Patrol Officer / Native Labour Inspector

Jill Clingan was born in Sydney. From an early age Ms. Clingan displayed artistic talent. She won a scholarship to study art at East Sydney Technical College but switched to a career in nursing. For over thirty years she studied and worked in the nursing profession in Sydney, the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea and in Canberra. She trained in nursing at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney, gaining certificates in General Nursing and Midwifery, nursed at the Royal Canberra Hospital, and gained a further certificate in Infant and Child Health. Miss Clingan then undertook studies at the NSW Baptist Bible College for a Deaconess and Missions Diploma which fired her interest in studying for a degree in Linguistics and Anthropology. She moved to PNG to work as a nurse for the Australian Baptist Mission in the Tinsley Hospital (later Health Centre), on the Baiyer River, 35 miles from Mt Hagen in the Western Highlands, for a two year term, 1971-1973. There she had a little time for sketching and painting and, by selling some of her paintings, was able to travel home via Madang and Lae. Working in Canberra Miss Clingan gained a fourth certificate in Community Nursing. She later travelled extensively in the Indian sub-continent, South East Asia, China, Hungary and Western Europe as well as the Middle East, and developed her artistic skills, publishing her sketches and drawings of the Greek Islands, exhibiting her works and fulfilling commissioned works. Since then she has travelled in Anatolia, Iran and Central Asia, gleaning more ideas for art and broadening further her areas of interest. In 1999 Miss Clingan completed a degree in linguistics and anthropology and commenced an enlargement of her degree work in Anthropology, on the indigenisation of Christianity in the Western Highlands of PNG following a short return visit there in 1999.

Bill Gammage was born in 1942. He arrived in Wagga Wagga, NSW, in 1951 after living about 2 years in Orange and about 7 years in Sydney. He went to Wagga Demonstration School and Wagga High School. During his school years, he worked in a range of jobs including a market garden, a cordial factory, and as a farm labourer. From 1961 he was a regular employee of the Heckendorfs of “Mountview”, Lockhart, during the long Christmas holidays, working mainly on the wheat harvest.

In 1961, Bill went to the Australian National University (ANU), Canberra. In 1964, he completed his Teachers’ Certificate at the University of Sydney and in 1965 his honours year in History at the ANU.

In 1966, Bill went to Port Moresby to teach history in the preliminary year of the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG). At the end of the year, he returned to ANU to do his PhD on Australian soldiers in the Great War. With his PhD finished, Bill travelled the world for a year.

On return from his travels in 1971, Bill worked for 5 months as a research assistant for Ken Inglis, Professor of History at UPNG, then accepted a job teaching Australian and Papua New Guinea history in the History Department at UPNG. In February 1972, he and Jan married and went to Port Moresby.

At the end of 1976, Bill left UPNG and joined the History Department at the University of Adelaide, teaching Australian history. From 1987 to 1990, he was Senior Research Fellow in Pacific History at the ANU, and from 1996, he was in the Humanities Research Centre at ANU, where he remains today as Adjunct Professor. He continues to supervise post-graduate students.

Bill’s books include The Broken Years: Australian Soldiers in the Great War (1974), An Australian in the First World War (1976), Narrandera Shire (1986), The Sky Travellers: Journeys in New Guinea 1938-1939 (1998) and The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia (2011). He has written articles, including on Papua New Guinea, and worked as a historical adviser/consultant on films and documentaries. He was a member of the Council of the National Museum of Australia for three years. He contributes to the work of the Australian Dictionary of Biography and the National Library of Australia’s Oral History Unit.

In 1987 Bill was made a Freeman of the Shire of Narrandera, in 1991 he became a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, and in 2005 he was awarded the Order of Australia (AM). Several of his books have won prizes, most recently in 2012 The Biggest Estate on Earth won seven prizes, including the Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History and the Victorian Prize for Literature.

Sione Latukefu as a scholar, Tongan patriot and Christian gentleman. Sione was born at Kolovai on Tongatapu in 1927, where his family were prominent commoners with important traditional responsibilities. His grandfather was a distinguished Tongan poet and his family were closely involved in the sufferings, educational achievements and faithful witness of the Wesleyan mission and afterwards the Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga. After secondary education at Tupou College Sione trained for a teaching career in Tonga and then, with scholarships, at the University of Queensland. He had already been ordained a minister of the Free Wesleyan Church in 1960.

Sione’s autobiographical essay, ‘The making of the first Tongan-born professional historian’, in the book Pacific Islands History, edited by Dr. Brij Lal, glosses over most of his educational advancement. The boy from Kolovai was not meant to aspire to academinc honours. Yet the highest in the land acknowledged his ability. Queen Salote, herself a scholar of traditional matters, recognized Sione’s potential, gave him encouragement and, in her last days, passed on some of her own knowledge to him.
Taking his studies further at the Australian National University, in an era when Phd Degrees were still fairly novel throughout the world, Sione was one of the first Pacific Islanders to obtain one. He was a generous, careful and perceptive historian.

Queen Salote had hoped that Sione would take charge of the Tongan Archives. Her death in 1965 caused him to take a different path. While at ANU he met his beloved life-partner, then Dr Ruth Fink and they were married in Sydney in 1966. Both Ruth and Sione successfully applied for the positions of anthropologist and historian respectively at the new University of Papua New Guinea. At Port Moresby they helped lay the groundwork for future courses and trained a new generation of Papua New Guinean leaders. Sione was also a successful funds raiser and from 1969 to 1988 he was secretary and executive officer of the Te Rangi Hiroa Fund for promoting the study of Pacific history.
After 18 years of dedicated service, by which time Sione was an Associate Professor, they retired for a while to Canberra to live. Sione’s dedication then led him to accept the post of Principal of the Pacific Theological College in Suva which he held from 1989 to 1991 when ill health led to his return to Canberra. At the College he proved a stabilising influence and helped to give the curriculum a greater academic emphasis. In Canberra he contined to work on various research projects surviving a triple by-pass operation and other setbacks with great courage and aplomb. He participated fully in the life of the new Division of Pacific and Asian History and he was still writing articles and working on a book at the time of his death.

Reverend Frederick James Paton, the son of the noted Presbyterian missionary John Gibson Paton, was born at Aniwa, New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) on 5 March 1867. After being educated in Australia and serving there for a short time as a Presbyterian minister, Paton returned to the New Hebrides and spent most of the rest of his life as a missionary there. He was particularly associated with Malekula, where he established a mission station in 1895. Paton worked alongside his wife Helen (died 1905) and second wife Christine (died 1914). He also served as a chaplain to Australian forces during World War I. Frederick Paton died on 12 December 1941.

Albert Speer was born in 1922 in Goulburn, Australia, and served in New Guinea with 2/2 Australian Field Ambulance from 1942-1945. He served in the Department of Public Health in the Australian Administration of Papua and New Guinea from 1947 until his retirement in 1971, initially as a European Medical Assistant and eventually as acting Director of the Medical Training Division. During the period 1954 to 1957 he was active in exploratory patrols establishing health services in uncontacted and uncontrolled highland areas of Papua. Mr Speer also fostered Sir Albert Maori Kiki, among other children. Mr Speer died in Sydney on 16th April 2014.

Sister Lida Tonkin (Mrs L. Gill), a nursing sister from Young, NSW, first arrived at the Methodist Mission at Raluana in New Britain in 1916.

James L.O.Tedder was raised in Wamberal, NSW, attended the local primary school, and Gosford High School. He served for a few months as a deck boy in the merchant navy and spent two years in the AIF, the last year in 13th Small Ships in New Guinea. After the War he spent four years at Sydney University graduating with Bachelor of Economics with three years of geography and three years of political theory.

In February 1952 James Tedder was appointed as an Administrative Officer cadet in the British Colonial Service and was posted direct to the Solomon Islands. Following two months in Central District, he was posted to Malaita as District Officer Aoke to serve under V.J. Andersen. In November 1953 he was posted to Malu'u as District Officer. In August 1954 he was sent to the Devonshire Course in Cambridge. Confirmed in his appointment in March 1955 he was posted to Kira Kira in June as District Commissioner Eastern. In May 1959 he was appointed as Census Commissioner for the sample census organised by Dr Norma McArthur. In June 1960 he was appointed District Commissioner Malaita while Michael M. Townsend was on leave.

A posting for six months as Assistant Secretary Social Affairs followed the six months in Malaita. Then he was posted to Western District as District Commissioner for a year. Following leave he was posted to Honiara as District Officer Guadalcanal in October then District Commissioner Central as from January 1963. In 1967 he was promoted to Administrative Officer Grade A and awarded the MBE which was conferred by the Queen in May while on a Local Government attachment to three Councils in the UK.

On 1 January 1972 James Tedder was appointed to the new post of Director of Information and Broadcasting from which he retired in November 1974. While serving in Honiara he was Chair of the Tourism Authority, and at times Chair of the Copra Board. He belonged to the Broadcast Advisory, the University of South Pacific, Museum, and Library Committees.

While Director of Information and Broadcasting he was responsible for helping to establish the Solomon Island Museum, the Library, and facilities to ensure that researchers placed copies of their work, whether print or film, in the archives.

James Tedder wrote a small booklet, Walks in Guadalcanal, for tourists. He co-authored with Geoff Stevens a book, Birds in Honiara, for the Scout Association, and with his wife, Margaret Tedder, wrote, Yam Cultivation in Guadalcanal. Articles on dried breadfruit, Honiara planning, Broadcasting, the Museum were published in the South Pacific Commission Quarterly and other journals. Short pieces on ancient village sites were contributed to the Solomon Islands Museum newsletter. With Tom Russell and advice from Professor Davenport he excavated a cave Fotoruma near Honiara revealing artifacts going back to 970 BC. He wrote a book, How Government Works, which was distributed to all schools. In 2008 he self published, Solomon Island Years: An Administrative Officer in the Islands 1952-74. Mr Tedder’s research on beach erosion, on coral cays, on bird census and drift voyages is yet to be written up.

Charles Morris Woodford was born in 1852 and educated at Tonbridge School in England. He settled in Suva about 1882 and from Fiji visited Kiribati (the Gilbert Islands group), as Government agent on the ketch Patience. In 1886, as a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society he made the first of three successive explorations of the Solomon Islands, especially Guadalcanal, where he was the first white man to penetrate the interior to any distance, collecting natural history specimens for the British Museum. His experiences are described in his book A Naturalist Among Headhunters (1890). In 1895 Woodford became Acting Consul and Deputy Commissioner at Samoa, and in the following year, a part of the Solomon Group having been made a British Protectorate, he was appointed the first Resident Commissioner, a post which he retained until his retirement in 1914. His later years were spent in Sussex.
Woodford contributed an account of his visit to the Gilbert Islands to The Geographical Journal in 1895, and a note on Ontong Java in 1909. In 1916 he read a paper to the Royal Geographical Society on Polynesian settlements in the Solomon Islands, published in the Journal in 1926. Woodford helped elucidate the narratives of Mandaña’s discovery of the Solomon Islands by identifying places visited by the Spaniards and taking photographs for inclusion in the Hakluyt Society publications. He also published papers in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, of which he was a Fellow.
From The Geographical Journal, 1928, pp.206-207.