Janet Knox was born in 1945 in Gundagai, NSW, and moved to Tumut in 1953. She rode a bike to school and to piano lessons. When Gilmore Creek flooded, the farm (“Yurunga” on the Gocup Road) was cut off from town, and her father drove her in the Land Rover. In 1956 Jan went to boarding school in Sydney, returning home for holidays on the steam train, the South West Mail, a 12 hour journey. When she got a driver’s licence in 1962, Jan worked in the holidays as an assistant in Knox Pharmacy in Tumut.
After completing her Leaving Certificate in 1963, she failed first year at Pharmacy College in Melbourne but the following year was accepted by the Australian National University (ANU) to enrol in a Bachelor of Arts (BA). She graduated with a BA, worked at ANU in the English Malay Dictionary Project and the Faculty of Asian Studies, and completed part-time a Bachelor of Arts, Asian Studies (BA (AS)). Her first trip overseas was to Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia in 1970.
In February 1972 Jan and Bill Gammage married and went to live in Port Moresby, in the suburb of Boroko. Jan got a job in the Australian Public Service which at Independence in 1975 became the PNG Public Service. She worked first in Town in the Policy Secretariat of the Department of Social Development and Home Affairs in ANG House, then at the Public Service Board with Papua New Guinean board member Bill Lawrence. She then moved to Waigani to the public service training college, the Administrative College, known as Adcol. There, amongst other duties, she worked on the Senior Executive Program and Adcol’s journal Administration for Development.
At the end of 1976, after 5 years in Papua New Guinea, Jan went to live in Adelaide, South Australia. Having enjoyed the experience of living and travelling a lot in PNG, she got a job as a clerk with Ansett Airlines, working mainly in the Holiday Travel Section. This created many opportunities to see a lot of Australia, including the “outback” before it became popular. After a year in Canberra in 1981 working for the Aboriginal Treaty Committee and the Centre for Continuing Education at ANU, Jan returned to Adelaide and worked part time for two community based organisations – the Citizens Advice Bureau and the non-government development agency Community Aid Abroad (CAA), now Oxfam.
Moving to Canberra in 1987 provided the opportunity to work in the Australian Government’s overseas aid program managed by the Australian Development Assistance Bureau (ADAB), subsequently AIDAB then AusAID. Jan worked in the program for the next 20 years, till the end of 2006, including ten years in the PNG program. Working for AusAID meant getting involved in challenging, interesting projects of which the most challenging was participating in 1997/98 in the regional mission known as Operation Bel Isi to help bring peace to Bougainville.
Jan’s participation in the mission to Bougainville was recognised by the award of an Australian Service Medal.
Retired now from paid employment, Jan is still busy. Amongst other activities, she travels, works as a volunteer, and researches and writes a form of biography/chronicle of women in her family.

April 2015

Gwen and Tom Taylor worked at the Buin Area School and Kerema in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea from 1945-1961. Tom Taylor was the principal.

Rev. Thomas Smaill was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on 28 July 1857, His family emigrated to Otago New Zealand in 1858. Thomas Smaill apprenticed as a joiner and later studied for a BA at Otago University before attending the Theological Hall Dunedin from 1883-1885. After postgraduate and City Mission work in Edinburgh, he studied medical classes and hospital practice in Dunedin prior to missionary work in the New Hebrides.
Thomas Smaill was ordained as a missionary at Knox Church, Dunedin on 25 February 1889. He travelled to Nikaura, Epi later in 1889. In 1890 he returned to New Zealand and married Helen Grant of Leeston and then returned to the New Hebrides.
On 21 April 1895 five men and two women were baptized into the Church membership at Epi under Rev. Thomas Smaill. By the end of the 19th Century membership was close to 100 people. Rev. and Mrs. Smaill lost their first and second children and their third child, Nellie, was born in New Zealand. Rev. Smaill caught a chill after going out in a hurricane to administer medical aid to a native woman and died on 12 April 1902 aged 44 years old. He was buried beside his two children at Nikaura on Epi Island, Vanuatu.

William Diaper was born in Ardleigh, England on 11 November 1820. His parents died when he was young and at the age of 16, he left England for Hobart Town on board the Joshua Carroll, using the alias John Jackson. He spent the remainder of his life as a beachcomber, living in, and travelling around, the islands of the Pacific Ocean and neighbouring countries. He worked on whaling boats, as a trader of bech-de-mer, turtle shell and other small commodities, as a translator (he spoke many languages), a sugar plantation overseer and a pig farmer, amongst other things. Diaper had many wives and claims to have fathered 38 children, resulting in 99 grandchildren. There is no formal record of his death but it is believed he died on 4 March 1891 at Mare in the Loyalty Islands.

Ellestan Joyce Dusting OBE attended Canberra High School and growing up was active in the Brownies, Guides and Rangers. Her involvement with the Guiding movement continued throughout her life, holding the positions of Guide Commissioner in Canberra and in 1970 she was elected President of the Trefoil Guild in Canberra. In 1954, Dusting served as an official for the Commonwealth Royal visit of Queen Elizabeth II. Dusting went on to serve with the Commonwealth Public Service Board and as private secretary to Sir Paul Hasluck, Australian Minister for External Territories. In the 1980s, Dusting served as Vice President, then Honorary President, of The Pan Pacific and South East Asia Women’s Association (PPSEAWA).

At the outbreak of World War I, Col. Sir Samuel Augustus Pethebridge 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.