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.