Papua New Guinea Association

I belong to an association called PNGAA (Papua New Guinea Association of Australia). The association is made up of ex-expatriates who lived and worked in Papua New Guinea. Its membership runs to the hundreds and quite a few are B4s (residents of PNG before the second world war). Some members were in private enterprise , others in the public service and some in the military. At self government and Independence for Papua New Guinea, many whites in the country wanted Australia to maintain control and stall off independence. Many people predicted chaos and economic failure. To some extent their predictions have come true, but there were never any independence fighters waging war with the Australian adminstration. We left the country at the right time and in very good condition.

I have been following talkback radio today about the Zimbabwe situation and have heard a number of ex-Zimbabwe residents lament the passing of the Ian Smith regime and the white controlled government. Quite a few were blaming Malcolm Fraser for the collapse of the Smith regime and the resulting government of Mugabe. Here is a link to a Zimbabwe history timeline

It was wrong to have Rhodesia strictly governed by a wealthy white minority and that is all there is to say about it. Mugabe is a bad boy and he has brought bad times on his own people. I suggest that the white farmers should have seen the land grab coming for years and should have started sending a few bars of gold out of the country for such a time. Pretty sure lots of them did! The whites in Zimbabwe have up until now, been a very privileged lot.

Back to the PNGAA. The story I wrote about on Feb. 22nd Coincidence and History has been well presented on the PNGAA site. Here is a link to the text and photos.

The site has many great stories of early times and wartime exploits by and about members.