CHRIS OVERLAND
ADELAIDE - Daniel Kumbon’s recent article on the work of early missionaries in Papua New Guinea triggered some memories for me, especially in relation to Goaribari Island.
By a strange quirk of fate I met a man who witnessed the events of 8 April 1901 when the Reverends James Chalmers and Oliver Tomkins, together with 12 colleagues, were murdered and then eaten by the people living on Goaribari Island.
Before I describe my meeting with this witness, it is worth looking at the history of what was, during a subsequent Royal Commission, described as “the affray at Goaribari Island”.
In 1901 most of what was then the British Protectorate of Papua was unexplored by Europeans.
There had been significant contact in and around Port Moresby, but the hinterland remained off limits to other than a few intrepid administration officials, mining prospectors and missionaries.
Goaribari Island lies far to the west of Port Moresby, being located in the tidal delta of the Gulf of Papua, roughly midway between the mouths of the Omati and Kikori Rivers. It was and remains only accessible by boat.
Missionaries like Chalmers were determined to bring the word of their God to the Papuan people and were prepared to take serious risks to do so.
Dying in the service of their God, while not necessarily desired, was regarded as a noble act of martyrdom which would bring eternal credit of the martyr’s soul upon arrival in Heaven.
So it was that on 8 April 1901 Chalmers’ party landed at Goaribari Island and were invited to attend a feast in the Men’s House (called a Dubu in Motu).
Unhappily, they turned out to be the main course and were treacherously and cruelly murdered by their hosts. Their skulls were subsequently displayed in the Dubu as trophies of that event.
Word soon filtered back to Port Moresby about the killings. The then Lieutenant Governor of Papua, Sir George Le Hunte, swiftly mounted a retaliatory expedition to punish the islanders.
Le Hunte, together with a large force of police duly descended upon the island one morning and slaughtered every man they saw, killing a total of 24 in all.
They then burned every Dubu on the island, being 10 in number, before departing for Port Moresby.
Such violent retaliation may seem excessive to us these days but was clearly regarded as proportionate at the time. Also, it was plainly consistent with the Papua New Guinea tradition of payback and would have been understood as such by the islanders.
Le Hunte’s actions should have been the end of the matter and, indeed, there it rested for two years when events took another fateful and lethal turn.
In June 1903, the Australian government had taken over control of Papua on behalf of the British government. This had always been the intention from the moment the reluctant British government had annexed Papua, mainly in order to prevent the further expansion of the German Empire into the Pacific.
On 9 June 1903, a 32 year old called Christopher Robinson was appointed as Acting Administrator.
I have been unable to ascertain exactly what Robinson’s qualifications and experience were for this demanding role but colleagues described him as showing little sympathy towards the indigenous population.
A contemporary rather unkindly described him as a “blithering idiot” and his subsequent actions seem to add weight to this description.
Perhaps the kindest way to think about him is that he was inexperienced, lacked good judgement and had been promoted far beyond his level of competence.
In any event, in March 1903 Robinson, in company with Police Commandant W C Bruce and a contingent of Papuan Constabulary, set off for Goaribari Island in the administration steamer called, somewhat paradoxically given what transpired, Merrie England.
The apparent aim was to capture the remaining murderers of Chalmers et al in order to bring them to trial.
At this point, it is worth considering the weapons they took with them on their journey.
Merrie England was 147 feet long and weighed about 170 tons. It could make a steady nine knots under steam power, so was quite fast by the standards of the day.
The vessel mounted a multi-barrel Nordenfelt quick firing gun, which was a precursor to the modern machine gun. Operated efficiently it could fire hundreds of rounds a minute of a heavy calibre (25mm) bullet.
To put such bullets in perspective, the USA’s Army’s most potent modern heavy machine guns fire bullets that are only marginally larger at 30mm diameter.
I think that the word bullet is an inadequate description for ammunition of this size. It is better to think of it as a small artillery shell, with a corresponding capacity to inflict enormous damage upon anything it strikes.
The constabulary were armed with Martini Henry carbines, firing a .577 calibre bullet. These weapons had an effective range of about 370 metres, but were still lethal at up to 1,000 metres. In the hands of a competent rifleman, several aimed shots could be fired in a minute.
The bullet used in these guns was made of lead and weighed around 30 grams. I have fired one of these weapons and, believe me, you would not wish to be hit by one of them at any range, let alone close range.
Their hitting power was sufficient to at least highly discourage if not stop a charging rhinoceros or elephant.
Thus equipped, Robinson and his colleagues duly arrived at Goaribari Island. Initially at least, the islanders greeted them with cautious offers of friendship. No doubt the last visit from Le Hunte remained firmly in their minds.
At first all went well but when the police seized one of the men identified as being a participant in the murder of Chalmers and his colleagues things went horribly wrong very fast.
Several islanders loosed off arrows towards Merrie England and pandemonium ensued. The police opened fire with all guns blazing, shooting indiscriminately into the assembled mass of islanders.
Commandant Bruce strove desperately to restore order as the police and Robinson himself frantically blazed away.
In the space of only a very short time, perhaps no more than 90 seconds, about 260 shots were fired, including many from the heavy calibre Nordenfelt gun.
At least eight islanders were killed outright and an indeterminate number were wounded. Some of the wounded must have subsequently died but Robinson and his men had long since departed so the true extent of the killing remains unknown.
Given the power of the weapons used and the number of shots fired it seems implausible to me that only eight deaths occurred. A wound caused by a Nordenfelt gun could easily remove a limb or blow a large hole in a person’s body. A Martini Henry rifle at close range would inflict very serious damage too.
Despite lacking any verifiable evidence, I think there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that Robinson (and possibly Le Hunte too) understated the casualties they inflicted, partly due to the well documented problem of accurately reporting events after the “fog of war” has descended upon those engaged in combat and partly in an effort to avoid criticism for using excessive force.
In any event, upon returning to Port Moresby, Robinson was confronted by almost unanimous condemnation for his ill conceived and disastrous expedition.
A subsequent Royal Commission was scathing in its assessment of his actions.
Depressed and suffering from malaria, Robinson committed suicide at Samarai (Milne Bay) in June 1904, thus bringing to a close a short and dreadful career as a colonial administrator.
This brings me to my own knowledge of this event which, I have to say, remained very scant until quite recently.
In 1970, I was stationed at Kikori in the Gulf Province, where I heard about these events for the first time. The information conveyed to me was very hazy, providing only the bare bones of the story.
So it was that, armed with incomplete and inaccurate information, I set off on patrol with the objective of visiting the Omati Base Camp, where the administration had established a large resettlement scheme.
The aim of the scheme was to create a haven for small scale agriculture and horticulture in the hilly but fertile country that surrounds the upper reaches of the Omati River.
On the way, I resolved to visit Goaribari Island.
Those who knew the island at that time may recall that the islanders tended to have distinctive facial features, enhanced by equally distinctive tattoos and piercings.
They looked more like the people from further west towards the Bamu River or even Daru in the Western Province. This made them fairly easy to recognise compared to people from, say, the area around Kikori or Baimuru or further east around Kerema.
I mention this only because they were, at that time at least, fairly distinctive in looks and, somehow, this seemed to fit with their reputation for ferocity in pre-colonial times. They also were superb canoe builders and this expertise was much respected by the local people.
Upon arrival at the village, I did the usual kiap inspection of things like gardens and toilets and made inquiries into the general well being of the people. As I recall nothing of great note required attention, so I settled into the “HausKiap” (visitors rest house) and chatted to the locals.
Inevitably, the story of Chalmers arose and one of the villagers mentioned that there was still one man alive who remembered the incident.
This immediately piqued my interest and I asked if I could talk to him. Someone set off towards a nearby house and soon a very elderly man tottered towards me before settling himself comfortably on a log under the shade of the Haus Kiap’s veranda.
He told me that he had been a small boy at the time that Chalmers was killed and so had taken no part in the murders. His role had been restricted to witnessing events from a position of safety and later consuming the leftovers from the subsequent feast.
He complained that, as a small boy, he was not entitled to the prime portions of the feast and was given a foot to gnaw upon. Irritatingly, he said, the foot had first to be removed from a sandshoe.
He also said he remembered that attacks by the white men that followed, although he apparently witnessed this from the safety of the bush, well away from the actual scene of the fighting.
I recall him saying that many were killed, including women and children but, unsurprisingly, he could not say how many.
To this day, I do not know whether or not he was merely pulling my leg about the foot and sandshoe, but I remain quite sure his account of the attacks was accurate.
I suppose I might well have been the last non-indigenous person to hear a firsthand account of the affray at Goaribari Island. The man who spoke to me was very old by the standards of the day, being over 70 years of age.
So that is my tenuous connection with the terrible events of 1901 and 1903 at Goaribari Island. It is a story I have told to my children but no-one else until now, mostly because I felt that there would be no great interest in it.
However, now that Daniel has raised the matter once again I thought that, while my story is historically insignificant, it does show that oral histories of events can reverberate down through the years in unexpected ways.
It is these histories that people like Daniel and Mathias Kin have been recording and they are certainly worth preserving.
My account of these events drew upon several sources, including the work of John Quinn, whose article ‘The Curious Case of Christopher Robinson’, was published by the PNGAA on 21 October 2018. John’s work provided a useful narrative framework for my account of Robinson’s actions and I commend it to readers.
In another example of how small a world it is that we live in, readers should know that John Quinn was my Assistant District Commissioner when, as a novice liklik kiap of no great promise, I arrived upon his doorstep in Kerema in 1969. I remember him as being kind to me and tolerant of my youthful failings. Thank you John.