Papua

Link With Early Papua Death of Mrs. Emily Leigh

mHE name of Armit is indelibly etched X into the early pioneering history of Papua. True daughter of the fam ily was Mrs. Emily Mary Yeldham Leigh, who died “in exile’’ in St. Vincent’s Pri vate Hospital, Sydney, on December 21.

She was the daughter of the late Cap tain William and Mrs. Armit, of Port Moresby and Samarai. Her father arrived in Papua in 1883, going from Cooktown, Queensland, as leader of the exploration expedition sent out by the proprietors of the Melbourne “Argus.” Based on Port Moresby, Captain Armit and his party were the first Europeans to cross the Owen Stanley Range.

After the return of the expedition, he spent many years around Papua and its eastern islands, but the Armit family remained in Cooktown. However, in 1895, Captain Armit, who was now serving in the Territory as an administrative offi cer under Sir William MacGregor, brought his wife and children' to live near Port Moresby. So bad were their suffer ings from malaria that one child died and the rest of the family were, after eight weeks, forced to return to Queens land to recuperate. Later in the same year, the family again went to Papua— this time to Samarai. They remained there for six years.

Captain Armit was then Resident Magistrate of the Northern Division, and while his duties kept him for ever on the move,-his family lived on the island, then in its virgin state, apart from the RM’s office and house. Emily Armit there helped her mother in the education of the younger children.

The task of pacifying the vast, un touched Northern Division was intense, and after he had got the warring tribes around Kokoda and the Yodda Valley under some sort of control, Captain Armit was worn and ill. At Tamata, on Janu ary 3, 1901, he collapsed and died.

Mrs. Armit, Emily and thd younger children then returned to Sydney, and Emily later married Mr. P. H. Leigh, of Port Moresby. After some years in New Zealand, the couple returned to Port Moresby in 1909. where they lived until the evacuation in 1941.

Mrs. Leigh inherited from her father a great love of natural history. She bred, for the purpose of study, moths, mos quitoes and other insects, and as a young girl helped the other Armit children to collect specimens for overseas institutions.

She had no social aspirations, preferring

to live a quiet life in the country that she loved. She was an enthusiastic church workey and took a particular interest in the children of the Territory. She is sur vived by husband, by her brother, Mr. L. Armit, well-known resident of Port Moresby, and Mrs. V. C. Gabriel and Captain E. F. Armit, cousins, residing in Sydney.

Mr. L. Armit was in possession of his father’s complete diaries of his life in Papua; and had himself kept diaries since going to Papua as a youth. These priceless pioneering documents were destroyed in the early months of the Army’s occupation of Port Moresby, in 1942.