Alumu Bagita

Alumu Bagita (c1896-c1970), Papuan policeman who worked for the trading firm Burns Philp in Samarai from 1912 to 1916 when he joined the Papuan police force. In 1922 he became a sergeant and for 40 years a member of the Criminal Investigations Branch. When he retired in 1966, after 50 years service, he held the British Empire Medal, the Australia Service Medal and the Police Long Service and Good Conduct Medal.

Paulius Arek

Paulius Arek (1929-1973), public servant and politician. Arek was born in Wanigela, Northern Province, and educated at Wanigela Anglican mission school and Sogeri Education Centre where he completed a teacher training course in 1948. He taught in Madang, Northern District and Western District. In the mid-1960s he was president of the Northern District Workers’ Association and the Popondetta Workers’ Club and vice-president of the Higaturu local government council. From 1968 until his death in 1973 Arek represented a Northern District electorate in the House of Assembly. In 1969 he became the first chairman of the Federation of Workers’ Associations. Also in 1969 he was elected chairman of the Select Committee on Constitutional Development and traveled extensively within PNG canvassing the people’s views on the form of government the country should adopt. He also traveled overseas to look at the experience of other developing countries. In 1971 the House of Assembly accepted the basic recommendations of the Committee’s Final Report. In 1972 Arek became Minister for Information and successfully established the National Broadcasting Commission.

Charles Barnes

Charles Edward Barnes (1901–1998), Australian minister responsible for PNG from 1963-72. Educated at Sydney Grammar School, Barnes served with the RAAF in PNG during WW II. He held the Queensland seat of McPherson for the Country Party 1958-74 and succeeded Sir Paul Hasluck as Minister for Territories from 1963-68. In 1968 the Territories portfolio was cut in half and Barnes was concerned with only External Territories (almost entirely PNG) from 1968 to 1972. Barnes discouraged the development of political parties. He believed that economic development was an essential foundation for political development. To accommodate the highlanders’ fear of being dominated by Papuans after Independence, he encouraged them to believe that Australia could delay independence for decades.

Donald Cleland

Donald Mackinnon Cleland (1901-1975), Australian Administrator of Papua and New Guinea. Born in Coolgardie, Western Australia (WA), and educated at Guildford Grammar School, Cleland became a barrister in 1925. He served in the Australian Army (including ANGAU) 1939-45, attaining the rank of brigadier. In 1945 he chaired the Australian New Guinea Production Control Board which was mainly concerned with the production of copra and rubber. Politically conservative, he chaired the State Executive of the National Party of WA from 1936-39, and was Vice-President of the Liberal Party of WA in 1945. He was Assistant Administrator PNG in 1951 and Administrator from 1952-67. From 1951-64 he was President of the Legislative and Executive Councils of PNG. In 1967 he became Chancellor of the Anglican diocese of PNG and from 1969 he was Pro-Chancellor of UPNG. Cleland was an honorary Colonel of the PIR (1958-67). He was knighted in 1961.

Ian Downs

Ian Farley Graham Downs (1915-2004), Administration officer. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and educated at Geelong Grammar School, Australia, and the Royal Australian Naval College, Downes became a patrol officer in the Australian Mandated Territory of New Guinea in 1936. He explored the country west of Mt Hagen with James Taylor and John Black in 1938 and served in the Royal Australian Navy from 1940-45. As a District Commissionar from 1946-56 he mobilized villagers in the Eastern Highlands to begin the construction of the Highlands Highway. Downes retired from the Administration in 1956 to became a coffee planter in the highlands. He became President of the Farmers and Settlers Association and editor of its New Guinea Highlands Bulletin. He represented the Eastern Highlands in the Legislative Council from 1957-63 and in the House of Assembly from 1964-68 and retired to Australia in the early 1970s. Downes’ published works include The Australian Trusteeship, PNG 1945-1975 (the official history commissioned by Australia’s Department of External Affairs), a novel, The Stolen Land, and his autobiography, The Last Mountain.

Emma Forsayth

Emma Eliza Forsayth (1850-1913), Samoan entrepreneur, trader and plantation owner (also known as “Queen Emma”). Emma Forsayth was educated in Sydney and San Francisco where she married James Forsayth. By 1878 she had left Forsayth and moved, with her de facto husband Captain Thomas Farrell, to Mioko in the Duke of York islands, northeast of the main island of New Guinea. There they established extensive copra plantations and, by 1884, when the Germans annexed the northeast of New Guinea, they were prosperous settlers. On Farrell’s death in 1886 Emma inherited the property. In 1893 she married Captain Karl Paul Kolbe. In 1907 she transferred part of her flourishing commercial empire to her son Coe Forsayth and moved to Australia. In 1913 she moved to Monte Carlo, France, where she died.

Otto Finsch

Friedrich Hermann Otto Finsch (1839-1917), German naturalist, ethnographer and explorer. He first visited eastern New Guinea and adjacent islands between 1879-82 collecting specimens, particularly birds, and recording the customs of the people. While collecting along the coast of Astrolabe Bay in 1881, he investigated the economic potential of the region on behalf of German commercial interests. In 1884-85, under the guise of scientific investigation, he led an expedition sponsored by German financier, Adolph von Hansemann, to select sites for settlement on the northeastern coast of New Guinea for Hansemann’s New Guinea Company. In November 1884 he named the northeast coast Kaiser Wilhelmsland and raised the German flag in the Bismarck Archipelago and on the New Guinea mainland. In December 1884 Germany claimed the area as a protectorate. In 1885 Finsch explored the mouth of the Sepik River and named the Bismarck Range after the German Chancellor. Finsch’s natural history papers, particularly those on birds, were published in a number of scientific journals. The port of Finschhafen, the site of the first German settlement, bears his name.

Saimon Gaias

Saimon Gaias ((c1920- ), first bishop of the United Church when it was established in 1968. Born in Valuana, ENB, and trained at the New Britain Methodist Theological College, Gaias worked among the Baining people in ENB before World War II and during the Japanese occupation. After the war he studied at Leigh Theological College in Sydney, Australia, before returning to the Baining people as an ordained minister of the Methodist church. He represented the Methodist (later the United) church at gatherings in Fiji, India, Africa, Britain and America. He was knighted in 1988.

John Guise

John Guise (1914-1991), policeman, trade union leader, politician and Governor-General. Guise was born at Gedulara, near Dogura, MBD, of mixed Chinese and Melanesian ancestry and educated at Dogura mission schools. He started work as a Burns Philp Pty Ltd (BP) waterside laborer at Samarai at the age of 14 and remained with the company until the Japanese invasion in 1942. During the war he worked for the Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit as a clerk in the Signals section. He joined the police force in 1946 and left with the rank of sergeant-major in 1961. In 1958 he was President of the Port Moresby Mixed Race Association but left it because he believed it discriminated against full Melanesians.

From 1961-63 he represented Eastern Papua in the newly established Legislative Council and rapidly became one of its most articulate members. In 1962 Guise chaired a Select Committee which recommended the establishment of a House of Assembly with a majority of elected PNGan members. In 1964 he was leader of the Elected Members Group and he represented MBD from 1964-75. In 1965 he initiated the Milne Bay District Workers’ Association (MBDWA) and became its first president. In 1966 he organized a successful strike for higher wages amongst waterside laborers employed by Burns Philp in Samarai. In 1967 Guise chaired a Select Committee on Constitutional Development on which he advocated a presidential system of government rather than the modified Westminster system which was later adopted. In 1968 he became the first PNGan Speaker of the House of Assembly. In 1972 he was Deputy Chief Minister in the Michael Somare cabinet and supported Somare’s position on early self-government and Independence and a multi-racial society.

In the early 1970s he gradually withdrew from the trade union movement and left the MBDWA in 1975. He was the first Governor-General (1975-77) of the newly independent state of PNG and knighted on being appointed Governor-General. In 1970 he was awarded an honorary LL.D. from UPNG. From 1977 to 1982 he represented MBP in the House of Assembly. On a number of occasions Guise represented the government and the Anglican Church at important overseas meetings. His published articles include: ”Blueprint for a Future: 20 year leases only?”, “Political Progress in Papua and New Guinea, 1918-68: a personal account”, and “A Policeman’s Lot: representation for the army too”.

Serei Eri

Serei Eri (1936-1993), teacher, administrator, writer and Governor-General. (Eri was known by the given name Vincent until he became Governor-General). Born at Moveave, Gulf District, and educated at Catholic mission schools and Sogeri High School, he trained as a teacher and from 1956 to 1962 taught in the Gulf District. In 1962 he became Acting District Inspector of Schools. In 1965 he founded the short-lived Local Teachers’ Association. He entered UPNG in 1967 and graduated B.A. in 1970. In 1971 he became Acting Superintendent of Primary Education and Vice-President of the Papua and New Guinea Society. In the 1980s he was involved with the People’s Action Party (PAP). In 1989 he was appointed Governor-General and knighted. In 1991 he was forced to resign from this post because he contravened the Constitution by refusing to dismiss the Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the PAP, Edward (Ted) Diro, who had been found quilty of violating the Leadership Code. Eri is the author of Crocodile, the first novel to be published by a PNGan.