PNGAF MAGAZINE ISSUE # 9B-5B4R1 of 26th August 2021 Eminent TPNG Forester Paul Ryan

AUSTRALIAN FORESTERS in PAPUA NEW GUINEA 1922-1975

PNGAF MAGAZINE ISSUE # 9B -5B4R1 of 26th August 2021 FOREST MANAGEMENT. Eminent TPNG Forester Paul Ryan

1

2

4

3

Editor R B McCarthy5 2021.

1

Paul Ryan Sagari Gadisu TA. Eminent TPNG Forester. TPNG Forests 1962-1972.

Paul Ryan Jimi Valley 1968.

3 Paul Ryan Tonolei Harbour 1970.

4 Paul Ryan Brown River. “Turi and the trees” DOF publication 1968.

5 Dick McCarthy District Forester TPNG Forests 1963-1975.

2

1

OVERVIEW

AUSTRALIAN TPNG FORESTRY CADETSHIP SCHEME6 1948 to 1963 After the Second World War, a Cadetship scheme was undertaken by the Australian Department of Territories to train Australian Forest Scientists to ensure sufficient professional staff for the purposes of creating a functional Forest Department for TPNG

7

Surname

Positions

Edward Charles Gordon Gray (NG) Alexander John Hart (NG) Donald Henry McIntosh (NG8) Kevin Joseph White (Q) Robin Levingston (NSW) Jaroslav Joseph Havel (WA)9 Robin Bilbrough Morwood (NG) Frank Harry Coppock (NG) Elliot Carby Tuckwell (NG) John Godlee (NG)10 Ian Grundy (NG) Eric Hammermaster (Q/NG) Des Harries (NG) Gerry Vickers (NG) Alan Cameron (Q)11 John Smith (NG) Brian O’Hagen (NG) Neil Brightwell (C/NSW/NG) Alan White (NG) Leon Clifford (NSW)12

TPNG Cadetship 1948 1946 1946 Qld 1953 1952 1953 1953 1954 1955 1955 1955 1955 1956 1956 1956 1960 1960 1958

AFS 1950/51 1950/51 1950/51 1950/51 1952/53 1953/54 1955/56 1956/57 1956/57 1957/58 1958/59 1958/59 1958/59 1958/59 1959/60 1959/60 1959/60 1960/61 1960/61 1961/62

Year grad 1952 1952 1952 1952 1954 1955 1957 1958 1958 1959 1960 1960 1960 1960 1961 1961 1961 1962 1962 1963

The appointments of Australian TPNG Forestry Cadets were summarized in LT Carron’s book in 2000 titled “A brief history of the Australian Forestry School (AFS)”.

7 Cadet Forest Officer pamphlet courtesy Des Harries TPNG Forests 1955-1976.

8 Don McIntosh Third Director of Forests PNG. TPNG Forests 1946-1973.

9 Joe Havel First Principal Bulolo Forestry College. TPNG Forests 1953-1965.

10 John Godlee Fourth Principal Bulolo Forestry College. TPNG Forests 1955-1980.

11 Alan Cameron Schlich 1960. TPNG Forests 1956-1970.

12 Leon Clifford Second Principal Bulolo Forestry College. TPNG Forests 1958-1975.

6

2

Evan Shield (NG) 1958 1961/62 John Lake (NG) 1962/63 Ian Currie (NG) 1963/64 John Harrison (NG) Medi vac out Last field 1961 1964/65 Chris Borough (NG) Field year year for 1960 1964/65 Bob Bruce (NG) no field year cadets 1961 1964/65 Rex Grattidge (NG) no field year 1961 1964/65 John Davidson (NG)13 1962 1965/66 Paul Ryan (NG) 1962 1965/66 Rod Holesgrove (NG) 1963 1965/66 Jim Belford (C) 1966 1966/67 Dick McCarthy (NG) 1963 1966/67 Dave Num (C) 1965 1966/67 R G Lyons (NG) 1965 1966/67 Gary Archer (NG) 1966 1967/68 Chris Done (NG) 1966 1967/68 Ken Hart (NG) 1963 1967/68 Ian Whyte (C) 1966 1967/68 Footnotes TPNG - Territory of Papua New Guinea, NG - New Guinea, Q – Queensland, WA – Western Australia, NSW - New South Wales, C – Commonwealth, AFS - Australian Forestry School, BFC - Bulolo Forestry College.

13

1963 1964 1965 1966 1966 1966 1966 1967 1967 1967 1968 1968 1968 1968 1969 1969 1969 1969

John Davidson Schlich Medal 1966: First Forestry Professor UNITECH. TPNG Forests 1962-1980.

3

Paul’s PNG Story Life before working with PNG Department of Forests PNG had been home since I was four, arriving in Rabaul with my mother and baby sister, Gayle, in February 1948. Dad was the local manager of Burns Philp, and he had arrived in Rabaul in 1932, at the age of 24, doubtless looking for an interesting life with the Company in this vastly different world, which some writers had referred to as ‘The Last Unknown’.

My mother had even longer and closer ties with PNG, or at least with what was Papua before the First World War. Her father had arrived in 1897 and brought my grandmother to Port Moresby after their marriage in 1901. And so, my mother and her siblings were born in Port Moresby; something of a frontier town at that point.

A photo of Rabaul, 1962, showing the towering presence of the dormant “Mother” volcano to the left of which is Namanula Hill where we lived. The still active Matupit volcano is in the top centre.

Rabaul prior to 1994 volcanic explosion.

(Wikipedia).

About 1952 we moved to Moresby, and I enjoyed life there in a carefree sort of way. Much time was spent on the sands and in the shallow reef strewn waters of Ela Beach, with many a red and sometimes blistering sunburn to show for it.

4

Waterfront Port Moresby 1913 (R Speedie Collection).

Burns Philp store.

Port Moresby 1914 with Burns Philp Store (Dept. of Territories).

Port Moresby 2000 Burns Philp Store. (Wikipedia).

Ryan’s cuk boi in Port Moresby.

Port Moresby 1958.

5

Port Moresby 2000. Burns Philp store. (Wikipedia).

Then in 1954, at the age of nine, I headed down to Our Lady of The Sacred Heart Convent in Bowral, NSW to start boarding school.

Qantas Sandringham flying boat that I flew from Moresby to Sydney in 1954.

Photo credit Paul Ryan.

It was quite an adventure travelling down on a Qantas Sandringham. I felt quite special, almost an adult, as I boarded the plane in the early morning on Moresby Harbour. I was too caught up with the impending flying experience to be concerned about leaving my parents and heading off to an unknown destination.

From landing on Sydney Harbour, I went up the road to Chevalier College at Burradoo, where I rather enjoyed the next eight years. The school was situated on 50 ha of rolling, partly treed countryside with its own dairy herd and a sheep dog we would borrow on occasions to hunt rabbits for dinner. As I was about to leave Chevalier my parents asked what career I had in mind. Over the preceding couple of years, I had considered several options including flying, going to sea and medicine. Now, what I said was, “Something outdoorsy”. I liked the outdoor life. As a young boy, I had roamed around the bush at the 6

back of our house on Namanula Hill in Rabaul and I had enjoyed the rural atmosphere at Chevalier.

I was thinking of agriculture, which seemed the obvious outdoor career, when my mother suggested forestry. I don’t know why, and I never asked her, but possibly she had done some research. Not knowing anything about forestry, she took me along to see a senior officer in the New South Wales Forestry Commission in Sydney. He explained all about it and I thought it was something I would like. So, we applied for two Cadetships with the Department of External Territories; one in agriculture and the other in forestry.

I missed out on the Agricultural Cadetship, and for some reason that possibly only a seventeen-year-old boy could explain, I forgot about the Forestry Cadetship. To get sufficient funds to put myself through an agricultural college I was working as a clerk with the Commonwealth Bank at their Brookvale branch in Sydney.

It was there, on a bright and sunny January day in 1962, that the bank manager called me into his office. I wondered what this was all about as I had already arranged with the Bank to transfer to Moresby the following month. Without much preamble the manager asked me, “Do you know anything about a Forestry Cadetship from External Territories?” My mind clicked back a few notches and I told him I had put in for such a Cadetship. “Well, it looks like you have won just such a Cadetship. So, what do you plan to do?” Very quickly, though in a bit of a daze, I said I would take the Cadetship. I wasn’t quite sure where it would all lead, but it was a preferable career to banking and maybe just as good as agriculture.

There wasn’t much time to spare to get into a university and in the end the only or best offer was at the University of New England in Armidale. So, instead of catching a plane up to Moresby in early February I was on a train up to Armidale. After three years there doing a Science Degree, I moved down to the Forestry School in Canberra, which was about to become amalgamated with the Australian National University. I spent two wonderful years learning about trees and silviculture, how to build roads and how to manage forests, as well as enjoying some great games of rugby as a winger and a vibrant social life.

Forestry House 2012.

Photo Credit John Pratt.

Australian Forestry School 2013. Photo credit Dick Passauer.

7

Fourth Year Students, Department of Forestry ANU 1966 in front of the Forestry School Building. John is in the back row on the right, Rod Holesgrove is in second row standing on the right, Paul Ryan is in the first row standing, fifth in from the left.

Source John Davidson.

14

Lost again Charlie H? AFS excursion? Paul Ryan.

Photo credit Paul Ryan.

14

Cartoon from Bob Brown’s Grass Roots Guide to PNG Pidgin South Pacific Post.

8

AFS excursion Bateman’s Bay Paul Ryan. Photo credit Paul Ryan.

1966 Staff and students Department of Forestry ANU in front of the Australian Forestry School Building, Yarralumla. Photo credit John Davidson.

Dave Num, Jim Belford, John Davidson, Dick McCarthy, Paul Ryan, Bob Lyons, Rod Holesgrove, Academic Staff: Dr E P Bachelard, Mr W C Boughton, Mr L T Carron, Dr D Colless, Dr R G Florence, Mr N Hall, Mr CD Hamilton, Dr W D Heather, Mr A G McArthur, Mr K P McGrath, Professor J D Ovington, Mr E D Parkes, Dr P Rudman, Dr M T Tanton, Mr D Lamb.

Non-Academic Staff: Mrs V A Boughton, Mrs O M Brierly, Mr C Clements, Mr J A Coley, Mrs J Crawford, Mrs B Driver, Mrs J Fenton, Mrs M Harmey, Mrs T Hill, Mrs C Hogg, Mrs A James, Miss J Johnson, Mr I G McArthur, Mr R Paton, Mrs M E Reid, Mr D L Wilson, Mr A Wood.

9

Life working with PNG Forests Having graduated from the Australian National University/Australian Forestry School in December 1966, I headed up to PNG, to what had been my home since I was four years old, to start my forestry career.

I had experienced something of a forester’s lot during the long Christmas vacations when, as a cadet forest officer, I was expected to work with the PNG Forestry Department, gaining an insight into plantation establishment of both Teak and Hoop Pine. These vacation sojourns with the Department of Forests were solely bush work and my introduction to working in the hot, humid conditions of thick tropical forests. It was hard physical work, though I did not mind and seemed to take it in my stride, learning about the bush and both the flora and fauna in it. And the local Papua and New Guineans with whom I worked were very willing to educate me.

I slowly learned to identify different tree species by their form, bark, leaves and fruit. Then there were the water vines one could cut and allow cool water to run into one’s mouth and the ‘wait-a-while’ vines with needle-like spines on their base and hook-like spines on their long waving vines that either whipped your hat off or stitched a series of holes in your clothes or skin. And, of course, there were plenty of snakes; venomous Papuan Blacks, Taipans and Death Adders to massive pythons.

15

While carrying out site preparation for a new Teak plantation at the Brown River Station, just inland from Moresby, I had an interesting snake bite episode. I had been talking with the Regional Forest Officer, Ian Grundy, and on returning to where I had been working with some labourers was informed that one of the blokes had been bitten by a snake, a death adder. Well, I knew a bit about the theory of dealing with snake bites. Luckily, the labourer was quite relaxed and calm. He thought he was going to die, and so did his workmates. However, I had other ideas and applied a tourniquet to his thigh above the bite and then got a couple of his mates to help carry him down to the Land Rover. Unfortunately, I had been putting in culverts along the road, but had not finished, so the Land Rover was a few hundred metres away.

Despite my urging, and probably because they thought he was going to die anyway, the men carrying the victim were just dawdling along. So, I stepped in and got them to put him on my back and so I piggy-backed him most of the way to the vehicle. When we arrived back at the station, the boss, a Technical Officer by the name of Tim Ward, figured he would try and suck the poison out; not something that is recommended. He got a safety razor and cut the two puncture marks then tried sucking out what he could. After a couple of minutes of this they bundled the poor chap into a car and headed off for Moresby Hospital, about half an hour’s drive away at a good speed. Much to the disappointment of his mates, who thought they would get a holiday to attend the funeral, the man lived.

Sagari Gadisu Then, during my vacation in December 1964, Forest Technical Officer, by the name of Chris Brown, and I spent some weeks in the Sagarai Valley, just in from Milne Bay, on the eastern tip of the island of New Guinea. The Rights to cut the wood in the Sagarai Timber Rights Purchase (TRP) had been purchased by the government from the local villagers. Our job was to put in the back boundary for the TRP before logging could take place, which meant 15

Cartoon from Bob Brown’s Grass Roots Guide to PNG Pidgin South Pacific Post.

10

traipsing through the forest, for some 40 km, over ridges and creeks, putting in boundary markers as we went.

Chris was an Englishman, and both a good bloke and knowledgeable forester. He was a lean and practical man with a good sense of humour, used to working in the bush and thus able to get the job done efficiently. Later, he walked for two days through the forest, suffering from peritonitis after suffering an attack of appendicitis many miles from the nearest settlement.

He survived, but it must have been quite an ordeal.

We flew down to the district headquarters at Alotau in a twin-engine Cessna 310, with all our gear, including a quantity of food and booze in large tin boxes that would have to be carried into the bush by porters. The booze consisted of bottles of rum. Beer was too bulky to carry, and we had no means of chilling it. On the other hand, the dark Rum Negrita went well with lemon juice from the local villages and some sugar; what we called planters punch.

At Alotau, we met up with my cousin, Wendy Murphy, who was married to the District Commissioner, Des Murphy. Unfortunately, Des was stabbed to death by a disgruntled local near Kikori in the Gulf Province a couple of years later. Our family have always been scattered geographically and we kept running into each other in odd or out-of-the-way places.

Apart from the social aspects we also had to let Des know what we were planning to do and why, while at the same time picking his brains for any useful local information. The government launch took us across Milne Bay to a village and mission station on the southwestern shore. There we camped for the night in the local rest house, known as haus kiaps16 in Tok Pidgin.

Paul Ryan in front of a haus kiap, our accommodation in the local village, after a hard day’s work in the forest.

Photo credit Paul Ryan.

These haus kiaps were constructed of local materials, in the same mode as a reasonable villager’s house. They were usually raised above the ground on posts, with bamboo and woven palm leave walls and a thatched grass roof. There would be two or three rooms, divided by woven bamboo walls, with open doors that faced a veranda of sorts. The floor was uneven and made of split black palm trunks, making sleeping without a mattress a little uncomfortable. But the houses were dry and cool and comfortable enough in the circumstances. They were built and maintained by the villagers for use by government officers. I stayed in a few of these village rest houses, and most were quite comfortable and allowed one to camp for the night without having to put up a tent.

16

A “kiap” is the Tok Pidgin word for patrol officer, the local administrative officer.

11

17

There were one or two occasions though, when the state of the haus kiap left much to be desired, being dirty and requiring quite some repairs. Then I did put up the tent, somewhat to the embarrassment of the local village chief, who lost some face over the matter, though he would have had a good talking to if I had been a kiap.

Before settling down for the evening, Chris organised with the village chief or luluai to have carriers available to accompany us next day. He also asked the luluai to inform the next village along our route to have villagers ready to take over as porters at their village boundary, which was the customary thing to do. We dined on local mud crabs and rice with raisins. The crabs were a real delicacy. But the delicacy part was lost on my stomach, when I found myself awake a couple of hours later with the distinct feeling that the crab and my stomach were not getting on and that an eviction notice had already been issued. I felt in the dark for my torch, then, having found it, made my way to the top of the rickety ladder of sticks that gave access to the haus kiap.

Halfway down I realized I would not be alone on the ground as I suddenly made out some shuffling and grunting. Shining my torch in that direction, the beam picked up an enormous pig. I wasn’t sure whether it was wild, but time did not allow for idle speculation and, so hoping for the best, I hit the ground and proceeded to negotiate my way around bushes and coconut palms to find the pit toilet, some distance away on the edge of the trees. Having had to use an assortment of toilets in similar drastic circumstances around the world, open pit latrines in remote PNG villages do not rate highly, particularly when the only light is from a torch that is definitely not pointing in the strategic direction. A few subsequent similar experiences finally convinced me that I had some sort of allergy to crabs, prawns, and lobsters.

The next morning my stomach was still misbehaving, but we were up early to help organize our party of porters for the trek. These, including several women, who arranged amongst themselves who would carry what from among our collection of metal patrol boxes with food, books or papers, rolls of tents and bedding, bags of bulk food such as rice and sugar, and assorted lamps, cans of kerosene and our kit bags. Poles were cut from the nearby bush to thread through the handles of the patrol boxes so that two men could carry a box, which could weigh as much as 70 kg, particularly if it had a lot of tin food inside. The men invariably carried these, but also other items, while the women, some of them none too young, would balance loads on their heads or across their shoulders. There was one woman, who must have been at least 50, not very tall, and quite slight. She leaned back against a rock on which a fellow porter arranged a load on her shoulders, including a five-gallon drum of kerosene. When all was set, she literally staggered to a walk, then kept on going…. for the next three hours.

When all was ready, we set off at a brisk pace along a dirt track into the forest away from Milne Bay in an easterly direction. At first, in the relative cool of the morning, and with a somewhat alert mind and interest in the surroundings it was not much harder than a pleasant stroll. However, as we moved away from the bay and into more hilly country, and the morning grew hotter, it became more of a chore. It did not take long for the sweat to start soaking my shirt, though we were generally under the shade of the forest. This contrasted with the heat in the open kunai grassland patches we encountered, which was oven-like, and

17

Cartoon from Bob Brown’s Grass Roots Guide to PNG Pidgin South Pacific Post.

12

the light reflected from the razor-sharp blades of the tall grass hurt the naked eyes with its intensity.

Every hour or so we would halt for a quick rest, sometimes by a stream, where I could refill my water bottle and take a refreshing drink of the clear flowing water. I commonly drank from streams in the forests in PNG without much concern about contracting a water-borne disease - something I would hesitate to do today even in a developed country. My one proviso was that the stream be flowing and passing through sunlight and that there were no villages known to be upstream.

After our brief respite, before we had cooled down too much, we would be off again, climbing out of the gully and trudging onward. Within a few hours the novelty of the trek had worn off and it was not so much fatigue, rather boredom that took over. My legs were carrying me along as if I were in a vehicle without feeling overexerted or tired, and this enabled me to take in the passing scenery or meditate on the meaning of life and my current girlfriend. Chris had developed a method of reading a book, in this case a novel, as he walked, glancing up every now and again to make sure his feet were heading in the right direction and the path ahead was clear of obstacles. I tried it, but found I needed too much concentration on the walking to be interested in the book.

The agreement with the porters was that they would carry to the boundary of the next village along the track, a three to four-hour hike. This distributed the benefits as well as allowing for a reasonable cartage distance. When we reached the boundary of the first village the word had obviously been passed along as the next group of porters were waiting to take over. We lined up those that had brought us on the first leg and paid them off. The rate was a shilling or a stick of tobacco an hour for both men and women. The thick, tarry, and sweet-smelling tobacco, which was often the preferred choice of payment, came with a page of newspaper in which to roll it. A portion of the tobacco would be pulled off the stick and shredded into the paper to make a cigarette that could be up to 20cm long. This was usually lit from a smouldering stick, then, unfinished cigarettes were put behind the ear until the need for another puff.

About mid-afternoon we emerged onto the flat plain of the Sagarai River and were soon on to the outskirts of Sagarai Plantation. Through the hospitality of its manager, we were to use this as a base camp. The plantation grew coconuts from which copra, the dried white flesh of the coconut was extracted. This is used to produce coconut oil and desiccated coconut.

There were acres and acres of regularly spaced tall palms in fields of short-cropped grass for more than a kilometre. We finally sighted the plantation homestead, stuck during this great expanse of coconut palms down by a river. Typical of many such houses, it was raised on posts with an open plan for the lounge and dining areas and a veranda enclosing the bedrooms, which made the place as cool as possible, and it was cool.

13

Mariawatte Plantation Sagarai Gadaisu Timber Area 1976.

Photo credit Ian Whyte.

By this time, after some seven hours on the track, I was no longer just daydreaming as I walked along. That comfort zone had gone, and I was starting to feel decidedly weary while my legs were losing their feeling and not always doing what my brain told them to. It was certainly nice to stop and sit down, and even nicer to have a hot shower and a couple of beers.

It did not take long to recover, though, and by the next day I was prepared for further treks.

These were not long in coming for as soon as we had settled in and organised our supplies we headed off into the bush, to start reconnoitring the area and putting in the boundary.

The work involved a few day trips that allowed us to return to the comforts of the plantation homestead at night, though most of the time we camped out as we walked up and along the ridge to the south of the TRP that looked out over the Coral Sea to the south. Every few days we would tramp back to the base camp at the plantation to replenish our supplies and have a hot shower. It was hard and hot work, particularly with the extra effort of carrying my kit bag while slogging through the bush and marking the boundary. We had employed a couple of local villagers to carry the tent fly and food.

Towards the latter part of the afternoon, we would search for a decent spot at which to camp, preferably near to water. Then we would pitch our tent flies using poles cut from nearby trees, with the locals doing most of the cutting as my skills in that direction were far below theirs. Several smaller poles would then be cut to set up the canvas bed sleeves. These had two poles either side to make a sort of stretcher, which was then supported at each end by cross pieces set into the ground. They made extremely comfortable beds, about 50cm above ground, secure from most animals, but not from rats or mice, which sometimes ran up and down inside the sleeve disturbing an otherwise good rest. The first time I experienced these it was disconcerting to wake in the wee hours to hear this scrambling going on in the hollow part of the bed sleeve. Though they seemed harmless I thumped the sleeve a few times to scare them away, then went back to sleep.

14

Although much of the forest or ‘bush’ in PNG is isolated from significant human settlements, one does not see a lot of wildlife. There are no large mammals as these didn’t make it across the Wallace Trench; that deep canyon in the ocean, near Sulawesi, that remained filled with water during the last ice age and so isolated PNG and Australia from the rest of Asia. We would sometimes come across a cassowary or hear the ‘drumming’ of a male as it pulsated its chest giving a mating call. Small wallabies would occasionally hop out of sight as we approached and there was plenty of bird life in the trees. The most notable of these were the large hornbills, which would sit in the treetops and, at our approach, take off with a slow, heavy, and distinctive beating of wings.

Despite the lack of large animals, I was nervous about snakes during my first night out in the bush. Chris and I set up the tents in young regrowth forest with the help of our co-workers.

We just used canvas tent flies as it was too hot for full tents, and we only needed shelter from the rain. There were two of us to a tent. As was usually the case, after a hard day’s slog through the bush and setting up the camp we would strip and have a wash in a nearby stream to get rid of the sweat and grime. The streams were commonly shallow affairs, so one had to squat and scoop the water out over oneself. There was a downside to this experience of squatting there naked in the bush; any mossies around could have a field day. Sometimes there were few, if any. On other occasions I knew it was going to be a painful experience as they would be circling in a grey swarm, waiting for the opportunity to attack. On this occasion there were not many mosquitoes and, so, feeling nicely clean and cooler, we settled down on a couple of camp chairs in the cool of the late afternoon to enjoy a planter’s punch before dinner.

As on many other occasions like this, I remember feeling a great sense of relaxation and contentment as one often feels after hard exercise and a good day’s work, then a refreshing shower or wash. A couple of rum punches also added to the sense of wellbeing, sitting in this isolated site, hundreds of miles from so called civilization. On other occasions we might set up our camp near a waterfall or beside a lake in similar isolated areas - not even a village close by. I remember saying on one or two such occasions, as we relaxed in such splendid isolation that tourists would pay thousands of dollars to be where we were, though perhaps in more salubrious accommodation. But we were here as part of our work and being paid for it.

Absolutely, bloody marvellous!

I have often felt fortunate in having a job as a forester that so often was enjoyable and rewarding in all sorts of out-of-the-way and interesting places and being paid for it. I wondered sometimes at gaining such enjoyment from my work. Some past Protestant or Calvinistic work ethic still lodged in my brain seemed to protest that work was not supposed to be fun or pleasurable. It did not trouble me greatly, though. Still, we are a weird mob to think such things.

18

Anyway, on this first occasion, down at Sagarai, after a dinner of rice, tinned meat, and veggies we turned in for the night and extinguished our kerosene pressure lamps. Lying there in the dark I listened to the noises of the bush. The frogs and the crickets seemed to have quite a party going. But it was the more subtle noises of something scrambling through the leaves that worried me, particularly later, when, in the early hours of the morning I needed to have a pee.

I used my torch to quickly check the surrounding ground, banged my boots together to ensure nothing nasty was resting there before putting them on, and then made my way out into the 18

Cartoon from Bob Brown’s Grass Roots Guide to PNG Pidgin South Pacific Post.

15

nearby trees. I do not know what continued to make scrambling noises in the leaf litter and it is hard to cover your back while your peeing, but I did return unharmed to my bed.

On occasions, we would stay the night in a village, usually in the haus kiap, but much of the time we were isolated from villages, being quite deep in the bush. However, that did not mean isolation from the local people, even if we may have thought that we were on our own.

The villagers in the vicinity obviously had an interest in what we were doing as it was their land and forest and this was brought home to me quite clearly on one occasion.

We had climbed to the top of a ridge while marking the TRP boundary, miles from any village and, seemingly, quite alone. Chris then decided to demonstrate that we were, in fact, being watched. In a small clearing he proceeded to draw lines on the ground with a stick in quite an elaborate fashion. This had gone on for about five minutes, when two older men pushed their way out from the surrounding dense bush. I was fascinated by the fact that, unbeknown to me, we had been under surveillance. It could also have been a little frightening if the ‘watchers’ were not friendly. However, in this case the two gents were simply curious to know what we were up to, though probably reporting back to keep the other villagers informed. Obviously, we were not seen as threats to their land or forest. We probably would have continued to have been unknowingly observed, but Chris’s drawings had been too much for them and they just had to get a closer look and ask a few questions, all in a very friendly manner. We explained what we were doing and, owning part of the TRP, they were interested to hear that our work was a forerunner to logging activities and some associated development of infrastructure for their area. They then proceeded to walk with us for a while as we continued the boundary marking, even helping us out by clearing some of the bush in our path with the bush knives (machetes) they both carried.

A few years later, while doing inventory work in the Watut and Bulolo Valleys we faced a much more hostile situation and had some difficulty explaining to villagers the purpose of marking out plots and measuring trees. On those occasions, we had to contend with local landowners armed with bows and arrows who cut down our tents, even though they had agreed to the TRPs in the area. It took many hours of patient talking in the village to convince them we were not planning to steal their resources. In hindsight, it would have been both courteous and good planning to have contacted the villagers in advance as to what we were about to do. After all, it was their land and forests.

When we would stop for the night and pitch the tents, they would have found suitable tent and bed sleeve poles and, with a few well directed blows cut them down and trimmed them in no time at all. Meanwhile, Ryan, who felt he had to pitch in and do his bit, would still be hacking down my second or third pole. On one or two occasions we got caught out in the bush with no tent or sleeping gear, having started back too late from our point of finishing work or having to take a longer route than planned. On these occasions we, but mainly they, would cut down poles and leaves to make a shelter, with more large leaves and palm fronds used to cushion a raised bed, or perhaps we would just sleep on the ground and risk the various crawling and slithering creatures that may happen along during the night. The forest contained all that was needed to set up a camp without the need for tents.

After some two weeks of trekking around the back blocks of the Sagarai area and losing a few kilos in the process, Chris and I walked out to Alotau and flew the 350 km back to Moresby for Christmas with our families and friends.

At this point Chris found he could not return to the job directly after Christmas.

Somebody had some faith in my taking over because I was sent back with another cadet forest officer, Dick McCarthy to finish the boundaries. Dick was a rather tall 16

and lean character, with a walking pace through the bush that almost left me running to keep up.

After flying in to Alotau, we again headed over into the Sagarai Valley. This time we took a different and supposedly shorter route, omitting the boat ride across the Bay and starting our walking from a village just to the east of Alotau. The distance to be walked was about 20 km as the crow flies, but more like 30 by the time we had negotiated the narrow, often muddy track up ridges and along streams through the ubiquitous rain forest. This time the relief porters did not meet our initial team of porters at the first village boundary. Apparently, the word about our porter requirements had not been communicated as I had requested. So, what to do? Well, it occurred to Dick and me that, as our first team of carriers were unwilling to continue for the whole journey, and we had no means of carrying the goods the rest of the way, we had two options. We could either go back and try to organize things from the start again or leave the goods by the side of the track, under cover, and return for them as quickly as we could. They were mainly food and our own personal gear, as the camping equipment had been left at the plantation when we departed for Christmas. Half-a-day’s walk back to our starting point and having to repeat the exercise the following day did not thrill either of us, so we placed the various items under a tarpaulin close to the track and set off on our own to our destination. Dick and I each carried our own kit bags, weighing some 15 kg, as well as an extra bag of something. I had a 10 kg bag of sugar balanced on my shoulder. It was a bit tough with this added, unbalanced, weight to carry, but we made the next 10 to 15 km to Sagarai Plantation in about 4 hours.

I wondered whether we would ever see the rest of the goods as the temptation must have been high among the local villagers to pinch a few items, given the assortment of food and other goodies. I had warned the first bunch of carriers that if anything was missing, we would know where to send the police. Nevertheless, I was sweating blood as we walked back the next day with some porters hired from the plantation, hoping like crazy I had made the right decision. As it turned out the local villagers were either a trustworthy lot, sufficiently wary of my threats, or we were just lucky they or nobody else passing decided to raid the stores, because as we came up the track to the bend where we’d left the stores, they seemed to be intact. And so, they were, thank goodness. It would not have done for my first venture as a team leader to lose most of our rations. That would have not only been embarrassing, but would have meant delays as we arranged for extra supplies to be sent in.

Melaleuca within the rainforest of the Sagarai Gadaisu TA. Photo credit Ian Whyte.

17

We spent several weeks roaming the ridges at the back of Sagarai, camping out overnight on occasions or returning to the comfort of the plantation house. By the end of January, we had finished and were ready to head back, first to Port Moresby, and then down to Australia and a continuation of our forestry studies in Canberra. I had survived, learnt a lot about selfsufficiency and self-confidence, and was as fit as a Mallee bull. I had also gained a new respect for the Papua and New Guineans in the bush and as human beings.

PNG Forest Inventories After graduating, I was assigned to some deep woods experience in the form of forest inventory duty. Luckily, I was somewhat fit after playing rugby for the Forestry School, though I was still found wanting in the early days of my first inventory survey, up in the Wau/Bulolo area.

Mess tent Bulolo Wau Inventory.

Photo credit Paul Ryan.

There, the hills were not that high, but they were steep, and the bush was often thick with undergrowth. The Papuan and New Guinea technical officers, with whom I worked, seemed to take it in their stride, whereas I found myself exhausted and with aching leg muscles I did not know I had, at least initially. I wasn’t totally unfit, but it took a few weeks and the loss of several kilos before I found I had adapted and improved my fitness where I was not so exhausted after a day’s bush bashing, though I was still not up to the standard of the locals.

The hot and humid tropical climate meant that ten minutes of solid walking would have my shirt drenched with sweat, but I gained a familiarity with and certain attachment to the environment; the damp, earthy smells with the occasional sharp scents from some shrub or tree; the fascinating complexity of the ecology; and the relatively cool shade of the forest compared with the searing heat of the open kunai (Imperata cylindrica) grasslands. Then there were the trees, the structural pillars of the forest, often with massive supporting buttresses. From their canopy would be hanging vines, some of which contained water that we occasionally drank by cutting sections and allowing the liquid to flow down into our mouths.

The usual routine was to first establish a base camp with some of the comforts of civilization like a couple of kerosene fridges to keep the beer and meat cold, and a hot shower constructed out of a 44-gallon drum with a shower rose that could be filled by bucket from a nearby drum on a fire. Then we were broken up into teams of four; a team leader and three 18

forestry assistants or labourers. I was a team leader and was lucky to have three experienced men from earlier inventories who knew the ropes. These Papua New Guinea men were the most skilled bushcraft men I came across in my career. Often, they would pad through the forest in bare feet, though there were times, particularly in rocky limestone country where even their heavily calloused feet suffered badly. They could erect our tent fly using cut saplings in no time, while I was still cutting my second sapling, and on one occasion we had to spend the night in the bush and an improvised hut made of bush materials was quickly put up.

Undertaking the forest inventories were quite a logistical exercise. Some fifty personnel had to be moved from their respective home bases to the base camp. The aviation gasoline for the helicopter had to be moved to the base camp. And then there was the food and beer that would be needed over perhaps a two-month period. This required the chartering of several aircraft – DC3s or a Caribou plus smaller planes to ferry in the personnel and supplies to the nearest airstrip, usually, a gravel or grass bush strip. On some occasions, where the base camp was near the beach in an isolated area a coastal boat was hired.

Bush survey camp.

Photo credit Paul Ryan.

All this was done without a great deal of bureaucracy through a helpful Treasury Officer, who had handled our requirements previously. The only hiccup I had while organizing the establishment of the inventory was when an overzealous Treasury Officer in Madang questioned the shipment by air at government expense some fifty cases of beer and assorted cases of spirits from Madang to our base camp in the Southern Highlands. However, all was resolved, somehow.

Portion of Mt Giluwe Timber area map showing strip line locations. Source DOF.

19

Those days of inventory surveys were a hard slog. We usually used a helicopter, initially a Bell 47/3B, then in later years a Jet Ranger, to drop us at a preselected pad close to where we were to put in our inventory lines. These pads could be a grassy area or sand bar, or, occasionally, a specially prepared pad cut out of the forest. There is nothing quite like the experience of taking off in a Bell 47 3B1, bubble helicopter, particularly on the first occasion.

There is literally nothing in front and under your feet except the clear Perspex as you lift off from the ground and then rise rapidly into the air, tilt slightly forward and then proceed to skim over buildings and trees. The sensation as you fly low over the edge of a cliff or steep mountain, with the earth plunging away beneath was quite something.

But there was a certain element of danger. This was brought home when, on one occasion, I spent a day doing low circuits over dense forests in the rugged hills of the highlands looking for another chopper that had gone down in the bush near Goroka. It was eventually found with all on board dead, with the chopper having suffered a sheared drive shaft as it climbed to gain altitude over some ridges. Often, if a helicopter has some height and then finds itself in difficulties it can auto-rotate down to the ground, an exercise whereby the pilot allows the main rotor to spin as the helicopter drops, then having got sufficient revs up he can have some control using the pitch of the blades. In this case, there was no chance for such an exercise. When that happens, there is nothing to counter the torque caused by the main rotor and the helicopter starts to spin uncontrollably until the power is cut. It requires extreme presence of mind to carry out the right procedure and survive, particularly if the aircraft is relatively close to the ground.

A Bell 47 3B1 helicopter on the ground at Baiyer River during one of our forest inventories. Photo credit Paul Ryan.

Two of three of the helicopter pilots we flew with in PNG died in crashes within a couple of years, one of whom, an ex-RAF bomber pilot, had already survived two tail rotor failures. He eventually ran out of luck and fuel in hilly and isolated terrain.

20

Once we had arrived at our inventory site, we would establish our camp and then first thing in the morning, after a breakfast of baked beans or navy biscuits (hard tack) and a cup of tea, the four-man team would locate the starting point for our inventory survey line and then proceed to head off on the line, across the terrain, putting in sample plots, measuring trees and recording the data.

At the end of the day, we would walk back down the couple of miles of line back to our tents.

Usually, the point or compass man on the chain would have to cut his way through the undergrowth and so there would be something of a trail to follow, although this was not always the case. I would follow on behind the other three team members, who would make good progress through the bush and up and down ridges, while I often scrambled to keep up, occasionally grabbing hold of a stinging tree or having its leaves slap me in the face as I tried to keep up. But they did not leave me behind and would wait patiently at the top of a ridge until I had made it up before moving off.

Back at our camp, the first task was to light a fire and get the billy on the boil for a good strong and sweet cup of tea. This was usually accompanied by a tin of some fruit like peaches. Then, we would go down to a nearby stream and have a wash of some sort. The speed with which this was accomplished was dictated by the number of mosquitoes. In some places there were none and at others they were there in the thousands and one would have to grab a plate of rice and tinned meat and sit on one’s bed under the mosquito net, being careful not to have any part of one’s body touching the net.

Bush camp with tent fly and bed sails.

Photo credit Paul Ryan.

After three or four days at one site, the helicopter would ferry us back to base camp. There, a cook would turn out delicious roast dinners, pasta or other culinary delights, and there was cold beer from a kerosene fridge. Clothes could be washed. Then after a day of such delights I would be briefed on a new site and off we would go again, with such a routine lasting from between two to three months. At the end of that time, chartered aircraft – often DC3s, but also Caribou – would return us, with our equipment and survey books back to Port Moresby or whatever town from which we had come.

21

Mess tent Ioma Survey.

Photo credit Paul Ryan.

Sometimes the weather and pilot concern would affect us when I was on the ground with a field team, waiting for a flight to pick up myself and some fellow workers. Around the scheduled pick-up time we would stand there listening for the sound of the chopper, hoping the pilot could see his way through. But it didn’t always happen, and we occasionally had to head back to our camp site and put up the tent flies and mosquito nets for another night in the bush, trusting that next day would see the aircraft get through.

Most of the surveys used line plots every 5 chains (100m) on a two-mile long line plotted to cross the terrain. Trees above 5ft girth were measured with a girth stick and heights estimated or measured with a Suunto Clinometer. Notes were also made of the terrain and features along the line between plots. In my last inventory at Tonolei, south Bougainville, we used continuous strips, one chain wide and 20 chains apart, with each line divided into plots five chains long on a horizontal basis. This gave us a 5 percent sample and enabled computer mapping to be done showing concentrations of species.

Tonolei TA map showing continuous strip lines.

22

These forests in which we were carrying out the inventories were all owned by the local tribes as was the case for all of PNG. So, for the trees to be available for harvesting by loggers, the Government had to carry out what was called a Timber Rights Purchase. In other words, they purchased the Rights from the local people for the forests to be logged for a certain period. This involved reaching a signed agreement with the villagers concerned and paying them a down payment. When the timber was felled each owner, which varied from being families to whole clans, would receive a designed Royalty.

Jimi Valley In the 1960s and early 70s, the local people’s understanding as to what this process was all about varied tremendously. Some seemed to grasp the idea, while for others, particularly in the more remote highland areas, it was probably a bit of a mystery. In the case of the people in the Jimi Valley in the Eastern Highlands, who had had little contact with outsiders and were literally still very much in the Stone Age, it must have been a strange experience. Here, they did not trust paper money, so instead of some $80,000 being paid out in notes as a down payment, it all had to be given in coins, and all flown in.

In mid-1968 myself and Bob McKeowen, a friend, draftsman and colleague from the Forestry Department found ourselves setting up camp in the Jimi Valley by the river of the same name. It seemed, at that point in time, as though the valley of the Jimi River had been forgotten, a small part of Papua New Guinea largely passed over in the development process and progression into the modern world. Located on the northern fringes of the Western Highlands, where considerable outside investment had been made since the early 1950s, the people of the Jimi Valley were stuck in an otherwise bygone era. There were no roads into or in the valley and no towns, with the people living in small villages on the higher ground, where there was less chance of suffering from malaria, though the disease still managed to kill and incapacitate considerable numbers. It was only a matter of a few years since these people had experienced contact with ‘white men’. General administration as well as law and order were undertaken by a patrol officer who was based at Tabibuga patrol post, situated on a ridge at the eastern end of the valley. This was served by light planes landing at an airstrip carved into the side of the ridge and only approachable in one direction.

Shortly after the helicopter left us on a rocky bend in the river a group of men filtered out through the surrounding bush as we were making our camp. I observed they were noticeably short, almost pygmies, not being above five feet tall, and were dressed largely in clothes made from bush materials. This consisted of a smooth bark belt into which was tucked a bunch of leaves over the rear end and a bunch of grass over the front. The women, whom we saw later, were dressed in a similar fashion, being bare breasted. A few individuals had pieces of western clothing, such as a shirt or shorts. Nobody wore anything on their feet.

The people of the Jimi Valley were really not far removed from the Stone Age, having acquired steel axes and knives only in the last decade or so, and, as we found, were still without files to sharpen such implements, in many cases. They were, generally, very friendly and through sign language and some tok pisin indicated they were prepared to help us make camp.

In 1968 the Forestry Department decided that the forest resources in the Jimi Valley should be acquired for potential logging operations. Apparently, this decision came about because the Director of Forests at the time was flying over the valley, en-route from Madang on the north coast when he noted that there were quantities of Araucaria pine present. The Rights to cut the timber was then purchased from the local people. Considerable sums of money were 23

flown in by helicopter and light plane and paid out to the locals, who really had no idea of the value of their resource and very little concept of the value of the money with which they were being paid. Their main concern was that the money be in coin, not paper notes, as the latter tended to deteriorate quickly when kept in the village, perhaps buried under a bed. There were no Banks handy you see. The down payment for the timber rights given to these people by the government some months earlier amounted to approximately Australian $ 80,000.

However, it only represented a fraction of the Royalty that should have been paid to the landowners for their trees when such trees were eventually cut.

The Forestry Department then decided, that, having bought the Timber Rights, they had better find out the extent and nature of the resource. I was to eventually manage the inventory of the forests there. However, we first had to decide how we would tackle the job, given the fact that we had to assess both the Araucaria (Klinkii Pine) as well as other merchantable species in the forest, obtaining a sample that would give a reasonable estimate of the volume of both sorts of trees. And that is how Bob and I ended up on a rocky bank of the Jimi River.

From discussions with the native inhabitants and the local Patrol Officer, we learnt that, like many other tribes in PNG, they had had a rough time of it over past generations and even currently. Malaria had been rampant in the past and was still a major problem, particularly in the lower lying areas of the valley. It had decimated the population to such an extent that their numbers had been significantly reduced, possibly halved. At that time, despite the development that had occurred elsewhere in PNG, they had a difficult existence, being remote from any medical assistance as well as from ready access to goods or markets for any saleable products. They had only limited communication with the rest of PNG and virtually no knowledge of and no communication with the rest of the world. Apart from the few modern tools they may have acquired from some distant trade store, their existence, as subsistence farmers and food gatherers, was probably much as it had been for centuries.

They had no outside income, except for the money they received for the TRP. However, as with the majority of Papua New Guineans, they had their most asset, their land…and their trees.

I mentioned that the people were not far removed from the Stone Age. In fact, the area was well known for its stone axes, which were extremely popular amongst collectors and tourists in the main towns. These were of two types; the shorter, better balanced utility axe, which was used for chopping, and the more ornate and counterbalanced ceremonial axe, which was used for compensation and as part of a bride price. It was these latter axes that often found their way onto the curio or artefact markets.

19

In 1968, during our timber inventory of the Valley, we acquired several of these latter types of axes. Our first Minister of Forests, Siwi Karundo, a man from Chimbu, in the Highlands, happened to be visiting our base camp, and so we asked him the worth of these axes. He thought for a moment, then said, in Tok Pisin, “if you had twelve of such axes, plus about twenty mother of pearl shell, plus fifteen pigs, it would be enough to purchase a bride like that” and pointed to the Playboy centre fold for “Miss March” we had pinned to the wall. Having only a couple of such axes and a lack of pigs I knew I was right out of the bride market. Unfortunately, so were a lot of 19

Cartoon from Bob Brown’s Grass Roots Guide to PNG Pidgin South Pacific Post.

24

other young Papuan and New Guineans, with older richer men often cornering the bride market and having several wives or potential brides, the latter being sometimes pre-teenagers.

Villagers clustered around the helicopter at Tabibuga Patrol Post prior to our flying into the Jimi Valley.

Photo credit Paul Ryan.

Before landing in the valley, we used the helicopter, a Bell 47.3B1, to fly over some of the valley so that we could get our bearings as well as an aerial impression of the forests with which we were dealing. We had earlier met the kiap (Patrol Officer) at the patrol post and apprised him of our intentions. Now the two of us were alone with our tent, gear, and food for about a week. We intended to see what the forest was like from the ground and how it compared to aerial photos we had brought with us. Our way out was to walk up to the patrol post and get a plane back to Mt Hagen, the main town in the area, about an hour’s flying away to the southwest. In the meantime, we set up the tent in thick forest near the river for our first night out and did a quick reconnaissance in the nearby vicinity.

Paul Ryan with Jimi Valley people on the road constructed by them to allow “the cargo” to come.

Photo credit Paul Ryan.

25

Not far from our camp site we came across, what appeared to be a road in the middle of this jungle. This was not just scrub, it was high forest, and trees up to 70 cm diameter and 50 meters high had been felled to create a 20-meter-wide swath for a right-of-way over several kilometres. A basic road form had then been constructed, entirely by hand. You could have driven a Land Rover down it, at least to the nearest decent water course. They had not mastered the art of building road bridges so there were no bridges. On the other hand, the local people were very adept at building cane bridges across quite wide waterways, and it was quite an experience to negotiate one’s way across this wildly swinging structure on a narrow footing of bamboo while clinging to the rattan cables and trying to avoid being mesmerized by the rushing river some 20 meters below.

At our camp site, the local inhabitants were quite interested in what we were doing in their nick of the woods. We managed to explain this to them through a mixture of Tok Pisin and gestures. Then we asked them about the road and gathered that it was built by the local villagers so ‘that the cargo could come’ and it extended most of the way down the valley, about twenty kilometres. This was another variation on the cargo cult that had been prevalent throughout PNG since the Second World War. Usually, it took the form of people building airstrips and putting dummy planes made of wood and grass on the strip, and sometimes, on the coast, the people would build wharves. The idea was that planes or boats were expected to come and deposit the ‘cargo’, which would be food and goods of all kinds as they had seen happen with the troops during the Second World War and with other government officers in more recent times. To many of the villagers, who then had little knowledge of the outside world, the arrival of all sorts of goods at such airstrips and wharves during the war would appear to be like gratuitous gifts from the Gods. The cult could have been somewhat innocuous if it had not been sometimes accompanied by a cessation of crop cultivation in the belief this was no longer necessary.

At our camp, the villagers just sat on their heels and watched us with a quiet curiosity, as we unpacked and set up our beds. Dinner was started before dark so that we could see what we were doing, and we had a wonderful meal, while sitting on the stones of the riverbed, with some villagers continuing to squat and watch our activities. Everything is relative, of course, and it certainly was not high-class cuisine. But for the bush it was great. First off was a sherry or two out of the same mug from which we then had some soup and finally milo after downing tinned stew and rice. The villagers pounced on any empty tins with glee, examining them with great interest, and then carrying them off for heaven knows what purpose.

Next morning the villagers were back again and asked if we had any files to sharpen their knives and axes. After some vigorous sharpening had taken place, they then proceeded to delightedly chop down a few medium sized trees in the vicinity to test the axes’ renewed cutting potential, regardless of where the trees fell. They offered to sell us fruit and vegetables, but when we asked about prices, it became obvious they had little knowledge of the value of the currency, asking $5 for a few bananas or sweet potatoes. So, we agreed on some reasonable prices and proceeded to get a good store of fresh food to supplement our tinned diet.

Our work in the valley consisted of walking over as much of the area as possible to see how the forests were structured. As with a lot of lowland and mid-montane forests in PNG, they were not virgin or climax forests, but rather advanced secondary forest. This was the result of shifting cultivation by the local forest dwellers, who had cut patches of the forest down, possibly on a rotation of about 40 years, to plant their food gardens. However, some species, 26

such as the Klinkii Pine and the denser or harder wood species were not felled during the shifting cultivation process and could be some 300 years old.

Crossing a cane suspension bridge with part of our gear. Photo credit Paul Ryan.

During the subsequent inventory, we saw graphic evidence of this destruction and regeneration of the forest in the trunk of a Klinkii Pine we had felled to test for defect and decay. The tree has its branches pruned when other trees grow beside it as do many species.

However, when the surrounding trees are felled, epicormic shoots would then develop into new branches and this happened every time some local cultivator cleared the forest to make a vegie garden. What we saw in the “biscuit” cut from the log several metres from the butt were branch stubs imbedded at different depths in the log. This provided a log or diary of the dynamics of the forest surrounding this tree. It showed that, on average, clearings, presumably for crop gardens, had been made about every 40 years on about four or five occasions. The locals told us the pine could stand because it was believed to harbour the ghosts (masalai) of departed relatives.

Because of the need to live on higher ground away from the worst malaria mosquito areas, most of the villages were situated on ridges where water was often only available a kilometre or so down the hillside. So, for us to wash it was necessary to either walk down to a stream 27

or rely on the small quantities of water that could be carried to the village. This was done in long tubes of bamboo. Other villages closer to civilization would have used buckets or old tins, but these just were not available to any extent in the Jimi Valley. Washing could be a hilarious affair, with one of us holding on to the bamboo tube trying not to pour out too much water while the washer soaped himself up and then rinsed. And all the while a crowd of about ten villagers would watch fascinated at these strange antics. What caused even more wonder was when, on one occasion, we got a decent shower of rain, and both of us got out the soap and proceeded to have a shower then and there in an open area of the village. Of course, we had to put on an act and play the fools for the crowd, probably giving them something to talk about for months.

Our carriers resting on the track between villages. Fresh leaves for the rear end each day. Photo credit Paul Ryan.

On the second day of our forest exploration, we had walked for some distance along the cargo road, towards the eastern end, when we came across a small group of men working industriously at clearing bush from the edge of the road. It was about mid-morning and both they and us were sweating profusely from our exertions in the humid heat. We stopped to chat as they were interested in us and what we were doing, and we were interested in learning about them.

28

20

During the conversation, one of these fellows asked if we would like some pawpaw (papaya) that was growing on the side of the road. We said we would love some. So, he cut down a couple of fruit and cut these in quarters, taking out the seeds with his bush knife. Then, to my amazement and dismay, he proceeded to rub the pieces of pawpaw along his arms collecting the sweat on the fruit. He, then, proudly handed us the fruit to eat. I started to protest that I did not like salt on my pawpaw, but it was too late, and, in any event, it would have been a lack of courtesy to refuse. Both of us ate the fruit, putting on a brave face and expressed our sincere gratitude, knowing the honour they had paid us.

I had not seen this sort of practice before, but I had read about it. The act of covering the fruit with sweat was a way of preserving and recycling the salt that was available. Salt was scarce in the area, there being no local source and no trade stores from which the locals could buy salt. Traditionally, I learnt, salt may have been traded with people from the coast, but this was not a common occurrence. So whatever salt was present, including that in the body, was preserved. I understand that, in some instances, urine was dried to obtain the salt, though I am not sure how much would be present. As a child in PNG, I remember watching villagers buying goods in the local trade store with salt being a major purchase. They would put their fingers into the salt and licking them with relish before they left the store. The workers from the highlands on our forest plantations would also save their salt rations till they had a bundle weighing several kilograms to take home as a valuable prize.

The villages were clean but being on higher ground to avoid mosquitoes lacked water supplies.

Photo credit Paul Ryan.

20

Cartoon from Bob Brown’s Grass Roots Guide to PNG Pidgin South Pacific Post.

29

Our reconnaissance of the valley’s forests meant moving camp every couple of days and here we used the locals as paid porters. On one or two occasions we camped in villages, but accommodation in the form of haus kiaps was rare, this being a relatively undeveloped area of the country, with almost no outside visitors. When we moved into or near a village to stay the night, we would be the centre of immense curiosity from all and sundry. Sometimes the old women would come up cooing and stroke our arms and legs, (we wore shorts) fascinated by the blonde hairs. I understood that in some parts it was customary for such people to greet strangers by grabbing their balls, but luckily, we were not subjected to this dubious honour.

After establishing our tent and as we then consulted our maps and notes about a dozen villagers, including many children would crowd around the entrance to the tent watching our every move and quietly chatting amongst themselves, obviously discussing what we might be doing. These people had had little contact with white people, and we were objects of utmost fascination.

21

With all the walking we had been doing, I had developed a bad ulcer on one heel from what had been a couple of mosquito bites and it was being aggravated by my continuing to walk with my bush boots on. Now, I had been trained as a ‘medical assistant’ during a three-week course at Port Moresby General Hospital. We had learnt to diagnose the major diseases, prescribe medicines, and give injections, dress wounds, and stitch up cuts, together with the usual St John’s Ambulance First Aid. It was felt such training would be useful as we often found ourselves in isolated situations with large groups who might need immediate treatment before we could get them to a hospital. I put my training to use on quite several occasions, particularly for malaria and bad cuts that occurred with our inventory crews. However, it was not always easy when it came to treating myself.

For one of my colleagues, I would have prescribed and given a course of penicillin by injection. However, I just could not get up the nerve to inject myself with the rather large bore needles that we carried, although I had seen one of my forestry colleagues do it. The alternative was to find a village medical aid who might be able to help, though I had my doubts as to his ability, or I could try and get Bob to do the honours, though he had never injected anything. In the end, I managed to avoid both alternatives by using a technique I had discovered for myself on earlier trips. After dinner at night, I would bath the wound in as hot water as I could stand. Now in these circumstances, particularly given the shortage of water, the best source was the remaining tea in the billy. By doing this for a few days and keeping a clean, well-padded dressing on the ulcer when I walked, it slowly healed itself. Many years after I discovered that the tannin in the tea may have been beneficial in the cure.

We spent about a week in the valley before climbing back up the ridge to Tabibuga patrol post, from where we boarded a light plane and flew out to Mt. Hagen, the main town in the Western Highlands. Later in the year we were back, but this time with an inventory team to find out how much timber existed in the valley. We set up our base camp in the adjoining Baiyer River Valley and used a helicopter to fly in inventory parties. I made occasional trips back to the ‘valley of the road to nowhere’ to check on the accuracy of the work being done and to get a better idea as to the nature of the forest.

21

Cartoon from Bob Brown’s Grass Roots Guide to PNG Pidgin South Pacific Post.

30

Having gone through the laborious and costly exercise of measuring and valuing the timber in the Jimi Valley, after the Rights to cut it had been purchased from the local people, the forest was still, largely intact, except for shifting cultivation activities, many years later. There was no feasible access across the range of mountains that enclose the valley. But the people there still have their forest, unlike many other villagers in PNG who have seen their forests badly degraded in the process of logging the few trees valued for export in return for short term financial gains.

Forest Inventory Map Jimi TA.

I had taken on the leadership of an inventory survey of the Tonolei Harbour area, at the southern end of the island of Bougainville in July for about two months. This was a mixed experience. Although, I had already been on several inventories over the previous three years and had led two of them, I seemed to struggle at times to get it right and there were occasions when I lacked the self-confidence and strength of character that a leader should have possessed.

We had established our base camp at what had been the site for a defunct logging and sawmilling operation, using a few fibro huts still standing for our office and senior officers’ quarters. I instructed the technical staff and labourers to set up their tents on a nearby ridge.

No sooner had my boss, Eric Hammermaster come on the scene to inspect operations than he upbraided me for putting those tents in such a difficult site. Somewhat shamefaced, I ordered the crews to put up their tent flies on the flat ground surrounding our office and accommodation.

Paul at the base camp, Tonolei Harbour.

Photo credit Paul Ryan.

Then, a field crew managed to wreck our almost new runabout boat a day’s walk around the other side of the peninsular that formed the southern side of the harbour. That happened just as the Director of Forests, Don McIntosh turned up for a visit. I had the feeling he and others may have felt I wasn’t in good enough control of operations, though nothing was said. We 31

also had a problem with several of the field crews developing nasty cases of foot rot. After about a month of spending long days in swampy conditions on some of the inventory lines their feet were red raw and painful. In time we overcame this problem by ensuring those with affected feet kept them dry and aired while in camp and that boots were also dried out. As time progressed it became a very congenial camp.

With work, including an inventory survey around the Gogol River near Madang on the north coast, the time passed rapidly.

1970 Gogol Survey.

Photo credit Ian Whyte.

Marriage and Madang I had two buck’s parties: the first with the crew from the Gogol inventory survey at the Smuggler’s Inn Motel in Madang. That was fairly tame, particularly compared to the party put on by my colleagues in Moresby in the back yard of a senior forest officer’s house. By the early morning some of us were naked and covered in treacle and one had some nasty cuts from rolling on a broken bottle. I awoke next morning to find the treacle-covered clothes I had dropped on my bedroom floor covered in ants.

The wedding was a small, though formal affair. Then, after a honeymoon in the interior of British Columbia, we flew back to Port Moresby. I had managed to be allocated a new house in the suburb of Gordon and had moved in a week or so before flying to Vancouver. Now we settled down to married life, though I felt some insecurity, feeling that such a drastic move for Marion would need a lot of support from me for her to adjust to such a different environment without her family and friends.

And the marriage may have been on the rocks one morning, when Marion said, “So, darling, what could I get you for breakfast?” “How about tinned spaghetti on toast”, I blithely replied, thinking of one of my favourite dishes.

Marion stared with a rather quizzical expression on her face, “I beg your pardon, what did you say?” It was taking time for her to adjust to strange Aussie eating habits.

In 1971 we moved to the beautiful town of Madang on the north coast, where I was now District Forest Officer. The Department chartered a plane to move us, a Short Skyvan. So, we loaded all our household goods and clothes together with our new black Labrador pup, 32

Beethoven, and a newly acquired rescue kitten, we had named Tuppence. Although Beethoven was tranquilized and, on a leash, the pilot was not happy about having a large black dog, stretched out in his plane.

22

My concerns about how well Marion would fit in and feel comfortable in PNG proved to be unfounded as she adapted wonderfully. She got herself a job with the office of the Harbourmaster in Madang and became adept at fending off enquires for himself when he was across the way at the Madang Club, until she could get his attention through the barman. And we made several friends among the expats in the town, of which there was a varied assortment. There was a seamy side to life in the form of key parties, where couples would come to dinner and put their car keys in a bowl. Then, after dinner and liqueurs, the men would draw out a key and go home with the woman linked to that key. We made it clear that was not our scene.

Madang 1972. Photo credit Ian Whyte.

Our two-bedroom house was located by the harbour near the airport together with a few other government houses. I had a canoe made by a local villager, which we pulled up opposite the house. We used this to paddle around the harbour and to nearby islands for picnics and swimming. However, we had to make sure our haus boi held on to Beethoven. If not, he would race across the intervening grass, dive in, and come swimming out to us in mid-stream.

We were then faced with trying to get a rather large dog on board without capsizing.

Madang Township 1972. Photo credit Ian Whyte.

22

Cartoon from Bob Brown’s Grass Roots Guide to PNG Pidgin South Pacific Post.

33

We would often venture along the coast on picnics to a local beach. And there in the bush, it was common to sight wreckage from WWII aircraft. These were particularly common just west of Madang and were mainly Japanese, mainly bombers. It was fascinating to walk around and scramble over the wrecks, some of which were not too dilapidated, and imagine what the situation was like, when these aircraft were in action some thirty years earlier.

23

WW 2 Bomber NW Gogol TA 1972. Photo credit Ian Whyte.

John Davidson (RAAF historian) provided the following information re the above wreck. It is a Douglas A-200G-DO Havoc.

Below is an RAAF photograph of the wreck taken not long after it force-landed. The aircraft with wheels up remained intact and the crew of three survived and escaped through the open hatches (two, pilot and navigator from the long front hatch, and gunner from the hatch behind the gun turret).

It was one of 37 USAAF aircraft lost or crashed that one Sunday afternoon during a severe New Guinea weather front as they tried to return from Hollandia to Nadzab. None was lost to 23

John Davidson personal communication re history of the bomber 11 May 2020.

34

enemy action during the raid! The story has been told only relatively recently in a book “Black Sunday” (Michael Claringbould 2000).

It was a Douglas A-20G-20-DO Havoc serial 42-86786 of the US 312th Bomb Group, 388th Bomb Squadron with nose art “The Hell’n Pelican II” that was forced down due to bad weather on 16 April 1944 during a raid mounted from Nadzab to Japanese targets in Hollandia (now Jayapura in the Indonesian Province of Papua).

35

Though not an RAAF aircraft, Douglas A20-G Havoc 42-86786 was among several wrecks recovered from PNG in 1984 and restored at RAAF Amberly, Queensland. Although owned

by PNG (by agreement reached to allow for its recovery, and eventually to be returned to PNG) it is currently on display at the RAAF Amberly Aviation Heritage Centre.

Douglas Havoc 4286786 was separated into manageable parts (engines, horizontal tailplanes, outer wing panels, nose) and lifted out in several flights by RAAF Chinook A15-005 on 1 October 1984. This was the final lift of the remaining stripped fuselage section.

(Photograph RAAF).

The restoration was completed in 1996. This is the restored aircraft at the RAAF Amberly Aviation Heritage Centre. (Photograph RAAF).

36

I got on with my forestry work, which often meant time being spent out at Gogol, to the southeast of Madang, establishing tree plantations. A new pulp mill was to be established by a Japanese joint venture company, JANT, using mixed tropical hardwoods.

JANT National Day Parade March 1972 Madang. Photo credit Ian Whyte.

National Day Parade March 1972 Madang. Photo credit Ian Whyte.

I was introduced to the concept of cost/benefit analysis and spent time undertaking feasibility studies relating to the venture in collaboration with the Japanese, with whom Marion and I became quite friendly.

JANT dinner with Marion and Docca Reid.

Photo credit Paul Ryan.

They were planning on cutting trees in the nearby Gogol River Forest, to make the chips, though, I hoped saving the better species for other more profitable uses.

37

Baku Forest Station Gogol 1971. Photo credit Ian Whyte.

As these forests were owned by the local people and the government had already purchased the rights to cut trees, but only down to a diameter of 50cm. We needed to reach an understanding on an extension of their Timber Rights Purchase Agreement to include smaller trees that could be harvested for pulpwood.

To that end a kiap (Patrol Officer) and myself spent a day flying from one village to another in a Jet Ranger helicopter, holding discussions with the forest owners in the remoter sections of the valley.

After our last visit for the day, at a village on the eastern side of the valley, we all piled into the chopper for the trip back to Madang where a few well-earned beers and dinner awaited us. As we sat in our seats, strapped in, and waiting for lift off there was the same sensation as getting into your car, turning the key, and finding all you get is a dead click. No power from the battery. So, what to do? We had no means of communicating with anyone, as the helicopter’s radio relied on the battery and, of course, there were no phones or radios in the village or within 30 kilometres. The pilot had cancelled his Search and Rescue (SAR)24 Watch with Air Traffic Control in Madang when he landed, so it was unlikely people would be too worried if we didn’t return, though if we had still failed to return next day, they might send a plane to check and see if all was ok.

24

All aircraft, on take-off in PNG were assigned a time at which they must report their position on an hourly basis. If nothing is heard from the aircraft a search and rescue procedure is activated.

38

Gogol Valley from Amele Madang 1972.

Photo credit Ian Whyte.

That, however, could mean that we might be stranded for two or more days. I wasn’t prepared to just spend the night in the village in the hope that someone outside would take action. I felt I needed to do something constructive.

The stranded helicopter.

Photo credit Paul Ryan.

So, I decided to walk for help – through the forest, and at night. It wasn’t too far, possibly 25 kilometres to the nearest road and a further 30 kilometres to Madang. The villagers told me that there was, indeed, a path to the Gogol River, about six or seven hours away, or as they also expressed in tok pidgin, “Im i lon wei liklik.” (Not too far). Once there I reasoned I 39

could find my way across the river and up to the Madang Road, where I should be able to get a lift into town in the morning. I borrowed a pair of walking boots from a local village policeman, as my shoes were not up to the sort of walking anticipated. Then, with a guide from the village, I set off just before sunset at about 6 pm.

We didn’t have a torch and there was no moon to speak of. Even if there had been, the dense forest canopy would still keep our path in the dark. So, before darkness fully set in my guide cut two dried bamboo culms to make torches, which we lit when the light had gone. They enabled us to see in our immediate vicinity as we tramped along the muddy track, climbing over the occasional log, and wading through small streams. But, apart from massive tree trunks and tangled undergrowth next to the path, the surrounding forest was a black void.

Gogol River Forest station and scene of my night walk.

Photo credit Paul Ryan.

A couple of hours into our journey it started to rain. The track became a great deal muddier and the going more slippery and decidedly less comfortable as the heavy rain soaked my clothes. Fortunately, it was quite flat and, despite my concerns that the rain would douse the torches, they continued to burn. So, we could still see where we were going, though, at this point I was starting to wonder whether I had made the right decision, while at the same time hoping that the guide did, in fact, know the way. Shortly thereafter, we stopped at a village where the guide managed to scrounge a kerosene pressure lamp. That improved our ability to see, particularly when the rain stopped shortly afterwards.

Finally, at around midnight we arrived at a village on the banks of the Gogol. A boatman was roused, protesting, from his slumbers, and we agreed on a price for him to take me across in his dugout canoe. This wasn’t an easy thing in the dark and on this wide river that was somewhat swollen with recent rains and flowing quite swiftly. I didn’t consider there was any alternative, although in hindsight it might have been more sensible to wait until daylight.

So, after returning the borrowed boots, I slid down the wet and muddy bank and gingerly seated myself in the canoe. I tried to ignore the dangers as our boatman set out from the bank and rowed us across the fast-flowing current.

The light from the pressure lamp, held by my guide, showed only a few metres out from the bank, a swirling mass of brown water. The obvious direction was across the current, though 40

that was sweeping us downstream at a hefty rate. I am not sure if there actually was a set landing place, but we could never have found it in the dark and with that current. So, we pushed on in our somewhat unstable craft, with the odd wave slopping water over the side, until, eventually, we made it across to the opposite bank, without capsizing or being savaged by a crocodile, which were quite prevalent in the area. I thanked and paid my guide. He would now have an even more difficult trip rowing back to his village, which was upstream from where we landed.

I made my way, barefoot and cautiously, up the bank and through some scrub. By now the clouds had broken and a starry sky was giving me enough light by which to see. Reaching the dirt road to Madang, I found my bearings and found I was next to a vocational training centre. That was a bit of luck as now I wouldn’t have to sit out the rest of the night on the edge of the road or spend it walking towards Madang. I decided I had a reasonable excuse to wake the local principal and his wife and banged on their front door. Needless to say, they got quite a shock seeing me on their doorstep, barefoot, wet through and covered in mud at one in the morning. But they kindly allowed me in and permitted me to silt up their shower with all the mud I had accumulated, before borrowing some clean clothes and settling down to sleep for what was left of the night, feeling somewhat pleased I had made it.

Madang Gogol Road 1974.

Photo credit Ian Whyte.

Next morning, they drove me into Madang after breakfast. It was Saturday and they were off to town for some shopping. Marion was just heading out as I drove up to our house. She wasn’t worried as she had been in touch with Air Traffic Control who had said they were not overly concerned, and they even though we may have stayed over for a party at the village. I immediately got onto Air Traffic Control and told them of the plight of the helicopter and its occupants. The person I spoke to told me that, although they weren’t concerned, they had diverted a DC 3 to check the area that morning. When it saw all appeared to be ok with the chopper, no further action was taken.

41

The helicopter company, when I contacted them, wanted me to walk back in with a battery, but I refused. So, instead, they sent in a helicopter, diverted from the Highlands and everyone came out the next day. The day after, the rains came again to such an extent that the sand bank on which the chopper had been resting was flooded.

Early in 1971, Madang received word that the Duke of Edinburgh would be coming for a visit. He would fly in and then board the Royal Yacht Britannia for his onward journey. The town was abuzz with rumours and anticipation.

Invitations were sent out by the District Commissioner, Desmond CliftonBassett, for various functions over the three days of the Duke’s stay. Marion and I, together with the Forestry Technical Officer, Dokka Reid and his wife, were invited for a garden party at the residence of the District Commissioner. Others got invites to barbeques or dinner on board the Britannia. We were specifically instructed, particularly the expat ladies, not to dress up, so that the local New Guinea people would not be outdone. But that didn’t stop the two main stores in town, Burns Philp, and Carpenters, from quickly being sold out of dress material, long gloves, stockings, and other items of formal or semi-formal dress. There was also a certain degree of one-upmanship among certain residents with comments being heard like, “Oh, you’re going to the reception, are you? We’ve been invited on board.”

Marion, Dokka, his wife and I didn’t bother with dressing up too much and arrived at the Residency in good time. As other guests milled about around the front of the house awaiting the arrival of the Duke, we moved down the lawn to the bar and proceeded to get ourselves a drink each. There was a commotion as the Duke arrived with people crowding around the driveway. We stayed where we were and continued drinking while watching what was happening. Then, the crowd opened up and the Duke, himself, came sauntering down towards us. He greeted us warmly and asked what we did. We then had a short conversation with the Duke cracking some joke about forestry, and he turned back to the throng at the front door. Well, that was something to write home about, and we wondered why he had made a point of coming down to talk to a non-conforming bunch like us.

About mid-1971, I got word from the head of the Botanic Gardens in Lae, that a Russian survey vessel, on its way to the Antarctic, was to call in with a group of botanists to celebrate the anniversary of the Russian botanist, Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay’s arrival on the Madang coast in 1871. I was to meet the Russian botanists and squire them around, including field trips to the bush. In the process of organising things people got to know about this planned alien visitation. Then, one morning I had a visit from the local ASIO officer, who had an office across from mine, where he seemed to spend most of the time reading the paper. “What’s all this I hear about a Russian vessel due to call into Madang?” So much for our highly esteemed security service. I filled him in, presumably so he could report his ‘intelligence coup’ to his bosses in Canberra.

Some people were aghast that I would be going on board the ship, perhaps thinking I might get kidnapped and brainwashed. This was the height of the cold war and Khrushchev hadn’t long since banged his shoe on the podium at the UN. The District Commissioner stated that the ship could dock to unload vehicles and equipment and allow scientists to come ashore, though it could not stay tied up and had to anchor in the harbour. I duly boarded the ship after it had docked and introduced myself to the respective scientists, who were all very friendly and seemed apolitical. We agreed on an agenda for their visit and then, having 42

sounded out Marion, I asked them to come home and have a drink at our place, which they did. Ironically, Marion’s favourite drink was a Black Russian (Tia Maria and Vodka, with no ice).

Then, they invited Marion and me back on board for more drinks and dinner. By now the ship was anchored in the harbour, so we made our way out by launch and up the gangway. On board we were treated first to straight vodka, which had to be tossed back in one shot. The first of these hit me behind the eyes, then the second went down without any pain. We were fed a rather tasty Borst soup for dinner, followed by brandy and a tour of some of the ship’s facilities. Descending the steep gangway to the launch required some careful positioning of feet, but we both made it and, having somewhat ungracefully clambered up onto the dock, drove back home, feeling what nice people these Russians were.

One of the favourite watering holes in Madang was the Madang Hotel, situated on the point at the entrance to the harbour. And it was there one evening that our esteemed Minister of Forests got into an altercation with one of the local police officers. I received a phone call the next morning asking if I could please come down to the Courthouse where the Minister was to come up before a Magistrate on some charge of affray or some such thing. I was to interpret for the Minister as he wasn’t too good with his English.

I knew the Minister, having met him on several previous occasions. I sat down next to him in the Courtroom and tried to explain what was going to happen. He couldn’t understand why he was being charged as he was only defending himself after he had got rather drunk and been told to leave, then manhandled out. The trial proceeded with the policeman involved giving evidence as to what had happened, together with a couple of other witnesses. All along I was interpreting for the Minister and at times he had to be restrained from leaping up and yelling at the witnesses, and then being told to sit down by the Magistrate or he would be charged with contempt of Court. The Minister, having no idea about how the Court operated could not understand why he couldn’t object, and I had difficulty in explaining this and what ‘contempt of Court’ meant. But he did quieten down and sat there mumbling to himself or me in tok pisin.

Then the Magistrate asked the prosecuting council whether the police officer concerned was sober enough to make a judgement about the charge. “Oh, yes, Your Worship.” The Council replied. “He was quite sober.”

“But how do you know?”, persisted the magistrate.

“Because, Your Worship, he was playing darts.”

“Darts? What is this darts?”, asked a puzzled magistrate.

The Council then proceeded to explain what was involved with playing darts, complete with appropriate actions. It went something like this, which, I proceeded to translate to the Minister in Tok Pisin.

“You put this board with all these pig bristles on it up on the wall. There are lines with numbers fixed on the pig bristles. Then one man stands back from the board with pig bristles and numbers and he throws these little spears at the board. Then another man does the same and the man who hits the highest numbers wins the game.”

43

The Magistrate was mystified, and the Minister was arguing quite loudly that this was a silly game and what did it have to do with anything.

In the end the Magistrate accepted that the policeman involved must have been sober enough to play such a game and proceeded to allow his testimony. And that testimony wasn’t good for the Minister as it seems he created quite a ruckus. However, after several hours of testimony and late in the afternoon, the Defence Counsel raised a point of order or procedure about certain options not being explained by the Magistrate to the Defendant. So, the court was adjourned until the next day.

Next morning, another Magistrate, flown in from Wewak, up the coast, concluded that it was a mistrial, and the Minister was free to go. No further charges were pursued. The Minister was completely bamboozled by the whole procedure, thinking that after trying to defend his dignity as any red-blooded Highlander would do. If this had been up at his home spears and arrows could have been involved. Here nobody was hurt and yet there was this day long court case accusing him of harming someone, then it all amounted to nothing.

JANT 2005 wood chip mill, chip pile and sawmill.

Photo credit Dick McCarthy.

Mosaic of plantations on traditional lands in Gogol Timber Area.

Photo credit Dick McCarthy.

44

Life After Leaving PNG Department of Forests.

As PNG moved towards Independence, Government positions were being ‘localized’ with Papua New Guineans replacing expats in jobs, starting at the top and the bottom. Knowing that sooner or later I would have to be looking for another job and because I was feeling somewhat isolated from forestry work decisions in Madang, I thought it best to make a move.

So, in May of 1972, I resigned from the Department of Forests. Marion and I flew over to live in Vancouver, Canada. I saved the Government some money by not following the usual practice and using plywood to make our packing crates. Instead, I went to the local sawmill, whose owner I knew, and bought numerous wide boards of New Guinea Rosewood and Walnut. I reasoned that I could use the timber in Vancouver to have furniture made, which is what we did. I also made a cage each for Beethoven our Labrador and Tuppy our bush cat, for their long trip across the Pacific.

It had been decided before we left PNG that, in Vancouver, Marion and I would join with Marion’s mother and set up a gallery selling PNG and other Oceanic art and artifacts in Gastown, a new trendy area of downtown Vancouver. To this end, I had purchased a considerable quantity of artefacts from in and around Madang before leaving, much of it originating in the Sepik River area. This was shipped over to Vancouver so that shortly after our arrival we had some 21 tonnes of artefacts in wooden crates dumped on the front lawn of our new house.

Running our own business was a tiring, though somewhat satisfying endeavour as we had a good collection of interesting and hard-to-obtain pieces from PNG. I had honed up on the ethnology and meanings associated with the various figures, masks and other carvings and enjoyed satisfying the enquiries from numerous, curious customers. However, after a very slow 1973/74 winter season, I felt I had had enough of the gallery business. It was time to get back into forestry. I didn’t much fancy tramping through the ice and snow of British Columbia’s winters to manage forests. So, I contacted a couple of forestry consulting firms and, in March 1974, accepted an offer from Forestal International, the forestry division of Sandwell and Company, a major pulp and paper engineering firm.

There then followed ten interesting years working on forestry projects in several countries.

The first of these was Turkey, during which life became rather tense during the Cyprus Crisis, when Turkey invaded Cypress. I returned to PNG in 1975 for a feasibility study for a pulp mill at Vanimo, that turned out to be unfeasible. There was also a year spent in Burma, in 1977, devising improved management for Teak forests, in a country which was 40 percent under insurgent control and armed escorts were necessary for all field work.

In 1978, I got my first World Bank assignment as a consultant, in Afghanistan, putting together a Poplar management and fuelwood component for a rural development project.

More World Bank, FAO and UNDP assignments followed, in Africa and Asia, including my introduction to social or community forestry in the Philippines, Bhutan and elsewhere. Then, in 1986, I got a call from one of the foresters in the World Bank asking if I would like to join the Bank as a specialist in wood fuels. I gave the offer some thought, considered all the procedural stuff and bureaucracy that went on, and decided to join up.

45

When I arrived at the Bank’s sprawling Washington, D.C. headquarters, its policy and focus in relation to forestry was changing. There was increasing emphasis on people and poverty as well as the rapidly changing landscape with regards to community involvement in forest management and recognition of the effectiveness of this participatory approach. This was in line with what I had been discovering through my own work with communities’ participation in forest management and tree planting.

The Division I joined in the Bank was referred to as the Energy Sector Management Assistance Programme, looking at the energy situation in developing countries, particularly as it applied to household and small industries. My role was to consider the wood fuels demand and supply aspects. It was certainly an interesting learning experience with economics often playing a key role.

There was considerable travel involved with as many as 180 days a year away from home in Washington. Projects to enhance the supply of wood fuels were developed for Bank funding in Tanzania and China and I undertook the management of several forestry projects in eastern and southern Africa. When designing the wood fuels project for Tanzania, I advanced the idea that, instead of just planting trees, mainly eucalypts, management be undertaken of the vast Miombo Woodlands, a preferred source of wood for fuel. I also proposed giving back control of these woodlands to the local communities, after they had been alienated by the Germans a hundred years earlier. After some debate, the Bank finally agreed to the project and I went on to manage it for six years, after which a second project was funded to complete the process.

In 1993, I moved with Chris, my wife, to the Bank’s regional office in Nairobi, Kenya. This put me much closer to the action, particularly in the field, for the projects I was managing in Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Malawi, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. However, by 1997, I decided that it was time to move on and come back to Australia. I had bought a house at Peregian Beach on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland in 1994, during a vacation. Now, it was time to get out from under the procedures and bureaucracy of the Bank and get back to more straight forestry, as well as indulge in other pursuits.

I maintained my Bank connections and ended up doing several consultancies for the Bank, both in Africa, and in PNG and South Asia. The South Asian experience was particularly rewarding, helping with management of a mangrove plantation project in Bangladesh and several community forestry management projects in India. The best of these was in Andhra Pradesh State, where I spent a dozen years going back and forth to help design, manage and evaluate a project involving 5100 communities, who took on the sustainable management of government reserve forests for their own and the forests benefit.

During my peripatetic life as a forester in several countries, I met up with several ex-PNG foresters.

These included Dick McCarthy, whom I met in Vancouver while he was researching forest management techniques in North America.

Then there was John Davidson whom I came across in Bangladesh at a rather troubled time.

I was part of a FAO team preparing a World Bank project and had just made it out of Dacca before a curfew came into force. In Chittagong we found John still grey around the gills after 46

lying on the back floor of his Landcruiser while his driver sped past angry mobs, intent on doing harm to anything or anybody.

In Liberia, Eric Hammermaster, who was there with the United Nations, not only helped us technically when I led a team evaluating a World Bank forestry project, he managed to keep one of our group from being arrested by a nasty little security man on trumped up charges of taking photos of sensitive subjects.

Kevin White met me on the Terai in Nepal where he was doing silvicultural work for FAO, and I was with an FAO team looking at the feasibility of a pulp mill.

Back home on the sunny coast, life revolves around working with Noosa and District Landcare on a variety of activities as well as running a Bushcare group that is rehabilitating the coastal dunes just down from my place, with help from Noosa Council. And then there are the odd talks given to U3A and other organizations on matters related to forestry and trees.

Short Bibliography NAME Year of Birth DATE JOINED DEPT OF FORESTRY PNG

WHAT WAS YOUR OCCUPATION WHAT LOCALITIES DID YOU WORK IN

WHAT DATE DID YOU LEAVE PNG LIFE AFTER PNG IF YOU WISH TO COMMENT BRIEFLY

DID YOU RECEIVE A PNG FORESTRY CADETSHIP IF SO WHEN DATE OF GRADUATION

Paul Ryan 1944 Signed on as a Cadet in January 1962.

Started work as graduate forester in PNG December 1966 Forest Officer Based in Moresby and Madang (DFO). Did inventory work in Wau/Bulolo, Watut/Markham, Ioma, Mt. Giluwe, Jimi River, West New Britain, Tonolei Harbour.

May 1972 Forestal International (Vancouver, Canada) as Project Manager – 1974 to 1983.

Forestry Consultant (Vancouver, Canada) 1983 to 1986.

World Bank as Forestry Specialist (Washington, D.C. and Nairobi, Kenya) 1986 to 1997.

Forestry Consultant (Peregian Beach) 1997 to 2011.

Noosa and District Landcare as volunteer (2000 to present) Yes 1962 1966

47

ACRONYMS AAD Australian Antartic Division ACT Australian Capital Territory ACIAR Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research ACLMP AusAid funded World Bank Land Mobilisation program.

AEC Administrators Executive Committee AFS Australian Forestry School AFPNG Association of Foresters of PNG AIF Australian Infantry Forces AMF Australian Military Forces ANBG Australian National Botanical Gardens ANGAU Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit ANU Australian National University APMF Australian Paper Manufacturers Forestry Pty Ltd APPM Australia Paper and Pulp Manufacturers ASIO Australian Security Intelligence Organisation ASOPA Australian School of Pacific Administration AusAID Australian Aid Agency BA basal area BCOF British Commonwealth Occupational Force 1945-52 “Beer Time” Any time.

BFC Bulolo Forestry College BGD Bulolo Gold Dredging Company BUC Bulolo University College C Commonwealth cm Centimetre CALM Western Australian Department of Conservation and Land Management CFA Commonwealth Forestry Association CNGT Commonwealth New Guinea Timbers Bulolo CRE Commander Royal Engineers 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).

CSIRO Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation CHAH Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria DASF Dept of Agriculture, Stock and Fisheries DBH/ dbh Diameter at breast height DEPT Department DPI Department of Primary Industry DOF Department of Forests e.g.

For example Etc. et cetera (more of the same) FAO Food and Agriculture Organisation F &TB Forest and Timber Bureau Canberra FIM Forest Information System FMA Forest Management Agreement FPRC Forest Products Research Centre Hohola FRG Forest Red Gum FRI Forest Research Institute Lae Forkol Bulolo Forestry College GAB Girth above buttress Gbhob Girth breast height over bark 48

Gubab GIS ha IBRD IFA IFY ITTC ITTO JICA L of N LRRS m3 MCCAF MHA MM NAA NARI NB NDS NFCAP NGM no.

NG NGF NGIB NGI NGO NGVR NZ NSW NTSC OIC OISCA P or p PIB PIR PNG PNGAA PNGAF PNGFA PNGFIA PNGRIS PNGUT POM Q QF RAE RPC RRA SFM SP TAG UK UN

Girth under bark above buttress Geographic Information Systems Hectare International Bank for Reconstruction and Development Institute of Foresters of Australia International Year of the Forest International Tropical Timber Council International Tropical Timber Organization Japanese International Cooperation Agency League of Nations Land Resource Soils Survey (branch of CSIRO) cubic metre McCarthy & Associates (Forestry) Pty. Ltd. Member of House of Assembly PNG Military Medal National Archives Australia National Agriculture Research Institute New Britain Northern District Sawmills PNG National Forestry and Conservation Action Plan New Guinea Mainland Number New Guinea New Guinea Forces (relates to plant collection of Lae Herbarium) New Guinea Infantry Battalion New Guinea Islands Non-Government Organisation New Guinea Volunteer Rifles New Zealand New South Wales National Tree Seed Centre PNG Bulolo Officer in Charge Organisation for Industrial, Spiritual and Cultural Advancement International Japan. page Papuan Infantry Battalion Pacific Islands Regiment Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea Australia Association Papua New Guinea Australian Foresters Magazine Series Papua New Guinea Forest Authority PNG Forest Industries Association Papua New Guinea Resource Information System PNG University of Technology Port Moresby Queensland Queensland Forestry Royal Australian Engineers/Australian Army Royal Papuan Constabulary Rapid Resource Appraisal Sustainable Forest Management South Pacific Trade Advisory Group of ITTO United Kingdom United Nations 49

Unasylva UNE UNEP UNI UNITECH UNRE UPNG UQ US USA TPNG TUBL TA TA TRP Vol VSF WA WB

Journal of FAO of UN University of New England Armidale NSW United Nations Environment Program University University of Technology Lae PNG University of Natural Resources and Environment University of Papua New Guinea University of Queensland United States United States of America Territory of Papua and New Guinea Territory United Brewery Ltd Timber Area Timber Authority Timber Rights Purchase volume Victorian School of Forestry Western Australia World Bank

50