My Dearest Brown Eyes:
letters between Sir Donald Cleland and Dame Rachel Cleland
during World War II.
Introduced and edited by Nancy Lutton, Canberra, Pandanus
Books, 2006. 323 pp., illus., maps, biographical notes,
bibliography. $34.95 (+ $5.50 p&p) at all good bookshops or
order from Unireps, University of NSW, Sydney. 2052 or
www.unireps.com.au.
Nancy Lutton’s editing of selected Cleland letters is a book
of two parts. Chapters One to Eight concentrate on the
anguish of Don and Rachel (as they are called) at their
wartime separation, their longing for peace and normality
and uncertainty about their future. The letters evoke the
feelings and hardships of thousands of other married couples
disrupted by the war, including evacuees from Papua and New
Guinea (PNG) shocked by the indifference of the Australian
government towards them. As the years dragged on Rachel’s
desperation in raising their two sons without Don’s
guiding/controlling presence begins to dominate her letters.
Don, in military postings overseas and conscious of the need
for self-censorship, could only reply in generalities
although his rapid promotion through ability and sheer hard
work is soon apparent. As is his inability to suffer fools.
This became obvious in his later dealings with PNG
department heads and senior officers. Rachel shows an
excellent grasp of contemporary politics in Australia and
England and frequently makes prescient forecasts of the
war’s outcome. Their mutual emotional and intellectual
dependence provided a solid base for Don as Administrator
striving to rebuild shattered PNG in the difficult postwar
years. He was forced to depend on Administration officers of
wildly varying ability to meet the sometimes unrealistic
demands of the Department of External Territories led by
largely ineffectual Ministers while tolerating “society” in
Port Moresby.
Lutton’s book is more relevant to past/present residents of
PNG from Chapter Nine when the emphasis changes from a love
story (as intimated by the unfortunate title) to a clear and
detailed account of ANGAU and its potential for PNG. In
April 1942 the two military administrative units established
after the collapse of civil administration were combined to
form ANGAU under the command of New Guinea Force
Headquarters. Until the war’s end ANGAU handled the
functions of government for those parts of PNG not in enemy
hands. Cleland’s involvement in this, and his careful
assessment of ANGAU’s role, started the desperately slow
process of post-war rehabilitation. The amalgamation of the
Territory of Papua and the Mandated Territory of New Guinea
into the Territory of PNG in 1949 assisted this. Pre-war
rivalries between officers of both territories soon faded.
There is an interesting parallel with the Australian
Military Administration of (former) German New Guinea and
the Expropriation Board established by the Australian
government to seize German property there. Each operated
separately, duplicated staff and initially neither the
Administrator (military to May 1921, then civil) nor the
Chairman of the Board (located in Melbourne) recognised the
authority of the other. It was, as one observer stated, a
‘Gilbert and Sullivan’ situation. Cleland’s subsequent
appointments as Assistant Administrator in September 1951,
acting Administrator in June 1952 and Administrator in
February, 1953, were based on his obvious ability and
experience in PNG.
Lutton need not have referred (p.141) to Dr Lachlan
Strahan’s tasteless inclusion in his Day of Reckoning
(pp.323-4) of an alleged happening in Cairo between Cleland
and J.S. Grimshaw (postwar PNG Police Commissioner). Their
service records show that Captains Cleland and Grimshaw were
never in Cairo at the same time. Dr Strahan’s otherwise
excellently researched (and very readable) book has been
marred by this tall-poppy-syndrome gossip.Lutton’s research
skills and accuracy leave me only two concerns. One is with
the aptness of the honorifics used in the book’s title. The
Clelands received these awards well after World War II but
perhaps Sir Donald’s rapid changes of military rank made it
difficult to decide which one to settle on. I also found the
very personal beginnings and endings of letters irritating
and repetitive. A few would have set the scene for readers;
the rest needed ruthless excision.
My Dearest Brown Eyes is one of the last books published by
the now defunct Pandanus Books which may explain why
available photographs were not included, and why it did not
receive the usual publicity launch. It gives a glimpse of
the lives and mutual affection of two essentially private
persons. During their time as Australia’s representatives in
PNG Sir Donald and Lady (later Dame Rachel) Cleland quietly
guided the emerging elite towards the ultimate
responsibility of national independence. Their capacity for
this is evident in these remarkable letters.
Dr Peter Cahill
Please note: A photographic supplement is available for My
Dearest Brown Eyes, put together by member Bob Cleland. In
eight A5 pages, family and official sources illustrate both
the family at home and Don in the Middle East and New
Guinea. Send your name and postal address and five 50 cent
stamps to Bob Cleland, 83 Bielby Road, Kenmore Hills, Qld,
4069.
Index
Jack Read,
Coastwatcher: The Bougainville Reports
ISBN 9980-9974-1-9. Softcover. 212 pp. Published by PNG
Printing Co. Ltd, $A25, posted to Australia, elsewhere on
request, from H.R. Holdings, PO Box 633, Port Moresby, 121
NCD, Papua New Guinea, PH: (675) 321-7610 or fax 321 4863.
Email hrh@printer.com.pg
They’ve taken more than 60 years to become accessible, but
Jack Read’s wartime Bougainville Reports, classified Secret,
can now be read by the rest of us. And what an illuminating
journey he takes us on! Every PNG old-hand knew, or knows of
Jack, who spent 46 years in his beloved islands as kiap,
soldier, sailor and finally PNG’s Senior Native Lands
Commissioner, retiring only in December 1976, a year after
independence. Born in Tasmania, he died aged 87 in Melbourne
in 1992, and his daughter, Judith Fairhurst, of Ballarat, is
a PNGAA member. Judith wrote the introduction to this
volume.
Read’s most outstanding period of achievement, for which he
was never officially honoured by Australia (although America
did), began in November 1941 after he was posted to
Bougainville as Assistant District Officer, Buka Passage.
Twelve years a kiap and with solid bush experience, it was
his first posting to Bougainville, and he was unfamiliar
with the big, rugged island. But after Japan attacked New
Guinea that January and his superior, the District Officer
at Kieta, and his whole HQ staff abandoned their posts and
sailed for Port Moresby, he got to know Bougainville very
well indeed as he found himself organising and directing
coastwatcher teams behind the lines for the next 17 months.
He put together this record of those months for Naval
Intelligence in Melbourne, to pass on the “practical
experience of the technique of coastwatching, as we found it
in Bougainville, which may afford some guidance for
operations elsewhere.” The Director of Naval Intelligence,
Commander R.B.M Long, acknowledged its receipt with a letter
to Read in Brisbane: “Your field exploits had my deepest
admiration – they were outstanding and superb examples of
the Coast Watching – may I say, Art? When I asked you to
write a report of your experiences as a C.W., I dared not
hope for a repetition of the high qualities of your field
work, but after reading your MS, however, I fear I am unable
to decide at which you are most successful. It is
excellent!”
There is no waffle as Read presents his balanced and
comprehensive, chronological account of the Japanese
occupation of Bougainville to mid 1943, including major
signal traffic between the coastwatching parties and
mainland headquarters. These transmissions became more vital
following the long-awaited Allied move against the Japanese
in August 1942 – the launching of the crucial American
offensive on Guadalcanal. Japanese bombers and ships had to
pass Bougainville on their way south from their Rabaul base,
and Read’s men in northern Bougainville and a party in the
Buin area under Paul Mason, flashed warnings of impending
Japanese raids in plenty of time for Guadalcanal to refuel
its planes and have them waiting in the clouds.
Bougainville’s coastwatchers mightily helped reverse the
odds against Japanese victory in the Pacific.
Yet of special fascination in these reports is the
on-running account of what life was like for the people of
occupied Bougainville, local and expatriate, and the
problems this created for Read. Many expatriate planter
families and missionaries had refused to leave the island at
the outbreak of war (the Christian missionaries holding a
sincere but misjudged belief that they could continue to
oversee native welfare unhindered) and their presence became
an increasing burden on Read. The residents’ demands
included food and other supplies to be dropped by air and,
finally, demand for evacuation. Thanks to Read and intrepid
US Navy submariners, all were eventually taken off the
island, although the performance of some of the expats, as
named and recorded here, hardly enhance their family
reputations. Meanwhile, some Australian residents, and
particularly the more numerous American missionaries, died
at the hands of the Japanese, and many more taken prisoner,
never to be heard of again.
In his unique records, Read lists the names and addresses of
all European (ie, expatriate) residents of Bougainville as
at 8 December 1941, and what happened to them, including
their evacuation; he lists the names of missionaries who
died, were taken prisoner or disappeared; names all AIF
personnel who served on Bougainville on coastwatching
activities; the names and home districts of the Bougainville
native police detachment, and natives other than police who
served under coastwatcher personnel; and the names and
details of coastwatchers who lost their lives, or were
injured, before coastwatching activity was suspended in mid
1943 following increasing Japanese pressure on the island’s
people.
The tighter Japanese control meant greater danger, sometimes
torture and death, for islanders who supported the
coastwatchers, for they could not now depend on the village
over the next ridge, or some of their own people, not to
denounce them to the Japanese. Read names the great many men
and women who risked their lives to aid the coastwatching
parties, and what they did, as well as naming others who
opposed them. Because of this, and because his 1943 report
describes with such immediacy, and with such empathy, a
native population under great stress in a colonial war that
was not of their making, Read’s account should become an
invaluable history for Papua New Guineans, even more than
for the rest of us.
Stuart Inder
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The Planter By Owen
Genty
ISBN: 0-473-10229-3, Published by Geebar Enterprises NZ
2006, 246pp, incl colour and b&w photos, NZ$35 available
from P.O. Box 24220, Manners Street Post Office, Wellington,
6142, New Zealand Email: ogn@owengenty.com
Owen Genty was born in Bowral, N.S.W. and grew up with a
love of the land and horses. He is a skilled equestrian who
has competed semi-professionally in Polo and Rodeo. In the
early fifties he signed on with CPL for three years as a
plantation overseer at Taboona plantation on the Gazelle
Peninsula. Three years turned into fifteen years and The
Planter is an anecdotal memoir which covers Genty's time in
PNG on different plantations, including stints at Pondo and
Popondetta. Genty recounts his first impressions of Rabaul
from the time the plane lands and his introduction to the
mores of the colonial community around Kokopo where social
and sporting life revolved around 'the club'. In the early
chapters dealing with PNG history - and at times throughout
the book - the lines between fact and hearsay are often
blurred and statements are unsubstantiated by accurate
source referencing. Of most interest to the reader is that
Genty records the variety of experiences and situations
presented by plantation life - including medical emergencies
- and highlights the camaraderie between young bachelors
living in isolation. He is not afraid to discuss the racial
attitudes and implications that made it difficult to
socialize with women outside the European community.
When Genty married, he and Merle decided to raise their
family in New Guinea; family life is pre-eminent in the book
and is a reminder that the political and economic climate
that prevailed in PNG at the time attracted adventurous
young men to put down roots and establish a career in 'the
territory'. These same men used their initiative to develop
the country in other ways. For example, Genty was involved
in the sailing club in Rabaul and formed the Polocrossse
club when he and Merle moved to Moresby. In l974 with great
sadness Genty and his family left PNG to settle in New
Zealand. He had witnessed many changes in his fifteen years
and with the onset of Independence the days of plantation
life as he had known them in the fifties and early sixties
were coming to an end. Those who have lived a plantation
life in PNG will be sure to relate to many of Genty's
experiences.
Editor
Index
Kundus,
Cannibals and Cargo Cults by Gloria Chalmers , Papua New
Guinea in the 1950’s
ISBN 978 174018 4144, Soft cover, Printed by Books &
Writers Network Pty Ltd 2006, 152 pages, photos and illus,
cost $24.95 pp available from Gallery 89 Partners, PO Box
302, Jerrabomberra. NSW 2619, Ph: 02-62559432, email:
glochalmers@bigpond.com.au
Gloria started work in Konedobu, Papua, for the Department
of Public Health in late 1951. Gloria describes her work and
association with early staff of the Health Department and
also involves us in the many recreational activities of life
in Port Moresby. A young Dr Zigas was on the threshold of
some wonderful exploration in medical research concerning
the newly discovered disease ‘Laughing Death’ or Kuru.
Gloria and Vin Zigas married at TAPINI in April 1953 where
Gloria had to quickly adapt to life on an isolated
outstation. Gloria became involved in educating the local
people, introducing them to the necessary hygiene rules for
housekeeping and the whiteman’s cultural world. Visits by
international scientists became more frequent as news of
kuru spread. Gloria touches on some amusing interludes
during her years in the Eastern Highlands, but we also see
loneliness and tragedy including the gradual breakdown of
her married life. Gloria eventually returned to an
independent PNG in the 1990s and was saddened by the
breakdown of tribal and village life as she knew it and the
prevalence of diseases which had been previously almost
controlled, a lifestyle that many of the people do not
deserve.
This book, essentially a personal account, contains some
hand-drawn illustrations and is a wonderful read for those
people who were involved in those early days of nation
building and the historical development of medical services
in TPNG as it was then known. Thank you Gloria.
Albert Speer MBE
Index
