In 1943, the Australian Army’s Colonel Alfred Conlon, who had previously chaired Prime Minister John Curtin's committee on national morale, was assigned to the staff of the Army’s commander-in-chief, General Sir Thomas Blamey. Alf Conlon believed the Army needed a research section to tackle major strategic contingencies, such as what to do if Japan invaded Australia, and persuaded Blamey to establish a Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs. Blamey assigned Conlon to head the Directorate, which also provided policy advice on the governance of the Trust Territory of Papua and the Mandated Territory of New Guinea, then under Australian administration and the scene of fierce fighting between Allied and Japanese forces.
By 1945, as World War II was drawing to a close, the School of Civil Affairs broadened its role to train officers for the Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit (ANGAU), responsible for civil administration in the Territories. At this time non-academic functions of Sydney University's Department of Anthropology - including providing training for cadet officers joining the New Guinea service and also more senior officials - were transferred to ASOPA.
Originally located at Royal Military College, Duntroon in Canberra, in March 1946 the School was transferred to civilian control and renamed the Australian School of Pacific Administration (ASOPA). Anne Robson had been working with the organisation for some time, and at this time she was appointed a fellow in Colonial Administration.[3] In May 1947, the School was relocated to a group of Army huts on Middle Head in the Sydney suburb of Mosman. ASOPA operated under the Papua and New Guinea Act 1949 and was a responsibility of the Federal Minister for External Territories until 1 December 1973.
In 1946, John Kerr (later Sir John Kerr, Governor-General of Australia; Anne Robson became his second wife in 1975) was demobilised from the Australian Army with the rank of colonel and appointed the first Principal of ASOPA. The following year he also became the first Organising Secretary of the South Pacific Commission. He returned to the bar in 1948 to become one of Sydney's leading industrial lawyers. Conlon himself took over ASOPA and spent 1948 and 1949 as a reportedly unsuccessful and unhappy Principal of the institution.
Operations
Immediately after the war, enrolments to study at ASOPA were restricted to servicemen and, when civilian candidates were admitted not long after, preference was given to those with working experience and good academic records. In the 27 years from 1946–73, ASOPA trained approximately 1400 administrators for service in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea (TPNG), the Northern Territory and Nauru. After initially acquiring field experience in TPNG, Patrol Officers spent a year at ASOPA studying subjects such as law, map reading, history, government, Tok Pisin and anthropology. 30 of those who trained for Papua New Guinea service died in service there, the last in 1978.
In 1954, ASOPA began to train Australian teachers for service in TPNG to assist develop primary education. At the same time, courses were offered to teachers recruited for Special (Aboriginal) Schools in the Northern Territory of Australia. From 1956, teacher cadets were trained at distant Bathurst Teachers’ College in Bathurst. When the training course was eventually transferred to Middle Head in 1958, the trainee teachers were redesignated ‘Cadet Education Officers’ (CEOs). Approximately 900 CEOs trained for two years at ASOPA while about 700 went to TPNG where, after three years service, they qualified for the award of the New South Wales Teacher’s Certificate.
In addition to training patrol and education officers, the School ran shorter orientation and refresher programs for Australian professional personnel preparing to serve in TPNG and elsewhere in the South Pacific.
By the mid-1960s, the Australian Government realised that Papua New Guinea would become independent sooner than previously anticipated and, under the Principalship of political scientist and author Charles Rowley, later Foundation Professor of Politics at the University of Papua New Guinea, ASOPA moved into an intensive period of training young Australians to accelerate the pace of development. Papua New Guinea eventually achieved nationhood on 16 September 1975.
In its final years, ASOPA introduced training for secondary teachers and more specialised administration courses. In 1970 there was a major change of focus as, with Papua New Guinea independence looming, the Australian Government turned to ASOPA to make good a serious shortage of trained indigenous administrators. The School enrolled up to 60 Papua New Guineans in ten-month management training courses. At the same time, the training of Australians was phased out. In these later years, ASOPA's work became more international. Although Papua New Guinea remained strongly represented, increasing numbers of students came from other developing countries in the Pacific and elsewhere.
A final restructuring – and change in name to Centre for Pacific Development and Training – saw the Middle Head campus used as a base for consultants operating in the South Pacific until this role came to an end late in 1997.
The history of ASOPA, and its successor institutions, paralleled the changing political milieu of the post-war and Cold War years. ASOPA began as a training institution for Australians taking leadership positions in Australia's territories. In its middle life, the School offered courses to people from developing countries. And, at the end, it provided a base for Australians consulting to the developing world.
At the end of World War II, confronting the first of many threats to the School’s existence over the years, John Kerr wrote: “The idea was opposed, and opposed in influential quarters... We were determined that what had been created should not be destroyed. In this we succeeded.”
Today, the old Army huts on Middle Head are empty, but they have been heritage listed by the Commonwealth Government and now await refurbishment and regeneration into another role.
The prehistory of Papua New Guinea can be traced to about 50,000–60,000 years ago, when people first migrated towards the Australian continent. The written history began when European navigators first sighted New Guinea in the early part of the 17th century.
The Papua New Guinea Defence Force (PNGDF) is the military organisation responsible for the defence of Papua New Guinea. It originated from the Australian Army land forces of the territory of Papua New Guinea before independence, coming into being in January 1973 and having its antecedents in the Pacific Islands Regiment. The PNGDF is a small force, numbering around 3,600 personnel, and consists of a Land Element, an Air Element and a Maritime Element. It is a joint force tasked with defending Papua New Guinea and its territories against external attack, as well as having secondary functions including national-building and internal security tasks.
The Territory of Papua comprised the southeastern quarter of the island of New Guinea from 1883 to 1975. In 1883, the Government of Queensland annexed this territory for the British Empire. The United Kingdom Government refused to ratify the annexation but in 1884 a protectorate was proclaimed over the territory, then called British New Guinea. There is a certain ambiguity about the exact date on which the entire territory was annexed by the British. The Papua Act 1905 recites that this happened "on or about" 4 September 1888. On 18 March 1902, the Territory was placed under the authority of the Commonwealth of Australia. Resolutions of acceptance were passed by the Commonwealth Parliament, which accepted the territory under the name of Papua.
The Royal Pacific Islands Regiment (RPIR) is an infantry regiment of the Papua New Guinea Defence Force (PNGDF). The regiment is descended from the Australian Army infantry battalions formed from native soldiers and Australian officers and non-commissioned officers in the territories of Papua and New Guinea during World War II to help fight against the Japanese. Disbanded after the war, the regiment was re-raised in 1951 as part of the Australian Army and continued to serve until Papua New Guinea gained its independence in 1975, when it became part of the PNGDF. Today, the RPIR consists of two battalions and has seen active service in Vanuatu, Bougainville and the Solomon Islands.
Colonel Alfred Austin Joseph Conlon was the head of the Australian Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs (DORCA) in World War II. A controversial figure, he influenced events throughout the Pacific region in the second half of the 20th century, through the Australian School of Pacific Administration (ASOPA), which grew out of the directorate.
The Territory of New Guinea was an Australian-administered League of Nations and then United Nations trust territory on the island of New Guinea from 1914 until 1975. In 1949, the Territory and the Territory of Papua were established in an administrative union by the name of the Territory of Papua and New Guinea. That administrative union was renamed as Papua New Guinea in 1971. Notwithstanding that it was part of an administrative union, the Territory of New Guinea at all times retained a distinct legal status and identity until the advent of the Independent State of Papua New Guinea.
The Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs (DORCA) was a mysterious and difficult-to-categorise think tank and possibly intelligence organisation within the Australian Army during World War II.
Lieutenant General Sir Edmund Francis Herring, was a senior Australian Army officer during the Second World War, Lieutenant Governor of Victoria, and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria. A Rhodes scholar, Herring was at New College, Oxford, when the First World War broke out and served with the Royal Field Artillery on the Macedonian front, for which he was awarded the Military Cross and Distinguished Service Order. After the war he carved out a successful career as a barrister and King's Counsel. He also joined the Australian Army, rising to the rank of colonel by 1939.
Brigadier General Dwight Frederick Johns was an American soldier and general in the first half of the 20th century. He is best known for his service in the South West Pacific Area during World War II, where he headed the Advance Base and the Combined Operations Service Command during the Kokoda Track campaign and the Battle of Buna-Gona. He later commanded the Advance Base at Lae and Finschhafen, and the Engineer School at Fort Belvoir. After the war he headed the Pacific Engineer Division, where he was responsible for a number of important flood control and irrigation projects.
New Guinea Force was a military command unit for Australian, United States and native troops from the Territories of Papua and New Guinea serving in the New Guinea campaign during World War II. Formed in April 1942, when the Australian First Army was formed from the Australian I Corps after it returned from the Middle East, it was responsible for planning and directing all operations within the territory up until October 1944. General Headquarters Southwest Pacific Area Operational Instruction No.7 of 25 May 1942, issued by Commander-Allied-Forces, General Douglas MacArthur, placed all Australian and US Army, Air Force and Navy Forces in the Port Moresby Area under the control of New Guinea Force. Over the course of its existence, New Guinea Force was commanded by some of the Australian Army's most notable commanders, including Sydney Rowell, Sir Edmund Herring and Sir Leslie Morshead.
Chinese people in Papua New Guinea included, as of 2008, only about 1,000 of the "old Chinese"—locally born descendants of late 19th- and early 20th-century immigrants—remain in the country; most have moved to Australia. However, their numbers have been bolstered significantly by new arrivals from overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia and later from mainland China. There are also a few migrants from the Republic of China (Taiwan).
The Australian Army was the largest service in the Australian military during World War II. Prior to the outbreak of war the Australian Army was split into the small full-time Permanent Military Forces (PMF) and the larger part-time Militia. Following the outbreak of war on the 3rd of September 1939, 11 days later, on 14 September 1939 Prime Minister Robert Menzies announced that 40,000 members of the Militia would be called up for training and a 20,000-strong expeditionary force, designated the Second Australian Imperial Force, would be formed for overseas service. Meanwhile, conscription was introduced in October 1939 to keep the Militia at strength as its members volunteered for the AIF. The Australian Army subsequently made an important contribution to the Allied campaigns in the Mediterranean, the Middle East and North Africa fighting the Germans, Italians, and Vichy French during 1940 and 1941, and later in the jungles of the South West Pacific Area fighting the Japanese between late 1941 and 1945. Following the Japanese surrender Australian Army units were deployed as occupation forces across the South West Pacific. Meanwhile, the Army contributed troops to the British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF) in Japan from 1946.
Major General Basil Moorhouse Morris, was an Australian Army officer. He served in both the First and Second World Wars. In 1942, he was the Australian military administrator at Port Moresby at the start of the Imperial Japanese advance along the Kokoda Track after the invasion of Buna-Gona and successfully delayed the Japanese advance until units of the Second Australian Imperial Force arrived.
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Colonel Sir Edward Ford, was an Australian soldier, academic and physician. He played an important role in the anti-malaria campaign in the South West Pacific Area during the Second World War, and in preventative medicine in Australia after the war, but is best known for his Bibliography of Australian Medicine.
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Keith Jackson, AM, FRSA, FAIM, is a British-born Australian journalist, blogger and retired media executive, known for his long relationship with Papua New Guinea, where he worked as a young man. He was foundation manager of two Australian radio stations, introduced educational broadcasting into the Maldives Republic, was the first head of corporate relations in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and established a national public relations and issue management company.
Anne Dickson-Waiko (1950–2018) was an academic from Papua New Guinea (PNG) who taught history and pioneered the teaching of gender studies in the country.
Sir Alkan Tololo was the director of Papua New Guinea's education department and the first Papua New Guinean to be chancellor of both the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) and the Papua New Guinea University of Technology (Unitech). He also became chancellor of Vudal University, as well as holding diplomatic posts in Australia and Malaysia.
Sir Henry ToRobert was a Papua New Guinean civil servant who was the first governor of the Bank of Papua New Guinea. He also played a major role in developing the Credit Corporation (PNG) Ltd and was president of the Papua New Guinea Olympic Committee for 30 years.
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