This thesis was submitted at the University of Sydney and was awarded the degree of Master of Arts (Pass) in Religious Studies. This study, conducted by Robert Leonard Pulsford, provides details and analysis of the Motu Koita traditional belief systems to general health and sickness. The study details the attitudes and their effects on introduced Christian faith and Western medicine. The cross-cultural health and religious situations witnessed by village-based community workers, including professionally trained doctors, nurses and welfare officers, provides insights into health practices. The author’s vast experience of working in the field of Papua New Guinea’s public health system provides a greater sensitivity to the sacred folklores and myths of the Motu Koita people by surveying the social, geographic and economic aspects as well as describing the ceremonial rituals of pre contact times. The study offers a comparison of the role of village diviners, magicians and the like over Western medicine.

The thesis includes nine pictorial images or illustrations which add valuable dimension to the religious and social interactions of the Motu Koita people, in particular Pari Hanua or village people. These images are described as:

• A black and white photograph of old Pari village of traditionally thatched roofed houses. Photo taken about 1926 and a hand drawn map of Pari village done in February 1965.
• Black and white photograph of the Kidukidu stones with two Pari men squatting between them and a poster drawing based on the legend showing a woman (Ugava Vaina) suckling a Kidu Kidu (tuna fish).
• Four photographs demonstrating the Pari village ceremonial Tuna (Kidukidu) fishing carried out on the 8th August 1986.
• Copy of an old photograph of Hanuabada Women’s Cricket team taken before 1940.
• Hanuabada woman in traditional (Sene) dancing costume of necklaces of dog’s teeth and seeds, betel nut and headdress of feathers.
• Hanuabada man Revo Pita in Motu traditional (Sene) costume of the pectoral ornament of pig’s tusks, necklace of coral, headband and feathers.
• Pari village women and men celebrating Easter by singing and dancing to the Prophet (Peroveta) song rhythms dressed in modern floral outfits.
• Pari village elder, Airi Airi dressed in floral outfit dancing to the Peroveta rhythms.
• Pari village women with dishes of cooked food on their heads proceeding with much singing to the communal table for sharing with everyone at the Easter celebrations on 13th April 1968.
• Burial of the Pari village elder of Airi Airi Rahobada on the 9th October 1969. Rev Puka Oala reading from the Bible in Motu conducting the burial service.

The Papua and New Guinea Villager was published in English while Rabaul News was published in Pidgin.

1. Papua and New Guinea Villager, Vol. 2 no. 10 (Nov. 1951) to Vol. 2 No. 11 (Dec. 1951)
2. Rabaul News, Vol. 6 No. 2 (13 Jan. 1951) to Vol. 14 No. 5 (31 Jan. 1959)

This collection of 60 postcards and photographs of German New Guinea, all dated 1912-1916, were transferred to David Kaus at the National Museum of Australia by Merrell Davis and Catherine Evans, included with the papers of Ellestan Dusting. Dusting served as private secretary to Australian Minister for External Territories, Sir Paul Hasluck, and as Vice President of the Pan Pacific and South East Asia Women’s Association (PPSEAWA). Mr Kaus transferred the photographs to the PMB on 28 January 2011.

Though these postcards were collected by Dusting, the envelope in which they are held is signed by R.G. Bowen and a number of the photographs are marked as having been taken by, or given to Bowen by a Col. Pethebridge, or ‘administrator’. It is possible the photos were given to Sir Paul Hasluck as some of his paper were amongst those of Dusting.

Lieutenant R.G. Bowen, RAN, was amongst the first Australians to fight German troops in World War I. On 11 September 1914, Lieutenant Bowen landed at Kakabaul in New Britain with No. 6 Company of the Naval Battalion of the Australian Naval & Military Expeditionary Force, to destroy the main German wireless station in the area. At the outbreak of war, Col. Sir Samuel Augustus Pethebridge, believed to be the photographer or sender of some of these images, took command of the Australian North-West Pacific Expedition, raised to occupy German islands north of the equator. Before the expedition could sail, the British government decided to allow the North Pacific islands to be left in the hands of their Japanese occupiers. Pethebridge suggested that his unit, known as Tropical Force, might be used to relieve the expeditionary force led by Colonel W. Holmes which had captured German New Guinea in the first weeks of the war. This was accepted, and in January 1915, Pethebridge succeeded Holmes as administrator at Rabaul. In January 1917, he contracted malaria which forced his return to Australia, where he died a year later.

The photos contained in this collection show people and infrastructure of German New Guinea (Deutsch-Neuguinea) including the Bismark Archipelago (hotels, churches), Rabaul (wharf, naval headquarters, hospital, China Town, ship building yard), the Bita Paka wireless radio station at Kabakaul and the wireless station and at Morobe (along with the District Officer’s residence and police quarters). The photos also feature Herbertshoe (naval signal post, hospital and German soldiers). There are also images of people (police, singsing, traditional headdress) and landscapes, including volcano Mt Mother, Mt Daughter, the beehive rock, plantations and a giant fig tree.

Sources:
Naval Historical Society of Australia, The Navy in New Guinea in 1914, http://www.navyhistory.org.au/the-navy-in-new-guinea-in-1914/
Australian Dictionary of Biography

Fisheries research in Papua New Guinea began in the 1920s with the Archbold expeditions and expanded during the thirty years following Schuster's 1950 Report of a survey of the inland fisheries of the Territory of Papua New Guinea. During the 1970s and 1980s there was a further increase in fisheries research and development in Papua New Guinea.<BR><P>The Fisheries Division of the Department of Agriculture was established in 1954. The Research and Surveys Branch of the Fisheries Division was formed in 1968 with its headquarters at Kanudi Fisheries Research Station, Port Moresby. A PNG Collection of research materials was established by the Research and Surveys Branch in its Library at Kanudi. The PNG Collection includes the P Series of research papers, both published and unpublished, survey material and some adminstrative reports documenting PNG fisheries research from 1948 till 1986 which were selected and arranged by John Lock, a scientist at Kanudi, in 1986.<BR>Further NFA research papers have been microfilmed at PMB 1118.

PNG Collection of Fisheries Research Papers (P Series), Nos. 778. <P><B>See reel list for further details</B>

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

The photographs and post cards include events, daily life and traditional customs practiced in Rabaul in the early 20th century. Funerary and marriage customs are represented. There is a good set of photographs on traditional fishing (PMB Photo 1_31 to PMB Photo 1_46). Other images show canoe building and sailing, basket, broom and string making and traditional houses, mission life and the Malabunga hospital. Dances, such as the Kulau dance, carvings used in dances and the

Nigel Oram was an ethnologist and academic. In 1946, after military service in World War II, he read history at Oxford University. This was followed by a career in the British Colonial Service in East Africa and Uganda. In 1961, Oram helped set up the New Guinea Research Unit, Port Moresby, which was an offshoot of the Australian National University. His role was to undertake social research. To facilitate his information gathering, Oram learnt the Motu and Hula languages. In 1969, he was appointed a fellow at the University of Papua New Guinea, where he remained from 1969 to 1975. Oram returned to Australia where he taught history for nine years at La Trobe University and where, upon his retirement, he became an honorary senior research fellow. An extensive collection of Oram’s PNG research papers is held at the National Library of Australia (MS 9436).

The mystery of Guise: conflict between missionaries, colonial administrators and foreign traders during the British New Guinea Protectorate, Ts., 29pp., is a biography of Reginald Edward Guise, grandfather of Sir John Guise, G.C.M.G., K.B.E., Hon. Ll.D., the first Governor-General of the independent state of Papua New Guinea. This version of Nigel Oram’s manuscript dates from sometime after 1994. In the late 1990s Oram’s health went steadily down hill, and completing the manuscript was beyond him. After Oram’s death, Janet Fingleton rescued the manuscript from her father’s computer. Donald Denoon has since worked on an edited version of this paper which is to be submitted to the Journal of Pacific History. This is a complete copy of the existing manuscript, but note that the references and some of the footnotes are missing.