Robert 'Bob' Leonard Pulsford was born on 2nd September 1915 in Waterloo, New South Wales (NSW), Australia. He attended Hawkesbury Agricultural College and worked as a jackaroo on three properties in NSW. In 1941, he enlisted with the Australian Imperial Force for a year in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea (TPNG), serving in Port Moresby, Buna, Finschhafen and Madang in a Malaria Control Unit. After demobilization he completed a Bachelor of Arts (BA) at the University of Sydney, graduating with Honours in Anthropology. He began his service in TPNG in April 1950 with the Department of Agriculture, Stock and Fisheries (DASF), based first at Boram near Wewak, and then at Urip near Dagua, 30 miles west of Wewak, where he managed the Dagua Rural Progress Society, producing rice and peanuts as cash crops.

In 1953, he married Mary Upton and their children were born in the Territory; Ian in Wewak and Susan in Lorengau. In 1955, he was posted to Manus, as District Agricultural Officer, where copra was the main economic crop, and in 1958 to Taliligap in the Gazelle Peninsula where he was in charge of a training centre with a focus on cocoa production. He was in Rabaul for two years as District Agricultural Officer for East New Britain then changed careers in 1963 and became the first Lecturer in Sociology and Anthropology at the newly formed Papuan Medical College in Port Moresby teaching medical students and nurses. He retired in December 1973 when the Medical College became the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG). During this period, he co-authored 'Health in a Developing Country' with Prof John Cawte. He was awarded a Masters (MA) degree from the University of Sydney for his thesis: 'Changing Attitudes to Illness and Misfortune amongst the Motu – Koita'; the result of ten years study in Pari urban village near Port Moresby. Pulsford died in 2004.

Neil Murray was born in 1937 and raised in Mackay, Queensland, where his parents ran a milk bar. Murray’s father was a communist and often hosted international communists in the family home. Neil was rejected for a Queensland Teachers Scholarship because of his father’s political views. Instead, Neil worked for a time as a cadet draftsman for the Queensland Irrigation and Water Supply Commission.

In 1955, Murray was accepted as a Cadet Education Officer to serve in the Territory of Papua New Guinea. He commenced his training at Bathurst Teachers’ College on 5 March 1956, as well as attending courses at the Australian School of Pacific Administration (ASOPA). He arrived in Port Moresby on 17 January 1958 for orientation, before taking on a challenging post in the one-teacher Sogeri Primary A School. After the first term, Murray was transferred to Sogeri Secondary School to teach a combined Papua New Guinean Grade 8 class where many students were older than him. Murray continued to teach at Sogeri Secondary School until 1962, teaching future Prime Ministers, Governors General, heads of government departments and senior public servants.

In 1962, Murray was involved in running a special Queensland Junior Certificate class for twenty promising public servants. Many of these men went on to play critical roles in the transition to Papua New Guinean independence. Murray visited many students in their home villages and taking photographs. He self-published a book documenting this period called, ‘Education officer, T.P.N.G.: a story of my first five years teaching in the territory of Papua and New Guinea, 1958-1962’.

In 1963, Murray was appointed to Malabunga High School in Rabaul, East New Britain Province, before taking up the post of Headmaster at Hutjena High School in Buka, Bougainville in 1967. Murray remained at Hutjena until 1973, during which time he oversaw major construction work at the school as classrooms, staff housing, water tanks and furniture were built to accommodate the new high school grades being added each year. The school site had been a Japanese base during the Second World War and students would often bring war relics to school. Murray documented these major social changes, as well as his many visits to students’ home villages. He self-published a book about this period, ‘Hutjena High School Buka: a story of my seven years as headmaster at Hutjena High School in Buka 1967-1973’.

Murray was appointed School Inspector in the East Sepik in 1973 and was later promoted to Superintendent Secondary & Vocational Inspections. Towards the end of his career, Murray served in the Materials Section of the Curriculum Unit in Port Moresby, where he wrote a set of Social Science booklets and cultural maps.

In 2001, Murray retired to Australia, first in Mackay, then later Cairns where he died in 2025. Murray developed strong friendships during his 43 years in Papua New Guinea which continued until the end of his life.

In the 1980s, Nic Maclellan was a trade union activist and member of the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement. He also travelled regularly to New Caledonia, French Polynesia and Marshall Islands, documenting struggles around US and French colonialism and nuclear testing. Between 1986-1995, Maclellan worked as a field officer for the Pacific program of the Overseas Service Bureau, in Papua New Guinea and Fiji, and then went on to establish the Australian Volunteers Abroad (AVA) program in Marshall Islands, Palau and Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). During his travels, Maclellan took hundreds of Kodachrome slides, which capture images of daily life in PNG and Micronesia during the 1980s, as well as unique moments in the rise of the Kanak independence movement during the 1984-1988 conflict known as 'Les evenements' or 'the events'. In the 2000s, Maclellan has worked as a correspondent for Islands Business magazine and contributor to Pacnews, Inside Story and other regional media.

Carl Franke served in New Guinea with an engineers' unit, the 15th Australian field company, during World War II. At the end of the war, in July 1947, Franke returned to New Guinea after accepting a cadetship with the Australian Department of Agriculture. The majority of his work was in surveying and reporting on the potential of viable crop production to assist in post war development. His first project was at Bumana vegetable research station on the Laloki River, approximately 30 miles north of Port Moresby. He then moved to a government rubber plantation at Kokoda. From that post, Franke moved to Kiaruku on the south west coast of Papua to begin the Meko Rice project. Franke then undertook a 25 day patrol through the Goila Sub District to ascertain which vegetable crops could be introduced to better vary the local diet and to determine the possibility of growing cash crops. He also spent time at the Agricultural Research Station in Kerevat near Rabaul where they were looking at coffee and cacao, before moving onto Buka at Bougainville to start an agricultural station that would distribute pigs to the community. Unfortunately many of the first consignment of pigs died due to erysipelas, after being sunburnt on the trip over.

In November 1949, Franke went on leave to get married, returning in January 1950 to Buin for another rice project. His wife Betty, who was completing her midwifery certificate, was to follow and also work in New Guinea, but Franke's father died in May 1950 and he returned to Australia where he was required to assist in the family business. Carl Franke died in May of 2020.