Former patrol officers shared stories from a different era in Papua New Guinea as Peter Gamgee updated Mapleton residents on a humanitarian project bringing power, communications, vaccines and health care to communities in the Owen Stanley Range.
The Mapleton Men’s Shed became a link between the Blackall Range and Papua New Guinea’s remote Owen Stanley Range on the afternoon of Sunday, 20 September, as local residents heard how community support is helping restore essential health services, communications and vaccination programmes in isolated mountain communities.
Image:©Range Community News
The gathering, Spirit of Papua New Guinea – New Stories & Lives Saved, combined historical accounts from former Papua New Guinea patrol officers with an update from Peter Gamgee on work centred on the Dorobisoro health facility and communities along the Kapa Kapa Trail, better known locally as the Ghost Mountain Trail.
The event, supported by Mapleton Men’s Shed, Blackall Range Lions and friends, also included live video links with people in Papua New Guinea. Despite poor connections, several participants came through, including Thomas Whitne headmaster of the Dorobisoro School, and Elizah Lufolo and Kuname Allanwho thanked the Mapleton community for equipment and support reaching their area.
Patrol Officers’ Stories
The afternoon began with recollections from Col Young, who served as a Patrol Officer in Papua New Guinea from 1963 to 1970, and John Brady, who served as a Patrol Officer and Administrator from 1963 to 1979.
Their accounts gave the audience a sense of the remoteness, difficult travel and limited infrastructure that shaped life in Papua New Guinea during the Australian administration: patrols on foot through dense bush, boat and aircraft transport, and villages with no roads, electricity or vehicles.
Both men also spoke candidly about the dangers they encountered, including periods of inter-village and tribal conflict and the difficulty of arranging medical evacuations from areas with no roads and limited aircraft access. Their stories were personal recollections of a particular historical period, rather than a description of Papua New Guinea today, but they provided useful context for Gamgee’s present-day work: even with modern technology, the difficulty of reaching isolated communities across rugged country remains immense.
Image:©Range Community News
John Brady also recalled the economic importance of copra, the dried coconut product that was a significant cash crop for many island communities. He described a period running a co-operative marketing society, when growers accumulated large quantities of bagged copra with no ships available to carry it to market, risking spoilage in the tropical humidity before a shipping company found room in its schedule.
John has since written a memoir of his years as a patrol officer, and at the earlier session offered to donate a copy to anyone who contributed $50 toward Gamgee’s project.
From the Kapa Kapa Trail to the Flying Dutchman
Gamgee explained that the trail his project now supports has its own wartime history. In October and November 1942, as Japanese forces pushed toward Port Moresby during the Kokoda campaign, roughly 1,000 American troops of the 32nd Division were sent on a parallel route east of the Kokoda Track in an attempt to outflank the Japanese. The 42-day crossing became known as one of the most gruelling marches of the Pacific campaign, named the Kapa Kapa Trail after an English mishearing of the coastal village of Gabagaba, and later the Ghost Mountain Trail a reflection of the eerie feeling troops described as they passed through the high-altitude jungle.
Separately, an aircraft named the Flying Dutchman took off from outside Port Moresby on 10 November 1942 carrying 3 crew and 20 troops being flown in to support the assault on the fortified northern beaches. The aircraft crashed in the Owen Stanley Range; six people survived.
Peter’s has a strong connection with that area centred around his search for that wreck, which he eventually located after repeated expeditions and later led a trek to the crash site, some of which is documented in his book In Search of the Flying Dutchman. He has written that the experience left him with a conviction that helping the communities along the trail was, in his words, “absolutely the right thing to do.”
The search repeatedly took him through villages where people were living with little or no access to basic medical care. “People were sick and dying for want of basic medical access to medical services,” he told the Mapleton audience.
He spoke of specific cases: villagers who survived after receiving comparatively simple treatment, and others who did not, including an 11-year-old girl who died in a village near the health post before a medical evacuation could reach her in time, and a local guide who had helped lead treks along the trail and died within months of finishing one. Infant vaccination in the area had been almost non-existent.
Power, Internet and Vaccines
Peter said a previous Mapleton fundraiser raised almost $16,000, funding a substantial upgrade of the Dorobisoro health post. In May, he travelled to Papua New Guinea with an Australian volunteer electrician, solar equipment and a Starlink unit, though the plan was repeatedly complicated by the practicalities of working in a remote region.
Starlink’s status in PNG was uncertain until shortly before the trip; the service had been blocked by regulators for more than two years. Two extra solar panels were needed to make the installation work, and were supplied free of charge when the shortfall was raised with the supplier. The two trained health workers expected to staff the facility had not been paid or transported to the area, and the original charter aircraft became unavailable only a day before departure after its pilot was called away on a family emergency.
Peter said each problem was resolved just in time. The health workers’ wages were organised overnight through a contact at the Provincial Health Authority. A replacement charter, larger than originally booked, meant the team could also carry vaccines and a refrigerator sourced from a doctor’s crew room, allowing cold storage to be installed the same day. “Within a day, we had the whole solar system, lights, Starlink, all installed and working,” Peter said.
Image:©Peter Gamgee
The installation coincided almost exactly with Starlink’s formal licensing in PNG. The National Information and Communications Technology Authority granted Starlink operating and spectrum licences following a lengthy dispute, the geo-blocking lifting the day Peter arrived. A provincial governor also visited the site during the installation, which Peter said was the first Starlink-supported health facility in the country.
Peter told the Mapleton audience that around 1,500 patient visits had been recorded since May.
Reaching the Surrounding Villages
The health post serves more than a single settlement. Peter said staff have begun an outreach programme covering villages scattered through the surrounding mountains, the closest around two hours’ walk away, others three to five hours, and the most distant approximately two days’ walk. “They have an active outreach programme which picks up all of the villages,” Peter said. “They have about five trips they have to make on a reasonably regular basis.”
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