Reverend Norman F. Cocks was born in Harrow, Middlesex, UK. He went to Hackney and New College, London, and was ordained at Skinner St. Congregarional Church, Poole, Dorset on 25 November 1934. His Pastorates in England were Poole, 1934-1940, and High Cross Tottenham, 1940-45. Rev Cocks was then appointed to the post of Australian and New Zealand Secretary of the London Missionary Society, 1945-1970. He transferred to the Anglican Church in Tasmania, was ordained Deacon in St. David's Hobart on 19 October 1970, and was subsequently ordained as an Anglican priest. His portrait is in the "LMS Chronicles" of February 1945 and June 1947.

Volumes 2-5, pp.150-651, of the autobiography of Rev. Norman F. Cocks completed in Hobart in 1987. Ts., photocopy. Chapter headings as follows. Vol.2, pp.150-299: So to London; A change of Wind; Outward Bound; Australian Landfall; Over the Tasman; Papua Invitation; Trial and Reunion; Eleanor Rivett; Traveller’s Days [1947]; More Gleanings from 1947; World Council of Churches – Amsterdam 1948; The Naming of the Ship ‘John Williams VI’; Visit of ‘John Williams VI’; Our New Home and Office; To Fiji and Samoa. Vol.3, pp.299-450: Home Again; 1951 and Britain Again; ‘Passage to India’; ‘Home from the Sea’; India – Australia – Papua; Royal Flush; Island Shadows; The Dickens Fellowship; Another Papuan Journey; A Year of Anticipation; South African Pilgrimage; ‘The Golden Route’ and the Cape; ‘Home’ Again; La Suisse; Transatlantic. Vol.4, pp.450-550: Across the North American Continent; Time Passes; 1961 – An Eventful Year; 1962 – So Many Changes; Port Moresby 21 November 1962; Pleasant Island Again; Churchwise; Another Year; 1965 Constant Movement; Papua ‘The Ecumenical Crisis’; The Wanderers Way. Vol.5, pp.550-651: What is ‘Normality’?; Papua Again; Night Flight to Independence; ‘The Gilbert and Sullivan Colony’; The Penultimate Year – 1969; Farewell Papua New Guinea.