had never actually seen any of the bedraggled and heavily traumatised little bands of people escaping across the border.
They hadn’t, for instance, seen people who had been eviscerated for fun by Indonesian soldiers and who were still alive.
There must have been some hard heads in the service but I never personally came across any kiaps who had followed the Canberra line on this matter.
Those non-patrols were extreme examples but there were others carried out for more mundane reasons but which couldn’t be reported because they conflicted with some silly edict from Canberra or Port Moresby.
Spending several months out on patrol building a road that wasn’t in the budget and for which no funds existed was a common occurrence.
“No need for a patrol report, old chum, let’s just keep it between ourselves shall we?” was often the advice from the assistant district commissioner or, indeed, the district commissioner.
On the flip side of the non-patrols were the real ones reported upon but which had never been carried out.
Constant patrolling was what made pre-independence administration so effective. The district commissioners knew this and kept up a constant pressure to make sure that boots were always on the ground.
Patrolling was hard work, not only for the kiaps but also for the police, the interpreters, the aid post orderlies and the long-suffering carriers.
Coming back from leave with a bit of extra flab and too relaxed leg muscles and doing that first gut-busting patrol was hell. It was a case of mind over matter to get motivated.
I often heard stories of middle-aged and overweight kiaps sitting on their patrol post verandahs writing fictitious patrol reports while chugging on rum and/or a bottle of South Pacific lager but I never actually came across one.
I hope that didn’t happen, but who knows?
Like most archival records, patrol reports are often interesting for what was not said and for the unexplained gaps that exist.
It’s a thought worth bearing in mind if you feel inclined to research them.