THEY buried him on Australia Day on a windswept hillside in
north-eastern Tasmania, far from the land he fell in love with, that he
helped transform and that came to adopt him as one of its own.
But
Barry Holloway brought Papua New Guinea home with him to the little
timber church with the peeling paint and rusting tin roof at Kimberley,
near Sheffield. It was there in his children, in the readings in the
pidgin and in the haunting strains of
Rock of Ages sung in Motu, the language of the coast.
The
journey had begun here, in the house across the valley where his mother
was born and where she gave birth to him in 1934, and in the nearby
school where a boy dreamed of a life of adventure far away.
That
journey was to take 60 years and it would traverse the modern history of
PNG - from colonial trust territory, to self-government and
independence and beyond.
It began with a teenage cadet patrol
officer trekking through the remote and untamed territory of New Guinea
and ended with a distinguished political career, a knighthood and the
deep affection of a generation of Papua New Guineans.
Barry Holloway with the Queen in 1974.
At each
step, Barry Holloway made a special mark. He was, probably more than any
other Australian, instrumental in the making of modern PNG, and his
death closes a circle on Australia's engagement with PNG's coming of
age.
He was one of the first expatriates to advocate independence
for the Australian trust territory in the 1960s. He helped found Pangu,
the country's first political party, and ran the numbers that saw a
brash young journalist named Michael Somare become its first leader. He
chaired the committee that drafted the constitution and, at independence
in 1975, he was one of the first white men to take citizenship of the
new nation, happily surrendering his Australian passport.
Barry Holloway with a UN Trusteeship Mission in 1956.
He
became speaker of the first parliament after independence, then a senior
minister in several governments. He was a reformer, a champion of the
ordinary man and a campaigner against corruption, the issue that many
believe drove him to an early death.
After finishing secondary
school, Holloway moved to Melbourne and was working as a labourer when
he saw a newspaper advertisement seeking young men with ''initiative,
imagination and courage'' to work as patrol officers in the UN-mandated
Territory of Papua and New Guinea.
Between 1949 and 1974, more than 2000 Australians aged between 18 and 24 were recruited as patrol officers, or
kiaps - pidgin for captain, from the German
kapitan - and sent to bring the rule of white law to the often lawless outer reaches of the territories.
After
six weeks' basic training, Holloway arrived in Port Moresby in April
1953, a lanky 18-year-old with a shock of curly red hair who was ready
for adventure. After an initial posting with an experienced kiap on
Bougainville island he was sent alone to a district in Madang province.
Suddenly he was at once police chief, magistrate, medical chief, census
officer and director of engineering for roads and airstrips.
On
one of his first patrols into an uncontrolled area he had to defuse a
clash between two warring tribes with the help of only a handful of
native policemen.
''After three weeks, the whole crowd of about
600 to 700 would be massing around,'' he told the ABC in 2009. ''We
demonstrated the power of the .303 by lining up about five shields,
making a dum-dum out of a bullet, and showing how it would come out with
a great gap on the other side. Because to these people these [rifles]
were just sticks, and had no meaning until we demonstrated their
power.'' That was the end of the tribal fight.
Holloway moved to
the Eastern Highlands in 1958 and won election to the territory's first
House of Assembly in 1964. He had a natural campaign advantage with his
unruly red hair. Many of the tribes believed the gods had red hair.
He
also had a unconventional but effective campaigning style. He would
arrive at each village with a simple message: ''On election day just go
the polling station and chant, 'Ollo-way, Ollo-way, Ollo-way'.'' And
they did, in their thousands.
In Port Moresby, Holloway quickly
befriended the first indigenous MPs and openly championed the case for
independence in a parliament dominated by the colonial administration
and conservative white planters.
In 1976 he and Tony Voutas,
another kiap turned MP, helped found Pangu along with a clutch of
others who would become legendary figures in the emerging nation -
Albert Maori Kiki, John Guise, Ebia Olewale and Michael Somare.
Barry Holloway with Indonesian foreign minister Adam Malik and PNG chief minister Michael Somare
In
the struggle to choose a party leader, Holloway was instrumental in
securing the numbers for Somare to beat Guise, who later became
governor-general. As Somare noted in a tribute sent to the Holloway
family last week: ''I acknowledge his immense contribution and great
support for my early political aspirations … He was among a handful of
non-indigenous people who supported the principle that Papua New
Guineans should be able to determine their own future.''
Somare
went on to become chief minister when Australia granted self-government
in late 1973 and the first prime minister at independence two years
later. After serving as speaker of the first parliament, Holloway held a
series of ministerial appointments, serving as finance minister under
Somare and Julius Chan, who led the country's second government.
His
love affair with PNG was both physical and spiritual. Nine of his 12
children were born to Papua New Guinean mothers. Friends say the
unofficial count is 16.
His first wife Elizabeth, whom he met and
married in Tasmania while on leave from PNG, moved back to Australia to
raise their twin sons and daughter. The boys returned in 1975 to spend
independence year at school in PNG.
Son Daniel recalls: ''He took
Damien and me up to Goroka on one occasion. When we got there, one day
he drove to his office and asked us to wait outside on the footpath. A
little while later he came back with a skinny little boy and said to us,
'Meet Joe. He's your brother.' I think it was as much of a surprise to
Joe as it was for us.''
Many other children and grandchildren and
great-grandchildren were to follow. ''None of us quite knew when he was
going to stop,'' Daniel says. ''It was a bit of a running joke. Each
time another child was born, we told him, 'You can stop now'.''
Holloway
married Ikini Yaboyang, a feisty young journalist, in 1974. He is
survived by his last wife, Dr Fua Uyassi (Lady Holloway). Says Daniel:
''He cared very much for all his children … and despite his marriages
unfortunately not working out, he also cared for his wives to the end.''
His
large and unconventional family was just one of the ways in which his
life matched that of many traditional ''big men'' in PNG society. His
homes in Port Moresby and Kainantu were open houses to friends and
colleagues, his vehicles were freely available and what money he had was
shared with those in need. ''If he only had a dollar in his pocket and
someone asked him for some money he would give it to them,'' Daniel
says.
A lifetime of such generosity and a series of business
ventures, including starting his own micro-finance scheme for villagers,
left him with little at the end of his life.
''He was flat
broke,'' said Ernie Lohberger, a fellow Tasmanian and long-time PNG
resident. ''In the end he was living on a friend's boat because he
couldn't afford the rents they charge in Port Moresby these days.''
Unlike
many Australians who stayed after independence - and many more of the
Papua New Guineans who succeeded them in positions of power - Holloway
did not set out to enrich himself. He was appalled by those who did
and, ultimately, it probably hastened his death.
Disturbed by a
trend that now ranks PNG among the worst on Transparency International's
global corruption index, Holloway decided to make a political comeback
in last year's elections, standing for governor of Eastern Highlands
Province.
Two weeks before campaigning was due to begin in the
midyear poll, he suffered a stroke that temporarily blinded him,
according to a close friend. He refused to go to hospital because his
opponents had argued that, at 78, he was too old for politics and he
feared they would use the news to wreck his campaign.
Despite the
pleas of family and friends, he threw himself into the campaign,
travelling by road and air and often on foot to visit as many of the
scattered and remote villages in the province as he could. In the end,
he lost, but only by a few hundred votes.
''He got more than
100,000 votes. It was testament to the strength of his following and his
standing in the Eastern Highlands,'' Peter Donigi, a long-time friend
and PNG's former ambassador to the United Nations told the mourners in
Kimberley.
Supporters wanted Holloway to call for a recount,
which they believed would see the result overturned, but he refused.
Instead, he was one of the first to send a message of congratulation to
the new provincial governor.
Some say he never recovered from the exhausting campaign, his health issues compounded by prostate cancer.
''Barry
never saw himself as merely a catalyst for change,'' says Tony Voutas,
who left PNG on the eve of independence. ''For him, it was his country.
He was one of the few in those colonial days who looked at Papua New
Guineans as equal human beings. The planters called them bush kanakas
and some right-wingers regarded them as a different evolutionary stream.
''But
Barry was one of those people who did not see race. And the Papua New
Guineans regarded him as one of them. And once you are accepted into
their society it is as if you were born into their society.''
After
his death at a Brisbane hospital on January 16, the leaders of Kainantu
wanted him brought back to be buried there, but Barry Holloway's last
wish was to be laid to rest beside his mother and father in the church
yard at Kimberley.
As
men wept and women wailed on Saturday afternoon, a daughter stepped
forward and sprinkled a sachet of his favourite Goroka coffee into the
red clay of the grave. For a moment the aroma of the New Guinea
highlands mingled with the scents of the Tasmanian bush.
''They will never see anything like this in Kimberley again,'' said Geoff Pedley, an old schoolmate.
They won't. We won't.
Mark Baker is editor-at-large. He is a former PNG correspondent for Fairfax.
