Jane Tinney was born in Ballarat, Australia, on 30 June 1867. She went to British New Guinea (later Papua) as a Methodist missionary in 1892 and was stationed at Dobu. She resigned owing to ill health in 1902. Later, she did mission work in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory of Australia.
Nicolai Michoutouchkine is from a family of Russian emigres based in Paris. He started travelling in 1953, before a brief period of conscription and work in New Caledonia. Michoutouchkine settled in Port Vila in 1961 with Aloi Pilioko, an artist from Futuna. They collected more than 6,000 indigenous art objects from right across the South Pacific which have been exhibited, with their own works, in Noumea, French Polynesia, Papua New Guinea, Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, Japan, Sweden, Russia and Central Europe, Taiwan and Indonesia.
Amy Constance Heussler (nee. Henry) was a prominent feminist and a founder of the United Associations (the association formed by the merging of Women's League of N.S.W. and the New South Wales Women Voters' Association). She was married to William James Heussler on 23 November 1892. They had two sons and two daughters. Amy is the granddaughter of London Mission Society (LMS) minister Revered William Henry.
William Henry was born in Sligo, Ireland, in 1770. He was a carpenter and joiner before joining the London Missionary Society. He married Sarah Maben and together they had four surviving children. In August 1796, they joined a group of missionaries aboard the 'Duff' in sailing for Tahiti. After deciding it was too dangerous, the missionaries continued on to Sydney, Australia aboard the 'Nautilus'. Along with shipmate James Fleet Cover, Henry established three congregations in Sydney, including at Parramatta, Toongabbie and Kissing Point, which later became St Anne's in Ryde.
In 1811, the family returned to Tahiti and Henry was inducted as a minister in a Tahitian church. His wife, Sarah, died in 1812. On a return visit to Sydney in 1813, he remarried, to Ann Shepherd. They went on to have ten children together. They remained in the islands until retiring to Sydney in 1848. William continued to preach at Kissing Point. He died in 1848, and Sarah in 1882.
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.
After graduating from Manchester University, Roy Davies joined the British Overseas Civil Service in 1944. He served first as a cadet with the British Solomon Islands Protectorate and later became a Solomon Islands District Commissioner on Malaita. From 1957 to 1962 he was Secretary of the Government of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony. He retired in 1972.
Reverend Francis Edwin Lawes served with the London Missionary Society missionary in Niue from 1868 until he retired in 1910. Lawes died in London in 1917.
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.