Miss Cottingham

Tribute to Papua's Pioneer Missionaries

I SEE that another of the real pioneers of British New Guinea has passed over the Great Divide”, says Mr. J.

Nixon Westwood, in a letter from San Francisco. He proceeds:— Miss Maud Cottingham was certainly a wonderful example of the real bravery which can be shown bv a European in such countries as Papua.

If I remember rightly, she was one of the women who went to the original Lakekamu goldfield, to assist in the

stamping out of the fever. And did the miners think those white women angels!

I had the pleasure of meeting her sev eral times, the last one being at Dogura, during an A.B.M. Convention in 1912. At that convention were Bishop Sharp, Arthur Kent Chignell, Miss Betty Ratti gan, Miss Rowland, Miss Winterbottom (later Mrs. Liston Blyth), Henry Holland, Samuel and Mrs. Tomlinson and others whose names I forget. It was really a wonderful gathering, and they all travelled on the “Albert McLaren”, with our mutual friend Jimmy Inman, of the ' Make some sitew and put an onion in it” fame.

The Anglican Mission did some wonder fully good work in those early days, and

little was ever heard of it. Their cheerful faces in all times of distress were like a cool drink on the hottest day. Their homes were always open and their friendship was ever offered to the traveller. If “Mouldy Mike’’ and Mr. Nicholls, late of Mom bare, are still alive, they will, I know, mourn the passing of one of Australia’s greatest daughters.

Miss Alice Maud Cottingham spent 37 years in the service of the New Guinea Mission at Dogura, Papua, and for 20 years, crippled by arthritis, did her work from a wheeled chair. She died on Feb ruary 20 last, after a long illness.

Much of the success of the Mission’s large school at Dogura is due to her untiring efforts in the early days, though perhaps the greatest of her many services rendered to Papua was the translation of the Holy Scripture books into the Wedauan tongue.

Standing behind Miss Cottingham, in the accompanying photograph, is Miss Townson, of the Mission staff.

—Photo, by courtesy A.B.M.