Vale- 2023, June
- Jun 30, 2023
- 6 min read
CLARKE | DWYER JOAN | DWYER PETER | NAMALIU | STENNETT
CLARKE, Prue OAM 25 August 2022
Prue was born in Port Moresby on 21 September 1939 and evacuated in 1941 with her mother, Eileen Clarke. Her father, Patrick Harold Clarke, was at one time District Finance Officer Samarai.
She returned to the Territory in 1947 and later trained as a teacher. She taught for some time at Hagara Primary T School then left for Australia where she had a distinguished career teaching and being principal of Canberra schools.
She was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for service to education and the community in 2007. She was also awarded the Centenary Medal (for voluntary service to the community) and the Public Education Award (Outstanding Educational Service, particularly in the area of Music Education).
In 1987 and 1988 she gave a series of 100 lectures on Australia for the Commonwealth Institute in London. She is survived by her husband, Kevin sons Greg, Stephen & Damien, daughter-in-law Kristen and grandchildren Jack and Tilda.
DWYER, Joan27 January 2023
Indiana Joan’ at the Goroka Show
Joan was born in 1926 and worked in PNG for 17 years with her husband, Patrol Officer Terry Dwyer. ‘Indiana Joan’, as she was known, loved every opportunity PNG offered and, after return to Australia successfully ran several businesses in South East Queensland. She is survived by her sons David and Colin and six grandchildren.Tracy Cheffins & Colin Dwyer
Editor’s Note: A story about Joan Dwyer’s life in PNG as the wife of a kiap was published in PNG Kundu March 2019:
DWYER, Peter David3 April 2023
Peter Dwyer was born at Waipawa, Hawkes Bay in New
Zealand in 1937. After studying Zoology at Wellington University, he did a PhD at University of New England in Armidale, NSW. From 1966, he lectured in Zoology at the University of Queensland.
In 1972, Peter travelled to Papua New Guinea and spent 15 months with the Rofaifo people of the Eastern Highlands studying bats and other small mammals. He soon became more interested in what Rofaifo people knew of these animals than in the animals themselves
Thus began a shift in his interests, from zoology to anthropology.
In 1978, Peter returned to PNG. He lived and worked with Etoro people along the southern slopes of Mt Sisa (Haliago) on the Great Papuan Plateau, now within the Hela Province. With Kristine Plowman, he spent 15 months with the people of Bobole, doing research for his first book, The pigs that ate the garden: a human ecology from Papua New Guinea.
He returned again to PNG to work with Kubo people of Western Province, living at Gwaimasi village just south of where the Strickland River emerges from the central ranges. With Monica Minnegal, he established deep and lasting relationships with these people. He and Monica returned to the area many times over the next 30 years, spending time with Kubo, Konai, Febi and Bedamuni people. (Peter’s last visit was for five months at the village of Suabi in 2014, when he was 77 years old.)
Peter became intrigued by the efforts of these people to shape a future for themselves as the world changed dramatically around them. Increasing western influence posed many challenges but also new opportunities. The people of the Strickland plains actively sought ways to engage with them. Documenting those efforts resulted in Peter’s second book, written with Monica, Navigating the future: an ethnography of change in Papua New Guinea, published in 2017.
The research for that book required Peter to engage with the reports of early explorers of the area—scientists, prospectors,
and kiaps. Thus, he came to know some of the kiaps who patrolled the Nomad district, and the missionaries with stations in Kubo land. He was delighted to include many of Bob Hoad’s photos in Taim bipo: people of the Nomad district when the white men came, a booklet prepared for local school students in the hope that they would begin to collate their own people’s stories of encounters.
Peter was immensely grateful to the people of PNG with whom he lived for their generous sharing of knowledge, hopes and fears. He tried, always, to ensure their own voices were heard to be shared and used for their own purposes.
Peter wrote about the need to pursue both social and environmental justice long before these became topics of everyday concern. He was a zoologist, anthropologist, a geographer and an historian.
But always he was concerned with change, and how relationships are re-negotiated in the face of change—questions of ecology and evolution.
In 1997 he left the University of Queensland to join Monica at the University of Melbourne. He never retired. He continued writing well into his final illness, with the last paper submitted for review only days before his death.
Monica Minnegal & Chris Warrillow
A longer version of this vale will be added to the PNGAA website.
For access to Peter Dwyer’s publications go to: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Peter-Dwyer
NAMALIU, Sir Rabbie Langanai28 March 2023, aged 75
Sir Rabbie Langanai Namaliu
Sir Rabbie had a long and distinguished political career serving in many important roles, including as foreign minister in the early days in government, and later as the speaker of parliament from 1994 to 1997. Sir Rabbie served as PNG’s fourth prime minister from July 1988 to July 1992.
He was an early graduate of the University of PNG and became a leading figure during PNG’s post-independence era along with Sir Mekere Morauta, Sir Anthony Siaguru, and Sir Charles Lepani.
Prime Minister James Marape said that PNG had ‘lost a great statesman’ and confirmed that a state funeral would be held in his honour.
PNG journalist Scott Waide told ABC Pacific that Sir Rabbie was a ‘typical Melanesian leader. He drew on his cultural roots, was always consultative, and at a time when there was so much instability [in PNG] during the Bougainville crisis, he survived four years in government as prime minister and survived many votes of no confidence.’
In a tribute on Facebook Max Uechtritz said: ‘A proud Tolai from East New Britain, Sir Rabbie twice honoured our family at funeral ceremonies. Firstly in 2004 when we reburied great-grandmother Phebe Parkinson at our Kuradui cemetery. Then again in 2019 when we took the ashes of our parents Alf and Mary Lou to inter next to the Parkinsons. Sir Rabbie spoke beautifully and generously at both.
He will forever hold a special place in PNG history.
Deepest condolences to his family, the people of Raluana, East New Britain and PNG. RIP.’
Stennett (née Holland), Margaret Ann17 October 2022
Margaret, the wife of Les (dec.) and much-loved mother of Michael, Robyn and Martin was born on 8 February 1937 in Wau to Jessie and Bill Holland (both dec.). Margaret is survived also by her three brothers Bill, Peter and Don.
Margaret was a seasoned Territorian as she had travelled twice from PNG to Australia (pre-war) before she was three years old. Once with her mother, Jessie, who needed to recuperate from blackwater fever when she was born and then with other mothers who were evacuated on the Macdui in 1941.
Jessie was a sister to Dorothy and Flora, Jimmy and Glory, who were very well-known Territorians during the gold mining boom times in the 1920s up until the 80s.
The early life was typical of the kids in the highlands and her favourite babysitter was a young local, Took, someone she seemed to prefer over anyone else.
The family returned to PNG in 1954 after which Margaret spent some time, like most children during that time, at boarding school in Rockhampton (the Range Convent).
After leaving school she started her working life in Rabaul at the Commonwealth Bank in Mango Avenue. She did all the things young teenagers did there and made her ‘debut’ to the District Commissioner John Foldi with many of her friends in 1956.
She married Les ‘the Carpenter’ in 1958 who was employed with Dahl Singh and Company. Les later became a teacher with Malaguna Tech, a position he had until they finally retired to Australia.
Margaret’s three children were all born in Rabaul and Margaret’s life for the next 20-odd years was spent in that lovely town. As mentioned, she descends from a well-known family of New Guinea ‘befores’ whose mother was a Stewart, the sister of Flora of the hotel fame in Wau, Bulolo and Samarai, Dorothy, also of the hotel fame (Cecil Lae, Cosmopolitan in Samarai and Rabaul and The Ascot in Rabaul) and their brother Jim who was well known in the 30s before being killed in an auto accident in 1937.
Margaret and Les’ children had their early upbringing in Rabaul all attending school there.
Like many Territorians Margaret and Les ‘went finish’ at least twice but always seemed to return, but did their final ‘going finish’ in 1972. The family settled down to life in suburban Brisbane after a time on Magnetic Island near Townsville.
In her later years Margaret lived a quiet life in Manly, West Brisbane and passed away peacefully with the family close by.
Margaret is survived by her children Michael, Robyn and Martin and their families. She had very fond memories of Rabaul and will be sadly missed.
Bill Holland
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