Extracts
NEW GUINEA WAITS
Three Articles on New Guinea
by Anne McCosker
"New Guinea Waits" © Anne McCosker, 1993
Troubled, angry,
innocent,
Witched with wild despair
New Guinea Waits.
Light lingers around
shadows
Crossing empty graves.
The dead are dancing.
These three short articles have been published in the hope that all future historical research on Australian colonial New Guinea will be based on fact.
Many flawed books have been published about New Guinea. However, with the appearance of Australian Women in Papua New Guinea by Chilla Bulbeck, it seems to me imperative that questions be asked - and answered - by the Australian academic world. From what background, what ethos, has this book arisen? How is it possible that a book on Australian women of New Guinea can be published and the author does not even seem to be aware of my name? This is in spite of repeated efforts over many years to draw attention to my work and valuable original material on New Guinea.
This unfortunate situation could have been prevented. As can be seen from the first two articles in this publication - printed as originally circulated, except for minor alterations - I had already responded to Chilla Bulbeck's earlier work. Why were these articles brushed aside by academics and publishers? Even the third article, a natural and inevitable outcome of this previous neglect, has been similarly treated.
---------
Many Papuans and New Guineans, as well as Australians, lost their lives or had them ruined, fighting for common interests during World War II. Papua New Guinea could remain an important ally of Australia. However, such an alliance is endangered when academics and publishers accept fanciful work on New Guinea or treat the subject, as is often the case, with patronizing indifference.
Colonial New Guinea was no place for weak Europeans. Only the strongest survived, or died, with integrity. Perhaps New Guinea is still testing Europeans who - in any way - dare to explore her territory.
on
Staying in Line or Getting out of Place: The Experiences of Expatriate Women in Papua New Guinea 1920-1960 by Chilla Bulbeck
These Reflections are concerned only with the area known from 1884 to 1921 as German New Guinea and, from 1921 to 1945, as the Mandated Territory of New Guinea. In 1949, after provisional administration by Australia, it was formally amalgamated with Papua to become the Territory of Papua and New Guinea. Today it is known as Papua New Guinea. In this article I shall call it New Guinea.
I do not think a precise history of the area can be achieved if this New Guinea and Papua are studied as if they have always had one identity - as is often the case nowadays and is so handled by Chilla Bulbeck in her working paper. Indeed, it would be more correct at times to distinguish mainland New Guinea from island New Guinea - the Bismarck Archipelago,
New Guinea and Papua had different European administrations for sixty-one years, and the inhabitants, certainly of New Guinea, considered the other a foreign country.1
Bulbeck's statements regarding the relationships between the black and white peoples of New Guinea are too simplistic, too rigid.2
"A few days after Stan arrived, he was wandering along the dirty track that was now Mango Avenue, sadly looking at the gaps that had once been filled with shops and offices. He glimpsed the outline of a familiar figure coming towards him. He quickened his pace. The other man quickened his. Stan and Rombin met.
Stan looked into his eyes and knew he was no traitor. 'It is you, my brother', he said quietly. They solemnly shook hands."3
As glimpsed in the above passage, in which black and white meet again after the years of war, there was a great variety of relationships between the various races and even within these individual relationships, as in any relationship, there was a continual movement. A black servant might become a white man's mate, a woman kanaka the beloved nanny of a white child. In the bush, the white man would acknowledge the superior bushcraft of his black 'companion and the black man accept the white man's less fearful approach to the unseen forces.4
The New Guinea population was made up of individuals. One race made the laws according to its own kind, which could lead to injustice for those of other races but, on a one-to-one basis, the roles of the various races depended on the character of each individual.5
The question of individuality was also the most important factor in deciding the role of the expatriate women - and black women - in New Guinea. Bulbeck quotes secondary sources about other parts of the British Empire - well before the time scale of her own study -suggesting women were not only late arrivals in the colonies but were given, from the beginning, a specific role and told what employment they could do.
I do not know whether these examples give a true picture for other parts of the Empire. They certainly are not correct for New Guinea.
Emma Coe, married first to James Forsayth and then common law wife of Tom Farrell and, later, wife of Paul Kolbe - "Queen Emma' - was a pioneer founder of the area around Kokopo which was the heart of the Bismarck Archipelago.6 She arrived in the Duke of York Islands, between New Britain and New Ireland, in 1878 with Tom Farrell.
"The fact that Emma's husband was thought to be still alive, and that Farrell had a wife living in Australia, did not concern the eleven white residents of the area. Two of their number had just been killed and eaten so they were glad to see newcomers."7
This woman - trader, planter, ship-owner, business woman - dominated the lives of everyone, lovers and husbands, female and male relations, friends, enemies and travellers who came in contact with her. She ruled her vast empire from Ralum near Kokopo and at her home, Gunantambu, she entertained on a lavish scale.
Phoebe Parkinson, one of Emma's sisters, was perhaps an even more remarkable woman than Emma. Both women had many relations and Coe women lived and worked all over the Bismarck Archipelago.
In 1909 Emma Kolbe sold - for a fortune - all her interests to Hamburghische Sudsee Aktien Gesellschaft, known as HASAG.
Queen Emma neither knew nor cared if she had a 'proper place'.8 Neither did the majority of European women living in New Guinea from 1920. There was 'Tiger Lil' who drove around Rabaul in a car called the 'silver bullet' and who had a string of lovers, one being the young Errol Flynn. There was Marjorie McCosker who, before her marriage, was a qualified accountant and teacher. After she settled in New Guinea, she continued her accountancy career and grew to be a well-loved white missus.
One woman was licensee of a Rabaul hotel, another helped her husband in medical research. The chemist shop, with delightful tea-house attached, was run by a husband-and-wife team. Lulu Miller went recruiting native labour, Doris Booth worked on the gold fields. Women owned and managed plantations which sometimes consisted of vast tracts of land, including whole island groups. They worked as teachers and secretaries. There were, of course, nurses and missionary sisters. Women worked at just about anything and everything.9
There were single women, separated and divorced women, faithful wives and unfaithful wives. There were women who were good with servants and the New Guinea natives in general and women who were unable to handle them well or justly. Some women and their children became fluent speakers of Pidgin English and even some local tribal dialects; others had almost no understanding of even basic Pidgin. Single women travelled freely and frequently between Australia and New Guinea. Married women often travelled alone with their children between the two countries. White women drove on their own between places such as Rabaul and Kokopo and the surrounding plantations. Black servants might risk their own lives to ensure the safety of a white missus even when there was no white man accompanying them.10
There were. Of course, subtle social distinctions - as there always have been in all ages throughout the world - between the women, but these were made as much by the women themselves as by any men. These could be, and were, disregarded by individual women in individual cases. Most of these women were pioneers - women often of above-average courage, humour and love. There was more scope for their gifts in raw countries such as New Guinea than even in early twentieth century Australia.
Bulbeck seems to accept that the black servants were treated according to the social class of the white women" yet she does not follow this evidence to its logical conclusion. For surely once this idea has been accepted, one must continually distinguish between not only social classes but characters. One should also distinguish between town, plantation and bush.12
Why does Bulbeck not pursue the extremely important statement, "Servants had care of small children, a relationship that required trust not fear."13
Bulbeck states on the subject of house servants, "This job almost always involved servants who were usually men. Why men were recruited to perform tasks normally undertaken by women has puzzled later commentators.'"4
The various commentators who were puzzled by this supposed situation should not have been. Even to this day in wealthy households throughout the world, there are male butlers, footmen, chefs, chauffeurs, gardeners and handymen.
However, at Matala Plantation in March 1941, photos were taken of the family and house servants. One photo shows all the females - black and white - of the family household. There was the Missus, her aunt, two children and five New Guineans. Four of these 'maries' (women) were house maries while the other was the elder child's playmate.15 It was not uncommon for maries to work in white households besides that of Matala Plantation, as did 'monkeys', young male New Guineans16. And I presume Molly [sic] Parer, as quoted by Bulbeck, was talking about black girls when she said 'girls'.17
Any attempt to analyse the relationships between white women and black men, as Bulbeck does, will lead to confusion and tomfoolery.18 Again it depends on the character of the individuals involved- This sensitive area of human relations is so obviously open to gossip, scandal, exaggeration and 'leg pulling' - something the New Guinea Europeans loved.
The contemporary English TV comedy programme, "You Rang M'Lord", puts such relationships with servants in proportion. Women are women and servants are servants the world over. A few women tantalise their male servants, whatever their colour; many do not. To outsiders, the most peculiar relationships exist between master/mistress and servants of all races with no sexual intimacy involved.
There were very few liaisons between white women and New Guinea men and even fewer marriages- Even the Coe women - with Samoan blood - married white men. S. W. Reed concluded that the New Guinea women were not attractive to European men.19 This perhaps applies to the converse situation.
Bulbeck finished her working paper with the sentence, "They (the women) were thus in a position to be more reflective concerning the impact of 'the white man's burden', if only because they were less involved in carrying it."20
"Send forth the best ye breed", Kipling's poem continued21 and some of the best of women, as well as men, did respond to the challenge. These women believed, with the same passion and assurance as the men, that they had a duty to take the light of Christ into the darkness of such countries as New Guinea.
Their burden was as great as, if not more so, than that of the men. A married woman had to endure either the loneliness of separation from her husband or the tigering climate of New Guinea. If she stayed with her husband and wanted children, she could find it an almost impossible task even to conceive because of the diseases the climate brought.22 If pregnant, she had to fight the alien physical and spiritual forces surrounding her and the unborn child. Perhaps that baby might even be born on the road-side as the parents tried to reach the hospital from an outlying plantation.23
It was the mother who bore the main burden of making sure her child had professional medical advice, if necessary, and the right food as an infant - not an easy task in isolated areas or even, at times, in the towns.24 The child's education fell on her shoulders. Away from the few towns, she would have to organise and supervise correspondence lessons. The necessity of separation from either her child or her husband, when the child's educational needs demanded schooling in Australia, could place an almost intolerable burden on her.25
The women, married or single - like women everywhere, no matter their pioneering
instincts - loved to talk and show their latest home possessions, whether it be
curtains, knick-knacks or linoleum. And women, much more than men, like to
dress up, go out, be seen. What chance did women living on isolated plantations
or mission stations have to do all these things?26
How many women were there who mourned the loss of some one they loved - husband, lover, son, brother - either through disease, injury or war, as a result of his time in an outpost of the Empire? Women who had perhaps never even been to a colony but who nevertheless carried the full burden of Empire - carried sometimes through a lifetime of loneliness and poverty.27
It was the white women who, perhaps even more than the white men, understood the "fluttered folk and wild"2", Kipling's black peoples, and the vulnerable position in which this put the often more emotionally mature black women. It was to these black women that the Christian white women wished to give their own great gift - the knowledge that they were equal to men, a complementary equality so natural that it needed no discussion.
A partnership of European husband and wife could achieve much. By 1941 at Matala Plantation on New Britain, the children had a beloved black nanny and the elder a black playmate who took correspondence lessons with her. Married couples lived on the plantation, the husbands working as labourers. The black women were as respected as the white women, certainly by the Europeans. Much more remained to be done but the foundations were well laid.29
However, first war, then the post-war clamour against colonialism, shattered the aspirations of the best, black and white, male and female. A different white man's burden has passed now to those who, from the late 1940s onwards, for a variety of reasons, determined to destroy all - including the good - that had been created by the 'best'.
It is the post-colonialists who have constructed an unreal world, the rigid lines from which no one - man or woman, black or white - gets out of place.
NOTES
1 Letter in author's possession.
Sir Herbert Murray, Lieutenant-Governor of Papua was, by 1940, against a union of the two territories thinking they had, by then, diverged too much. Gavin Souter, The Last Unknown, Angus and Robertson, 1963, p. 172.
2
Chilla Bulbeck, Staying in Line or Getting out of Place: the Experiences of Expatriate Women in Papua New Guinea /920-1960, published by the Sir Robert Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, 1988, pp. 1-2.
3 Anne McCosker, Masked Eden, an unpublished (in 1993) historically accurate account of the colonial period of the Territory of New Guinea. Completed in 1979. The two aspects of New Guinea life - the personal and official - are woven into this book. The lives of real people are portrayed, the biographical details being based on private letters, diaries, short stories, articles and photographs in the author's possession. Authenticity has been achieved from the many conversations the author had with Old Timers in Australia and New Guinea, as well as from her own memories and experiences. Chapter 12. Section 1.
(Masked Eden was published in 1998)
The words spoken by Stan McCosker in this extract were told to the author by Rombin in Rabaul in 1971.
"Dear my sister Robin" and "Dear Sister Robin Anne" - greetings in letters (1947 and 1948) from Rombin to Stan's daughter in Australia. Letters in author's possession.
Anne McCosker, 'Rombin', Potter's Clay, Matala Publishing Co. 1973, p. 13.
4 Anne McCosker, Masked Eden; inter alia Chapters 12 and 13.
S. W. Reed, The Making of Modern New Guinea. American Philosophical
Society.1943, pp. 231-2.
However, the friendship between Stan and Rombin (Note 3) lasted 28 years, broken
only when Stan left New Guinea on the death of his wife.
5 Ibid., p.216, Reed quotes R.Thurnwald: "European contact does not create the same conditions everywhere. Consequently we must distinguish the phenomena of contact and adaptation not only according to tribal conditions, but also in relation to the particular circumstances created by Europeans on a certain spot."
6 There are many books, handbooks, articles and papers that mention Queen Emma and her extended family.
This author had several talks with Lulu Miller, Queen Emma's great-niece. She also talked with Herbert Zander who had known Emma in his youth. The author knew well Walford King who was a German-speaking Government Auditor in New Guinea in the 1920s and 1930s. He knew many of Emma's relations and friends, including Phoebe Parkinson and Peter Hansen.
7 R. W. Robson, Queen Emma, Pacific Publications, 1965, p. 10.
8 Chilla Bulbeck, Staying in Line or Getting out of Place, p. 2.
9 Anne McCosker, Masked Eden. Many women and their contribution to New Guinea are mentioned throughout the book. This information is also held in letters in the author's possession.
10. Ibid., Chapter 6. Letter in author's possession.
11. Chilla Bulbeck, Staying in Line or Getting out of Place, p. 12.
12. S. W. Reed, The Making of Modem New Guinea, p. 251.
13. Chilla Bulbeck, Staying in Line or Getting out of Place, p. 12.
14. Ibid,. p.6.
15. A photograph in the author's possession.
16.
Lilian Overall, A Woman's Impressions of German New Guinea,
John
Lane, The Bodley Head. 1923, inter alia Chapter IX, p. 164.
R. W.
Robson, Queen Emma, p. 198. (Note p. 181).
Anne
McCosker, Masked Eden, many chapters.
Photographs
in author's possession.
17. Chilla Bulbeck, Staying in Line or Getting out of Place, p.l3.
18. Ibid., pp. 7-8.
19. S. W. Reed. The Making of Modern New Guinea, p. 249.
20. Chilla Bulbeck, Staying in Line or Getting out of Place, p. 15.
21. Rudyard Kipling, 'White Man's Burden', A Choice
of Kipling's Verse,
edited
by T.
S. Eliot. Faber and Faber, 1963, p. 136
22. Anne McCosker, Masked Eden. Chapter 4.
23. Ibid., Chapter 8. Letter in author's possession.
24. Ibid., Chapters 6 and 8. Letter in author's possession.
25. Ibid.. Chapter 13.
26. Ibid., Chapters 3 and 4.
27. Ibid., Chapter 12.
28. See Note 21.
29. Anne McCosker, Masked Eden, Chapter 9.
Letters and photographs in
author's possession.
Recently, I have been drawn back into reading academic research on New Guinea,
particularly some of the work done by Chilla Bulbeck.
I have felt it necessary to reply to her papers - in Reflections 1 and now in this short article Empire? which is a response to another one of her papers.2
Some academics and writers decreed that the British Empire was evil. There had always been questions and questionings amongst the best of the colonialists but this determination to denigrate all of Empire reached maturity in the case of New Guinea - I talk only about New Guinea - in the 1960s, To denigrate all of Empire, these professionals had to construct an edifice of rooms or tenets based almost totally on false foundations, false assumptions.
I do not know all the rooms or tenets within this building. However, the main one it seems was that all white people were wicked and all the native peoples abused. Nothing good was done in the name of the British Empire.
I gather now that another room in this building was labelled sexist. Apparently, if an academic was studying women as distinct from men, as well as colonial history, the white man of the colonies was not only a wicked white man, he was also a wicked white man. The white women were as downtrodden as the native peoples. Chilla Bulbeck has made statements and assumptions based on this theory3. Now after further research she has discovered all is not quite as she was led to think it was.4 Cracks have appeared in that building constructed on such false foundations.
This is where I come in. I have books of poetry in all the main Australian and British libraries. The first ones were placed there in 1973. These books include important poems on New Guinea. They are under Anne (therefore obviously a woman) McCosker and classified under New Guinea - where I was born. These books were even printed in New Guinea.5
Why do Chilla Bulbeck and others engaged in colonial research, as well as in women's studies, appear not to have discovered my existence if they carried out research in these libraries? Would it not have been a true voyage of discovery for them to have read this poetry and contacted me? If they had, they would then have found out that I started research on a book, Masked Eden, in 1971. This book contains a great deal of original material, much of it about colonial women. These were women of one or even two generations earlier than those women whom she and her colleagues are discussing in their material. Since early 1979 I have been trying to have this book published. Academics, publishers and writers have been aware of this,
Am I, a poet, born in Rabaul, the then capital of the Mandated Territory of New Guinea, with New Guinea dominating my youth, of complete irrelevance to those now studying the women of New Guinea?
If she and others had carried out this basic research they might not now be in the false position they are in, thinking they are breaking new ground on the subject of women in the Empire. They are not. They are still within that crazed, ramshackle building constructed by their peers a couple of academic generations ago. They prise a few bricks off a make-believe structure that should not have arisen in the first place.
The earth of Empire, over which this monstrosity has been constructed, still waits quiet and fertile beneath their confused feet. Will they take up the challenge and feel its vibrations?
(See also Empire and Commonwealth)
NOTES
1. Anne McCosker, Reflections on Staying in Line or Getting out of Place. Unpublished article written January 1992 - see pp. 9-14 of this publication.
2. Chilla Bulbeck, New Histories of the Memsahib and Missus: The Case of Papua New Guinea. Journal of Woman's History Vol.3 No.2 (Fall) 1991.
I do not intend going into detailed discussion as regards this paper. I will, however, answer one statement Bulbeck makes, as she opens her paper with it - "The consensus among the women was that they could see long before the men it was time to go." She continues that "the women's reactions were quite distinct from those of the men." p.80.
I was in New Guinea in 1971 and 1974. The few Old Timers left in the Territory - men and women - were well aware of the true situation and were reacting to the political events in a similar manner. Those who intended leaving - some for various reasons did not - were settling their affairs as quickly as possible,
Stan McCosker had seen from 1945 onwards that changes would happen. (Letters in author's possession. Personal knowledge).
John Gilmore, another pre-Second War resident of New Guinea, troubled by the situation, had left the Islands in the mid -1960s. (Personal knowledge).
Both these men and others like them, who had spent their adult lives in New Guinea, were horrified and angered by the determination of those in power - often people with little or no practical experience of the country - to push through independence as quickly as possible. They did not think it in the best long-term interests of the New Guineans. Events in New Guinea since independence have proved them partially correct. Perhaps the future will prove them totally correct.
See Districts of Papua and New Guinea, Dept of Information, Port Moresby 1969, pp. 4-12 for a short summary of the actions, political and economic, that were being undertaken by the PNG Administration from the 1950s "with the aim of hastening the attainment of self-government by the people of Papua & New Guinea".
PNG was one of the last colonies of the British Empire to be granted independence. It must have been a very stupid man, indeed, who was not aware either of the push by his own Administration for indigenous independence or the granting of independence to other colonies.
3. Anne McCosker, Reflections on Staying in Line or Getting out of Place.
4. Chilla Bulbeck, New Histories of the Memsahib and Missus, inter alia p.86.
5. Anne McCosker, Sea Watch, Camp-Fires, Potter's Clay, Matala Publishing Company, 1972-3.
Comment on Australian Women in Papua New Guinea
by Chilla Bulbeck
"At birth I heard the drums, witch doctor shadowed me" - the opening line of my poem 'New Britain Birth'.1
The opening sentence
in Chilla Bulbeck's book Australian Women in Papua New Guinea -
sub-titled Colonial Passages 1920-1960 - is "Although a few white women
have been born in Papua New Guinea, and indeed spent all or most of their lives
there, the great majority lived in the Territory for only a few years." She
continues,
"For most expatriate women, Papua New Guinea was a passage in their lives, a
brief moment . . ." 2
Perhaps these two quotations are not contradictory. I think, however, they arise from very different mental and spiritual perceptions. Because of my birth in New Guinea and subsequent life, I know of many women - too many to be dismissed as lightly as Chilla Bulbeck does - whose lives were, and sometimes still are, profoundly affected by New Guinea. This is true regardless of whether they were born there or not, or lived there for a very long time or not.
Some women, of course,
were not affected by the Islands but these were as tourists compared to the many
women to whom New Guinea was physically or emotionally home for five, fifteen,
thirty years or more. What made Bulbeck decide to emphasise those women to whom
New Guinea meant little; thus, in effect, ignoring the many to whom New Guinea
meant so much? Are not the latter the women she should have chosen as her source
of information on Australian women in New Guinea? Perhaps, then, her opening
sentences would have been less misleading.
As it is, Bulbeck seems to have failed to take into account the inner reality active in all humans. Intense involvement in a particular situation can have a greater and longer lasting influence on a person than years of humdrum living.
My life has been
greatly influenced by my birth there - "Fire of birthplace equalled fire
of blood"3. In one sense it is my country and Rabaul "bright harbour
in the stars, my home."4 To a lesser or greater extent, I think this
is true of all the other Australian women of my generation born in New Guinea.
My mother, Marjorie McCosker, found her life dominated by the Islands from the moment they first touched her in 1927, and they were the main cause of her death at a relatively early age in 1957. Other members of her family were also affected, through her, by New Guinea. Women who have not lived in the Islands since World War II still have New Guinea Club meetings, a bond existing between them of amazing depth.
The New Guinea Islanders were not a servile people of no spirit or character. There was far more interaction between the races than Bulbeck seems to realise or accept, even though she writes. "For all, it meant an abiding interest in a close neighbour."5 Nor does she seem to value the fact that a land can have the power to influence people, not only while they live there, but long after they have left it, although she writes, "Annie Deland will always remember 'that strange morning and evening light.'"6
I shall not comment on any statements about Papua. It was, and still is, a foreign country to me- I am a daughter of the Islands of New Guinea. It is also not possible to give a historically accurate picture if both countries, not formally united until 1949, are pushed together.
I shall not comment either on any of the considerable amount of material in the book dealing with other parts of the British Empire. I do wonder, though, why there is so much of this in a book called Australian Women in Papua New Guinea.
In her 'Introduction' Bulbeck writes, "In contrast with official histories, the gender axis is central to this book."7 Why then has she completely ignored all my published poetry on New Guinea? The first three books have been in major libraries - since 1973 - classified under the heading NEW GUINEA. Does she not think that my voice, the voice of a poet, is of any importance when considering the Australian women of colonial New Guinea?
It seems, too, that she has not interviewed any women of my generation born in New Guinea. According to her 'Biographical Notes' she has talked to only two elderly ladies who were in PNG before World War II.8 Women of my generation are living in Brisbane and other capital cities of Australia and there are several ladies in Brisbane, for example, who were in the Islands well before World War II.9
If "In contrast with official histories the gender axis is central to this book,"10 how then can Bulbeck be so confused about the founder woman of New Guinea? Any serious student of New Guinea surely knows that Queen Emma was never called Parkinson. It was her sister's married name.11 How can an academic claiming to be writing about the colonial women of New Guinea - and thus assuming the mantle of an expert on the subject not get the name of the woman founder of New Britain and thus New Guinea correct? Even all the male historians knew about Emma.
However, this is some
improvement on Bulbeck's early paper on New Guinea. In Slavic m Line or
Getting out of Place, '2 Queen Emma is not even mentioned. One
can understand the reluctance to mention Queen Emma for to do so makes nonsense
of many other theories regarding women in the Empire.
This determination to see the world from a 'woman's axis' can and does lead to many errors.
"Women accepted the Independence of Papua New Guinea as inevitable and fair; men
saw it as a defeat."13 Bulbeck's next sentence, part of a quotation
from an unfinished thesis, is almost the same as one given in another of her
papers - "The consensus among the women of this group was that they could see
long before the men that it was time to go."14
I repeat my answer first given in the 'Notes' of my paper Empire?
"I was in New Guinea in 1971 and 1974. The few Old Timers left in the
Territory - men and women - were well aware of the true situation and were
reacting to the political events in a similar manner. Those who intended leaving
- some for various reasons did not - were settling their affairs as quickly as
possible."15
I shall now discuss some of the inaccurate statements - and omissions - Bulbeck makes regarding World War II.
She touches on the trauma of evacuation for the Australian women and their children but she gives misleading and/or one-sided material. For instance, "The administration's plans were to send the civilian population bush during this period."16 In fact, the Administration suggested all women and children leave the Islands.17 The McCoskers of Matala Plantation left soon after this advice was given. They were aware of Japanese behaviour in China.18
The Administration never intended storing food in the bush for the civilians,19 as Bulbeck suggests. There was not even such a plan for the army.20
Bulbeck mentions the arrival of the women and children in Australia and then, except for a couple of extracts, leaves it at that. Does she not think it important to discuss the life of those Australian women of New Guinea as they struggled to cope in Australia during the war? She ignores them as did the Government of that time. From original material, I have written in detail of this tragic episode in Australian history - in Masked Eden.21
She then repeats the myth that all the New Britain men were lost on the 'Montevideo Maru'.22 Hardly anyone of pre-war Rabaul accepted that story. Even those wives who at first believed it were, over the years, to grow increasingly sceptical.23 Only generations of academics seem to believe it.
I am not sure how to interpret the statement "(Marjorie) discovered that he had been captured when, coming home . . . she picked up the Courier Mail. Across the front page was a headline 'Japs claim capture of Australian spy'-"24 If John Murphy's name was not mentioned in the paper, is Bulbeck implying that Marjorie Murphy was a gifted clairvoyant who knew it was her husband, (even if Marjorie Murphy had been told John was missing, so were other men), or is she suggesting that John Murphy was the only Australian intelligence officer behind the lines whom the Japs could capture? If the latter, then it is a grave insult to brave men - black and white - who were behind the lines in New Britain.
Chilla Bulbeck's handling of this material also raises the question whether she realised what happened following Murphy's capture. Has she, for example, read Eric Feldt?
"The Japanese extracted a complete account of the coast-watching parties in New Britain from Murphy .... There can be no doubt that drugs were used to make him talk. Had it been torture, Murphy .. would have left out some items on which the Jap could not check. The information he gave was correct to the last detail. ....
The information which the Japs obtained gravely endangered all the parties in New Britain. ..... The worst result of all was that the Malay, Johannes, his wife and family were executed in Rabaul for the assistance he had given."25
Bulbeck also states, presumably having heard the information from Marjorie Murphy, that "he (John) and six Americans were the only survivors of the prisoner of war camp in Rabaul."26
Other sources present a different picture. On 13th September 1945, 'Ramale Day,' an Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit (ANGAU) party headed by Major Bates, including Lt. John Gilmore, arrived in Rabaul. They freed four civilians - Thomas, Creswick, McKecknie and Ellis. These were the only men of the New Britain civilian population, captured by the Japanese, still alive. By then they were in caves in the Ramale valley with a party of missionaries. Scattered about Rabaul were POW camps of military personnel from many armies - British, Indian, American.27
Was the information given by these elderly ladies not
checked?
In the chapter 'War, a Watershed in Race Relations?', Bulbeck seems to have little background knowledge of New Guinea. I give just a few examples. "Australian B4s 'ran away' in defeat".28 Most were killed long before they ran anywhere. Some left, promising the Islanders they would return, which they did. Others like Father Harris were tortured to death, rather than betray white soldiers or leave their flock. A few Old Timers hid in the bush for some months before joining up with the intelligence parties. And some brave men, such as the coast watcher C. L. Page, remained until they were murdered by the Japanese -without giving away information during captivity.29
Soon small groups of Allied Intelligence Bureau (AIB) parties were organised and moving about New Britain - an area ignored by Bulbeck. Old Timers were working with New Guinea men like Rombin/Robin in New Britain, in conditions requiring great degrees of trust. These Australian men were obviously the only ones who knew the local conditions and were thus capable of leading such expeditions.30
Bulbeck does correctly state that the Americans gave no recognition to their Papuan 'Joes' after the war.31 She does not say, however, that they were also ungrateful to the men and women of the Islands, particularly New Britain, who saved American airmen. It was men like Stan McCosker - an Old Timer - who, without success, fought the American government for years as they tried to make them recognise the loyalty and courage of New Guinea men like Rombin. Eventually, in 1948, the Australian government rewarded these New Guineans with medals.
Salmon Gauis might have worked for the Japanese32 but Rombin, also in the Bainings area, was certainly not working for them. He was busy hiding an American airman and generally hood-winking the Japanese. He then led the airman to safety and joined the AIB. 33
As a bridge between comments on World War II and on life before and after the war, I shall ask a question. Why does Bulbeck not explore any of the tragic consequences for the Australian women caused by the death of so many of the men of Rabaul? She writes, "Records of women's experiences in Papua New Guinea are largely absent from the official narrative"14 yet she herself has almost entirely ignored their suffering.
It is not possible to understand post-war New Guinea unless one understands what happened in January 1942. Does she not think that was as important a factor in post-war New Guinea as any intervention of American troops? So many women lost husbands, brothers, sons. And the women of my generation lost their fathers.
MEN OF RABAUL
On the 23rd January 1942 Rabaul, the capital of the Mandated Territory of New Guinea, was invaded by the Japanese. The town and surrounding area held more than a thousand European men, mostly over military age, a few European women and an army garrison. At least three-quarters were captured and killed by the Japanese. The actual manner of many murders still remains a mystery. On the fiftieth anniversary of this invasion, I placed flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Westminster Abbey.
Fifty years fade into stone
That crafted arch by arch
Lead to an altar.
Time is silenced, distance inched
Spheres meet in vaulted order.
Rabaul so loved
Is blooded.
Men run like ants
As ants are killed,
Sight splintered.
A sea of blue is red
I kneel now beside poppies
That guard a grave.
'Unknown soldier,'
Yet my parents knew those men betrayed.35
(See Witch Doctor)
I shall now consider a few of the misleading or inaccurate and/or contradictory statements which I have taken at random from various chapters of Australian Women in Papua New Guinea.
Bulbeck quotes Doris Groves as writing, "before the Second World War very few white residents knew much about native village life."36 I seem to have had great luck in my parents and their friends, Stan and Marjorie McCosker were both writing articles about native life on the Witus in the early 1930s. Walford King had managed to obtain a long description in the 1920s of the 1878 eruption in Rabual from Tomaran, an old man from Matupi. Noel Barry, my sister's godfather, translated into English Richard Parkinson's book, Dreissig Jahre in der Suusee (Thirty Years in the South Seas'), a task that included checking the various statements made by Parkinson regarding the native peoples.37
Like everywhere else in the world, some people were interested in their fellow men and women, others not.
Take another statement she makes - "Thus white society in New Guinea developed a code against manual labour, work fit 'only for blacks'."38 However, earlier Daphne Brigland is quoted as saying, "If you are a plantation manager you are everything."39
Is Bulbeck suggesting that Daphne Brigland was talking only about post-war New Guinea and that life on a plantation was not like this pre-war - that planters did none of the work Daphne Brigland describes. If they did not, then who did the work? Stan McCosker always worked manually on his plantations.40 However, Bulbeck then says that the people pre-war worked beside their employees on the plantations.41
What is the point of this roundabout tale? People living on the land always do more manual work, either on their own or with employees, than those in a town for no other reason than there is much more manual work to be done. However, in New Guinea as elsewhere pre-war, European men frequently worked on their cars, both in town and on the plantations; cars in that environment needed a great deal of maintenance, especially pre-war!42
One can only wonder why Bulbeck bothered to interview even a few Old Timers or read any original documents after reading the statement, "Although the accounts gathered in this book do not tell tales of economic exploitation or physical violence, such exchanges clearly marred much of colonial life."43 How does the student cope with such statements? Only someone like myself, an historian, with a personal knowledge of colonial New Guinea, can distinguish fact from fiction. Yet, I presume this book is to be considered a reliable source of information on colonial New Guinea.
I give two more examples of confused and misleading statements. First, she quotes Pat Murray as saying, "every blasted bob, or 99.9% that the plantation community got, went back into the country, and we were exploiting the country, according to them" (the government officials).44
Then Bulbeck says, "They (the plantation community) were the only group that neither collected taxes nor expected gifts from Papua New Guineans - Any lack of reciprocity in their relationship was hidden beneath the surface equality of cash or rations payments for services rendered. But even this relationship was rendered in terms of a gift to the labourers."45 What does this last sentence mean?
The second example - Chilla Bulbeck says it rankled Papua New Guineans that they were prevented from wearing European clothes on the upper parts of their bodies.46 However, as far as New Guinea was concerned, a random look at photographs in my collection shows:
1. Two New Guinea men wearing European
tops in the Witu Islands in 1933; one
has on a type of T-shirt, the other a singlet.
2. Three black men are wearing European
tops while working on Londip Plantation
in 1935. Two are wearing singlets and one a shirt.
3. Another photo taken at Londip at about
the same time shows one black man
wearing a singlet.
4. One black man waiting at an unknown wharf in 1935 wearing a singlet.47
In Empire7
I suggested that a make-believe structure was erected by those who wished to
denigrate ALL of Empire and that Bulbeck and others were now beginning to prise
a few bricks off this construction - a structure that should never have arisen
in the first place.48 Much of Australian Women in Papua Hew Guinea
confirms my opinions expressed in that short article. In this book, Bulbeck
argues about and reassesses ideas regarding colonial New Guinea that would not
even be considered, let alone taken seriously, by those who knew the Empire
well.
The last two chapters particularly are, to me, full of theorising fantasy and contradictions. In her 'Introduction' she writes, "Chapter 7 argues that there was a circumscribed place for everyone ..... Because white men were located at the top of the hierarchy, they can be said to have a 'position'."49 How can one base theories on this idea and then write '"These contradictory responses reveal the complexities of a society where hierarchies are volcanic rather than sedimentary. Race and class and sex are not separable structures deployed with the symmetrical precision of a layer cake."50 Which is it to be?
In Reflections I tried to show that colonial women - and men - were just like women and men anywhere - good, bad and indifferent.51 Their behaviour in any situation was determined by their character, regardless of any real or imagined hierarchical structures. One has only to look at how everyone behaved before and after the fall of Rabaul to see this.52
Where, for instance, does Bulbeck place the following extract in her hierarchical structure?
". . . . Stan's boss-boy had rushed up the stairs on to the verandah. Stan knew that Yetia's woman was very pregnant with her first child. The day obviously had come, but something must be very wrong. The women usually dealt with childbirth among themselves. Stan had never been called before. He went into the bedroom and took his medical box from its special shelf, then turned and quickly followed Pongi.
About five minutes later they reached a collection of huts. . . . Stan entered.
It was dark and stuffy inside and crowded with people. He dimly saw .... a woman kneeling on the floor, clutching a post as was their custom in childbirth She was obviously in great pain. . ... What could he do? Why had he been sent for? It was already too late.
All eyes were now on the white master. Stan took control of himself.
The mary died a few hours later. Stan was not surprised; her condition had seemed hopeless from the moment he saw her."53
So much of the chapter 'Matters of Sex' is anecdotal. Surely Bulbeck knows, as nearly everyone knows, that people everywhere are always likely to lie about their sexual life and thoughts. Again, is she not just proving that we are all individuals?
In this chapter Bulbeck repeats many of the statements made in Staying in Line. For example, "Almost all white women in Papua New Guinea had male assistance with household tasks, Why men were recruited to perform tasks normally done by women has puzzled commentators . . . ."54
I shall reply with an extract taken from Reflections,
altering only the Notes numbers.
"The various commentators who were puzzled by this supposed situation should not have been. Even to this day in wealthy households throughout the world, there are male butlers, footmen, chefs, chauffeurs, gardeners and handy men.
"However, at Matala Plantation in March 1941, a photo was taken of the family and house servants. One photo shows all the females - black and white - of the family household. There was the Missus, her aunt, two children and five New Guineans. Four of these 'maries' (women) were house maries while the other was the elder child's playmate.55 "It was not uncommon for maries to work in white households besides that of Matala Plantation, as did 'monkeys', young male New Guineans."56 And I presume Molly [sic] Parer, as quoted by Bulbeck, was talking about black girls when she said 'girls'.57"
I find it very difficult to take seriously the section in Chapter 8 headed "White Women - the Ruin of Male Empire?", the last section of the book. She justifies and/or refutes arguments that are academically inspired instead of being based on reality. Sir David Lean's comment, for example, that she quotes, "It's a well-known saying that the women lost us the Empire, It's true-"58 only shows that Sir David, amongst others, had no idea of 'realpolitik'.
Again in Chapter 8, Bulbeck says she is exploring "the relations between white women and indigenous women in colonial settings" as well as "the debate concerning white women's role in the 'ruin of Empire'."59 Why then does she not analyse the impact birth in the Islands had for, at least, some white women?
This land where I was born
Pushed me out of that racial shape
Into which my parents had conceived me.60
Why has she not explored the relationships between the white children, the black children and their nannies? Bulbeck states "Childhood was a time when race relations were less rigidly enforced,"61 yet it was the parents who allowed the child the black nannies and black playmates. Bulbeck does not analyse this fact either.
"Race ignored, race explored,
Birth shaping roots
In rootlessness."62
Tibby, a little black child at Matala Plantation, was often in the house with the young Robin McCosker,63 in contrast to Pat Murray who is quoted as saying that the black children "weren't allowed in the house".64 The mother who allowed this was as close to the black nanny, Tibby's adopted mother, as was Robin.
"I loved you so
White child of mine.
Born to my world
I gave you a gift,
The rite of my people"65
Bulbeck writes even the expatriate women's accounts collected for this book barely mention interactions and relations with indigenous women. 66 Masked Eden tells of Tibby and Robin, Klearwat and Marjorie and their love for one another - white and black, child and adult. It tells how Robin and Tibby played and had lessons together 67,68 Robin speaking several tribal languages. It tells of Klearwat's death during the war and the great distress this caused Robin and Marjorie.
In her 'Introduction'. Bulbeck writes "Unfortunately, despite our attempts to include them, indigenous women spoke little during these interviews."69
"I loved you so
White child of mine.
Long now apart
We are together,
My work well done." 70
Perhaps the black women of New Guinea are talking, talking through one of their white wantoks - a woman born in their country - who is a poet. Sadly, it seems that neither Chilla Bulbeck nor any other academic is listening. Is it because what these women are saying is not what the academics expect or want to hear?
NEW GUINEA - MY COUNTRY
Thunder moves towards the mountain
Clouds press their sullen rain
Upon a sea frown-forming.
Stones and pumice stir
Uneasily with bones
Around cratered Rabaul.
Eyes watch from kunai grass
Forms shoed in ignorance
Mirror themselves, then vanish
Before dark dancers can
Face them with their craft,
Test strength in single combat.
The sun fidgets towards night
And a new moon breeding shadows
From where ancestors speak
Tattooed, shelled and speared
Of a past denied
By smug superstition.
Blackbirders of the soul
Would make this land impotent,
As they challenge from a distance
With clever, twisted tales
A country whose spirits
Have power only in place.
Who really cares
About this 'nowhere land'
This elemental earth
Of energetic passion,
It is used, abused,
Made play-thing by arrogance.
Yet this, my country, is no 'nowhere land,"
She has the right to choose
Her destiny,
Rise from her own roots,
Know her past unhindered
By lies masked out as learning.
Fronds slender, nervous,
Finger day with agitation.
A wind arises, tears
Thatched roof and roped canoe.
Blood-red berries split
Their juice across old tracks.
Thunder moves towards the mountain
Lightning drags the sky
Into feverish shade-
A figure pauses, squats,
Medium of movement
Around the tribal hearth.71
(See Witch Doctor)
NOTES
1. Anne
McCosker, 'New Britain Birth', Camp Fires.
Matala Publishing Co. 1972,
p. 8.
2. Chilla Bulbeck, Australian
Women in
Papua
New Guinea,
Cambridge University Press, 1992, p. 7.
3. Anne McCosker,
'Potter's Clay', Potter's Clay,
Matala Publishing Co., 1973, p. 65.
4. Anne McCosker. 'Rabaul', Potters Clay, p. 16.
5. Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 6.
6. Ibid., p. 37.
7. ibid., p. 4.
8. Ibid., Mollie [sic] Parer p. 255; Isobel Patten p. 256.
9. All attempts on
the author's part to give this information to CUP - before
the book was
published - were treated with contempt.
10. Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 4.
11. Ibid., pp. 9, 14 and 91 and in Index.
There are many books,
handbooks, articles and papers that mention
Queen Emma and her extended family.
See NOTES for
Reflections on Staying in Line or Getting out of Place
in this
publication, p. 13, Note 6.
12. Chilla Bulbeck, Staying in Line or Getting out of Place, SRMCAS 1988.
13. Chilla Bulbeck. Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p.245
14.
Ibid., p.246; similar quotation in
New Histories of the Memsahih
and Missus: the case of Papua New Guinea.
Journal of Woman's History,
Vol.3 No.2 (Fall) 1991, p. 80. There she omits the
words 'of this group'.
15. Anne
McCosker, Empire?. Unpublished article written March 1992.
For the rest
of the text of this Note, see NOTES for Empire?
in this publication, p.
17, Note 2.
16. Chilla Bulbeck. Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 15.
17. Lionel
Wigmore, The Japanese Thrust. Series 1: Australia in the War of
1939-1945, Canberra, Australian War Memorial 1957, p. 392.
18. Personal family knowledge of author.
19. Chilla Bulbeck. Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 15.
20. Lionel Wigmore, The Japanese Thrust, p. 398.
21. Anne McCosker, Masked Eden, Chapters 11-13.
See
NOTES for Reflections in this publication, p, 13, Note 3.
22. Chilla Bulbeck,
Australian Women in
Papua New Guinea,
p. 21.
23. Anne McCosker, Masked Eden,
Chapter 12.
24. Chilla Bulbeck,
Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 43.
25. Eric Feldt, The Coast Watchers, OUP, 1946, p. 345.
26. Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 43,
27.
Books, newspapers and magazines have this information in full or part.
See, for
example,
Sydney Sun,
12/10/45;
Pacific Islands Year Book,
1950, p. 32. In author's possession letter from John Gilmore.
Anne McCosker,
Masked Eden,
Chapter 12.
28. Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 160.
29. Anne McCosker, Masked Eden, Chapter 10.
Lionel Wigmore, The Japanese Thrust, Appendix 4.
Eric Feldt, The Coast Watchers, Chapters IV-VI.
30. Eric Feldt, The Coast Watchers, p. 356.
Gavin Long,
The Final Campaigns,
Series 1:
Australia in the War of 1939-1945, 1963, p.247.
31. Chilla Bulbeck. Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 159.
32. Ibid.,159.
33. Anne McCosker,
Masked Eden.
Chapter 11. Personal family knowledge
of the author; she has photographs
showing Rombin with his medals.
Quentin Reynolds,
Seventy Thousand to One,
Cassell and Company Ltd. 1947.
Eric Feldt,
The Coast Watchers,
p. 356-
34. Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 2.
35. Anne McCosker, unpublished
poem written 1992.
[See Witch
Doctor]
36. Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 172.
37. Letters, articles and photographs in author's possession.
38. Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 174.
39. Chilla Bulbeck, ibid., p. 48,
40. Letters, articles, photographs in the author's possession.
41. Chilla Bulbeck. Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 176.
42. Chilla Bulbeck.
ibid.,
p. 48.
Letters in author's possession.
43. Chilla Bulbeck, ibid., p. 125.
44. Chilla Bulbeck, ibid., p. 61.
45. Chilla Bulbeck, ibid., p.
197.
46. Chilla Bulbeck, ibid., p. 166.
47. Photographs in
the author's possession. Nos. 2, 3 and 4 are in an album of
photographs taken
by her aunt, Miss W, F. Martin.
48. Anne McCosker, Empire7 In this publication, pp. 15-17.
49. Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 4.
50. Chilla
Bulbeck, ibid., p. 220; when the author said something similar in simple
language in her paper Reflections, she was patronizingly dismissed by an
anonymous referee. This person was unable to spell the author's name correctly,
had no idea of all the meanings of the word 'reflections' and implied that the
author
had written a 'memoir'. (In fact. Reflections discusses a period
almost entirel
before the author was born.)
This flawed comment
was readily accepted by several leading academics - even
after attention had
been drawn to its faults. Reflections was therefore not
published.
(Referee's comment and author's Response in author's possession.)
51. Anne McCosker, Reflections, in this publication, pp. 9-11.
52. Anne McCosker, Masked Eden, Chapter 10.
53. Anne
McCosker, Masked Eden. Chapter 1, Section 1. Stan McCosker told the
author this story in the mid-1960s. It still troubled him - forty years after
the event
- that he had not been able to save the woman.
54. Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 215
55. A photograph in the author's possession.
56. Lilian
Overall. A Woman's Impressions of German New Guinea, John Lane,
The Bodley Head. 1923. inter alia. Chapter IX, p. 164.
R. W Robson,
Queen Emma. p.198 (Note p.181).
Anne McCosker,
Masked Eden. many chapters.
Photographs in
author's possession.
57. Chilla Bulbeck,
Staying in Line. "We'd have a siesta after lunch and the girls
would wake you up to say
afternoon tea was waiting." p. 13.
For the two following
paragraphs which were written in the original article,
see Reflections
in this publication, p. 11.
58. Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 237.
59. ibid., p.221.
60. Anne McCosker, 'Potter's Clay' Potter's Clay, p. 65.
61. Chilla Bulbeck. Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 124.
62. Anne McCosker, 'Frangipani and Daffodil', Potter's Clay, p.12.
63. Photographs in the author's possession.
64. Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women m Papua New Guinea, p. 124.
65. Anne McCosker, 'Possession',
Beyond the Sunset,
Matala Publishing Co., 1992,
p. 18
66. Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 230.
67. Anne
McCosker, Masked Eden, several chapters. Tibby was being taught with
Robin before World War II. See Note 68. Photographs in author's possession.
68. Chilla
Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, "in the years leading
to
Independence .... Plantation women asked their houseboys to join their white
children's classes; Heather Searle suggesting this was never done before the
war."
p,246.
69. Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 3.
70. Anne McCosker, 'Possession', Beyond the Sunset, p. 19.
71. Anne McCosker,
'New Guinea - My Country', unpublished poem written 1992.
[See
Witch Doctor]
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