Memories of Queen Emma
p. 75 · Read in the full issue
Queen Emma
The recent release of a new edition of R. W. Robson’s Queen Emma (Pacific Publications, $4) has prompted letters about her from two long-time readers. Mr, V. T.
Saunders of Port Moresby writes about an altar which Emma had re modelled as a cocktail bar in her residence, Gunantambu, at Ralum about 1884. Although Emma was held in some esteem by the Catholics —she made liberal donations to their newly-established mission station near Kokopo—they never forgave her for the way in which she treated the altar. It was part of the equipment sent out to New Britain with the ill fated Marquis de Ray’s expedition and abandoned there, nearly a century ago, later to be salvaged by the Ralum people.
“I picked up a funny old story in the bar of the Popondetta Club last week. It is to the effect that the altar, presumably after Emma ceased to reside at her famous bungalow at Ralum, was removed from the house to the Vunapope mission, at the end of World War I.”
Is it still there?
Former well - known supercargo Neville Chatfield (87) thinks he must be one of a very few people living who actually spoke to Emma in her heyday. He writes the following:— Whenever she came to Sydney she called at the Burns Philp offices— then at No. 10 Bridge Street. 1 well remember that, about 1902, when she was under treatment in St. Vin cents Hospital, she decided that she wanted her diamonds.
I was called into the office of my chief, Mr. Nosworthy, and handed a letter, addressed to the manager (Mr. Bryant) of the Union Bank, at the corner of Hunter and Pitt Streets.
I was told to take a cab, and not to let that letter out of my hand until I saw Mr. Bryant.
Mr. Bryant sent off and got a tin box, and instructed me, as Mr. Nos worthy had done, that—on pain of death—l was to continue in the cab to St. Vincents Hospital, and deliver the box personally into no hands other than those of Mrs. Emma Kolbe.
Which mission I successfully car ried out. I was only 17 at the time and you can imagine the impression the incident made upon me. [Queen Emma sold most of her New Guinea interests about 1910, and died in Monte Carlo in 1913.]