December 2014

The PNG-Australia Social & Cultural Group did not overlook PNG Independence Day in Darwin this year although the celebration was held ten days later. There was lunch, music and games for children beside Lake Alexander on 27 September.

Palmerston NT boasts only two ex-kiaps and they missed the occasion through absence. Rick Gray is working at Tari and Mike Press on holiday in USA. They will be back for the Wet Season.

Another of ‘God’s shadows on Earth’, Frank Leibfried, reporting from Hobart touches on medical matters (a topic not uncommon amongst Una Voce readers). He says he has been condemned to Warfarin for life. I responded that my wife insists on driving me to appointments with the cardiologist, which I would find unnecessary except that Mary always has questions for him that I would not think of.

Frank replied that his Sushila always accompanies him to the cardiac clinic clutching a foolscap page of questions that she puts to the specialist while Frank sits nodding sagely. Thank Heavens for the Gentle (and much more inquisitive) Sex.

A resolution to cull old files can easily result in more time spent re-reading documents than actual chucking-out. I was struck by a comment “What perhaps you don’t know is that the really interesting things that occurred in Rabaul never reached the files”. So wrote the late Johnny Herbert to me in a 2002 letter but it would not be something unique to East New Britain. John was an Inspector RPNGC there having joined in 1949 but when he left in 1976 it was as Chief of Division in the Labour Department.

Early one Sunday morning in 1956, the half-buried corpse of Adela Woo was discovered on the 6th green of the Rabaul golf course and nearby lay a badly injured Leo Wattemina who survived for only three days. The details of what followed made for an interesting crime story even for those who didn’t know Malaytown, Rabaul, and its residents so years later I penned an account which appeared in the September 1997 edition of Una Voce. It is still available on the Library section of the PNGAA website but in brief, Freddie Smith, friend to the two dead teenagers, was found guilty of murder by the Chief Justice whereas on appeal he was discharged. The three Appeal judges cast doubt on the procedure under which a confession had been obtained.

From Herbert’s letter “I was there when Smith broke down and said ‘I did it Mr Herbert'. I promptly gave him a pen, cautioned him, and said ‘How about writing it down Freddie?’ He did this, I read it, took it in to Rackemann (Superintendent) who said ‘Well that sews it up’.”

In a Vale notice he wrote for Johnnie Herbert during 2011, Max Hayes. our Constabulary historian, said that the former RAF Lancaster tail-gunner was “respected and trusted” a description I completely endorse. It is comprehensible that Smith, greatly chagrined when the girl he fancied went off to the golf course at midnight with one of his friends, did what Herbert reports he admitted to the next day. However, that truth involved other investigators and the Appeal Court found it littered with evidential uncertainties. But even 60 years later it would make a good 30 minutes episode for Crime TV.