Charles As One Of The Boys

From Susan Young When Prince Charles, heir to the British Throne, stays at the Anglican Martyrs’ Memorial School near Popondetta, Papua, for several days in May, he will be treated the same way as the other schoolboys who will make up the rest of his group. Prince Charles will share a garden house of bush timber with a thatched roof with one of the school pupils, eat and sleep there and wash in a nearby creek.

Prince Charles arrives with a group of Geelong Grammer pupils, in what is the fifth annual visit of a party from Geelong. Geelong is a Church of England school and has had a special link with the Martyrs’ secondary school for some years.

Martyrs was founded in 1948 as a memorial to Church people killed in World War 11. Three years later it was destroyed in the big Mt. Lamington eruption, but it was rebuilt and now has 300 boys and a staff of 12. It is one of the finest secondary schools in the country.

Prince Charles will also spend five days at the Dogura mission headquarters—founded in 1891 as the first Anglican station. Here again he will join in the normal life of the mission.