The Papua and New Guinea Villager was published in English while Rabaul News was published in Pidgin.
Papua and New Guinea Villager. Port Moresby: Papua and New Guinea Dept. of Education, c.1950- Rabaul News. Papua and New Guinea Dept. of Education, c.1946 - Jan. 1959
Postcards of German New Guinea
This collection of 60 postcards and photographs of German New Guinea, all dated 1912-1916, were transferred to David Kaus at the National Museum of Australia by Merrell Davis and Catherine Evans, included with the papers of Ellestan Dusting. Dusting served as private secretary to Australian Minister for External Territories, Sir Paul Hasluck, and as Vice President of the Pan Pacific and South East Asia Women’s Association (PPSEAWA). Mr Kaus transferred the photographs to the PMB on 28 January 2011.
Though these postcards were collected by Dusting, the envelope in which they are held is signed by R.G. Bowen and a number of the photographs are marked as having been taken by, or given to Bowen by a Col. Pethebridge, or ‘administrator’. It is possible the photos were given to Sir Paul Hasluck as some of his paper were amongst those of Dusting.
Lieutenant R.G. Bowen, RAN, was amongst the first Australians to fight German troops in World War I. On 11 September 1914, Lieutenant Bowen landed at Kakabaul in New Britain with No. 6 Company of the Naval Battalion of the Australian Naval & Military Expeditionary Force, to destroy the main German wireless station in the area. At the outbreak of war, Col. Sir Samuel Augustus Pethebridge, believed to be the photographer or sender of some of these images, 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.
The photos contained in this collection show people and infrastructure of German New Guinea (Deutsch-Neuguinea) including the Bismark Archipelago (hotels, churches), Rabaul (wharf, naval headquarters, hospital, China Town, ship building yard), the Bita Paka wireless radio station at Kabakaul and the wireless station and at Morobe (along with the District Officer’s residence and police quarters). The photos also feature Herbertshoe (naval signal post, hospital and German soldiers). There are also images of people (police, singsing, traditional headdress) and landscapes, including volcano Mt Mother, Mt Daughter, the beehive rock, plantations and a giant fig tree.
Sources:
Naval Historical Society of Australia, The Navy in New Guinea in 1914, http://www.navyhistory.org.au/the-navy-in-new-guinea-in-1914/
Australian Dictionary of Biography
Dusting, Ellestan Joyce
The changing attitudes to illness and misfortune of the Motu/Koita people
This thesis was submitted at the University of Sydney and was awarded the degree of Master of Arts (Pass) in Religious Studies. This study, conducted by Robert Leonard Pulsford, provides details and analysis of the Motu Koita traditional belief systems to general health and sickness. The study details the attitudes and their effects on introduced Christian faith and Western medicine. The cross-cultural health and religious situations witnessed by village-based community workers, including professionally trained doctors, nurses and welfare officers, provides insights into health practices. The author’s vast experience of working in the field of Papua New Guinea’s public health system provides a greater sensitivity to the sacred folklores and myths of the Motu Koita people by surveying the social, geographic and economic aspects as well as describing the ceremonial rituals of pre contact times. The study offers a comparison of the role of village diviners, magicians and the like over Western medicine.
The thesis includes nine pictorial images or illustrations which add valuable dimension to the religious and social interactions of the Motu Koita people, in particular Pari Hanua or village people. These images are described as:
Pulsford, Robert Leonard
Malu’u dictionary, recording the English translation of Malu’u words, a language spoken on Malaita, Solomon Islands. Malu’u is also known as Toqabaqita or To'abaita language. A note inside the cover of the dictionary states that it was compiled for the South Sea Evangelical Mission by Clara Waterston and others, and is one of six copies produced. Arranged in alphabetical order, typescript 296 pp.
Pages 100 and 204 are missing from the original manuscript and appear to be intentionally torn out. In the process of copying, the following pages were not digitised as they were blank: pp. 26-28, 42-45, 53-56, 84-87, 97-99, 110-113, 141-144, 159-162, 181-184, 192-195, 201-203, 214-217, 227-230, 244-247, 277-280, 289-292, and 297-299.
Waterston, Clara
The Marshall Islands Journal is the newspaper of the Marshall Islands. It began in 1966 and was known as:
1967-1969 – The Marshall Islands Journal
1970-1973 – Micronitor (starting in Dec 1973 [Vol 4 no. 46], changes title to Micronesian Independent)
1974- mid-1980 – Micronesian Independent
1980-2016 – The Marshall Islands Journal Some articles in this newspaper relate to other Pacific Islands as well as the Marshall Islands.
The newspaper was established by Joe Murphy and Mike Malone, two Irish-American expatriates who were in the Marshall Islands. [They claim to have started in 1970; the first three volumes from 1966-1969 appear to have been published by others].
The newspaper was published usually once a week, sometimes monthly, although some weeks it was not published and throughout the 1980s it was sometimes produced as regularly as 3 times per week when Dan Smith, a former Peace Corps Volunteer assisted.
The newspaper set up offices in Truk (Chuuk) and Ponape (Pohnpei) and Saipan. It appeared in other Trust Territory districts under the alias of Marianas Weekly or Ponape Sun. The newspaper simply made print runs using a different masthead.
Giff Johnson became the editor in 1984 and assumed day-to-day responsibility for the newspaper. Giff continues to work as the editor today in 2016.
Micronitor News and Printing Company
Photographs of Dr Frank Forster, Papua New Guinea
This collection comprises 39 images black and white photographs taken in the Australian Territory of Papua and New Guinea by Australian Frank Forster in the 4 months December 1949-March 1950.
The photographs record a trip made mainly by boat to the Territory by Frank, a 28 year old honours graduate in obstetrics, surgery and gynaecology of the University of Melbourne, who became as well a medical historian, bibliophile and benefactor. At the time, health care services provided for the local people by the colonial authorities were minimal. In 1947 there were 17 doctors working there, all of whom were expatriates. The first two trained surgeons arrived about 1950, and were based in Rabaul and in Port Moresby. In 1953 the Australian National University, through a government committee, began identifying “gaps in knowledge” in the territory.
Frank’s record of his journey starts in Papua’s Eastern District at Samarai Island and ends as he returns to Brisbane, having visited several other small islands including Kwato in Papua, then to New Guinea where he visited Lae, Goroka in the Eastern Highlands, Madang, and Manus Island.
Frank’s collection is literally a “snapshot” of the times. He shows various types of boats and light aircraft, local people at work, postwar buildings including wharves and railway lines, and equipment. Nine photos relate to the port and town on Samarai Island in the Milne Bay District of Papua, now the Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea. Six of these show boats at the wharf, including MV Malaita of the Burns Philp Shipping Company, the wharf railway line and men working to move cargo. Two photos show members of the Papua and New Guinea Constabulary presenting arms, and one is of a building displaying an Australian flag and two flags of the United States, a clear reminder of the importance of Samarai to the Allies in World War 2.
En route to Lae in the Morobe District of New Guinea, now the Morobe Province of Papua New Guinea, the boat passed Gesila Island and berthed at Kwato Island. On Kwato, Frank photographed the London Missionary Society (LMS) Church. In the port of Lae, Frank photographed landing craft AB2348 with many men, possibly labourers, on board, and the ship MV Malaita again.
In Madang District, four photographs are of the coastline and buildings, one possibly of the administrative headquarters of the district and business establishments, and a detailed scene of a wharf, including men working to move cargo. On the mainland, three photographs show beautiful trees including one of a long archway of trees, and at the cemetery, the 1914 grave of Willi Wohlgemuth, a machinist probably on the mission ship, for the Divine Word Mission at Sek (Alexishafen). In 1913 the Mission sub-divided for sale land on Doilon Plantation just south of Alexishafen, and Wohlgemuth got Block 3, 160 hectares, but died of appendicitis on 1 March 1914. (Amtsblatt 1914, 45, 91.) One photograph captures a well maintained corrugated iron building with “1913” clearly shown and another an aerial view of MV Malaita at a wharf.
Four photographs were taken in or near Goroka, probably at Humilaveka, in the Eastern Highlands District of New Guinea, and all relate to an airstrip – kunai (grass) buildings, fences, people watching and a biplane, a De Havilland 84 Dragon.
The four photographs taken of Manus Island are of the main port of Lorengau. Various types of water craft, possibly pieces of equipment left after World War 2, buildings and the main wharf, are shown in these photos.
Probably on his way back to Australia, Frank took a photograph in the China Straits showing three different types of boat, and one other.
The photographs were given to Helen and Ray Spark in 1976. They met him on a trip with their two daughters to Melbourne from Wewak in Papua New Guinea where they were living, Ray then working at the Wewak hospital. They got talking and Frank told them he had some old photos of New Guinea. He said he took the photos when he was a student doing an internship there in December 1949- March 1950. Under Frank’s care, a son was born to the Sparks in April 1976. Frank gave the photos to the Sparks in the brown manilla envelope. On it in pencil is the note “These pictures were taken Dec 1949 March 1950”: presumably the handwriting is Frank’s.
The brief descriptions on most photos are Frank Forster’s own. Additional information has been added to these descriptions, much of it based on the work Bill Gammage did in 2018 when asked to look at the images by the Bureau.
Forster, Frank
Diary (photocopy of original in Roviana)
This diary, associated with the Methodist Mission in the Solomon Islands, was found with Job Tozaka's diary (see PMB 1102). Diary of an unnamed person, possibly John Kevisi, 14 Jan-21 Apr 1937. See reel list for further details.
John Kevisi [?]
Papers on Pacific Islands land matters
Alan Ward is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Newcastle, NSW and contract historian for the Waitangi Tribunal, New Zealand. His Master's thesis was on the East Coast Maori Trust, in the Gisborne region of New Zealand's North Island where he was born and raised. During this research Ward became interested in customary Maori land tenure and its conversion to forms of title cognisable in the New Zealand courts and intended to facilitate land transfer and economic development. This interest lead to subsequent research on land tenure in the Pacific islands, particularly in New Caledonia, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea and to employment in land administration in the latter two countries. Emeritus Professor Ward is the author of a number of books on land issues in PNG, New Caledonia and New Zealand, the most recent being <I>An Unsettled History: Treaty Claims in New Zealand Today</I> (Bridget Williams Books, Wellington, 1999).
Almost half of this record group is concerned with PNG. These papers were gathered when Ward was Lecturer in History at the University of Papua New Guinea and adviser to the Land Evaluation and Demarcation Project Study (LEAD). The collection includes correspondence, notes, articles and papers, draft legislation and press cuttings. A small portion of these papers relate to politics and land matters in Australia, New Zealand, Solomon Islands, Africa, Marshall Islands, Kiribati, Vanuatu, Banaba, French Polynesia and Guadeloupe. The remainder of the documents are mainly concerned with New Caledonia between 1947 and 1990 and were assembled by Ward at La Trobe University, Melbourne, through the 1980s, particularly during the years of political uncertainty in the French Territory from 1984 to 1990. <b>The complete, two hundred page calender of microfilmed documents held in the Alan Ward papers is available. <a href=http://rspas.anu.edu.au/pambu/reels/manuscripts/PMB1168full.rtf> [rtf format]</a>, <a href=http://rspas.anu.edu.au/pambu/reels/manuscripts/PMB1168full.pdf> [pdf format]</a> </b>
<b>See reel list of file titles for a shorter summary</b>.
Ward, Alan
Please see PMB 1046 for full entry.
Gray, Elizabeth (nee McEwen)
See also SSEM correspondence, 1890-1946, at PMB 1150; Not in Vain, 1887-1995, at PMB Doc 439; Despatches from the SSEM, Mar 1932-Jul 1956, at PMB Doc 440; and Solomon Soldiers’ News, 1945-1966, at PMB Doc 441.
Reel 1
Queensland Kanaka Mission. List of Baptisms, Nos. 1-1369, 1886-1900
Notes on baptised people, cross referenced to QKM List of Baptisms, above, 1902(?).
Solomons Baptisms Register, Nos. 1-1203, 1902-1905.
Solomons Register of Baptisms, Nos. 1204-2811, 1915-1922.
Solomons Baptisms Register, Nos. 2812-5821, 1922-1932.
Solomons Baptisms Register, Nos. 5822-9310, 1932-Mar 1946.
Solomons Baptisms Register, Nos. 9311-14796, 1946-1962.
New Guinea Baptism Record Book, Nos. 1-3180, 1958-1973.
Reel 2
Miss L. Drewitt. List of Villagers visiting Mission (One Pesi?), 1927-1951.
Furlough Lists (2 volumes). Lists time spent by staff in the Islands, 1907-1965.
Grammar Notes and English-Makira Vocabulary WB [Wanoni Bay], arranged by Miss Waterson. Ts., carbon; c.80pp., (first page missing), 1931.
South Sea Evangelical Mission, formerly Queensland Kanaka Mission