James L.O.Tedder was raised in Wamberal, NSW, attended the local primary school, and Gosford High School. He served for a few months as a deck boy in the merchant navy and spent two years in the AIF, the last year in 13th Small Ships in New Guinea. After the War he spent four years at Sydney University graduating with Bachelor of Economics with three years of geography and three years of political theory.

In February 1952 James Tedder was appointed as an Administrative Officer cadet in the British Colonial Service and was posted direct to the Solomon Islands. Following two months in Central District, he was posted to Malaita as District Officer Aoke to serve under V.J. Andersen. In November 1953 he was posted to Malu'u as District Officer. In August 1954 he was sent to the Devonshire Course in Cambridge. Confirmed in his appointment in March 1955 he was posted to Kira Kira in June as District Commissioner Eastern. In May 1959 he was appointed as Census Commissioner for the sample census organised by Dr Norma McArthur. In June 1960 he was appointed District Commissioner Malaita while Michael M. Townsend was on leave.

A posting for six months as Assistant Secretary Social Affairs followed the six months in Malaita. Then he was posted to Western District as District Commissioner for a year. Following leave he was posted to Honiara as District Officer Guadalcanal in October then District Commissioner Central as from January 1963. In 1967 he was promoted to Administrative Officer Grade A and awarded the MBE which was conferred by the Queen in May while on a Local Government attachment to three Councils in the UK.

On 1 January 1972 James Tedder was appointed to the new post of Director of Information and Broadcasting from which he retired in November 1974. While serving in Honiara he was Chair of the Tourism Authority, and at times Chair of the Copra Board. He belonged to the Broadcast Advisory, the University of South Pacific, Museum, and Library Committees.

While Director of Information and Broadcasting he was responsible for helping to establish the Solomon Island Museum, the Library, and facilities to ensure that researchers placed copies of their work, whether print or film, in the archives.

James Tedder wrote a small booklet, Walks in Guadalcanal, for tourists. He co-authored with Geoff Stevens a book, Birds in Honiara, for the Scout Association, and with his wife, Margaret Tedder, wrote, Yam Cultivation in Guadalcanal. Articles on dried breadfruit, Honiara planning, Broadcasting, the Museum were published in the South Pacific Commission Quarterly and other journals. Short pieces on ancient village sites were contributed to the Solomon Islands Museum newsletter. With Tom Russell and advice from Professor Davenport he excavated a cave Fotoruma near Honiara revealing artifacts going back to 970 BC. He wrote a book, How Government Works, which was distributed to all schools. In 2008 he self published, Solomon Island Years: An Administrative Officer in the Islands 1952-74. Mr Tedder’s research on beach erosion, on coral cays, on bird census and drift voyages is yet to be written up.

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.

Tim Bayliss-Smith was born in Brighton, England in 1947. He was educated at Brighton College before going on to university at Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge. He served on the Volunteer Service Overseas (VSO) program in Honiara, Solomon Islands, 1965-1966. He worked as a teacher in the Survey Drafting School in the Lands Department of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate Government and as a librarian in the Geological Survey Department.

Tim has made a number of subsequent visits to Solomon Islands. In 1971, he spent 11 months on Ontong Java atoll for his PhD fieldwork and returned to Ontong Java in 1972, with the Harvard Biomedical Expedition. Tim joined the Department of Geography at University of Cambridge in 1973 where he has continued his research in the area of land management in the humid tropics, with a particular focus on Melanesia. Throughout his career, Tim has undertaken research in human ecology, population changes and the prehistoric ecology of various environments in Melanesia. He has returned to Solomon Islands on various research teams, carrying out fieldwork in Marovo Lagoon and Mase Crater, New Georgia. He has also carried out research in northern Sweden, Malaysia and Costa Rica.

Tim continues to serve as Emeritus Professor of Pacific Geography, and Fellow of St. John's College, University of Cambridge.

Frank Menzies Cameron Forster was born in Sydney, NSW, on 21 September 1923. He moved to Melbourne with his mother, Jean Catherine Forster, a psychology graduate and later pioneering remedial teacher, and attended Princes Hill Primary School then Melbourne Grammar. In 1940 Frank went to the University of Melbourne to study medicine. While there, he underwent surgery for a tumour on his spine which left him with “spinal weakness and intermittent pain.” He graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) in 1948 with honours in surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology.

At the end of the following year, Frank spent the four months December 1949-March 1950 in the Australian Territory of Papua and New Guinea. Post World War 2, Australian health and medical professionals went to work there, but Frank did not stay there or return later as far as is known. He did keep a small collection of black and white photographs he took at the time which show that he visited Samarai, Lae, Goroka, Madang and Manus, travelling by boat and plane.

By 1951 he was a resident doctor at the Royal Women’s Hospital (RWH) in Melbourne. In 1952 he married Prudence Isobel Swan Edgar, a nurse, and in 1953 they travelled together to London where Forster worked at the Hospital for Women and gained membership of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

The Forsters returned by 1954 to Melbourne where Frank worked again at the RWH. He became known for his bedside teaching and lively lectures, emphasising the need for care of pregnant women, and became a specialist in dealing with difficult pregnancies. In 1967, he gave the inaugural annual Tracy Maund Memorial lecture, honouring the memory of the two founders of the RWH. Not only was Frank Forster a practitioner with a flair for teaching and public speaking, he was also a collector of medical books, pamphlets and instruments, a researcher, archivist and writer of works related to medical matters, and an active member and financial supporter of several organisations such as the Medical History Museum and the medical professional body known as the Royal Australian College of Gynaecologists (RACOG) and later as RANZCOG when the Australian and New Zealand bodies amalgamated. Frank donated to RACOG’s library his collections of items relating to women’s health in 1987. The College renamed their library the Frank Forster Library in his honour when Frank died on 18 March 1995 age 71. Frank was survived by his wife, a daughter and three sons.

More information about Frank Forster is online at http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/forster-frank-menzies-23427. See also the article “A College Benefactor: Frank Forster” in Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology 2004; 44: 3-5.)

The Marist Order (Society of Mary) was canonically approved in April 1836 after the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith in Rome had sought means of evangelising the western half of the Pacific. The eastern half had been entrusted to the Sacred Heart (Picpus) Order in 1833. The Marists, originally an informal group of diocesan priests, accepted the task in the Western Pacific, provided they were recognised as an independent religious order. The first Marists sailed for the Pacific in December 1836 under the leadership of Bishop Jean-Baptiste Pompallier. The Bishop established his headquarters in New Zealand while some of his missionaries were left on the islands of Wallis and Futuna. However, the huge vicariate under Pompallier’s care soon proved too large to be practicable and in 1842 part of it was carved off to form the Vicariate of Central Oceania. This new vicariate comprised the islands of Wallis, Futuna, New Caledonia, New Hebrides, Samoa, Tokelau, Fiji, Rotuma, Niue and the Gilbert Islands. A few years later, before any Marist missionaries had set foot there, the Gilbert Islands were made part of a new vicariate of Micronesia. In 1898, the Marists working in Wallis & Futuna, Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, New Caledonia, New Hebrides, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and Bougainville were formally constituted into the Province of Oceania. The provincial administration was established in Sydney and remained there until 1971, when the headquarters was transferred to Suva, Fiji.