Notes from the Northern Territory: Jim Toner

June 2011

Barely a handful of PNG people can be found in NT towns outside Darwin but Barry Densley has lived in Katherine for 26 years. Although not (yet) a member of PNGAA he and his wife Valerie have fond memories of their time in the islands. Barry served the first year of a contract with the Education Department in 1973 as Deputy Principal, Moresby High School, and the following year as Deputy at Popondetta HS in support of the first locally appointed Secondary Head, Araga Gure.

Barry had a diploma in civil engineering and after three years Down South the couple fancied another look at Kumul country. So they spent 1978 in Lae where Barry taught his subject at the Technical College. Appointed Principal of Mt Hagen Tech he enjoyed 1979 there but returned to Moresby in 1980 as Coordinator of Technical Studies/Inspector of Technical Schools.

Now 74, Barry enlivens retirement with duties as a Civil Marriage celebrant but he is a dedicated Aussie Rules man. At his PNG postings he umpired in A grade but took great pleasure in being Manager of the Lae team which met Moresby in an "inter-Territory" challenge in 1978. Game-keeper turned poacher?

Those of us who encountered Patrick Virgil Dwyer during his nearly two decades in PNG will blink upon hearing that the onetime wild colonial boy from our convict island has just enjoyed his 73rd birthday. And that he is the grey-bearded patriarch of a dynasty numbering 20 of whom all but two surrounded him for the celebration in Perth. One small grand-daughter on learning that he originally came from Tasmania enquired "And did you come to Australia for a better life?"

Fear Drive My Feet was a WW2 memoir which left even Weary Dunlop much impressed. It is a long time since its author Peter Ryan, MM, was an 18-year-old soldier in New Guinea but he is still putting pen to paper and recently had an article in The Spectator (26 March). Written for readers not as in touch with PNG affairs as our members he covered achievements prior to Independence and developments, or lack of, since. He mentions the ongoing debate as to whether Australia's withdrawal in 1975 was a responsible act and reveals an eyebrow-lifting comment made to him personally by Mr Gough Whitlam: "Never forget, Comrade, that it was I who liberated Papua New Guinea". It can be assumed that the onetime Prime Minister did not say this in jest.

In Africa there seem to be problems from one end to the other. So it is interesting that one eminent commentator there has said: "the best advertisement for colonial administration is post-colonial administration"

The recent Japanese earthquake set up a tsunami which spread to PNG particularly the Sepik coast. Wewak suffered three major waves causing damage and all patients at the Boram hospital had to be evacuated. An estimated K5 million is required for its re-establishment. This disaster stirred memories of the 1960 tsunami which swept across the Pacific from Chile and was remarked on by Dennis Compston, Pat Murray, John Brady, Ossie Dent, Robin McKay and myself in Una Voce 45 years later. The tidal surges then seen at Wewak, Madang, Rabaul, Kieta, and on the east coast of New Ireland did not cause the appalling damage to Japan's people and property which resulted from their magnitude 8.9 earthquake but the named members can say that we were witnesses, if somewhat distant, of the world‘s biggest
Quake since 1900. For Chile was a magnitude 9.5.

Higher costs concern us all so a call for the regulation of bride prices in the Western Highlands is a little amusing but quite understandable. Recently at a village near Mt Hagen K54,000 and 72 pigs were paid by a business man for his son's bride but he pointed out that poor families were increasingly unable to acquire wives for their young men with detrimental social consequences.

It might have astounded the authors of Moresby's Black and White magazine in the 70s but, given education and training PNG nationals can, of course, rise to great heights. As in the case of the pilot of a 500 seat Airbus mentioned in the March issue. However some news from the Southern Highlands concerning perceived competency as instant builders stretches the imagination. Construction of the three-storied Mendi Valley Plaza is under way and the contractor says it has employed over 50 local men who were handpicked from the street without any experience and trained on the job as carpenters, bricklayers, concretors and steel fixers. The Plaza will—so long as it stands up—be the second tallest structure in the Valley outdone only by the seven storeys of the Provincial Government Centre.

On a personal note I shall in May celebrate the 40th anniversary of my becoming an Australian. O happy day! My proposers were two ex-RAAF types: Des Clancy (Native Affairs) and Barney Madden ( Education) and what Immigration bureaucrat could challenge that pair? As a subject of the Queen already there was no need for ceremony but my so-called friends decided otherwise. Seized and sat in a chair, wrapped in the flag, and then baptised with upended "greenies" and "brownies" I became a wet alcoholic mess. During which ritual Ed Brumby (Education), talented lyricist, declaimed his ode written on toilet paper extolling my many virtues and applauding my renunciation of Pommy bastardry....

So on the 29th I shall be celebrating once again, sadly without the raucous wantoks present, but with a beverage from the Barossa, Hunter, or Margaret River, none of which precious liquid shall touch my hair. What remains of it.