Editor R B McCarthy 2022. Dr Joe Havel (TPNG Forests 1953 1965) was the first full time silvicultural researcher in the Department of Forests in Papua New Guinea. Early research into Klinkii Pine silviculture2 was undertaken by Joe Havel which was completed by 1959 and published in 1965.
1 AUSTRALIAN FORESTERS in PAPUA NEW GUINEA 1922-1975
1 Dick McCarthy District Forester TPNG Forests 1963 1975. 2 Havel J J 1965 Plantation establishment of klinki pine (Araucaria hunsteinii) in New Guinea. Common Forestry Review 44 (3) 172 87 PNGAF # 9B-5B4H7 of 15th Aug 2022 MANAGEMENT.
. His pioneering studies on klinkii pine in 1955 59 enabled the species to be grown more successfully in the nursery and plantations (Ref. Plantation establishment of klinkii pine (Araucaria hunsteinii) in New Guinea. Commonwealth Forestry Review, 44(3): 172 187). Joe Havel did extensive research into the ecological studies of the PNG Araucaria forests which have been published internationally. Ref. Havel, J. J. 1971. The Araucaria forests of New Guinea and their regenerative capacity. J. Ecology, 59: 203 214. (1). Joe Havel with students studying botanical specimens PNG Forestry College Bulolo.
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Joe Havel in his M.Sc. Thesis acknowledged his time at Bulolo from 1952 1954. Havel, in the introduction in his M.Sc. Thesis (Thesis submitted to the University of Queensland 1959), notes “the investigations here described were intended to deal with the many problems met in raising and planting klinkii pine seedlings. Though the Queensland hoop pine technique were useful as a guide, a complete investigation of all aspects of raising and planting klinkii seedlings was necessary.”
Eminent TPNG Forester Joe Havel 1953-1965
Photograph 1964 Dept. of Forests Port Moresby.
2 Name Havel Jaroslav Joseph DOB 1930 Joined PNG Forestry 1953 Occupation Cadet Forest Officer Forest Officer Acting Regional Forest Officer Principal Forestry College Bulolo Work Locations 1955 56 Bulolo 1957-58 Bulolo and Highlands 1959 60 Rabaul 1962-64 Bulolo Departure PNG 1965 Life after PNG I had to restart in WA practically from scratch, but ultimately progressed to Director of Research and Planning in Department of Conservation and Land Management in WA. PNG Forestry Cadetship Yes. 1953 Graduation 1955. Any other staff Bill Finlayson who was deputy principal of the forestry college 1963 65. He was from UK. Address unknown 3End of 1964 Photo Forestry College staff housed in temporary quarters near Bulolo Forestry Station Office. Front row L to R Hi, Norma Collis, Arthur "Blue" Ramsay, Joe Havel, Bill Finlayson and Heinar Streimann. Photo credit Norma/Cheryl Colis. 3 Personal communication Gary Archer 25th January 2021.
untold story is that of the contribution to forestry by post war migrants. These men and women came to Australia in the 1940s, 50s and 60s and made their new lives in the Western Australian forests. I knew many of them and some of their wives, sons, and daughters. Jaroslav Joseph (‘Joe’) Havel was one of the earliest to arrive after World War II, and his story is one of the most remarkable.
Joe Havel’s Early Life as described by Roger Underwood4 in his article.
I first met Joe in 1967 when we were officers of the Forests Department. I was the DFO at Mundaring, and Joe was a junior scientific officer, having recently taken up a position in the department’s Research Branch down in the city. His junior status, however, was an illusion. He was 11 years older than me and had already achieved senior rank in the forest service in Papua New Guinea before moving to Western Australia to start a new life.
Our first meeting came about when Joe phoned me to see if he could pay me a visit. Would I show him around the district’s trial pine plots? Trial pine plots were all the go back in the 1950s and 1960s as foresters sought to define the best sites for new plantations. The Mundaring District had 15 or 20 trial plots, each about a half acre in size. They were widely scattered in the jarrah and wandoo forest east of Mundaring Weir. I knew the plots quite well as I had visited most of them and had even measured up one or two to check on growth rates, potential timber yield and other traditional forester interests. Anticipating that Joe’s interests would be similar, I dug out details about the dates of planting, fertiliser application, pruning records and so on. All this information was neatly set out in the Experimental Plots Register, a massive hardcover A3 book which occupied a whole drawer of the filing cabinet in the DFO’s office. In those days, every forestry HQ had such a book. I already knew a little about Joe. I had heard about him from my boss Peter Hewett, who was an infallible source of all the latest departmental gossip and had been a contemporary of Joe’s at Forestry School. Peter’s thumbnail sketch informed me that Joe came to Western Australia from Czechoslovakia in 1948 as an 18-year-old, a ‘Displaced Person’ (a term applied to people who were homeless and stateless after World War II). He arrived quite alone, with extremely limited English mostly picked up in a refugee camp. He triumphed to become a 4 Personal communication from Roger Underwood 9/4/2019, giving approval to reprint his article The Ecologist. Joe Havel by Roger Underwood in Underwood, Roger (2006): Old Growth Foresters the lives and times of Western Australian Foresters. York Gum Publishing. 5 This was written in 2005.
The Ecologist: Joe Havel. Part One Joe’s Early Life.
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I was thinking about my hero, Joe Havel, the other day5, having recently attended his 50th wedding anniversary. It occurred to me that there are two great stories about Western Australian forestry which are yet to be told. The first is the impact of ex servicemen after the two World Wars and the way they shaped the Forests Department and foresters in the 1920s and the 1950s. These ex servicemen had an innate toughness and courage, and they understood the discipline needed in times of crisis, such as in bushfire fighting. They were used to ‘making do’ in difficult and dangerous situations and fostered the spirit of mateship and camaraderie which was such a feature of the old forestry districts when I first worked Thethere.second
On that first time in the bush, we had a couple of intriguing days, getting to know each other as we drove to the various plots so that Joe could decide the ones he would review in more detail on a return visit, and yarning over our cribs under a shady tree.
Joe’s botanical and ecological expertise was not my only surprise. We hit it off from the beginning, sharing many enthusiasms including the same sense of humour, love of the wandoo country and a keen interest in history and philosophy. It even turned out that his favourite book was one of my mine (Jaroslav Hasek’s The Good Soldier Svejk), although I knew it in the English translation while Joe had read the original in Czech. He regarded the book as a sort of ‘resistance manual’ for oppressed people, rather than just comedy, and pointed out that Svejk’s survival strategy could be summarised in four words: “Look stupid, think smart.”
Later when I was working in the karri forest (by then Joe had begun his inevitable climb up the research leadership ladder), our paths intersected many times. His managerial duties in the Research Branch brought him down on regular trips to Manjimup, where he acted as guide and mentor to young Research Officers like Per Christensen, Rick Sneeuwjagt, Paul Jones, and Neil Burrows. I particularly remember one occasion on which Joe, Barney White, Dick Perry, and I walked in to look at some sand dune stabilisation work at the mouth of the Warren River, an extremely inaccessible spot on the south coast. The original work was carried out by Dick in the 1940s and I had read a fascinating paper he had written on the project. Intrigued, I had been in to look at the area and was greatly impressed. I wanted others to see it, so an expedition was mounted.
Joe appeared on the dot at the appointed hour. He was a slight figure in his mid 30s, smartly dressed, and radiating an intense intelligence. Ushered into my office, he drew himself to attention and bowed respectfully, before clasping my hand and smiling broadly. It was a greeting I came to know well it has changed little over the last 40 odd years. By this time, Joe spoke excellent English ... but with a slight central European inflexion and an occasional idiomatic lapse. I find it endearing to this day. Out in the bush, Joe sprang some surprises. He was not so much interested in the typical forestry aspects of the trial plots as in the ecological aspects, and he made a far more detailed inspection of the bush adjoining and surrounding the plots than he did of the pines. Joe explained that his research was focused on developing a technique to predict plantation success from site and vegetation factors which could be assessed in advance of planting.
There was nothing new about this foresters had been trying to do this for years, generally based on easily researched physical factors such as rainfall, soil type and nutritional status.
4 professional forester and now, according to Peter, he appeared set for a distinguished career as a research scientist.
What was new was Joe’s view that environmental conditions and site potential were already integrated and fully expressed by the native vegetation, the shrub species. By studying these species and their relative composition and correlating these with tree growth in the trial plots, he believed he would be able to design a fool proof system for predicting plantation growth and (even better) for eliminating unsuitable sites. Although none of us knew it at the time, this novel work was the start of an extraordinary larger project, the site vegetation mapping of the entire forest of the South West. This work culminated years later in Joe being awarded a PhD, and along the way it found a wide application in native forest silviculture, dieback management, bushfire research and the development of the State’s conservation reserves system.
The terms of the ‘assisted passages’ for non English speaking migrants to Australia were vastly different to those which applied to migrants from Britain in those days, or today for that matter. The British were given favourable treatment in contrast to Joe and his fellow refugees from eastern and central Europe. The Australian Immigration Department undertook to pay the fare for the migrant to come to live in Australia provided he agreed to go anywhere he was told to go and to undertake manual labour in the bush for a minimum of two years. The work assignments were usually those most Australians and British migrants did not want to do, like picking up rocks in farmers’ paddocks or cutting wood for the mines or the pumping stations along the Kalgoorlie pipeline.
I gradually began to reconstruct the story of Joe’s early days. He was born in 1930 and grew up in rural Czechoslovakia, a land of beautiful cities, charming villages, mountains, lakes, and forests but also a country vulnerable to the political winds blowing from Europe, Russia, or Asia. His father was a librarian who worked in an economic research institute. He was also what today we in Australia would call a ‘bushwalker,’ and he encouraged Joe and his young brother to spend a lot of time in the surrounding forests and mountains, walking, climbing, and exploring. These experiences led to Joe’s lifetime interests in forests and forestry. But the times were hard. When Joe was only eight his mother died and not long after, Czechoslovakia was invaded and occupied by the Nazis. Then came the war years, times of deprivation and Nohorror.sooner had the war ended than new problems arose. The elation of the liberation from the Nazis lasted only two years, and even during that time there was great social and political tension. In the small village where Joe had been born, these tensions surfaced exceedingly early, because it was a mining region and a heartland for the communist unions. Joe’s father was a Czech nationalist and did not support the communists. When the opportunity to move to Prague came up, his father promptly accepted. In Prague he was virtually unknown and escaped the persecution which was directed at the nationalists after the communists gained Joepower.was not so lucky. He had seen the nasty side of communism and spoken out. He clashed with his schoolteachers who supported the new regime and began to get a reputation of being a young troublemaker. He and a friend decided that they could not spend the rest of their lives under another dictatorship. Without their parents’ knowledge, they escaped. Since the Czech government had closed the country’s borders, they accomplished this by walking at night over the mountains into the American Zone of Germany.
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Eventually Joe ended up in a refugee camp where he spent some months awaiting a response to his application to emigrate. In a brief memoir published in 1987 (in Leaves from the Forest), Joe recalled: Australia had not been my first choice. All I knew about it was that it was large, hot, and dry. My preference had been for Canada, with its conifer forests and cold climate. But refugees in the American Zone of Germany were beggars, not choosers … and in any case, Canada wanted textile workers and miners, not unskilled high school students.
It was one of those lovely mild south coast summer days, and up on the high dunes you could smell the clean salt air of the sea as well as the earthy aromas of the bush. Looking north to the karri forest, Joe suddenly paused, flung out his arms and cried “I can never get used to the fact that I am getting paid to have days like this!” It was a sentiment I heard him express many times over the years, and one with which most foresters identified.
The mill manager recognised that Joe was sharp and keen and saw him as a potential locomotive driver and offered him an apprenticeship. He changed his mind, however, when he discovered that Joe had excellent mathematical skills. The manager promoted Joe to a day job, sorting, stacking, loading, and tallying the sawn timber as it came out of the mill in various lengths and dimensions. This brought Joe into contact with English speaking workmates, enabling him to make better progress in speaking the language. At this time Joe had his first introduction to ‘the forestry,’ as the Forests Department was always known in the timber industry. In mid summer of 1949, there was a big bushfire east of Jarrahdale and the whole workforce of the mill was called in to help. My main recollection of this event was a tremendous boot in the backside when I sat down on the fire trail to rest after a full day and a night of firefighting, and of the Voice of Authority telling me to stay on my feet if I did not want to get cooked! It made sense and I did what I was told without protest.
Joe has written about his early life in the bush after arriving in Western Australia in 1948.
To Joe it was an immense forward step. He had made enquiries and been advised that to get to university to study forestry he had first to pass the ‘Leaving’ or matriculation exam which came at the end of five years high school for young West Australians. Joe had completed his high school education in Czechoslovakia, but now faced exams set in English and the answers had to be given in English. He enrolled in a correspondence course from the Perth Technical School, studying English, languages, and maths. His first major financial investment was a Tilley pressure lamp which allowed him to study at night.
At the Gleneagle settlement, Joe lived initially in a tent and after a couple of months he progressed to his first Australian home a 12 foot by 10 foot forestry hut. The hut had a stove and an iron chimney, weatherboard walls and a proper floor. The roof was half of a large water tank. It was all mine for five shillings a week, and it was luxury, despite the open air cold shower and pit latrine.
I considered this lucky because Jarrahdale was close to Perth and my new friends, and because it was within the forest region. As an introduction to life in Australia, however, it had its drawbacks. Accommodation was very primitive: a choice of a tiny hut at the back of the mill, or a grubby boarding house. I chose the hut. My job was the overnight cleaning, stoking, and greasing of the steam locomotives which daily went out to haul logs from the bush, and sawn timber down to the siding at Mundijong. My shift finished at 6 am. I then had to wash off the grease and grime under a cold shower, cook a meal and sleep during the day only yards from the screeching saws, thumping baulks and banging wagons and steam whistles coming from the mill. Rough as this was, it was a great improvement on the refugee camps in Germany!
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After a month in a camp at Graylands (where he met the Australian family into which he would later marry), he was sent to the jarrah forest to work at Millars Timber and Trading Company’s sawmill at Jarrahdale. Joe recalled in his story in Leaves from the Forest:
After six months at the mill, Joe was given the option to change jobs. He chose to join a Forests Department gang at Gleneagle, the headquarters of a large forestry district which took in most of the jarrah and wandoo forests east of Armadale and Serpentine. The settlement itself (now long gone) was located about 30 km from Armadale on the Albany Highway and was extremely isolated. There were no shops or civic facilities, just the forestry office, a few houses, a workshop, and a single men’s camp. Even when I batched in the Gleneagle single men’s camp for a few weeks in 1960, it was one of the loneliest places I ever experienced.
Joe loved his job in the Gleneagle gang, especially the freedom and the beauty of the jarrah and wandoo forests. He learned lessons to last a lifetime. For example, there were a series of bad fires in the northern jarrah forests from 1949 to 1951 and Joe was a hands on firefighter in most of them. He was a good observer and quickly appreciated the value of prescribed burning in helping to control wildfires. This personal experience was one factor that led him to become an advocate for regular burning in the jarrah forest throughout his career.
After graduation, Joe took up a job in the Australian Territory of New Guinea where he was appointed a forest officer in the remote highland ‘goldfields’ region. His main jobs were supervising afforestation with hoop pine and research into the silviculture of klinki pine. This research became the basis of the Master’s degree he was awarded from the University of Queensland. His staff and workmen were mainly New Guinea highlanders and to work with them, Joe learned yet another language: Pidgin English or Neomelanesian.
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The start of the 1951 university year coincided with the completion of Joe’s two years obligatory work in the bush, and this meant he was free to set off on the road to becoming a professional forester. Over the next four years he completed his Bachelor of Science degree in Forestry. Within a day of graduation, he married Betty, whom he had met when he had been not long off the migrant ship. Joe Havel on vacation work at Glenoran after commencing his forestry degree. Photo credit Roger Underwood. Joe is remembered with affection and respect by his contemporaries at the Forestry School. I recently spoke with two of them (Queenslanders Garth Nikles and Peter Kanowski). They recall that Joe was not one of the hard driving, high living forestry students of the day. He lived a quiet and studious life, engrossed with his studies and with keeping in touch with his true love back in Western Australia. At the same time, he was recognised for his humour and courtesy and his great passion for his new profession.
It was a demanding schedule for a young man: an 8 hour day of manual work in the gang followed by a night of study under less than perfect conditions. He succeeded in passing the Leaving examination, gaining university entrance, and being awarded a Commonwealth forestry scholarship. It is a significant indicator of the man’s intelligence and diligence that he achieved a Distinction in English in his Leaving Exam, only two years after arriving in Australia. “I was lucky,” he told me years later. “One of the key questions in the exam was on the foundations of the English language, and I had studied all three of the languages on which English is based, German, French and Latin, at my Czech high school.”
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After four years of this work, Joe was transferred to the New Guinea Islands Region (New Britain, New Ireland, Bougainville, and Manus Islands) and promoted to Regional Forest Officer. This job involved extensive inter island travel, assessment of forest resources and attempts to control the timber trade. At about this time, New Guinea independence was being planned, and because Joe got on well with the New Guineans, spoke the language and was popular with them, he was chosen to head up a training school for local foresters. To prepare for this, he undertook a post graduate Diploma of Education in Western Australia and inspected forestry training in New Zealand and Fiji. On his return to New Guinea, he was appointed the foundation Head of the New Guinea Forestry College at Bulolo and organised the entire course from scratch. As part of his training methods, he used to take his students on extensive field trips, covering everything from coastal mangroves to mountain forests at an altitude of over 4500 m. Joe reckoned this toughened the young men physically, as many of them had become soft at boarding schools in Australia.
Challenging Jobs in Papua New Guinea Forest Department by Joe Havel.
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Going back to my New Guinea career is a long trip sixty five years to when I first contacted the Director of PNG Forests Department about a possible career there in 1953. For this reason, I am focusing on the events that are easier to remember and on the things that were important to me, rather than the grand scheme of things. Hopefully, these events will also be easier to read about.
I wrote to the Department after becoming an Australian citizen. I was in my third year of forestry studies, the first year in Canberra. I was by then already engaged to be married, so my main consideration was whether I would get accommodation in New Guinea as a married man. The Director, Jim McAdam, assured me in writing that I could, so I took up a cadetship for the rest of my studies in Canberra, which required signing up for five years of service in New Guinea after graduation. During the rest of my studies in Canberra, I began to prepare myself for that, such as studying whatever technical information I could get on New Guinea. It was not very much, mainly war time manuals on the trees of New Guinea, Lane Poole’s report and a basic textbook of Pidgin English Joe Havel. ANU AFS Archives.
A positive aspect of this clearing work was the opportunity to study the felled trees with leaves, flowers and fruits becoming available on the ground instead of being thirty metres or more off the ground. I sent specimens to the herbarium in Lae. Some of them turned out to be previously undescribed species.
10 I arrived in PNG in mid-January 1955, straight after graduation, marriage, and honeymoon.
that the real adjustment began, supervising a group of Waria workers, normally survey hands but conscripted to the weeding of the newly established hoop pine plantations. I tested my book knowledge of Pidgin English on them and adjusted my pronunciation. As my knowledge of the language improved, my responsibility was increased to several gangs of highlanders, each thirty men strong, but only a few of whom could speak Pidgin. Our responsibility was not restricted to work supervision. It included supply of food and dispensing antimalarial drugs and sorting out personal and inter personal conflicts.
In Port Moresby I had an introductory interview with Director Jim McAdam, an imposing man, both physically and intellectually. He informed me that I would be sent to Bulolo on the northern flanks of the dividing range, and that I would be primarily working on plantation establishment. Next day I was taken to Brown River by a ranger, and it was a shock to the system: couple of mildew and moss covered tents; reeking of sweat and accommodating a handful of highlanders. The ranger brought their rations and treated them for malaria and tropical ulcers. They were establishing a trial plot of teak. I wondered what I had let myself in for, and how my wife would cope. The next day I flew to Bulolo where everything, especially climate and accommodation, were much more favourable, and my outlook improved Theconsiderably.nextdayafter
The second year at Bulolo was easier than the first and I was able to begin researching the plantation establishment for klinkii pine, which in all respects was a superior timber species to the hoop pine they were planting. This was because of the availability of plantation methodology developed for hoop pine in Queensland. I acquired a small group of research assistants from the Buka Island, who were better educated and were superb climbers, which was handy when investigating the seed collection and processing. The best klinkii specimens were sixty metres tall.
Three months into my service in Bulolo I had to request the Director for married accommodation, as my wife could not continue her nursing training because of pregnancy. After some delays, the Director honoured his word, and my wife was able to join me. By that time, the plantation work changed from weeding established plantations to clearing land for new plantations. It was done with axes, and a great deal of training and persuasion was needed to change the old methods of our highland workers, based on stone axes, to a safer and more productive ways. My two years of work on forestry gangs in Western Australia came in handy, but it did not prepare me for a major incident, when a couple of Hagens dropped a tree on a Chimbu, causing a compound fracture of one of his legs. It took all my persuasion to stop the two gangs getting stuck into one another with axes, to clear a track to the road and to construct a rough stretcher to get the injured Chimbu into a jeep and hospital. It made me acutely aware that my past training was inadequate for the task.
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6 Havel J J
At the end of that year my family went on leave in Western Australia and whilst there we bought a cheap property just north of the capital Perth. On return to Bulolo I managed the plantations for three months whilst the senior forester, Don McIntosh was on leave. By then it was a sizeable operation with several hundreds of workers, and the responsibility was correspondingly heavy. After Don’s return and the arrival of a newly graduated forester, my duties began to widen geographically. On one occasion I was sent to the Highlands to inspect the forestry situation there and to advise native affairs people who were attempting some tree planting. I was unlucky to arrive just as the District Commissioner was seething with anger at having a golf tournament, which he organised spoilt for him by arrival of higher officials from Canberra. He did not appreciate the honest opinion I gave him about some grassland reforestation trials I had seen and ordered me out of his office. Seeing he was twice my weight and many times my official ranking, I had to comply, but I completed the inspection of the Highlands with help of an 1965 Plantation establishment of klinki pine (Araucaria hunsteinii) in New Guinea. Forestry
I also took part in the UNESCO symposium on the impact of man on the vegetation of the humid tropics held in Goroka. I presented two papers based on my research work in Bulolo, one on vegetational succession in plantation and its control and the other on problems of tree establishment in tropical grasslands, which were published in the proceedings. Not all my second term was equally exciting. I combined the supervision of work in the plantations with research into the early stages of klinkii silviculture and made good progress. It was during this term that the Director Jim McAdam died of a heart attack. His replacement was Bill Suttie, who was a Queenslander of similar vintage to McAdam, but of different management style. He had a strong belief in the “in vino veritas” (there is truth in the vine) Roman style of management, that is that when drunk, people say things they would not say when sober. As a non drinker I had nothing to fear from it, as I was still sober at the end of the parties when he was not, but I used to be quizzed by him the next morning as to what he had said. Towards the end of the term, Mr Suttie informed me that I would be sent for a limited period to Rabaul as acting Regional Officer for the Islands Region, to replace the officer poached by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. I had never worked in a lowland rainforest and had no experience in the control of log harvesting, which was the main part of the job in Rabaul, but that was considered only a minor problem, and in any case, there was no one else to send. So, we arrived in Rabaul with all our possessions packed in a few cases and were met at the airport by the outgoing officer, who handed me the keys to the house and informed me that
12 agricultural officer. At the end of the period, I had to report to the District Commissioner again, but this time my reception was much more positive, as he could see that I understood the human side of the problem as well as the tree side. I stressed the importance of protecting and caring for the planted trees. Hopefully, it contributed to subsequent revegetation of the grasslands in the Highland valleys. A rather different task arose when the seed production of hoop pine round Bulolo and other better stocks failed. A remote stand at Okapa in the Highlands seemed to be an exception, so I was sent to collect seed there. Okapa was a village and a patrol post on the edge of controlled territory. It was occupied by the Forei tribe, known primarily for the occurrence among them of the Kuru of laughing disease, which caused the progressive destruction of the brain and strange contortions of the face. I packed some collecting gear and sleeping gear for myself and the four Buka climbers and bags for the seed. We flew to Kainantu and then went by a jeep on a very rough road to Okapa. The first night in the village, the Bukas insisted on sleeping in the haus kiap (patrol officer’s house) with me, though it was no different from the haus polis allocated to them. The reason being that they were afraid of the Foreis, whom they believed to be cannibals. The problem was eventually solved by the kiap, who had a new patrol post a few miles up the mountain. He sent his police sergeant, who was a Buka and was suspected of being the source of the information about cannibalism to stay with Bukas when I had to returned to Bulolo. My departure coincided with arrival of the medical research team, and I had a dinner with them in the kiap’s one bedroom house and office. We sat around a table at the centre of which were jars with pickled human brains and the discussion was about the timing of the removal of brains from the victims of the kuru disease. I struggled to eat much. The seed collection was a success and the Bukas the heroes of it. A decade later it was discovered that the Foreis did eat the corpses of the deceased, and transmitted the disease, like the mad cow disease in Britain. In that way it might have been discovered earlier, if we, especially the medicos, believed the Buka sergeant. Again, my training did not prepare me for something like this.
The outstanding thing about the job was the travel involved. The leases were generally accessible only by small trading boats that carried copra (dried coconut) and salted crocodile skins and travelled at slow speeds which gave me plenty of time to fish for tuna and barracuda. One of these boats was Noosa, which dated back to before WW1. I travelled on it along the north coast of New Britain, and we encountered a bad storm. After I finally got off at Cape Hoskins, where there was an airstrip, The Noosa scraped a coral reef, and it was hauled up for inspection of damage. It was condemned as unfit because the timbers below the copper plate were rotten. Another one, a better quality ship that I used to get a timber assessment on Bougainville Island sunk a couple of years later in a storm because it was poorly balanced and possibly overloaded.
The accommodation was likewise quite varied. On one occasion I dined on pork and sauerkraut at a Roman Catholic mission’s Ulamona sawmill at the foot of the Father Volcano whilst solving the mysteries of negative log volumes caused by the high degree of utilisation of hollow kamarere logs.
13 the clerk at the office would hand me over the other keys. Fortunately, the clerk was well informed and cooperative, as were the other officers of the region. The job was not without its problems. The royalties were behind the due date on several leases, and some of the leaseholders attempted bribery through Christmas presents for my family, which I forbad my wife to accept. I brought the worst offender to order by refusing to give his log shipment a quarantine certificate. As I was the only one authorised to issue the certificate, he paid up, though he subsequently complained to the Director about my misuse of authority. The Director complemented me on it.
The net volume was arrived at by deducting the squared volume of the hollow from the round volume of the log, so that if the hollow was big enough, the net volume was negative. We agreed to ignore such logs. Because I would not share the German monks’ homebrew beer brew, I was suspected of being an Irishman, which did not match up with Irishmen’s reputation in Australia. On another occasion, after having inspected a lease on Bairiman River, on the south coast of New Britain I slept in a house kiap built on the banks of the river. It had extremely high posts and difficult access via a precarious ladder. I was woken up at dawn by a yelp under the house and a big splash in the river. I later found out from the lululai (village headman) that a man had come to get water from the river and ran into a crocodile that was coming to feast on village pigs. They both turned back to where they came from. The evening before I had cooked my meal right on the banks of the river where the croc came out of the water. Until then, I believed that crocs did not like running rivers with clear water. The high house posts and steep ladders made a lot more sense in the morning. The most consequential trip, in terms of long term effects, was to inspect exploratory assessment of forests on Toneloi Harbour on the southern tip of Bougainville Island. The area was reputed to have good stands of calophyllum. It was a strange combination of steep stony ridges and swampy inlets with mangroves. My boots got shredded on the ridges and the soles sucked off the tops in the swamps, so that I finessed walking barefoot. I stood on a thorn and in a quick reaction to it, fell downslope, hurting my back. I was able to walk to the airstrip in my second pair of shoes and to fly back to Rabaul, but after a day in the office I was unable to straighten up and stayed like that for over a month. The injury still bothers me today, though I largely keep it under control by daily exercisers and occasional visits to the physiotherapist.
Another stress source was a major lease proposed for the Cape Hoskins area. Because of its size and international potential, it was largely dealt with by the Head Office, but I did inspect the area briefly with the assessment crew. I mentioned to the Director my experience with hollow logs utilised by the Ulamona sawmill, because like that area, the kamarere stands at Cape Hoskins were also on volcanic ashes and likely to have the same problems. The director replied that he worked in the area during the war and did not share my fears. The Deputy Director did share those fears and when he took over the project during the Director’s long service leave, he sent a utilisation crew that felled a lot of the kamarere trees and found them hollow. The project was downgraded. However, by then I was no longer in Rabaul or even in the Territory. By that time, I completed my 18 month term in Rabaul, and a more senior officer was appointed to the position from overseas. Independence was becoming a major issue and the Director invited me to become involved in developing a forestry college at Bulolo to train local staff. Not having had any educational training, I negotiated a year at the University of Western Australia studying for a Diploma of Education and inspection of forestry training in New Zealand and Fiji. To get that, I had to sign up for another five years of service in New WhenGuinea.Ireturned to the Territory in 1962, I was involved in the preparation of the establishment of the forestry college, but also had a broader involvement for the preparation for independence. The main thing I remember about accompanying a group of Canberra officials dealing with the education issue was their concern that we in the Territory may have some privileges or entitlements that they did not have in Canberra. I also began developing teaching material for the college and identified an illustrated botanical textbook as one of the key needs. To help me in that I acquired Aubeta Kairo as an assistant. He was expelled from high school for insubordination but was an excellent field botanist who provided me with botanical specimens I needed for the textbook and for the school herbarium. I used co operation with assessment and utilization crews as means of getting into areas that I did not know such as Milne Bay and Western Papua districts.
During my stay in Rabaul. I completed the analysis of my research into early stages of klinkii pine plantation establishment and wrote it up towards the degree of Master of Science in forestry with the University of Queensland. I was successful in getting the degree and later published a brief version of it in an international journal. The physical stresses were not the key problems of the job. There was a huge demand for leases, especially those with good access. On one occasion received a verbal instruction to issue a lease to the leading businessman in Rabaul, who was also a member of the advisory council assisting the territory administrator. He already had leases, and I understood it to be a departmental policy to judge the granting of the lease on previous performance. I asked my utilisation ranger to check on the old lease, and he reported back that the contractor had logged all the timber that could be snigged by tractor and built no roads. There was significant timber residual, but probably too costly to haul. Having been taught self defence by Dave Dunn, the deputy director, I wrote to the Director pointing out the problem and advising him that I could only proceed if directed. Next, I had a rare visit from the Chief of Utilisation, but no written direction. I offered to resign if my management was unsatisfactory, but the matter was dropped, at least for the rest of my short stay in Rabaul.
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The first training that I carried out was the upgrading of local timber assessment crews in identification of trees and taking measurements in assessment surveys, which was done in Pidgin English.
The second, more substantial training was the last intake of forest rangers from Australia, whose training was much more substantial. The classroom was my office in Bulolo. I developed teaching material as I went, often giving lectures which, I prepared the evening before. This course was the basis of the next step. Peter Eddowes7 in his article Reflections of past times in PNG Forestry (1961 75) described his enrolment in the first forestry school held in PNG under my guidance as Principal.
Toward the end of 1962, Peter received notice for his departure (reluctantly) from Rabaul, to return to Port Moresby for a briefing session, prior to heading off to Bulolo for the commencement of the very first Forestry school. The initial intake of the newly recruited (six) students saw all of them housed in one old wooden house opposite the Forestry Office. The overall housing and teaching conditions were somewhat rudimentary, with the classroom in the storage room for the Pine seeds. My job as the first official Principal of the College was to shape the new (raw) recruits into ‘knowledgeable’ Forest Officers, over the next 18 Petermonths.viewed me as a very dedicated man, and although lacking in resources, devoted to the task ahead. I did a big job over the ensuing period of lecturing, organising field trips to and including the ‘mossy’ beech (Nothofagus) forests of Eadie Creek in Wau with Kevin White as their guide, and with visits to the Bulolo Plymill, Golden Pines sawmills, and the local sawmills in Lae.
7 Personal communication and contribution by Peter Eddowes 27/6/2018 titled Reflections of past times in PNG forestry (1961 1975).
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I arranged for other members of the Forestry Department to present lectures in the various fields of Forestry, including forest surveys, aerial photography and interpretation, mensuration and silviculture, botany, timber utilisation and timber identification etc. The part time lecturers included Kevin White, Alan Cameron, Eric Hammermaster, Greg McDonald, Phil Ainsworth, Alan Ross, and John Womersley.
Bulolo Forestry College Herbarium Class Lecturer Kairo Aubeta a long-term staff member. Photo Credit J Clifford.
(standing)CromptonTony& Peter PeterPhotoBuloloMontanework.forestTrainingfield(seated)Eddowes&localassistants.insurveyLowerForest1963.creditEddowes
Upon graduating at the end of 1963. Peter was seconded to the Division of Utilisation to work together with Greg McDonald & Barry Hartwell under the leadership of the late John Colwell, Chief of Division of Utilisation. Their major task, as allocated, was to plot and plan for expeditions, throughout the country, for the collection of wood material, supported by fertile botanical material, collected under the authentic ‘New Guinea Forest’ (NGF) series, for what was deemed, the major commercial timber species as occurring throughout the Twocountryofthe rangers were subsequently assigned to me to help in the subjects in which they excelled, namely Arthur Ramsay (Blue) in survey and assessment and Heiner Streimann in
Crossing 1963tripaftertoheadingstudentsintakeRiver.MarkhamtheFirstofbackBulolofieldtoLae.
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I had the students involved in a major ‘burn off’ in the Wau valley. Frank Coppock oversaw the operation, and together with other forestry personnel and local labourers, a whole day was spent in a successful ‘burn.’ After that, everyone retreated to the old Wau Pub for a few ales where caution had to be observed due to the presence of ‘termites’ in the floorboards!
. EddowescreditPhotoPeter.
17 botany. I was also assigned a Scottish forester Bill Finlayson, with experience in East Africa as my deputy.
The recruitment of trainees for the first indigenous rangers course proved challenging. Firstly, the forestry profession was not rated highly by the high schools and the Education Department. I recollect a remark at the bottom of a school certificate: “not suitable for law of medicine try agriculture or forestry.” There was a similar attitude among the potential students that I interviewed at schools and at regional agricultural shows they did not go to schools to work in the bush, their preference was a clean office job. Ultimately, I did scrape a training group of nine students for the first year. The school that I was co designing with architects was still only on the paper, so the classroom and dormitory was extremely basic. However, we, i.e., all of the teachers put in a solid effort and endeavoured to give the trainees not just theory, but also practice, in school excursions they experienced every vegetation type from the to the top of Mt Wilhelm, quite literally. I taught them technical English so that they could read scientific and technical subjects. It was at this point that I ran into a major personal problem. My older son developed a hip problem. The doctor at Bulolo, whose idea of medicine was shaped by a spell in the German Army during WW2, thought he was malingering. When I had to do another recruiting drive at Lae High school, my wife came along with our son for a second medical check. The doctor at Lae, who had just completed postgraduate studies of bone diseases in USA, identified Perthe’s disease and put our son straight into hospital. He recommended that we arrange a speedy transfer to Australia for prolonged treatment, which we did with help of our missionary connections in Port Moresby and Sydney. My wife followed as soon as we communication Archer 25th January 2021.
8End of 1964 Photo Forestry College staff housed in temporary quarters near Bulolo Forestry Station Office. Front row L to R Hi, Norma Collis, Arthur "Blue" Ramsay, Joe Havel, Bill Finlayson and Heinar Streimann. Photo credit Norma/Cheryl Colis.
8 Personal
Gary
18 packed our gear, but I had to stay to complete the school year. I then took my leave and applied for transfer to Port Moresby, the only place where my son’s illness could be treated, In Australia, our family lived in a small house on the property we bought near Perth, and I kept requesting the transfer to Port Moresby. What I got instead was a list of obstacles to my transfer accommodation shortage, no position and transfer costs being the main ones. I used up my ordinary leave and was well through my long service when I had a letter from my deputy in Bulolo. The key item was the report that at a social evening in Bulolo the Director made a statement that “he could not see why Havel could not send his son for treatment from Bulolo to Port Moresby whenever it was needed.” Our son was at the time in plaster from his hips down, his legs being held wide apart to minimise permanent deformation. The strategy of “in vino veritas”: “there is truth in the vine” was at work again. This time I was not just a bemused observer, but an incredibly angry father. It was plain that the strategy was to let me use up my leave entitlements and be forced to come back to Bulolo. The next day I went to see the management of the Forests Department in Western Australia. Some of the top officers knew me both as a labourer on a gang and as a university student but gave me a temporary research position in the same location where I already had a house. The same day I sent a telegram to Port Moresby resigning from my position and requesting that our gear be sent to us in Western Australia. I got a reply that the obstacles to my transfer to Port Moresby had been overcome. I merely confirmed my decision to resign. That was the end of my official career in the Territory. I continued to publish my work on sub professional training in Australasia, on the teaching of tropical botany and on the ecology of PNG forests, especially those with Araucaria emergents.
Joe’s early research studies in Western Australia concentrated on maritime pine and the expansion of the plantations north of Perth. His ecological studies became the basis for the site definition work which led to many thousands of hectares of successful plantation, and his site vegetation studies in the native forest began to break new frontiers in forest ecology. Joe was one of the first forest research scientists in Australia to become expert in the use of the computer, a new tool in the biological sciences at that time, and his skills in this area were much in demand from other researchers. Although I was mostly working down south in those days, I remember going on a field trip in the mid 1970s to the Wanneroo Division and listening spellbound to Joe demonstrating site vegetation relationships and their correlations with plantation growth and yields.
I was also fascinated to note that although he was nominally a Research Officer, Joe put a tremendous effort into taking his work right through to operations. The scientific methodology involving principal component analysis by computer was translated by Joe into techniques which could be used by field foresters with the normal tools of their trade, such as aerial photographs and diameter tapes. I also remember a particularly prophetic comment of Joe’s at the time: it was a big mistake, he said, to be planting pine on top of the Gnangara water mound (a subterranean aquifer of fresh water, at that time just being tapped for Perth’s water supply). It was Joe’s view that the plantations would not survive in the long term, because of conflict over urban water demands. This statement was regarded as heresy, but Joe was right. As I write some 30 years later, the Gnangara plantations are being cut out, to be replaced by native bush, due to community perceptions about their negative impact on water Thesupplies.history of research in Australian forestry agencies shows that intelligent and capable scientists generally end up going in one of two directions. Some opt to stay in research as working scientists, devoted to their special area of expertise, and refining their skills and knowledge over a lifetime, often in an increasingly narrowing field. Others gravitate into research management, doing less and less scientific work while focusing on supporting and fostering the research of others. A good example of the first is Trevor Butcher, who for 35 years never wavered from his intense research interest in pine silviculture and tree breeding. Joe took the other path. Not long after he joined the Research Branch he was promoted to Inspector, shortly after to Superintendent, and in the early 1980s to Chief of Research.
The Ecologist: Joe Havel. Part Two. Life after PNG By then Joe and Betty had three children. When the eldest developed a bone disease which could not be treated locally, the 10 year spell in New Guinea came to an end. He approached the Forests Department in Western Australia and applied for a job. The timing was good there was a vacancy for a junior Research Officer, and the man making the appointment, Eric Hopkins, knew Joe. He got the job and a new phase in his life began.
Joe was an outstanding research leader. Although he was no longer active in research daily, he always maintained his status as an international specialist in his own field, publishing papers on jarrah forest ecology and site vegetation interactions in the international scientific journals. At the same time, he was never so immersed in his own field that he lost touch with other research issues and the interactions between them. He was a tremendous reader. I once 9
Joe Havel’s Early Life as described by Roger Underwood9 in his article.
Personal communication from Roger Underwood 9/4/2019, giving approval to reprint his article The Ecologist. Joe Havel by Roger Underwood in Underwood, Roger (2006): Old Growth Foresters the lives and times of Western Australian Foresters. York Gum Publishing.
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strokes of good fortune in my forestry career was to spend three years working directly under Joe soon after he became Chief of Research in the Forests Department. In this position I was able to study and absorb his philosophy. From our first meeting, our relationship had always been friendly and respectful. The quantum leap came in 1982 when I was unexpectedly transferred from my position as Northern Region Superintendent to Research Superintendent, replacing Frank McKinnell who had been promoted. I look back on the three years which followed (terminated by the formation of CALM in 1985) as some of the most enjoyable, interesting, and educational in my whole Incareer.thefirst place, working with Joe was a personal pleasure. I knew what was expected of me and I also knew he would go out of his way to help, guide, and support me. He could be deeply passionate about issues and sometimes apologised for being ‘grumpy,’ but he never lost his temper. He treated everyone around him, from the Conservator to the Storeman, from the Minister to the newest young typist, with unfailing courtesy. He believed in telling the truth and in human dignity, but he was not beyond a scintillating and witty description of the foibles of the silly or the ambitious among us. At the professional level, Joe saw clearly that the Forests Department was not itself a research organisation, but a forest management agency. He believed that in a government department, research was done to assist management, not as an end. This was a very heretical doctrine to some people who felt that the great thing was to pursue an academic problem down its remotest corridor to its most obscure corner, rather than to tackle the everyday problems faced by foresters out in the regions.
20 visited him at home one evening and found Joe sitting companionably with Betty in the lounge room. While she watched TV, he wore earmuffs, and was facing away from the television set and reading a scientific book. He read widely in the scientific literature and was genuinely interested in all aspects of forest management and conservation. He was an informed commentator and wise adviser by a wide range of research scientists in applied as well as fundamental fields. Joe contributed intelligently to debates and discussions right across the spectrum from hydrology to pathology and drew out the linkages between them.
Finally, and here I regard him as unsurpassed, Joe understood the relationship between forest research and forest operations, and between scientists and managers, and he set out determinedly to make the relationship a positive one for all concerned. He was one of the few who could work effectively across the hazardous interface between the two camps. This was because he had uniquely worked as a scientist, a forest manager, and a forest workman. As well as having the experience, he understood the conflicting perspectives and imperatives.
Most of the literature on this subject came from non forestry fields, but Joe was easily able to make the extrapolation and construct a model to apply in his day to day work in the Onedepartment.ofthegreat
One of the first things he did when he became a research leader was to study research management and the most effective means of transferring research findings into operations.
The relationship between research foresters and field foresters in the Western Australian Forests Department in those days was often tense, and this led to sub optimum performance in both areas. It was one of the first things Joe asked me to work on when I joined the Research Branch. He started by opening my eyes to the two cultures, helping me to see and understand the differences in outlook and attitudes and the underlying reasons for the annoying conflicts we encountered. As Joe pointed out, research people, in general, were committed to generating innovation and change, to altering the status quo. This justified their existence. Most scientists worked alone, or with one devoted servant, their Technical
The best of the research officers lived by Joe’s dictums, especially those who worked in fire research, pine silviculture and genetics, and in the karri forest. For my part, Joe encouraged me to work with the Regional Superintendents and the DFOs, and with them I tried to tease out the problems they faced. I invited them to our research conferences and sought their input to priority setting. The idea was to ensure some ownership of what the research people were trying to do. I wanted the staff from both camps to feel that they were part of one, not two, Forests Departments. I was lucky to move around Australia a bit at that time as a participant in an excellent national scheme known as the ‘Research Working Groups’ (RWG). These brought together the specialist research officers from agencies and institutions across the country who were working roughly in the same field to share problems and progress on their solutions. At the RWG meetings I came to see that for all our difficulties in Western Australia, we had better research operations relationship than many other forestry agencies in Australia and a much better one than some other non forestry organisations, especially CSIRO. In those days, the CSIRO was purely and simply a research organisation, fully divorced from management and operations. I formed an exceptionally low opinion of some of the CSIRO forest research scientists at that time (the bushfire people excluded). They seemed to see their role in life as one of creating problems for forest managers, not to assist them or find solutions. After the formation of CALM, I was able to take this study one step further through consideration of the Wildlife Research Branch which had been part of the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife. This large group of professional and technical officers were almost
21 Assistant, and usually they had no deadlines. The DFO running a forest district on the other hand, was constrained by the need to get large seasonal works programs completed to schedule and within budget. He worked mostly by delegation to field staff, overseers, forest workmen and contractors. DFOs preferred stable management systems where everyone knew just what to do, and how, allowing annual budgets and works programs to be prepared and implemented in the most routine way possible. To the DFO, the status quo could always be refined, but it was not to be discarded. The cultural gulf between research and operations was often exacerbated by personality clashes. Some research officers regarded themselves as an intellectual elite. In response, they were branded by field staff in the districts as ‘research bastards,’ a term with powerful connotations. Things bubbled over not long after I joined the Research Branch when an ex technical officer published an article in an environmentalist newsletter in which he referred to “the two Forests Departments.” On the one hand, he said, there was the Research Branch whose staff were intelligent, educated, clear minded, scientific, and dedicated to conservation. On the other hand, there were the intellectual pygmies, dullards and vandals who filled the ranks of the field staff in the districts. Worst of all, the good guys in Research were continually being frustrated by the bad guys in the districts who unaccountably had been put in charge of the forest. Copies of the article duly did the rounds and caused a lot of angst. The gulf widened. Joe put a lot of work into sorting this out. Repeatedly he told his research officers that their work involved far more than simply carrying out experiments or collecting data. They had to be prepared to drop beloved projects and pick up new ones; they must go and talk to the field foresters and find out their research priorities and worrying problems. They had to involve the operational staff in field trials. They had to get out into the field and actively participate in early application of any new prescription to learn first hand about any difficulties which emerged in the scaling up process. “The outcome of forest research is better forestry,” Joe used to say, “not just a paper published in a scientific journal.”
Wonderful research work was being done, but the commitment was to the accumulation of knowledge, not its application. One of these officers, Stephen Hopper, was deeply offended when I told him that in my opinion CALM was not a research organisation, but a conservation and land management organisation, and that research within such an agency was a means to this end, not an end in itself.
22 totally devoted to research, and they had virtually no management staff or operational responsibilities.
In addition to his scientific and managerial accomplishments, Joe was a wise and intelligent observer of the human animal and its machinations. I often consulted him when I was worried about some crisis in the department, or in the profession, or in forestry. Joe would give me an insightful and pithy summary of the situation, his view on where things were heading and were likely to end up, and the right strategy for someone like me to adopt, and I would immediately feel better. Often, he would add an appropriate aphorism or proverb in Czech to emphasise his point, which he introduced with the memorable line, “There is an old Czechoslovakian saying …” One of these translated roughly into “When the storm comes across the mountains, and the lightning flashes and the thunder rumbles all around, keep your head down. All storms pass.” It was a survivor’s philosophy. I especially enjoyed observing Joe performing in his corporate role as a Chief of Division.
The Conservator, Mr Beggs, and the other Chiefs soon learned that involving Joe (and therefore the Research Division) in decision making about almost any aspect of departmental affairs guaranteed a better outcome. In this way he was active in the larger sphere of forestry. Indeed, he provided the ‘intellectual grunt’ behind several major innovations in the late 1970s and early 1980s, especially in dieback management in the jarrah forest (which resulted from the work of a special Task Force, of which he became the leader), and a new system of management based on land use priorities. This was, for its time, a highly sophisticated approach to forestry that classified the whole of the native forest into Management Priority Areas. The MPAs included water production (for the high rainfall catchment areas), catchment protection (for the salinity risk zones), flora and fauna (for significant wildlife and landscape zones), recreation, timber production and so on. For each MPA, a different form of management was laid down to optimise the priority use. Other uses were designated as compatible or non compatible. In this way, each area of forest in the South West was managed to optimise the selected outputs. It was a far more sophisticated approach than that adopted by CALM today, especially in the catchment areas of the jarrah forest. Several people helped to develop this concept (also including Joe’s protégé, the brilliant botanist Libby Mattiske when it came to the mapping stage), but it was Joe who provided the scientific underpinning and the logic. When CALM was formed in 1985, Joe was appointed the inaugural Director of Research and Planning. It was a job of immense complexity and difficulty. There were immediate demands for management plans for deeply controversial areas such as the Lane Poole Reserve and the d’Entrecasteaux National Park. New structures were needed to integrate the planning and research groups from the three amalgamating agencies. There were new research priorities and imperatives bearing down from all angles, new appointments to be made and self interested politicians and narrow minded environmentalists lurking behind every tree. Joe no longer had to worry just about merging the cultures between research and operations in the
Based on Joe’s teaching and example on technology transfer (or ‘research extension’ as it was sometimes called), I wrote a paper on the subject which I delivered to a conference in Canberra and later published. I received acclaim from several international foresters and scientists, although Joe deserved all the credit.
From a situation in the Forests Department where Joe was largely in control of his own destiny, he suddenly found himself in a world of chaos, incompatible demands, lack of trust and interpersonal conflicts. To nobody’s surprise, it was too much for one man. Joe’s health, already fragile from a heart attack, began to falter and he found few pleasures in the daily task. Within the year he retired, having just reached the minimum retirement age.
There were some who thought that this would be the last we saw of Joe, that he would retreat to tend his magnificent orchard at Wanneroo. Those people did not know Joe, his enthusiasm and work ethic. Before long he emerged as a consulting scientist working for various government agencies, including CALM. He did a series of ecological research projects in Indonesia and became fluent in Indonesian. He worked on sandalwood cultivation in Timor and the east Kimberley. Simultaneously he signed up at Murdoch University to turn his lifelong expertise in site vegetation analysis into a PhD, which he completed in his early 70s.
23 old Forests Department; he now had to take into account the even more conflicting cultures in the planning and research sections of the national parks and the wildlife organisations.
With Libby Mattiske he developed the forest site vegetation maps used as a basis for the conservation reserve system proposed under the Regional Forest Agreement in the mid 1990s. The fact that a lot of this work was simply abandoned by self serving politicians was not Joe’s fault and, in any case, the work is still finding other applications, notably in planning a more sophisticated approach to prescribed burning. Although Joe is a courteous, gentle, and tolerant man, nevertheless he is human and capable of losing patience with fools. His well known respect for the views of others did not extend to the Nazis and the dictatorial communists he knew in his youth nor to the unions, and he had a magnificent contempt for the phoneyisms and falsehoods of the environmental activists and ‘green academics’ who besieged forest science for many years. In what he calls ‘semi retirement,’ Joe is actively helping disadvantaged people in his community, and grand parenting as well as writing, reading, studying, and tending his orchard. There were two great highlights for him in later years. In 1990 he and Betty called in to Czechoslovakia on their way to a conference in Canada. It was just after the fall of communism, the first time in 42 years that he was able to re enter the country without the threat of being prevented from leaving. Initially, there was some dark humour: the Czech border guards did not know how to handle him. Two months earlier they would have arrested him, but now they thought he might be related to the new President, Vaclav Havel, so in the end he was treated like an honoured guest. There was also great sadness. Joe’s father, whom he had seen briefly on two earlier trips to Zurich and Vienna, was dying, while Joe’s brother, Mirek, had difficulty in adjusting to this new Joe whom he had not seen since they were teenagers. Meeting other family members and people he had not seen for 50 years; Joe experienced the ultimate revelation which comes to all returning migrants: he was a stranger in the land where he was born. The other highlight was returning to his birthplace in what is now the Czech Republic in 2000 with his two sons and retracing with them his walk across the mountains to Germany and Ifreedom.stillsee Joe now and again, to seek his advice or just to have a chat or a wander around his orchard. Without difficulty I recall our first meeting at Mundaring Weir nearly 40 years ago and I note with pleasure the same alert intelligence, wide interests, irreverent humour, and passion for life. I forgive him his occasional grumpiness about the decline of this or that, and I enjoy the stimulus of his acute observations. I am reminded that storms do pass. And the best things in life endure. Roger Underwood Gwambygine 2006
I trained Kairo Aubeta in botanical collection who has been instrumental over his lifetime in making a major contribution to PNG botanical collections. On the 30th of August 2018, 89 year old Kairo Aubeta12 was recognised by PNG in being made a Member of the Order of Logohu. Kairo remarked on the day that he was in the Second World War and in 1955 started in forestry with Joe Havel. He went to forestry everywhere in PNG. He worked at the Bulolo Forestry College and became a botanist for 28 years and retired in 2017. Previously he had been honoured for his work in New Year’s Awards in 1975 and 1982.
10 Havel J 1970 reprinted 1975 Training Manual for the Forestry College Volume 3 Forest Botany ; Part 2 Botanical Taxonomy
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11 Havel J 1970 Training Manual for the forestry College Volume 3 Forest Botany Part 1 Terminology.
Nearly a decade later, I had a surprising request, namely, to co operate with the Division of Botany in revising and publishing my manual of forest botany, which had been left untouched on the shelf. It resulted in a well utilised book, still used today, because it is based on sound educational theory and abundant illustrations, rather than the usual taxonomic Ijargon.wasan
avid botanical collector from 1955. By 1965, I had compiled an illustrated textbook of forest botany. This publication sat on a shelf in the Lae Herbarium until 1970 when Don McIntosh the Managing Director of Forests arranged for its publication.
10 11 My next contact was a visit to PNG for the first conference of the Association of Foresters of PNG in 1996; organised by Dick McCarthy and Gabriel Samol. I was given a highland chief’s cap and a stone axe in recognition of my work in PNG and revisited some of the places where I once worked. I visited the Forestry College and for the first time saw the buildings I helped to design but never taught in. I met only one of my students and learned that another had already died. I also met my botanical assistant Kairo Aubeta and expressed my gratitude for his past help.
Epilogue Joe Havel
12 The National Newspaper Port Moresby 31 August 2018.
Bulolo Forestry College Bulolo 1973. Original design by Joe Havel. Photo credit M Day. I was saddened by the run down appearance of the Bulolo plantations. I was shocked by the extensive clearing and lack of environmental considerations in the logging of the Cape Hoskins area. By contrast I was impressed by the success of reforestation of the Highlands. I even met a Forei from Okapa, now high in the administration of Goroka My final effort was to publish in 2009, a summary of forty years of study of Araucarias held in New Zealand.
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26 13 13 Neil Carr VAFI IFA Newsletter Volume 37 Number 6 of December 1996
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Havel JJ 1960. Factors influencing the establishment of ligneous vegetation in mid mountain pyro and anthropogenic grassland.” UNESCO Symposium on the impact of Man on Humid Tropic Vegetation Goroka, 370 12
Havel JJ 1965. Plantation establishment of klinkii pine (Araucaria hunsteinii) in New Guinea. Common Forestry Review 44 (3):172 87
Havel JJ 1960. Deflections of secondary succession of cleared mid mountain rainforest sites by plantation tendings. UNESCO Symposium on the impact of Man on Humid Tropic Vegetation Goroka. 339 43
Havel JJ 1971 The Araucaria forests of New Guinea and their regenerative capacity. Ecol. 59: 203 14
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Havel JJ 1975 Training Manual for the Forestry College. Vol 3 Forest Botany. Papua New Guinea Department of Forests 317 pp.
Havel JJ 1965 Teaching tropical forest botany. Unasylva 19 (4): 179 83
Havel JJ 1964 Sub professional forestry education in Australasia. Aust For. 28 (4): 287 93
Havel JJ 1972 New Guinea Forests structure, composition, and management. Aust For. 36: 24 Havel37 JJ 2009 Araucariaceae, Angiosperms and People. Proceedings of 2002 Araucariaceae Symposium, International Dendrology Society NZ 2002, pp 107 132
31 ACRONYMS AAD Australian Antarctic Division ACT Australian Capital Territory ACIAR Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research ACLMP AusAid funded World Bank Land Mobilisation program. ACP African, Caribbean and Pacific States ADB Asian Development Bank AEC Administrators Executive Committee AFAP Australian Foundation for the Peoples of Asia & the Pacific Ltd. ADB African Development Bank AFLEGT African Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade AFPNG Association of Foresters of PNG AFS Australian Forestry School AFTA Asean Free Trade Area AIF Australian Infantry Forces AMF Australian Military Forces ANBG Australian National Botanical Gardens ANGAU Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit ANU Australian National University APEC Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation APMF Australian Paper Manufacturers Forestry Pty Ltd APPM Australia Paper and Pulp Manufacturers ARD Afforestation, Reforestation and avoided Deforestation ASEAN Association of South East Asian Nations ASIO Australian Security Intelligence Organisation ASOPA Australian School of Pacific Administration ATIBT Association Technique Internationale des Bois Tropicaux ATL Accelerated Tariff Liberalization ATO African Timber Organization AusAID Australian Aid Agency BA basal area BCOF British Commonwealth Occupational Force 1945 52 BDV Brussels Definition of Value “Beer Time” Any time. BFC Bulolo Forestry College BGD Bulolo Gold Dredging Company BNGD British New Guinea Development (Company Limited) BUC Bulolo University College C Commonwealth cm centimetre CALM Western Australian Department of Conservation and Land Management CBD Convention on Biological Diversity CDM Clean Development Mechanism CEFACT United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business CEPT Common Effective Preferential Tariff CERFLOR Certificate of Origin of Forest Raw Material, Brazil CFA Commonwealth Forestry Association CFE Community forestry enterprise
COP Conference of Parties
ECOSOC Economic and Social Council of the United Nations
CSIRO Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation
CTE Committee on Trade and Environment
CSD Commission on Sustainable Development (United Nations)
EEA European Economic Area
FAO Food and Agriculture Organisation
Cintra
DSB Dispute Settlement Body
32
EIA Environmental Investigation Agency
DBH/ dbh Diameter at breast height
CPF Collaborative Partnership on Forests
DIY Do-it-yourself
CIFOR Centre for International Forestry Research
CGTM for Global Trade Model
DEPT Department
C
EMAS Eco Management and Audit Scheme of European Union
CRE CRE is a term inherited by RAE from RE and is the term for the Commanding Officer of a RAE unit which is headed by a Lt Col. Although the officer is called the CRE the name is also used for the name of his unit. E.g., CRE Aust Forestry Group or 1(NG Forests).
Etc et cetera (more of the same) EU European Union EVSL Early Voluntary Liberalisation
CIF cost, insurance, freight
CRE Commander Royal Engineers
C&I Criteria and Indicators
ENB East New Britain Province. e.g. For example ENGO Environmental Non governmental Organisation
COC chain of custody
C&L Certification and Labelling
DPI Department of Primary Industry
DASF Dept of Agriculture, Stock and Fisheries
DOF Department of Forests
ECE Economic Commission for Europe
EFI European Forest Institute
DESA United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs
Criteria and indicators
FMA Forest Management Agreement
EC European Commission ECA Export credit agency
F &TB Forest and Timber Bureau Canberra FIM Forest Information System
DIES Department of Information and Extension Services
CHAH Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria
EMS Environmental Management System
CITES Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora & I
CNGT Commonwealth New Guinea Timbers Bulolo CO2 carbon dioxide
33 FPRC Forest Products Research Centre Hohola FRA Forest Resource Assessment FRG Forest Red Gum FRI Forest Research Institute Lae Forkol Bulolo Forestry College FSP/PNG Foundation of the Peoples of the South Pacific FCCC See UNFCCC FD Forest department FDI Foreign direct investment FIELD The Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development FLEGT Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade FLEG Forest Law Enforcement and Governance FLONAS National Forest logging concessions, Brazil FOB free on board FSC Forest Stewardship Council FTAA Free Trade Area of the Americas GAB Girth above buttress Gbhob Girth breast height over bark Gubab Girth under bark above buttress GIS Geographic Information Systems G8 Group of Eight (leading economies) GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade GDP Gross Domestic Product GEF Global Environment Facility GFTN Global Forest and Trade Network GFPM Global Forest Products Model GHG greenhouse gas GIS Geographical information system GMO genetically modified organism GNP Gross National Product GPA Plurilateral Government Procurement Agreement GSP Generalized System of Preferences GTZ Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit ha hectare IBRD International Bank for Reconstruction and Development IEA International Energy Agency IFA Institute of Foresters of Australia IFY International Year of the Forest IADB Inter American Development Bank IBAMA Amazon Environmental Institute, Brazil ICA International Commodity Agreement ICCI International Conference on C&I for Sustainable Forest Management IDB Inter American Development Bank IEA International Environmental Agreement IEC International Electrical Commission IFC International Finance Corporation IFF Intergovernmental Forum on Forests IHPA International Hardwood Products Association IIED International Institute for Environment and Development
34 IMF International Monetary Fund INGO International Non Governmental Organisations IPC Integrated Programme for Commodities IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPF Intergovernmental Panel on Forests ISO International Organization for Standardisation ITC International Trade Centre ITTA International Tropical Timber Agreement ITTC International Tropical Timber Council ITTO International Tropical Timber Organization IUCN The World Conservation Union IWPA International Wood Products Association JICA Japanese International Cooperation Agency L of N League of Nations LRRS Land Resource Soils Survey (branch of CSIRO) LCA Life Cycle Analysis LEEC London Economic and Environmental Centre LEI Indonesian Ecolabelling Institute LULUCF Land Use, Land Use Change and Forests m3 cubic metre MCCAF McCarthy & Associates (Forestry) Pty. Ltd. MHA Member of House of Assembly PNG MM Military Medal MUS Malayan Uniform System MEA Multilateral Environmental Agreement MFN Most Favoured Nation MIGA Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency MOU Memorandum of Understanding MTTC Malaysian Timber Certification Council n.a. not available NAA National Archives Australia NARI National Agriculture Research Institute NB New Britain NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement NGO Non Governmental Organisation NHLA National Hardwood Lumber Association NRRP Natural Resources and Rights Program NT National Treatment NTB non tariff barrier NTCC National Timber Certification Council NTFP non timber forest product NTM non tariff measures NWFP non wood forest product NDS Northern District Sawmills NFCAP PNG National Forestry and Conservation Action Plan NGM New Guinea Mainland no. number NG New Guinea NGF New Guinea Forces (relates to plant collection of Lae Herbarium) NGIB New Guinea Infantry Battalion
35 NGI New Guinea Islands NGO Non Government Organisation NGVR New Guinea Volunteer Rifles NZ New Zealand NSW New South Wales NTSC National Tree Seed Centre PNG Bulolo OECD Organization for Economic Co operation and Development OTO Office of Trade and Investment Ombudsman OIC Officer in Charge OISCA Organisation for Industrial, Spiritual and Cultural Advancement International Japan. OTML Ok Tedi Mining Ltd P or p page PEFC Pan European Forest Certification Scheme PIB Papuan Infantry Battalion PIR Pacific Islands Regiment PNG Papua New Guinea PNGAA Papua New Guinea Australia Association PNGAF Papua New Guinea Australian Foresters Magazine Series PNGFA Papua New Guinea Forest Authority PNGFIA PNG Forest Industries Association PNGRIS Papua New Guinea Resource Information System PNGUT PNG University of Technology POM Port Moresby P&C Principles and Criteria PEFC Pan European Forest Certification Framework PGA Plurilateral Agreement on Government Procurement PPM production and processing method PPP Polluter Pays Principle (other meaning Purchasing Power Parity) QLD Queensland QF Queensland Forestry RAE Royal Australian Engineers/Australian Army RPC Royal Papuan Constabulary RRA Rapid Resource Appraisal RIIA Royal Institute of International Affairs RIL reduced impact logging RFE Russia Far East RTA Regional Trade Agreement RWE roundwood equivalent SAP structural adjustment programme SPS Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures SFM Sustainable Forest Management SGS Société General de Surveillance SMS Selective Management System Malaysia SP South Pacific SPWP Secondary Processed Wood Products sq m square metres TAG Trade Advisory Group of ITTO TSS Tropical Shelterwood System TBT Technical Barriers to Trade
36 TFF Tropical Forest Foundation TFRK traditional forest related knowledge TNC Transnational corporation TRAINS Trade Basic Indicators of UNCTAD TREM trade related environmental measures TRIM Trade Related Investment Measures TRIP Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights UK United Kingdom UN United Nations Unasylva Journal of FAO of UN UNCCD United Nations Programme to Combat Desertification UNCED United Nations Conference on Environment and Development UNCSD United Nations Committee on Sustainable Development UNCTAD United Nations Conference on Trade and Development UNESCO United Nations Economic and Social Council UNDP United Nations Development Programme UNECE United Nations Economic Commission for Europe UNEP United Nations Environment Programme UNFCCC Framework Convention on Climate Change of United Nations UNFF United Nations Forum on Forests US, USTR Office of the US Trade Representative UNE University of New England Armidale NSW UNEP United Nations Environment Program UNI University UNITECH University of Technology Lae PNG UNRE University of Natural Resources and Environment UPNG University of Papua New Guinea UQ University of Queensland US United States USA United States of America USD United States dollar TPNG Territory of Papua and New Guinea TUBL Territory United Brewery Ltd TA Timber Area TA Timber Authority TRP Timber Rights Purchase Vol volume VSF Victorian School of Forestry WA Western Australia WB World Bank WCMC World Conservation Monitoring Centre WCO World Customs Organisation WSSD World Summit for Sustainable Development WTO World Trade Organization WWF World Wide Fund for Nature