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.

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.

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.

Arthur Joseph Bearup was lecturer in medical parasitology for thirty years at the University of Sydney. After completing his schooling, he joined the Postmaster General's Department where he worked in Nhill, Victoria as a telegraph messenger until he qualified as a telegraphist. Bearup was then sent to Brisbane and then Mt Surprise in Queensland. His service with the Postmaster General's Department was interrupted during the First World War when Bearup joined the Australian Imperial Forces and was sent to the Middle East. Upon his return to Australia, he was transferred to the Commonwealth Department of Health in 1922. one of his tasks there was to help establish a Commonwealth Health laboratory in Townsville. In 1928 Bearup transferred to the Australian Institute of Tropical Medicine, also in Townsville, and was appointed technical assistant to the parasitologist. The Institute closed down in 1930 and most staff, including Bearup were transferred to the School of Public Health and Tropical medicine at the University of Sydney. Arthur Bearup spent the next thirty years researching and teaching parasitology there. In 1968 he was awarded the British Empire Medal for services to medicine

Born in Adelaide on 3 January 1932, Peter's father was Colonel JS Grimshaw, MC, and was Commissioner of the Royal Papua and New Guinea Constabulary from 1947 to 1954, with Peter spending part of his early life in Papua New Guinea.

Educated at Unley High School he later studied for an Arts degree from the University of Queensland and obtained a Master’s degree in Education (Administration) from the University of New England. From 1949 to 1957 Peter served in the Department of Civil Aviation in Papua New Guinea and also joined the Papua New Guinea Volunteer Rifles in which he was commissioned.

Peter joined the staff of the Australian National University as Business Manager in 1964 and held
that post in different capacities until his retirement in 1997.While at the ANU he continued his historical studies and just before his death he completed a manuscript on the history of the Papua New Guinea constabulary.

Sir Paul Meernaa Caedwalla Hasluck KG, GCMG, GCVO was an Australian historian, poet, public servant and politician, and the 17th Governor-General of Australia. Hasluck was born in Fremantle, Western Australia and was educated at Perth Modern School and the University of Western Australia, where he graduated with a MA degree.

In 1923 Hasluck joined the literary staff of The West Australian newspaper, and also began to publish works on Western Australian history. He tutored in history at the University, and in 1939 he joined its faculty as a lecturer in history. In 1941 Hasluck was recruited to the staff of the Department of External Affairs, and served on Australian delegations to several international conferences, including the San Francisco Conference which founded the United Nations. After the war Hasluck returned to the University of Western Australia as a Reader in History, and was commissioned to write two volumes of Australia in the War of 1939–1945, a 22-volume official history of Australia's involvement in World War II. These volumes were published as The Government and the People 1939–1941 in 1951 and The Government and the People 1941–1945 in 1970.

At the 1949 election Hasluck won Liberal preselection for the newly created Perth-area seat of Curtin. In 1951 the Prime Minister, Robert Menzies appointed Hasluck as Minister for Territories, a post he held for twelve years. This gave him responsibility for Australia's colonial possession, Papua New Guinea, and also the Northern Territory, home to Australia's largest population of Aboriginal people. Although he shared the paternalistic views of the period about the treatment of the Papua-New Guineans, and followed an assimilationist policy for the Aboriginal people, he carried out significant reforms in the way both peoples were treated. Michael Somare, who became Papua New Guinea's first Prime Minister, said that his country had been able to enter self-government without fear of having to argue with an Ian Smith “simply because of Paul Hasluck”.

In early 1969, Prime Minister Gorton offered him the post of Governor-General, a position he held until 1974. Hasluck retired to Perth where he remained active in cultural and political affairs until his death in 1993.

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.