Kaminiel Ladi, David Bulu, Libai Tiengwa
What was the dream for a new mission in the Southern Highlands in 1950?
In Sydney in 1949 and 1950 the Methodist Overseas Missions Board started to discuss some new work. For a long time, they had been very worried about the terrible war that came to the Pacific between 1942 and 1945. The war, and all the fighting and damage to people, property and mission work, affected mission work in New Britain and New Ireland, where the Japanese Navy invaded early in 1942 and captured Methodist Mission staff; almost all the Australian Methodist men died. There was also serious fighting in Papuan Islands Region, Solomon Islands Region and other parts of the whole country. Missionaries from overseas had to leave and the local people had a terrible time until the end of years of war. By 1945 the war was over, but for the next years everyone had to work hard to repair damaged property and gardens and restore the work of the church in those regions.
In 1949 and 1950, the Methodist Board of Mission started to think about new opportunities for outreach. Some people were worried. They thought that there was still a lot of work to do to repair and restore all the places and church communities that had been damaged by the war years. Leaders had died and they all had to start again with their ministry. As well as the needs in New Guinea Islands, Papuan Islands and Solomon Islands, they were also worried about war damage in North Australia and Fiji.
At the same time, the Methodists in Australia heard news about large populations of people in the Highlands. Before the war, a few Australian patrol officers went to explore the mountains. They were surprised to find how many people were already living in the mountains, with their gardens and customs, and speaking many different languages. Other missions, such as the Lutherans, the Baptists and the Catholics were already moving to begin new mission work in the Western and Eastern Highlands as well as Enga. The Board of Methodist Overseas Missions (MOM) was interested, but didn’t know where they could go to start something new.
Early in 1950, the men of the MOM Board decided to send some people to look for a suitable place in the Highlands. They decided:
‘That we should seek on the mainland of New Guinea an area where our church would not interfere with the established work of existing missions or occupy areas at present unevangelized but which are the natural field of expansion of such missions. We should seek any untouched population where Methodism could exercise its evangelical and social ministry for years to come.’
1950 Commission of MOM Board reported in The Methodist 25 November 1950
The team to look for a new place for mission included an older Australian missionary, Rev Ernest Clarke. Ernest Clarke was an experienced missionary who had served for more than twenty years in Papuan Islands District. His partner was a younger man, Rev Gordon Young. Young went to New Britain after the war as a military chaplain and then joined the Methodist staff of New Guinea Islands District, working in Namatanai, New Ireland. They took with them Stephen Moyalaka, Nelson Kainamale and Libai Tiengwa from Papuan Islands and Kaminiel Ladi, Tomas Tomar and David Bulu from Namatanai Circuit in New Ireland.
Left: Rev Ernest Clarke
They went to stay at the Lutheran Mission at Ogelbeng and travelled around to see the work of other missions in the area. At first it was hard to find anywhere. Other missions were already working in many places, and the Methodists did not want to interfere with their work.
One day, when the team was in Mt Hagen, not far from Ogelbeng, they met a group of three young patrol officers. Ron Neville, Des Clancy and Sydney Smith had just arrived in Mt Hagen from a big patrol. These three men had started a new government patrol post at Lake Kutubu in the Southern Highlands in 1949 in a region that still had no links with the outside world or government contact. Lake Kutubu was a good starting point because seaplanes could land on the Lake.
‘We started from Lake Kutubu’, they said, ‘and it was our job to find a suitable place somewhere in the Southern Highlands to start a new Government patrol post. We walked through the Mendi Valley on our way back to Mt Hagen. We are going to recommend it to our boss as a good place to be the centre for a new Southern Highlands District. There are no other missions there at all.’
Clarke and Young were very excited about this and met with the senior man, Assistant District Officer Alan Temperley. When Clarke wrote a long report for the MOM Board about their work to survey a place for a new mission, he wrote:
“Before we commenced the survey, communications had indicated that we might find a sphere for Methodism, South of the Hagen Range and across the Papuan Border. Here there are the valleys that lie between the Hagen Range and the Limestone Barrier. Some might call it luck; I don’t believe it was the result of careful planning, it was the guidance of God that our survey party arrived in the Highlands at the time when the Administration was considering the possibility of establishing a district station in this area.
Rev Ernest Clarke, The Missionary Review—December, 1950
Last December [1949], the A.D.O. Mt. Hagen, Mr. Alan Temperley, led a patrol from Hagen to Lake Kutubu and return, as he sought a site for an air-strip and District Office. Mr. Temperley advised from the time we first interviewed him that Methodism could find her sphere of work in the Nembi Valley in the centre of the Papuan Highlands. While we were at Hagen, Mr. Smith brought another patrol from Kutubu to Hagen. On the way he discovered sufficient flat land for an airstrip at the junction of the Mendi and Menken Rivers, 18 miles south-west of the peak of Mount Giluwe and at a height of just over 5,000 feet. The strip has already been levelled and has been passed by the Department of Civil Aviation for use.“
Temperley told Young, ‘If we set up our government camp on one side of the Mendi and Mangani Rivers and you set up on the other side, we can support each other. We think that there are different clan groups on each side of the Mendi River. The local people might not want to welcome us, so you would need to stay close to us.’
Temperley invited Gordon Young to go with him on his patrol to inspect the Mendi area for himself. Gordon Young was young and fit and very keen to go, but Ernest Clarke was older and had problems with his feet, so he stayed in Mt Hagen. For the first patrol, Steven from Papua and Ladi from New Ireland joined the government group. It was a tough walk and took the men seven days, between 19-25 October, to travel from Mt Hagen, along the north western side of Mt Giluwe and into the Mendi Valley. Temperley inspected progress on the new airstrip and encouraged Gordon Young to bring his new mission to Mendi, too. At that time, there were no other missions working anywhere in the Southern Highlands.
At that time, the whole of the Southern Highlands was called ‘restricted territory’ by the Australian Government because the only patrol post was a small one at Lake Kutubu. Although the Australian government understood that they were responsible for governing the whole country, the people of the Southern Highlands had never been contacted and knew nothing about the rest of the world.
The patrol walked back to Mt Hagen and Gordon Young told Ernest Clarke what he had seen and learned. They were both sure that God had guided them to this new place. Clarke returned to Sydney and made his report to the MOM Board at their November meeting in 1950. At the end of a long, detailed report, he wrote:
“Our commission was to find an area with sufficient population where Methodism might exercise her evangelical and social ministry. I believe that in the Papuan Highlands we have found such an area. Here there are at least 100,000 people to whom we shall take the message of Christ and its implications. It is a situation in line with the Methodist tradition on Tonga, Fiji, New Britain and Papua. For Australian Methodism, this is the greatest missionary opportunity of the present century. To us has been given the opportunity to co-operate with the Administration to enter this area in time to lay the foundations for the future Christian experience and well-being of the people. No other Protestant Society is ready to take up the task, and the great missionary pioneers, the London Missionary Society and the Lutherans, welcome our entry into this work. It will cost our Church much sacrifice in service and money, but I believe our people of Australia and of the Islands of the Pacific will accept the challenge and advance with Christ to this, one of the last of the unexplored and unevangelised areas of our Australian Commonwealth.”
Rev Ernest Clarke, The Missionary Review—December, 1950
The MOM Board agreed to support this new work and began to make plans. In the Minutes of their meeting, they recorded:
R E S O L V E D
( a ) That the Board, with a solemn appreciation of the momentous and historic importance of this occasion, records its thankfulness to God for the remarkable way in which difficulties have been overcome in the great task undertaken by the survey party, and believes that there has been Divine guidance in the discovery and selection of this new field of missionary endeavour.
1950 Commission of MOM Board reported in The Methodist 25 November 1950
The Board also recorded their appreciation for the work of the men from New Guinea and Papuan Islands who were part of the pioneer team.
The next time Alan Temperley returned to Mendi, Gordon Young went with him again. They arrived on 21 November 1950. This time Tomas Tomar and David Bulu went with the patrol, but Kaminiel Ladi was sick and joined them later. By the time they arrived, the patrol officers had begun a small patrol post and the short airstrip was ready for a small Auster aircraft to be able to land on it.
Now it was time to begin their new mission work.
Margaret Reeson 2023
Sources:
1950 Commission of MOM Board reported in The Methodist 25 November 1950
The Missionary Review—December, 1950
Margaret Reeson 