Up Front
with the Editor
T don’t know whether it has any thing to do with the death wish which appears to be inherent in human nature, but the most frequent question I get asked by people who wonder about the future of Papua New Guinea is, “Do you think there will be a blood-bath up there?”
The answer is, “No I don’t”. I have never thought it in the 20 years I have been following Papua New Guinea affairs, and I have no reason to change my mind with PNG’s independence.
For the record, I used to be asked the same question about Fiji, but when Fiji independence came and went without blood-letting, people stopped asking, and you never hear it now. There were also predictions about the social chaos that would follow Western Samoa’s indepen dence and Nauru’s independence.
But when the Samoans and the Nau ruans refused to oblige the Jeremiahs, those predictions have died too.
Why it is that people are not more positive and constructive in their ap proach, I will never know.
EVERYBODY has said it, and it’s true: “How sad that Sir Donald Cleland died virtually on the eve of the independence of the country he did so much for and chose to live out his days in”.
Don Cleland was buried in Port Moresby with State honours. In a personal tribute to him in an article in the Papua New Guinea Post- Courier, Sir John Gunther, who as his second-in-command for so many years knew Don Cleland better than most men, tells how Cleland was a modest man who got impatient with pomp and ceremony and forgot to take his medals when he was pre sented to the Queen in Canberra in 1954, although another administrator of a small Australian possession not only wore his, but pinned them on a morning suit!
On more serious matters John Gunther added: “Personally, I be lieve a colonial civil servant must on occasions think he has a conflict of loyalty. Appointed by the metro politan government to administer its colonial policies, he is nevertheless appointed to advance the welfare of the colonial dependents and if a direction is in conflict with that wel
fare the Administrator has to decide how to react.
“Donald Cleland found that in the later years of his administration he disagreed with those who spoke for the Australian Government. He re acted in the strongest possible terms.
But he never reacted without a punctilious examination of all aspects of the directive and his reaction tc it. He had a “sixth sense” for any likely political ramifications and here he served Australia well. His legal training gave him an analytical mind, his military training allowed him to see attack and defence, and counter attack”.
When one considers that Sir Donald Cleland’s main term as Ad ministrator of Papua New Guinea was in the heady days of conflicting pressures from Territories Minister Paul Hasluck and the Australian Cabinet, a very strong PNG Public Service, a growingly vocal Legis lative Council and from Dr John Gunther himself, I think history may record that Don Cleland was the most able of the country’s colonial administrators.
THERE was another death in Port Port Moresby not long before Independence whose ripples were felt over a wide area. Rev Percy Chatterton’s “Chrissie” slipped away after a long illness. She had been 50 years a missionary in Papua.
“Her end was peaceful and as far as one can tell, without pain”, writes Percy in a sad letter. “Yesterday, after an early morning service in the Hanuabada Church, we took her back to her beloved Delena and buried her there. The Delena people had some time ago expressed a wish that she should be buried there and I gladly agreed, as I felt sure that that was what she would like best.
“For her it can only be regarded as a merciful release. For me it means a period of readjustment. For nearly three years now my thrice daily visits to the hospital have been the centre of gravity of my existence; now I have to find a new one”.
I’ll best remember Chrissie Chat terton for the fey Scots humour she shared out with the tea and biscuits around their small kitchen table during many visits I made over many
years.
Stuart Inder