Roger Southern was a teacher with the Department of Geography at the University of Papua New Guinea [UPNG] in Port Moresby 1969-1973. He was also researching a master's degree with the University of Bristol for which he travelled to the PNG Highlands to observe the place of roads and road transport in economic change.

The Rev. James Egan Moulton (1841-1909) was a noted Methodist missionary in Tonga from 1865 to 1906. He was the founder of Tupou College, Nuku'alofa.

John Baker worked as a volunteer under the auspices of the British Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) organisation in 1964-1965. He was 18 and 19 at the time and was what was known as a ‘school leaver’ volunteer. John was attached mainly to two District Administrations to work on various local projects. August-November 1964, Baker worked as a teacher at the Geological Department’s survey school in Honiara. Then he transferred to Western District headquarters in Gizo and worked during December 1964 and January 1965 as a surveyor on the Wagina Island Gilbertese resettlement scheme. In February 1965 he transferred to Eastern District headquarters in Kira Kira where he spent six weeks working on local election preparations. He then moved back to Gizo and spent April to August 1965 travelling round, organising the construction of concrete drinking water tanks in various villages in the Roviana and Wana Wana lagoons and subsequently on the island of Ranonnga.

John Baker’s work in Solomon Islands prompted a long-term interest in the Pacific Islands and saw him work as Government Economist in Tonga in 1969-70. He later lived in Fiji and Tonga in 1971, while he undertook research for an ANU PhD on inter-island shipping services in the two countries. In 1976-77, while working in the Australian Government’s aid organisation, he was head of the Pacific Islands Section. Finally, after three years as an Australian Ambassador in Africa John Baker returned to working on the Pacific Islands when in 1991-97 he was Coordinator of the World Bank’s South Pacific Development Management Program. The program ran one-week residential management programs for senior government officials from across the region, with a number of participants later becoming heads of government in their countries.

Handley Bathurst Sterndale was born in India in 1833, where his father worked as an indigo planter. He was educated in Britain, but ran away to sea at the age of 16. He travelled to the Americas, where he undertook a variety of employment, including labour in Panama and as a mercenary in Nicaragua. Sterndale probably first arrived in the Pacific in the 1850s where he worked in the trade of shell and beche-de-mer. He also worked for plantations in the labour trade, also known as blackbirding. He married Helen Matilda Caulton in Melbourne, Australia in 1867.

In 1870, Sterndale spent some months working as a surveyor for the German trading company Goddefroy & Sohn who sought to establish plantations on the island of Upolo, Samoa. During this time, he made the journey across Upolo - likely in his capacity as a surveyor – and made notes and sketches of the expedition. In 1871, on Motu Kotawa on the islet of Pukapuka atoll in the Cook Islands, he wrote the manuscript ‘Upolu; or, A Paradise of the Gods’ and worked his sketches into finished drawings. In that same year, Sterndale published the first of what became regular articles under the title, ‘My Adventures and Researches in the Pacific’ in the ‘Australian Town and Country Journal’. He wrote under the pseudonym ‘A Master Mariner’. Sterndale also wrote for the New Zealand newspaper ‘The Daily Southern Cross’ and ‘The New Zealand Herald’.

In 1872, Sterndale worked as an agent for King Cakobau of Fiji and in 1874 entered a joint venture with Thomas Henderson, of New Zealand company Henderson and Macfarlane, to develop the Cook Islands atoll of Suwarrow. This ended in a dramatic conflict between the two, with the Sterndales forced to return to New Zealand. He later moved to San Francisco, probably to remedy his poor health, but he died there on Christmas Day, 1878 at the age of 45.

Elizabeth McEwen was born in 1857, daughter of John McEwen. She married Reverend William Gray at her father's house in 1882. Shortly after their marriage, they sailed for Weasisi, Tanna, New Hebrides in the 'Dayspring'. Elizabeth is described as being deeply committed to the Christian mission in New Hebrides (now Vanuatu). Six of their seven children were born on Tanna. Like her husband, she held concerns about the Pacific labour trade.

William Gray was born near Gawler, South Australia. He obtained his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Adelaide and graduated in Divinity from Union College in 1880, the first Presbyterian student to complete the course. He spent 1881, the year of his ordination, in medical training at Adelaide Hospital and as Minister to the congregations of Goodwood and Mount Barker. He married Elizabeth McEwen in 1882 and shortly after they sailed for Weasisi, Tanna, New Hebrides in the 'Dayspring'. Gray was the first Presbyterian Church of South Australia missionary to the New Hebrides. He produced a grammar, primer, hymnal and translation of Luke's Gospel in the Tanna language. Six of his seven children were born on Tanna. At the age of 71 Gray became head of the Smith of Dunesk Presbyterians Mission which later became the nucleus of John Flynn's Australian Inland Mission.

Gray was an outspoken advocate for the end of the Melanesian labour trade.