A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973

CONTENTS PART FIVE & SIX V Towards Partnership Chapter 1 The Solomons 1922-72 a. Policy b. Education c. Health d. Industrial Training e. Volunteers Chapter 2 Ministry in the Solomons Chapter 3 Foundations of Nationhood (Fiji, Tonga and Samoa) Chapter 4 New Frontier. The Highlands Chapter 5 The United Church and the New World Chapter 6 In Other Fields VI The Next Half Century Bibliography Appendix II People who link the N.Z. Church with Churches overseas. Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 1

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973

V Towards Partnership

CHAPTER 1: THE SOLOMONS 1922-1972

A. POLICY Every now and then through the years, the Overseas Missions Board has been challenged by the church with the question, “What is your policy?” Usually the response has been to point to the "achievements" and say. Of course we have a policy, look at what it is producing. For pragmatic Methodists this is usually enough, for we are not a people who are overly concerned with theory, and we are very apt to respond to the situation, devising theories and methods as we go on. It seems clear however that there have been certain lines of policy, which we have in fact followed over the year. In the 1920-22 period when we prepared to take over the Solomons, we formed clear judgements about what we should be doing. Our first concern was to have a field for evangelisation. The Solomons attracted because the whole of Bougainville and Buka was regarded as an untouched field, though the Roman Catholics had been at work in some areas for a generation, and Methodist pioneers had begun work in Siwai, South Bougainville in 1916. Control over Tonga and Samoa were also sought because these were churches from which staff might be drawn. The possibility of local Solomon Island evangelists was not overlooked, but it was not regarded as the complete answer. The second concern was to build a strong, viable Christian community, and this was expressed in three main directions; a strong medical mission work; strengthening of the schools and educational system, and an enthusiasm for 'industrial missions', a rather vague concept which could be wrapped in high sounding terms but was not very clear in direction. Each of these lines of approach were in accord with the attitudes of the Rev. J. F. Goldie, and were thus acceptable to him. While they were formed on the basis of the consultations held with him by Sinclair and Court, and it is probably true to say that they would succeed or fail only in so far as he supported them, they were nevertheless policies which the New Zealand Church as a whole could support. In the field of medical work this is most clear, for the church at grass roots level sent the doctor back after the depression years, and put the whole work on a sound financial basis. Popular support was also evident for the other policies. The New Zealand Board was of course very new, and though they had some fine men and women on the Board, they would have been very brave to have gone counter to the wishes of the pioneer chairman. Not only was he the man on the spot, who in the Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 2

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 last resort would determine whether a policy would be carried out, but he had tremendous standing in the Solomons, Australia and New Zealand. His public image of 'near saint' had been assiduously cultivated to the point where to challenge his judgement publicly would have been to shatter the whole image of foreign mission work in the Solomons that had been built up. The Australian Board had made an effort to bring Goldie under more effective control earlier, and had failed.1 In passing him to the New Zealand Conference they did so with no regrets. J. W. Burton told A. N. Scotter in 1927 that had the Solomons remained part of the Australian Church, "they would have got rid of Goldie or compelled him to give up plantation work and outside interests."2 Burton himself might have caused the Board to do this, for he was a very strong man, and a strict disciplinarian. But it is doubtful if anyone else could have done so, and doubtful also what the end result would have been. It is very likely that had Goldie been recalled by the church, then he would have simply moved out of the house at Munda, to place down the lagoon and continued to be the "uncrowned king of the western Solomons". He would almost certainly have taken the larger part of the Roviana people with him and there would have been a split. In that respect at least, Silas Eto who in the 1960's led a large number of people out of the Methodist Mission into the Christian Fellowship Church, was true to Goldie and his ways. In the light of all this, the New Zealand Board had no real hope of making a radical change in the policy of the Solomons. The other concern of the New Zealand Church which comes through most strongly after 1927, was for the establishment of a local indigenous church. They wanted to see the Scriptures translated, a native ministry built up and the development of a stronger sacramental life. In this they were really supported by the majority of the missionaries on the field, as the so called "insurrection synod" of 1929 (when Goldie was away in New Zealand) showed very clearly. But little or nothing came of this. The present writer recalls an article in an international missionary journal written in the 1950's, which said that no Indian should be ordained to the ministry of the Word and Sacraments, unless he was at least a third generation Christian. This attitude would have been supported by Goldie. In any case he, and some of his colleagues saw no need for haste. He was astute enough to play the Board off against missionaries, and missionaries off against one another, and was a past master in the art of delaying tactics. While this was never communicated to the church as a whole, and the missionary propaganda of the time continued to be quite adulatory, there must have been some very bitter thoughts at Board level. When the Rev. A. N. Scotter, by no means a man to make rash judgements could say, "It is hard to make definite charges of failure (against Goldie) but one has the feeling that all is not as well as it should be", things were bad.3 What would have been the outcome if normal patterns of social and economic growth had persisted is hard to say. The Board pushed the young Gina forward as a candidate Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 3

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 for the ministry, when Goldie was only talking about it, and they would probably have become more and more insistent on a number of matters as the years went by. But outside forces were too strong for them. The world wide depression which brought the missionary society to the point of bankruptcy, the long slow haul back to some sort of financial stability and the intrusion of a world war, meant that for twenty years, the fine theories had to be put aside in the struggle for existence. Though tremendous work was being done by individual workers, and by the mission as a whole the root cause of disagreement with Goldie ... the building of a church, self governing, self propagating and self supporting was not advanced very much. The medical and education work were continued with considerable success and the industrial mission concept was quietly buried beneath a tombstone of rusty sawmilling machinery and a shroud of rice bags. Hindsight is very easy. We know now that in 1945 when the war was over and the missionaries returned, we had entered a new world. But the church at home and the church in the islands could only see the need for restoration. They all thought that they could clear away the debris of war and take up life where they had laid it down in 1942. Perhaps only John R. Metcalfe, that fiery Yorkshireman who had stayed behind the Japanese lines and suffered, realised that they could not go back. Even he had no clear concept of the extent of the change that had taken place, and his volcanic outbursts, often ill directed and rarely tactful did not get the attention they deserved. So Goldie was allowed to return, before anyone else, and seize again his tight hold on the Roviana people, and the missionaries went back, with many high ideals, to the backbreaking work of just creating a very simple kind of order out of a very great chaos. They did this, and in terms of physical, mental and spiritual involvement, the task was more demanding than even the original pioneering had been. They had a certain number of tools at their disposal that the early missionaries did not, but those mechanical things created their own set of problems, and time was against them. In five or six years they tried to restore what had taken forty years to build. The New Zealand Church, which had gathered together a rehabilitation fund of more than $200,000, could see that there was a need for some development, not just restoration, but they thought of overtaking the last years rather than meeting a totally new situation. When A. H. Scrivin, the General Secretary, and G. S. Gapper, the lay treasurer, went to the field in 1949, they made this clear to the staff, and found support, but there was no real long term vision. In any case any progressive move was blocked by Goldie. Even if John Metcalfe and one or two others had some idea of the magnitude of the changes needed, none of us saw sufficiently clearly the need to think in quite new terms. The writer was among the new staff who were merely impatient and frustrated without really knowing what could or should be done, or how to go about it.

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A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973

In 1952, there was a new General Secretary in the office in Auckland, and there was a new Chairman on Kokenggolo hill. The jubilee celebrations in May were a great moment of nostalgia, and were attended by the pioneer Chairman who came especially from Australia. He was near the end of his life, his creativity already dead, as was the world in which he had done his best work and the kind of church structure that he had tried to create. In that year the Board, which in every preceding annual meeting had passed a resolution of greeting to the "native church", now addressed its greeting to the "Methodist Church in the Western Solomons". It was symptomatic of a major shift of emphasis. The General Secretary, the Rev. S. G. Andrews, had visited the field for the Jubilee and his report reveals the reasons for this change. He saw great needs but he saw a church, not a mission. He called for an increase in technical staff to remove from the ministers the burdens of bookkeeping, house building, etc.; a reconsideration of the meaning of membership; and a thorough re-appraisal of the importance of the Sacraments. He also called for more work on Scripture translation and in the development of indigenous leadership both ministerial and lay. He drew attention to the fact that the Australian Board had moved into a new field in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea and that both the Solomon Islands and New Zealand might have a share in this. The Chairman, the Rev. J. R. Metcalfe, was one of the best of the "church builders" among the earlier generation of missionaries, and he had been the driving force behind the establishment of the "native conference"— a gathering of indigenous leaders from every circuit, which had no official status but came in the next decade to have great power for its recommendations were heeded by the Synod, and the people were discovering their own power to decide and to influence church life. The scene should have been set for fruitful partnership and advance, but it was not as easy as might be thought. The one who had been called "king" had gone. He had been an absolute monarch and his former subjects could neither accept anyone in his place nor tolerate any suggestion even by implication that he was wrong. Yet at the same time the suppressed antagonisms which had been growing steadily through the thirties had been fed by the war time freedom, with its destruction of the myth of white superiority, and now with the father figure gone there was no reason or restraint. Mr Metcalfe had for so long been associated with Choiseui, and was in any case not 'persona grata' with the Roviana leadership, that he was condemned before he started. Progress was made in the 50's but it was slower than one would have hoped. For example, when the present writer became chairman in 1959 there were still only one ordained minister in the active work and three probationers. This was followed by a tremendous increase in the number of candidates for the ministry, but also by the explosion in the church which was known as the Eto movement, and which resulted in the formation of the Christian Fellowship Church. This movement, which has been fully documented and described elsewhere,4 can be seen as a measure of the failure of Goldie to create a church which had any real roots in the hearts and lives of the Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 5

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 people; it can be seen as an attempt to express in another form the real values that he had actually conveyed to the people, the security of a dictatorial father figure, the emotional satisfaction of large gatherings and the mass activity; or it can be seen as a real attempt to understand and express the relevance of the Gospel in Melanesian terms. Probably there is truth in all three. The new Chairman, quite unknown to the people as a person, limited in his command of the language, and under great pressure from the anti-Eto faction, after every effort at reconciliation appeared to be fruitless, adopted a deliberate policy of acceptance. To the horror of some he accepted the movement as fact, and told the local people that they and they alone could stop its spread for they and not the missionaries, were the church. The Synod by this time included a growing preponderance of local people and a growing number of local ministers, including senior men ordained with little or no special training and young men having behind them better education and training than ever before. The Board in New Zealand, led by Mr Andrews, adopted a policy of giving the Islands church fullest freedom within the limits of finance and staff that were available. Though this was never set down, the fact was clear enough to those of us on the spot. At the same time the movement towards Church Union was growing apace and the autonomy of the church was soon to get a legal as well as a practical framework. B. EDUCATION In speaking of Fiji, we have shown how Methodism's concern for education made a significant impact on the community and indeed on the history of the country. In tne British Solomons, Methodists have never been anything but a minority group, yet they have also made a significant contribution to the country through education. Up till the mid 1950s the vast majority of Solomon Islanders in government service and in high places outside it were products of Methodist schools. After that other church schools began to contribute their quota of people to the public service, and Methodism rejoiced in this. More recently there are a number of people coming into prominence who have not been to a church school at all, or have been to one only at primary level. This trend to the secular control of education will continue but in 1922 no one, least of all the British Government, had any such ideas. The philosophy of leaving education to the "voluntary agencies", though not explicitly spelt out until the 1950s was implicit from the beginning. Schools were opened almost from the moment the missionaries arrived in an area. They were at once the point of contact with the people and the first fruits of the presence of the missionary. At Teop for example, when the Rev. Allan Cropp got permission to place a teacher there, he placed the Fijian couple, Eroni Kotosoma and his wife Loata, in a small building on the mainland across the narrow channel from Teop Island. Mano, the local big man who had agreed to care for Eroni, brought his

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A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 small son each day as he went off to the garden or to his day's fishing and collected him again at night. With this one little boy, Eroni began a school. In later life that small boy, known in adulthood as Simon Rigamu, recalled how Eroni began teaching him, and other small boys wanted to know what was going on, and so persuade their families to let them go too. Simon Rigamu was to be the outstanding church leader of the 40's and 50's in the Teop circuit. It was from this school that church work grew. At Mono in the Treasury group the Fijian missionary began a school, and his work grew rapidly. In 1905, leading men from Siwai, South Bougainville, who were visiting their relatives and trading partners at Mono looked with awe at what was going on in the school, and desired this new kind of magic for themselves. So they sent a message to Mr Goldie asking for a teacher. At neither Teop nor Mono was the purpose of education understood at first. It was perhaps seen as a type of magic which would help meet the new and unknown forces that were being unleashed on their culture and society by the strange people from overseas. This explains in part some of the enthusiasm for schools, the occasional fall off in interest when the expected results did not seem to follow, and later the bitter opposition to the consolidation of schools from small villages and hamlets. They would lose not only the status symbol, but also the guardian of the people and the faith. As education and medicine have passed from the control of the church to the government agency, there has been a tendency for people to repudiate the church also. This intimate link between education, and medicine, and the Christian faith is neither new nor is it necessarily harmful. Indeed, on the contrary it is very helpful and as we come to see education as a service offered to the community in Christ's Name, not a way of making converts, we develop a true balance which strengthens our witness by achieving a kind of education that puts people in the position of being able to make a free and informed choice in regard to the Christian faith. Education in the western Solomons began with the first missionaries and it is significant that the native agents, whether from Tonga, Fiji, Samoa or the local islands were called "teachers" right up till the 1960s whether in fact they taught school or not. Mr Goldie used his staff for schools from the earliest days. The first students were youngsters, probably in their early teens who were old enough to break away from family control, and yet young enough not to have been caught up in the social and military activity of the older man. But as education spread there was a tendency for it to be regarded as too important for children and women. One recalls vividly, a local teacher who had to give up being the pastor-teacher to the village but continued to reside there. On the missionary's next visit he was found in the "Standard 2" class with the children, listening to the new teacher! Or the Class 1 at Koau, South Bougainville, in 1949, which consisted of eighty students, at least sixty of whom were adult or near adult.

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A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973

The station schools were the centre. As village schools sprang up they did little more than provide a kind of basic preschool education which involved a limited amount of literacy. At Kokenggolo, the head station, the "college" was set up as a training establishment for young men who would go out as "teachers" (or more accurately pastor-teachers) both to teach and to evangelise. When New Zealand took over control in 1922, the Chairman was nominally the Principal, and retained this title till the end of his ministry. The work was done by Mr J. H. L. Waterhouse, a son of the famous missionary family and linked by marriage with the Lawry family. He had had experience in Fiji and after he left the Solomons was to go on to New Britain where he was to serve the Government of the mandated Territory for some years. There is a Waterhouse Memorial School today near Rabaul. Waterhouse was a man of many parts. He was a capable botanist and after leaving Roviana spent a year collecting for Kew Gardens from among the flora of Bougainville. He was a good linguist and compiled the Roviana English Dictionary which is still in use today. He suffered from ill health which while it did not limit his activity to any noticeable extent made it hard at times for him. As an educationalist he was not in the first rank. He taught the older students and taught them reasonably well. He did establish the schools where he worked on sound lines, but he was somewhat inflexible in his methods and not really open to new insights for himself, though he would accept them in others. He was however a good showman. In this he was at one with his Chairman. Those who worked with him at the Nodup School in Rabaul, recalled his tricks for presenting his students in the most favourable light to visitors. At Roviana his name is associated with brass bands and flag waving. At one stage an army n.c.o. came and taught the students semaphore with flags. Lawry Waterhouse and John F. Goldie were alike in being able to put on a good show. Let us not overlook the fact that behind this was good work done by both and for the Roviana people, at least, some flamboyance was necessary as a form of emotional expression. Education took on a new look however with the arrival of Miss Una Jones in 1924. She came from Christchurch and was an experienced and well trained teacher. Though she had already been teaching for a number of years she was very open to new ideas and new methods. On the job she tried methods and adapted or discarded them as they failed to fulfil their purpose. A true educationalist in the best sense of the word, she recognised the importance of foundations, and knew that the methods of teaching suited to teenage boys were not applicable to little children. Above all, this lady of deep faith was blessed with the ability to get on with people to a marked degree. Through all her years in the Solomons (and after) she remained young at heart, and even now in the later years of her life can win respect and affection from the young. Perhaps no missionary in the Solomons, not even Goldie himself inspired such love and affection as she did. Mr Goldie apparently recognised her ability early because once he gave permission for the initial adjustments to be made in the school he did not

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A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 interfere at all, and she was able to work out her educational problems with some freedom. Una Jones' major achievement in her first years was the establishment of the "Kinda" (Kindergarten). Let her tell the story in her own words: "When in 1923, the Foreign Mission Board accepted me to go to Roviana to begin a 'school for children' I hardly knew just what awaited me, but, nevertheless, began to collect school material which I thought might be useful. New Zealand Methodists— especially the women—became interested and supplied me with much material and with money to buy more—all of which proved very helpful. In March 1924 I left New Zealand. When I arrived in Sydney it was to find that Mr Goldie had been there a short time before on his way to New Zealand and had made bookings for me on the Solomon Islands steamer, giving me a two months stay in Sydney to visit schools there. Thus was I further prepared for my work and have never forgotten the kindness of the teachers to whom I was sent and the great help they gave me. I arrived at Roviana on Saturday afternoon, June 14th, 1924. On the Monday I stood in front of a class of boys bigger than myself! And that was beginning of my work in the mission schools! I continued just at school till Mr Goldie returned from furlough in September. A few days previously Mr Waterhouse, who was the Headmaster, had been talking Kindergarten with me and we tried to think out the best arrangements to make as regards time and place, etc., subject to Mr Goldie's approval. It was Mr Waterhouse who had given the name "Kindergarten" to this new venture. It was soon shortened by the people to "Kinda" and Kinda it remained right up to the time of the Second World War. One day I went with Mr Waterhouse into the lowest school class and picked out the children I should have to begin with. On Mr Goldie's arrival, Mr Waterhouse spoke to him about the matter and I also had a talk with him, and so preparations were made for the all important opening day, September 24th 1924. Present were 26 children and two assistants, David Paukabatu, a college student from Choiseui, and Sima Nomaru, a senior girl in the sisters' home. For a start Kinda was held in the school building from 11.15 to 12.45 after the ordinary school session. That first day the porch at the doorway was crowded with curious spectators. It made me nervous, not yet being very fluent with the Roviana language. David was my interpreter, saying in Roviana what I could not say for myself in that language. We did not have any actual lessons, but the children were told what we would be doing in the days to come. That was all. By the 29th, the roll was up to 30. I divided the children into three groups, the lowest composed of children who had not had any schooling at all. I took each group in turn each day, David and Sima looking after the other two groups. But we began each day with "collective"

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A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 exercises and games before going into groups for Reading, Number Work, Writing, etc. Some low tables had been made by station carpenters. The children sat on the floor with legs under the tables. Mr Chivers made some little boards for plasticene and for blackboards. In Sydney I had studied the "Jones System" of teaching Reading (English) and had met Mr Jones himself. It was a system of hand signs for the different vowel sounds, then written signs to correspond to the hand signs. I used it with these children and they made good progress. We kept on with this system till a few years later when we decided we must have methods which the teachers could also use in their village schools. The younger children were taught Roviana reading at first by the method that had been in use from the beginning of the mission schools. For Arithmetic we made use of the Domino method to begin with. I remember that for the first few years I had to try and reject, try and reject, till we found at last the method of teaching Roviana reading, English reading and Arithmetic that seemed most suitable to the children and teachers, and, of course, each method had to be tried for quite some time to prove its worth or otherwise. There was no other trained teacher anywhere in the district to whom I could turn for help. And so, dependent on myself, I had to "do and dare" and trust that the children would not suffer for it! We gave the children exercises and games, teaching them to "work" together in teams or all together. This was no easy task! We also did handwork—crayon drawing, using "homemade" brown paper books to start with; plasticene, which was something quite new to them, but some soon showed initiative and originality; paperwork—cutting and tearing, but they were not quite so good at this, and when later we had to drop something, that was what we dropped first. Complementary, as it were, to Kinda, was the sewing class for the Kinda girls, though it was held on a Thursday afternoon. This was begun on November 4th 1924. Pieces of materials, packets of needles, cotton, embroidery cotton, etc., came in Gift Boxes in those days and were very welcome for this work, and the girls made good progress. That November also saw the beginning of Sunday School on Sunday afternoons while an adult service was being held. We began with 84 boys and girls. I had some fun getting their names that first Sunday! Some months later they were divided into Primary and Junior, each with its own team of native assistants. The first groups I had divided Kinda children into were only provisional. By January 1925, I had a good idea of the capabilities and progress of each child, and so I divided them again into 3 classes, but graded according to the progress they had made. This Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 10

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 was an improvement. Classes were numbered as in "big" school, Class 1 being the top class. The assistants took their classes for some subjects, I for others, doing the round of all 3 classes. At first we did not open Kinda with singing, mainly because I did not trust myself! I thought we'd be able to do it in the New Year, but the children got in before me and asked why we didn't sing—they wanted to sing, they said. And so, sometime in February, 1925, we began singing hymns and songs they already knew and then we learnt new ones, too. "Jesus love me" was the first one they learned in English. Attendances were often irregular, for different reasons, such as these: 1. The time was not suitable. It interfered with gardening. 2. The people would go away elsewhere for weeks or even months, taking the children, of course, which was very disappointing. 3. A feast in progress or preparation. 4. If I reproved a child for anything, he or she would stay away the rest of the week or longer. Not being disciplined at home, they objected to it at school. In time, they learned otherwise, but it was "in time". Teachers, too, often had to be changed for one reason or another, but in July 1925 Gideon Kaegasi came in and he and David were a good team. Because Kinda was new to the children and the people, I thought it might be a good idea to have a visiting day on the First Anniversary. We worked to that end. Invitations were sent out to white people in the vicinity and to chiefs and native leaders, etc. We had it on the 23rd September, as being the more convenient day that week. As the day drew near, the children were greatly excited. David lectured them, telling them to come "all spick and span", as it were. They did. There were many uninvited guests on the porch, as well as the invited guests inside. There were 45 children present, some of whom had not been for weeks! However, they were "on show" and everything went smoothly and well. One result of this special day was that the roll number increased quite a bit, going up to about 45. At Christmas 1925 we held the first Christmas Tree, which had been kept as a great secret and surprise, with the help of the teachers, of course. When the children saw the tree with its hanging gifts, they stood open-eyed and open-mouthed — in silence—till one of the bolder ones asked, "Is it for us?" The atmosphere of awe pervaded all the proceedings, even when they were given their gifts, till as they were going out, they received lollies, and some fell on the floor. Then were their tongues loosened! By March 1926 the roll was up to 60, attendances from 40 to 52 usually; we had to divide the "babies" class, and so the new class was Class 4. For a while, Eunice, Milton's wife, came and did good work, but had to give up sooner than she expected, and so Eda, Opete Pina's wife, filled the gap for a time. Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 11

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I taught the children new games and began a story period on Fridays. David and Kae each took a turn at stories, too, and so there was variety. This was in addition to the usual Friday "free occupation" when they were able to look at books, thread beads, play with picture blocks and building blocks, etc. In September that year we celebrated our 2nd Anniversary by having a Visitors' Day again, and 62 children attended! The District Commissioner from Gizo happened to be in the vicinity —whether by accident or design I can't say—and so he came, and certainly appeared to be very interested. He and all the eleven other white visitors were particularly interested in the Jones System of Reading. The children had learnt Hoop Drill (hoops made from bush cane). David was to play the cornet for it, but was too nervous, and so Gina (not noted for nervousness) took his place. In October Sister Jean Dalziel, who had been working on Choiseui, came to Kokeqolo to learn the ins and outs of Kinda so that she could take over during my time of furlough in 1927. It was at this time that we persuaded Mr Goldie to let us change the time of Kinda to 7.15-8.45, before big school, instead of after it—to be tried out till New Year to begin with. (Needless to say, that time was continued through the following years.) There not being clocks or watches in the villages in those days, on the first morning of the new time, many children arrived by 5.45, and there was an attendance of 60 children. The 5.45 stunt didn't last, of course! We liked the early time though, and it apparently suited the villagers better, and so the roll number increased considerably. David Paukabatu was sent back to Choiseui to help in school work there, and a Bilua lad, Opete Itu came in his place, and a little later, another Choiseui lad, Simeon Nala. And so we went steadily on—that is, mostly so, though there were a few unsteady periods now and again — introducing new work at appropriate times, assessing the capacity of each child, changing timetable or methods to suit changing circumstances, and making new classes as numbers increased. Keeping in mind that 1927 was Semi- Jubilee year for the Mission, and therefore display and exhibition work would be expected in school and Kinda, we worked accordingly. The special display was the Maypole Dance. There had been difficulty getting the pole made right, but eventually it was accomplished and the children enjoyed doing the dance at any time. It had not been begun as a Jubilee stunt, but it went well. We hardly ever did it again as it needed only 16 children, of the 60 or more who now attended Kinda. The rest of the children, at the Jubilee, sang a Maypole Dance song, which had been sent to me from Melbourne. There was also a Visiting Day, when the Semi-Jubilee special visitors were shown Kinda at work in all subjects. By now, Kinda was well established, accepted by the whole community as a real part of their life, which their customs must acknowledge and allow for. All children were now expected to attend Kinda, Sunday School, Thursday afternoon Lotu, and sewing Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 12

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 class for girls. The habit of going off somewhere else for days, weeks or months still continued, which hindered the progress of the children concerned. Often the children did not wish to go away, but had to follow their parents. There was no compulsory education in those days, and so it was a case of working so that the children would want to attend. And generally speaking that was accomplished."5 In 1927, the Board decided that they needed to place a minister at the head station to assist the chairman. Since they could not afford an extra appointment, it was decided to terminate Mr Waterhouse's appointment and appoint the Rev. F. H. Hayman. Mr Hayman was sent by the Board to Fiji for a time on his way out to the Solomons to see what the educational work there had to offer. Mr Goldie had accepted the termination of Mr Waterhouse's appointment but he had strongly opposed Mr Hayman being sent to Fiji on the ground that "We have not much to learn from them as far as I know, and think that the expense would not be warranted, and the visit do more harm than good to a young fellow coming to the field for the first time. What I would like Hayman to do is to make himself quite expert in transmitting and receiving Morse-"6 This was an unfortunate beginning, for Mr Hayman, young, very committed to the proclamation of the Gospel had made very considerable sacrifices to take up this appointment. He arrived on the field full of enthusiasm and new ideas, to. find he had to work closely with a man who was already prejudiced against his appointment and whose ideas of what was right and proper had not changed for 25 years. This tension with the Chairman could not of course be hidden and affected the quality of his witness. Yet Frank Hayman did a good job. In spite of the fact that he replaced a much respected man, Waterhouse, and tried to set things on a tack not approved by the Chairman, he left behind him a memory of thorough teaching and concerned interest. His students did not forget him and they were grateful to him. His term of service over, he did not come back but was replaced by the Rev. E. Clarence Leadley. Unlike Mr Hayman, Mr Leadley had no training as a teacher, and indeed had been a carpenter by trade. But Clarence Leadley brought to the task of gift of "brotherliness" that helped him to communicate with his students as it did with his colleagues all through his ministry. One recalls pastor teachers who had gone through the college under him, preaching his sermons many years later, with all the gestures and inflections of voice that were characteristic. Though he chafed under the restrictions placed by the Chairman on the work he was given to do, and felt restricted because he could so seldom leave the station, he was able to work in reasonable harmony with all concerned. Mrs Leadley, who took charge of medical work, was a great help to him, and her own ability to make friends with people, and keep relationships on a good level was very helpful. Educationally the College progressed reasonably though not spectacularly. Sister Ruth Grant joined Sister Lina in 1931. She was trained and helpful. Though she left after only one term to marry Frank Hayman, the practice of sending trained teachers was now well established. Ruth Grant had been supported by the Young Women's Bible Class Union, and so though the effects of the Depression were their Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 13

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 most severe, there was no problem about paying a replacement. The choice fell on Ada Lee, who next to Lina Jones, was to be the most influential teacher in the history of the District. After three years with Sister Lina at Roviana, Sister Ada was sent to Bougainville which had not, up to that stage, had a trained teacher on the staff. Though she was absent in New Zealand through the war years and from the end of 1948 until 1952, her influence until her final retirement in 1966 was considerable.

Sister Lina M. Jones Sister Ada L. Lee In Bougainville, her first and her prime task was to prepare young men to go to Roviana. Until 1936, the mandated Territory of New Guinea of which Bougainville and Buka were a part refused to allow students to go outside the country for training. They would now allow a few lads each year to go down to the British Solomons for training, and as much of the instruction there was done in the Roviana language, these men first had to learn that tongue. They also had to compete with second generation students from the British Solomons and they came with very limited educational backgrounds. Sister Ada's task was to try and iron out some of the worst inequalities in education and teach them some Roviana. When the young men got to Kokenggolo they were made part of a two stream structure. For ordinary schooling they were down in Class 6, 5 or 4. After morning school was over they moved to "college" and were in the same classes with lads from Class 2 and Class 1 (the top class academically). This was, no doubt, the only possible structure, but it did tend to make them very conscious of their own inferiority and very sure of the superiority of all things related to Roviana. It became a status symbol to take a lengthy Lotu in Roviana for people who understood not one word of that tongue!

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Education in the western British Solomons was not only growing and improving at the head station, but was also going ahead in each of the other circuits. In 1939 the Protectorate was visited by Mr W. C. Groves, a competent educationalist who was later to be Director of Education in post-war Papua New Guinea. Mr Groves had been appointed by the Government to advise them. His report on Methodist education was good. Speaking of the teacher training, and the use of the Kokenggolo School as a "practising school" he said, "In this as in so much else, the? Methodist Mission educational system is considerably in advance of the other missions; and this is due, I am convinced, to the fact that the work is in the hands of European teachers trained on modem lines."7 Mr Groves also commended the work being done in the Sisters "homes" among the girls. He spoke particularly highly of the work as Sasamungga under Sister Ethel McMillian. All in all the education work was going well, and the credit belongs to Mr Waterhouse and the New Zealand teachers who brought to the task training and adaptability. Most of all it belongs to Lina M. Jones, who might well be dubbed the 'mother of Solomon Islands Education'. Out of the chaos of a war which destroyed virtually every building on every mission station, and left the villages also devastated, the task of bringing order was formidable. In a sense the teachers were lucky. You can teach under the shade of a tree (even in a climate where the rainfall exceeds 130" a year, and the noonday temperature is 95° in the shade!) You can even teach a class on 4 sticks of chalk a week, and be thankful you have a blackboard . . . but it is hard going, as some of us know from experience. Sister Lina and Sister Effie Harkness were quickly on the job when they were able to return in 1945. First at Bilua, and then back in the Munda area on several successive sites, they began to get school moving again. But it was not just re-establishing a school, but gathering together the teachers who were taking up their tasks in the villages again, encouraging them, keeping them supplied with materials (as far as possible) and with ideas. To plan, to improvise, to carry on under conditions which made the pre-war limitations seem like wide open country, this was their task, and how well they did it. As the people began to settle back in their home area, they were becoming more settled and demanding more of life. Already there were signs of the upsurge of population that was to come to full flowering a decade later. The widened horizons of the people included a better appreciation of the value of education as the way forward and so the students were more eager than ever.

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Sister Effie Harkness Sister Effie Harkness, continuing the missionary tradition of her family, had responded to an approach in 1937 and gone to the Solomons to teach. When Sister Ada went north to Bougainville, she became Sister Lina's co-worker in happy partnership that has continued in one form or another until the present. They had been among the folk evacuated in early 1942 on the ship "Fauro Chief" and now they were back again at their task, among the people whom they loved and who loved them. Sister Effie was to gradually take over more and more of the responsibility, including the training of teachers and after Sister Lina retired in 1949, she remained as the senior member of the teaching staff in the BSIP. She herself retired in 1956 and has continued ever since to serve the church overseas and its staff in one way or another. Sister Lina, because of Sister Effie's assistance, was able to do a great deal in the field of translation. One of the rather inexplicable things about John Goldie was his failure to have the Bible translated into the Roviana language. His theological attitudes and his assurance that Roviana, the language and the people should be pre-eminent in the Solomons, would surely have made him want to get the New Testament, at least, if not the whole Bible, into the language. But this is not what happened. It took more than ten years before a Gospel was printed and up till the war only the four Gospels had been completed. One can only assume that he had absorbed a very large share of the local attitude of 'keke rane', (one day ... a day that never comes). Now Sister Lina, with his grudging consent, and with the help of men like John Bitimbule, not only completed the whole New Testament, but also revised Waterhouse's dictionary, and the hymn book. She also continued translation of Sunday School lessons, school lessons and teachers aids as she had done all her years on the field.

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Rev. Allan H. Hall was appointed to the District in 1947 to take up the task that E. C. Leadley had laid down in 1942, that of Vice Principal of the College, and with it the training of the pastor teachers. A trained school teacher just back from war service he came to the field filled with the boundless enthusiasm which was to be one of his 'hallmarks'. The other was his as yet unrecognised ability with language. It is said that within six weeks he was speaking fluent Roviana. Both these gifts were at once to define his contribution to the work of education, and at the same time to limit it. His tremendous zest for life and anything new took him valiantly through the frustrations and problems of his early years, but tended to prevent that long continued concentration which would have given more solidity to the training, and a more lasting equality to his work. His linguistic fluency tended to make him more a talker than a listener, and at times more a pundit than a good communicator. Yet his contribution, at a critical and difficult time was considerable. He influenced a whole generation of men, some of whom were leaders of the church, and some of whom are even now taking up posts of responsibility. Had the church recognised his real linguistic gifts earlier and set him aside for translation work in the 1950's, it might have been wiser. It was not until 1962 that this was done, and by then the tide was running out. All pretence at making Roviana the lingua franca even for the Methodist Church had been given up. After several years of full time translation work in New Zealand, Mr Hall moved to Queensland where he has been involved for a decade now in linguistic research and translation work, a task that gives him deep satisfaction and uses his talents fully. One task that Allen Hall did, that perhaps no one else on the field at the time could have accomplished, was the transfer of the college away from Kokenggolo to Banga Island 4 miles away. It was a decision that Synod supported, but in the implementation of it, it was he, and almost he alone that carried it through. Though the character of 'Goldie College' as it came to be called has changed radically from a 'home missionary' training school, to a high school cum senior primary school, yet it still rests on the foundation he laid. Choiseui shows the advantages of being a comparative backwater. It has tended to be less affected by the currents of change than other areas. Even the war left it less damaged than elsewhere. It has also been fortunate in the length of service of its staff, and the quality of the "church builders" who have served it. After the pioneer, S. R. Rooney, came the Rev. Vincent Le Cornu Binet from the Channel Islands and John Rudd Metcalfe from Yorkshire. From 1916, when Mr Binet was appointed, until 1951 when Mr Metcalfe became Chairman, one or other of them, or both together, guided the destinies of the church on the island and nursed it strongly from the grass roots up. Sister Ethel McMillan served there from 1915 to 1941, and did a fine work among the women and girls. Now in the post war era Choiseui received a gift from New Zealand who was to continued and enhance the tradition— Lucy H. Money, deaconess and midwife, thorough, reliable and utterly loyal. She has been stationed there ever since. Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 17

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There have been times when she has assisted at Munda, and she has had one prolonged leave in New Zealand, but for the whole of that time she has given herself freely to the Choiseui people and their concerns. In her first years it was the midwifery work, of which there was plenty, and teaching in the school; in later years it has been translation of the Scriptures; for long periods, when there has been no overseas ministers appointed, she has in fact been superintendent of the whole large circuit. Always there have been the girls in the boarding school, the mothers and babies in the village and on the station to whom she has given herself without stint. Perhaps the best tribute comes out of the mouth of a tiny child ... a little Choiseui girl, who chipped into a conversation about 'tie vaka' (foreigners) and said, "Sister Lucy is not a tie vaka, she speaks Bambatana." It was entirely fitting that the Solomon Islands Region of the United Church should ask her to present to the first indigenous moderator their gift. For both the Rev. Leslie Boseto and his wife, Hazel, were her former students and are her firm friends. It was a moving moment for those of us present as she spoke to them first in Bambatana and then in English conveying the deep love of the whole region. Because of this stability of staff even rehabilitation on Choiseui after the war was not as difficult as elsewhere. A notable contribution to education on Choiseui was made by Sister Beryl Grice who served there for 10 years. Her twin sister, Audrey, also a teacher had preceded her to the field and had taught at Roviana, Buka and Bilua, making at the latter place a fine contribution to the development of upper primary education. Beryl's service on Choiseui was marked by consistency and by the skill with which she encouraged the local staff, both trained and untrained, to give of their best.

Church of the Lotu Readers, Goldie College.

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The other major educational centre in the British Solomons was Bilua, on Vella Lavella. Its boarding school followed the pattern set elsewhere. In the post war years there was a time when it became a testing ground for a high school. Under the Rev. Alee Watson, a trained teacher, and Sister Audrey Grice, a sigr nificant experiment was carried out which prepared the way for the work that Goldie College would ultimately do. But the key figure of the period is Sister Myra Fraser. Though she did in fact spend notable periods of time at Munda, most of her 21 years was at Bilua.

Sister Myra C. Fraser Here she built up an educational system which was based soundly on good educational practice, but even more on a person-centred philosophy. In a very special way she was able to encourage teachers and children and bring out the best in a significant number of them. She was in many ways the perfect colleague being a team worker by temperament and conviction. Like other outstanding teachers who have had a place in this chronicle, she inspired deep affection from the folk whom she loved and served. When Ada Lee returned to Bougainville after the war, her first concern was to re- establish the educational work. All the missionaries were at Torokina and were to be there for a considerable time before they could go to the various stations, at Skotolan, Buka Circuit, Kekesu, Teop Circuit and Koau, the new home for the head station of Buin Circuit. But if the missionaries could not go to their stations most of the people could come to them. The Bougainville people as a whole suffered greatly from sickness and malnutrition under the Japanese occupation and the subsequent fighting. Reliable estimates suggest that the population dropped by one third during the period of hostilities. In their debilitated state, epidemics of dysentery and poliomyelitis took their toll, and the endemic diseases of malaria and yaws, were all too much in Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 19

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 evidence. But work began again in village schools and the pastor teachers were soon coming for materials, for help and advice. By the time the work could be re- established in Buin, the number of potential students was growing all through the area. One reason for this was that so many had missed out during the war years and now sought to make up for the loss; another that new areas sought the education, the Lotu, and the material goods of those who had had longer contact. A third reason was the Australian Government extended to New Guinea the provision of the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme (C.R.T.S.). This, like the Rehabilitation Scheme in New Zealand, was designed to aid in the reintegration of servicemen in their own society. It was extended in a modified form to New Guinea on the grounds that they too had been at war in Australia's defence. From the mission point of view this meant that money would become available under certain conditions for training programmes . . teacher training, domestic training, agricultural training and technical training. The Rev. A. H. Voyce, superintendent of the Bougainville Buka Circuit was quick to see the opportunity this gave to the church. He appealed to New Zealand for more educational staff ... staff which had been promised long since but had never materialised, and ably backed by Ada Lee got on with the job as far as was possible. Re-establishing a boarding school which must feed itself from the soil is a slow business but in the period up to the end of 1948 this was being accomplished. At Buka, Mrs Margaret Sotutu, wife of Fijian pioneer Rev. Usaia Sotutu, was running a school, judged by the Director of Education, W. C. Groves, to be the finest in the Territory; at Kekesu, the Rev. Trevor Shepherd and his local helpers were making progress with the able assistance of Sister Merle Carter, the nurse. But at Koau critical work was being done. Sister Ada was seeking to cope with a growing school, and to prepare students who might possibly be given a permit to the BSIP for pastor training at the College, and at the same time help to look after the "girls" in the boarding school together with Mrs Voyce. At the end of 1948 however she had to return to New Zealand because of her family commitments. Three years later she was back again and until she retired in January 1966, she remained there, in Buin. When in 1955 an education conference of staff met at Roreinang in Kieta, they pressed strongly for a District Girls' School. The old opposition to such an establishment in the BSIP was beginning to die away, but in Bougainville the more clamant need for such an institution could not be ignored. It was recommended that a domestic science teacher be sought but that the institution be under Sister Ada Lee. The reason for this choice was clear. She spoke fluent Roviana and was known and trusted by many B.S.I, parents, and perhaps they might entrust their girls to her; in Bougainville generally she was widely known and respected and local leaders supported her nomination; and in the Siwai-Buin area where opposition to any form of girls' education was strongest, she was also known and accepted. In addition she had the experience and technical qualifications for the job. The school opened its doors in 1956 with Sister Beulah Reeves joining the staff a year later as domestic science Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 20

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 teacher. Later she was replaced by Sister Pat Jacobson who followed Sister Ada as Principal. The school has changed in nature and purpose as time has gone on. Rightly it is responsive to the needs of the day.

Rev. A. H. & Mrs. Voyce with people at Tonu Under C.R.T.S. domestic training was also developed at Skotolan and Kekesu, but while valuable work was done, it was not a tremendous success from C.R.T.S. point of view, and soon lost Government support. The C.R.T.S. scheme was beginning to be phased out by 1952 when Sisters Helen Whitlow and Thelma Duthie took up their appointments, one at each station as teachers. In each place the educational work was now put on a new and sounder footing. These ladies were required, as other teachers were, not only to teach a class and be the head teacher of a large school, but to give oversight to the village work where teachers with very varied attainments were endeavouring to carry on. The effort at technical training under C.R.T.S. fell to the ground because too much was asked of the staff. Both carpenter and engineer were asked to carry on with very demanding jobs and do the training as a side line. It did not work. Mr Chris Palmer, who with his wife, the former Sister Jean Simpkin, travelled out to Koau in 1949, as well equipped in many ways for either the task as District Engineer or as the technical instructor. His father, Reeves Palmer, had served for a number of years with Papuan Industries, an off shoot of the London Missionary Society, which ran plantations for the L.M.S. Chris himself was competent and versatile. It was tragic that the polio epidemic of 1951, which took several hundred lives in the area, claimed him as a victim. Badly crippled, he returned to New Zealand that year. Mr George Yearbury Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 21

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 who came out in 1950 was a skilled builder and had teaching gifts. But for him also the double job of being district builder and also a technical instructor was really too much. After a visit by C.R.T.S. inspectors from Port Moresby these aspects of the scheme were discontinued. Yet both Chris Palmer and George Yearbury did a good deal of training at a practical level, as every other technical worker had done. Each builder, for example, had to train his own team of workers, and some of these men, so trained, have continued to be valuable as maintenance carpenters and indeed builders in their own right. The teacher training programme under C.R.T.S. was entrusted to the present writer, a young ex-serviceman with very little teaching experience. Perhaps his main qualifications was that service in the New Hebrides and the Solomons as an R.N.Z.A.F. nursing orderly, had taught him to cope with the climate and its ills. He found 400 students of all ages from grandfathers to grandchildren (sometimes in the same class) being taught by 6 teachers, under the guidance of the Rev. John Taufa of Tonga. He obtained the help of Mrs Jean Palmer and Mrs Carter. The superintendent brought in another two teachers and things got under way. Mrs Carter took the children out of the lowest class (which had eighty students) and these 20 children who spoke 16 different languages were soon welded into a happy "new entrant" class which used English (because the teacher knew no other language) and became the model class for the teacher trainees. These men had very limited academic education but their motivation was very strong and their willingness to learn undoubted. Mrs Carter, fresh from a year's teaching in South Taranaki, where her pupils included a high proportion of Maori children, was able to demonstrate the basic teaching skills they were trying to inculcate. In 1951, Sister Pamela Beaumont joined the staff and took over the school when the teacher training was closed at the end of that year and the Carters went to study leave in New Zealand. They returned to Teop Circuit, where Mr Carter, now a probationary minister, was appointed. Teacher training was subsequently re-established at Kekesu, Teop Circuit in 1957, and Sisters Thelma Duthie, Norma Graves and Kathleen Shaw with the Carters, and later the Rev. G. D. and Mrs Brough, kept it alive, until the union with the other Methodist Districts allowed for a combined teachers college in the New Guinea Islands. Pamela Beaumont, meantime, was transferred inland to Tonu, Siwai. Twenty years later one looks back and stands somewhat aghast at the difficulties she and her various companions had to face. But Pamela continued, served a year under the Order of St. Stephen, so that she could be set aside for full time translation work for a year, was accepted and trained for the Deaconness Order, and in later years has been more fully occupied with pastoral and translation work than anything else. The New Testament in the local language, a complex non-Melanesian tongue, nears completion. This will be the climax of a remarkable career of service.

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Rev. G. G. Carter, General Secretary 1965- The pre-war system of pastor-teachers and pastor teacher training no longer fitted the modern age, and gradually it was superseded first by the teacher training in Bougainville, which in its Kekesu days won Government recognition and was able to prepare people for Government certificates. Later the attempt to establish a similar scheme in the British Solomons failed and the Government themselves set up the British Solomons Training College which gradually became the sole teacher training agency in the Protectorate, returning the majority of its trainees to the "voluntary agencies" who run the schools. Primary schools in both countries have become more and more effective and increasingly under Government control. It is likely that they will be eventually taken over by local or national governments. Secondary schooling in Bougainville Buka, apart from a brief attempt, was never possible to the Methodist Church and awaited the establishment of Government High Schools. In the British Solomons, various attempts at High School work met with limited success, but now that it is clear that the Government Secondary School King George VI cannot handle the rising numbers of qualified entrants, Goldie College is coming into its own. The Rev. J. F. Cropp who followed Mr Hall as Principal, established both pastor training and secondary education on sound lines. His principal assistant and still one of the key staff there is Sister Lyn Sadler who has a genius for teaching, and for teaching English as a second language. She stands in the tradition of Sisters Lina, Effie and Ada as an educationalist in the best and broadest sense. A succession of fine teachers have continued to serve the church in the Solomons, the Highlands and now in other areas of the United Church.

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New Zealand staff gave a great deal to Fiji in the educational field. In the Solomons, on both sides of the border they have done the same. In the schools, at the council table, in relationships with the local people, and in the development of schools, curricula and methods they have done a job which has justified their appointments many times over. C. HEALTH SERVICES The healing of the sick is a compelling task, particularly in a society where endemic illness is obvious. It is also the type of Christian work which wins a response from a wide variety of people, both within and without the Church. When R. C. Nicholson and Dan Bula had visited New Zealand in 1917 they had roused interest in the medical work which Nicholson himself had run on Vella Lavella. Almost every other missionary had mentioned the need for medicine, for better hygiene and so on. It is not surprising therefore that this appeal should win a response from New Zealand people, and that the deputation sent out in 1920 should come back and report as follows: "The question of medical mission work and the establishment of a hospital was discussed at considerable length with the missionaries on the field. They regard such work as being of the utmost importance. Skin and other diseases are very prevalent among the Natives, while infant mortality is exceedingly heavy. The missionaries and their wives are called on to undertake much medical, and even surgical work, and with very satisfactory results, but much more is needed."8 They went on to recommend the urgent appointment of a doctor and the establishment within a year or two of a permanent hospital where local staff could be trained. They spoke encouragingly of the suggestion that a Plunket nurse be sent out from New Zealand. This New Zealand concern for medical work, matched J. F. Goldie's, and it was soon found that concern was not only that of the Mission Board and missionaries but a grass roots feeling in the home church. In the first party sent from New Zealand in 1922, Sister Lilian Berry was a trained nurse whose task it was to prepare the way for greater medical developments, as well as to carry on and develop medical work that had already been begun. As early as 1907 the Australian Board had appointed Nurse Reid and Nurse Moore to the Solomons. Nurse Reid apparently did not leave Australia's shores and Nurse Moore was unable to stand the climate and conditions generally. Thereafter all workers became involved with the treatment of ills and most had some rudimentary training, even if it was only in simple first aid. Lilian Berry, the first in a long line of dedicated nurses, had some difficult adjustments to make. She had quite a bit of unofficial support from New Zealand and was challenged with the tremendous need. But she had to learn to fit in with the situation as it was, and see her task as part of the total work. There must have been some difficult moments, and times when she was almost overwhelmed by the magnitude of the job before her. Without a doctor anywhere near, she carried the full responsibility and she wrote:—

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Sister Lilian Berry "On arrival at Kokenggolo I found there were very many sick people lying in almost every home; many suffered from influenza and malaria; others from terrible chronic sores, useless arms and legs, and numerous other ills, and I longed for a hospital and equipment where I might minister properly to their bodily and spiritual needs. But there was no hospital so I nursed them for a few weeks on Sisters' Home verandah and in their homes, but this was altogether unsatisfactory as I could not trust the natives to carry out my instructions. A great deal of my strength and time was wasted journeying from home to home. Then as a hospital Sister, it was my duty to train workers, and that was not possible without a training school. Some natives were put out of a leaf hut, containing two rooms, so that it could be transformed into a hospital. By the aid of hammer and saw, benzine boxes and cases, soap and water, the place was soon made workable and patients were admitted. We had no fireplace, having to sterilize and boil water outside in all weathers."9 Sister Lilian soon established the medical work with authority and began the training of orderlies—at first only boys could be trained, but later girls living in the boarding school were involved. Sister Elizabeth Common, who was appointed in 1923 had been trained as a Plunket nurse. To her fell the special task of the care of children. Opeti was orphaned the day he was bom and Sister Elizabeth cared for him and mothered him. Many years later Opeti's own wife died in childbirth and he brought his baby daughter to the missionary and his wife and gave her to them to bring up, asking only that she be called Elizabeth, because of the love he still bore for his "mother". Missionary sisters fend ministers' wives (and the ministers themselves) so often stood 'in loco parentis' to children and were able not only to love and cherish them but to demonstrate in practical ways the lessons of care, feeding and hygiene they sought to teach. Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 25

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In 1920 church folk in Christchurch had rallied to the support of a young medical student who felt himself called to be a missionary. Edward G. Sayers had grown up in the Sydenham Church and his vision of service as a medical missionary was shared by the local people. The newly formed Mission Board had its eyes on the far horizon also and soon began to share Ted Sayers' sense of calling. Thus it was that first the local church, and then the whole church, through the Mission Board, gave financial assistance to this brilliant young man to carry on his studies, believing that God had called him. Never was money better invested. Ted Sayers graduated from Otago Medical School and then went to Britain. There, while qualifying for the Diploma of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene he was associated with Dr Manson Bahr, a distinguished specialist in this field and collaborated with him in several pieces of research. He quickly made a name for himself and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine.10 He returned to New Zealand working his passage as ship's doctor and arriving in Auckland in early June 1927. He made a quick trip to Christchurch and there visited several Young Men's Bible Classes, for the Y.M.B.C. Union regarding him as their own missionary and helping to finance his appointment. Then on the 12th June he was commissioned to his missionary service, the Rev. Dr Harry Ranston, another brilliant scholar, who was President of Conference for the year, giving the address.

Dr. E. G. Sayers Many years later Sir Edward Sayers, Dean of the Otago Medical School, first New Zealander to be President of the Royal Australian College of Physicians, recalled how some of his professional colleagues had tried to dissuade him, saying he was mad to throw away a potentially brilliant professional career! The conviction that God had

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A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 laid His hand on him was too strong for such gloomy predictions to have any effect and Ted Sayers went out to serve. He travelled with the deputation of the Rev. A. N. Scotter and Mr J. W. Court to the 25th anniversary celebration of the Solomon Island District. This, together with the high expectations of both the New Zealand Church and the Mission District meant that he received a measure of V.I.P. treatment not accorded to most new missionaries. The advantage was that he was able to travel through the District and get a clear perspective of the need and the same time to meet his colleagues and establish good relationships with them. One of his gifts was the ability to get along with people, and the Solomon Islanders took him to their hearts. Even the Chairman who could be notably unenthusiastic about new workers responded and wrote:— "Dr Sayers has made a splendid start, and the only danger is that he will work himself to death. When passing through Tulagi, the medical superintendent told him that we would never get the people to come to him—especially the midwifery cases—and that he would have to get a vessel and go after them. The absurdity of such a statement has been amply demonstrated, for much as we had to do in this way before, the doctor is simply rushed off his feet by patients flocking to him. The people everywhere appreciate this new evidence of New Zealand's love for them. The medical part of the work seems to have taken the natives by storm. During the last quarter, we have had to turn away many because we had no room for them in the little hospital. We have a daily average of thirty inpatients, forty outpatients and about twenty-five casuals. If we had more room we could fill as many more beds. I am putting up a temporary building to be used for hospital purposes until we get the main building up."11 At the same time the Rev. A. A. Bensley on Vella Lavella wrote:— "We are all very favourably impressed with Dr Sayers. He seems so thorough, and his diagnoses seem to be so in accord with commonsense and one instinctively says, 'Of course, it couldn't be anything else,' after he has explained a case. Moreover he touches and treats the natives as though he loves them, and he does not merely regard them professionally."12 Thoroughness, a gift for getting along with people, and a basic common sense attitude were in many ways the hallmark of Ted Sayers' work in the Solomons and his whole career. The next year his fiancee came from New Zealand and they were married at Roviana with Sister Edna White as bridesmaid. Dr Sayers was never one to neglect his patients and his concern for them made its own impact. At the same time he was concerned to push back the frontiers of knowledge in an area where opportunities for research had been limited. During his seven years in the Solomons he wrote and published a number of papers documenting his findings. Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 27

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His report for 1932-33 for example, speaks of the paper on the "Melanesia Woman in Pregnancy and Labour", another on "Malaria in the British Solomons", "The Treatment of Tropical Ulcers by a New Method" and one on the relation to Herpes Zoster to Chicken Pox. He had been experimenting with new anti-malarial drugs, atebrin and plasmoquine; working on cancer among Melanesians; the incidence of Falarial infections; nephritis; diet and the common muscle abscess. Beside all this he was collecting snakes and scorpions and centipedes for the British Museum! And all this without neglecting his patients.13 In 1929 the decision was made to transfer the hospital to Bilua and build the Helena Goldie Hospital there. This proved wise and by 1933 a good set of buildings had been provided. A special feature continued to be the training of local staff. Lilian Berry had made a beginning and Dr Sayers continued it. Men like Isaac Pitakomaki of Choiseui benefitted. Isaac began with Sister Lilian and continued under the doctor until 1929 when he volunteered as a missionary for Bougainville. Through the years he did an outstanding work in Siwai and many owed their lives to his care.14 Nurses came and went from New Zealand. For one reason or another few stayed long. Illness and the call of ageing parents took them home. Each made her contribution and some of them are still well remembered. In 1972 older folk at Roviana talked of Lilian Berry and her service so lovingly given. On Choiseui they recalled Coralie Murray who with Muriel Stewart was appointed to assist Dr James.15 Coralie was only in the islands for two and a half years yet she was remembered because of her concern for people and her understanding. May Bartle and Isobel Stringer each served only a short period, because they were withdrawn during the depression. Sister Grace McDonald who went out in 1928, also had her service terminated by the depression in 1934. She was a qualified midwife but had not done her general training. When word reached her in Britain that her service had been terminated she determined to do her general nursing training. This she did and in due course was re-appointed to the Solomons in 1939. Evacuated with other mission staff in 1942 she spent a short time in New Zealand and then returned in the post war period, serving until final retirement in 1950. Pre-eminent among them all was Sister Edna White. She was appointed in 1927 to assist Dr Sayers and this she did with vigour and ability. She arrived 6 weeks before the doctor and she helped prepare for his coming, and then for five years tremendously strengthened the whole work, while at the same time becoming well known to the people both in Roviana and Bilua as a person who could be loved and trusted.

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Sister Edna White Her return to New Zealand in 1932 was to meet the need of her parents. When the depression began to lift and it was becoming possible to set a date for the return of a doctor to the field, the Board asked Sister Edna if she would go back and prepare the way for the re-establishment of the medical unit at Bilua. So back she went in 1936. Noone was better equipped for the task, and in the 2i years she was there the job was done thoroughly. When Dr Rutter arrived he was most appreciative and wrote to the Board, "What are the things that strike one most forcibly in these first few weeks? First I think, the very fine work that Sister Edna has been doing in the last two years and the respect and love the natives have for her."16 Edna White came back to the Solomons twice more. In 1955 she came to relieve an acute nursing shortage and was most of that time on Bougainville. In 1962 she gave another year of voluntary service spending part of her time in Siwai with Sister Mary Addison and part in the British Solomons, mainly on Choiseul. In the years between she had been Box Organiser for the M.W.M.U. following the death of Mrs Smethurst. She was always an ardent advocate of the missionary cause to which her own life and service had been so freely given. Looking back over the 1930's, it seems that the medical missionary work dominated the scene. The establishment of the medical unit in 1927, the appointment of the second doctor in 1928, the high hopes and encouraging statistics, all helped to build up a pride and an interest in that section of the task. When first Dr James and then Dr Sayers had to be withdrawn, the disappointment was great in many people's hearts. From the moment when the retrenchment became effective, there were those who worked to 'send back the doctor'. With real insight, the Board and the General

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Secretary took this as their watchword, and in fact the appeal of the medical work carried, as it were, the rest of the work on its coat tails. Chief among the supporters of the medical work, and generous in many other ways, was Mr Samuel German of Nelson. Mr German was very concerned that the doctor had been withdrawn and did his best to see, not only that a doctor would be sent back, but that never again would a doctor have to be withdrawn because of financial reasons. As his annual gifts to the medical fund began to mount, the Church took more and more notice of him and of the Fund. This meant that other people also were inspired to contribute. He was asked by successive Presidents to send a message to the Conference, and this he did. The last one read at the Conference of 1943, just ten days before his death, expressed his own simple faith in the validity of the mission cause, and his own call to build up the rehabilitation fund. His benefactions for the Medical Fund had at that date realised a total of $36,972. Under his will a further sum of nearly $40,000 was left to the mission society. This was for the general work but in some years during the war the interest on this was added to the medical fund. In all it would seem that of the present (1972) Medical Fund of $70,259, well over half came from Mr German. As long as the need is there the first charge on this fund must be the support of a doctor in the Western Solomons. But it should not be thought that only the big gifts mattered. The medical fund was built up and the annual income boosted by a multitude of small gifts from a wide range of people.

Dr. C. S. James The replacement of the doctor and his team in the Solomon did not have to wait on a man. Allen G. Rutter had been accepted by the Board much earlier and encouraged to go to London to do his Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. While there he received the Lalcaca Medal for the highest aggregate marks in the exams. He also Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 30

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 secured his Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons (Edinburgh). He returned to New Zealand and was married on the 18th March 1938, to Miss Betty Rowe of Napier, a bacteriologist. They left New Zealand on April 26th. They travelled the first part of the journey with Sister Ada Lee and then the two nurses who were to make up the rest of the medical team, Merle Farland and Joy Whitehouse, joined them in Sydney. It was said of Allen Rutter that he never walked, he always ran. Indeed, there was a quicksilver quality about him, but he was just as dedicated and just as thorough as his predecessors had been, and had begun to make his mark in the Solomons when war intervened.

Dr. A. G. Rutter He was one of those who had to make the difficult decision about taking the sick women folk out on the ship 'Fauro Chief’, and so he reached Australia and then New Zealand. Like the rest of the staff he wanted to get back as soon as possible. To do this he accepted an interim appointment with the British Government as Senior Medical Officer. Back in the Solomons he was a tower of strength, not only to the Protectorate medical service, which he re-established, but also to the work of the church. He was able to maintain contact with the Methodist folk in the west, provide a base for the missionaries in Honiara when they returned and keep the Mission Board, and the Chairman, in touch with developments. In a sense Allen Rutter's most valuable service to the church was given in this period. It does not detract from the work he had done earlier, but at a critical stage he was where he could do the most good for the people, and give the best advice to the church with which he was still connected.

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Joy Whitehouse and Merle Farland enjoyed working with Allen Rutter and each of them found the Solomons fascinating. When war clouds hung over the world they talked the matter over and agreed that if war came to the Solomons they would stick to their post.

Sister Merle Farland As it happened Joy was in New Zealand on leave, when the critical time came but Merle was at Bilua, and with the superintendent of the circuit she stayed behind. As long as she could, she ministered to the sick and needy and in the course of those duties travelled far and wide by canoe and on foot. This courageous stand was of great value to the local people, though the coast watchers were very concerned for her. It is not surprising that they took an early opportunity to have her evacuated by Catalina from Sege, at the south end of New Georgia. She had travelled there by canoe a good hundred miles through the enemy lines. Evacuated to Noumea, she joined the Army as a nursing sister in the 3rd Division, and returned briefly to the Solomons in that capacity. After the war and further training, Merle Farland became involved with the World Health Organisation and served them in many developing countries. Under the auspices of this organisation she made one more brief trip to the western Solomons, and had the pleasured of meeting many old friends. Joy Whitehouse returned to the mission staff after the war for a term, before resigning to get married. The problem of finding a replacement for Doctor Rutter was with the Board for several years. There seemed no Methodist availaable. Dr Gerald Hoult was a member of the Church of Christ who had felt the call of Africa and was seeking an' opportunity to go there. But in 1948 the door to Africa was closed for him, and he agreed to go out Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 32

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 to the Solomons, for a trial period. The Board were happy to accept this offer, and for Gerald Hoult it was a chance to try out his sense of missionary calling. In the event he stayed for fourteen years. A qualified dentist as well as a doctor, Gerald Hoult brought to the task a great dedication, and a willingness to serve which was much to be admired. On his first leave, the Board arranged for him to do the Diploma of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene at Sydney University. Though Gerald Hoult began work at Bilua where the pre-war hospital had been, it was decided in 1948 that Helena Goldie Hospital should be rebuilt at Munda. It was clear that the development of Gizo as a Government centre with a medical officer, made it less essential that Bilua should be the site, and the growing population of the North East of New Georgia, made it desirable that there should be a fully equipped medical unit there. While this decision reversed that made in 1929, it was nonetheless the right one. Not only did the needs of the people justify it, but the proximity to the mechanical services of the engineering workshop was a great help. Patrol work had always been a part of the medical task. For this a boat was essential. The pre-war doctors boat, the 'Cicely', given by the Astley family, had been a war casualty- Now the Astley family and the M.W.M.U. together made it possible for the launch 'Cicely II' to be built. This 40 foot launch was a very lively boat in a sea, but its shallow draft made it suitable for in-shore work, and it was really a very safe boat though it did not always feel like it. Dr Hoult covered many hundreds of miles in it from the time of its arrival in 1949 until he transferred his 'flag', as it were, to another vessel in 1958. The new vessel was the 'Ozama Twomey'. No account of the work in the South Pacific could possibly be complete without mention of Patrick Joseph Twomey who gave his name to the boat. For Mr Twomey was a postman, and a devout Roman Catholic layman, who caught a vision of the needs of leprosy sufferers in the south Pacific, and so followed the gleam that in time he became known as the Leper Man, and a letter addressed simply to the Leper Man, New Zealand, would in fact be delivered, and that quite speedily. With single minded dedication he collected money from all who would listen and year by year the response grew as he made the needs known. Though leprosy was his single concern no one could say he was a man of narrow vision. More clearly than most he realised that to fight leprosy was not just to treat the sufferers but to do everything possible to raise general standards of community health and improve standards of hygiene. The money that was raised was dispersed to various agencies, mainly missions, which were working for the healing of the people, and among lepers. From a small trickle (in 1950, for example, our gift from the Lepers' Trust Board was $5,000) it swelled in a few years to a mighty flood (often our share has been in excess of $30,000 in recent years). The money helped to pay for the medical staff, provided necessary drugs, built hospital buildings and provided equipment. But no gift was more magnificent than the gift of three ships to each of the three churches in Melanesia with a big sea-going medical work. The Melanesian Mission (Anglican) Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 33

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 received the 'Fauambu Twomey', the Catholics the 'Mala Twomey', and the Methodists the 'Ozama Twomey'. These vessels, 56 feet in length and sturdily built were excellent sea boats, with a good turn of speed. The 'Ozama Twomey' still serves. Doctor Hoult built up the hospital at Munda and saw it grow from a collection of leaf buildings into a vital complex of permanent buildings. But the man who had spent himself without stint, in the end burnt himself out and a collapse in health in the early 1960's took him from his profession and from the Solomons. When he went, he left behind more than buildings. He had been instrumental in sending three local people overseas for training. Sister Vivian Mamupio had spent two years at St. Helen's in Auckland and returned to become the first Solomon Islander to take charge of a hospital, winning golden opinions and high respect even from men folk in areas traditionally anti-feminist. Mr Gillian Lai and Mr Nathan Ringgeo went together to Wellington Hospital where Mr Lai became a competent Xray technician and Mr Ringgeo trained as a laboratory technician. Unfortunately Mr Lai's sudden death a year after his return deprived the church of a noble servant. The confidence of having been overseas and the experience gained there, enabled each of them to put into practice their skills with confidence and effectiveness. Shortly afterwards, Government registration of medical staff, and improved standards of training were to work a transformation. But thanks to Gerald Hoult the Methodists were already in the van of the new developments. New Zealand nurses were not lacking for the work in Bougainville and Buka, and in the British Solomons in the years after the second world war. Some served only for one term, but others gave long service. Sister Merle Carter, for example, served for fourteen years on Bougainville and Sister Gladys Larkin spent ten years at Munda and Buka. Following Doctor Hoult, Doctor Ron Pattinson came from the Australian Methodist Church and now Doctor Roger Scown, of the New Zealand Presbyterian Church, holds the office. Each appointment has been made possible by the Medical Fund income, each man has enriched the work and witness of the church making his special contribution. It is significant that the first nurse appointed to Bougainville, apart from Loata, the wife of Fijian pioneer Kotosoma, was Elizabeth Common who was trained as a Plunket nurse. For the medical contribution of the Methodist Church to Bougainville has particularly been in the field of infant welfare and maternal and child health. Though general medical work of every kind has been undertaken as it was required, it has been the privilege of the Roman Catholics and the Administration to provide the doctors and the wider general medical services. We have shared in the task which has transformed the health picture, and the population picture also. Prior to 1950, it is estimated that the infant mortality in the first year of life on Bougainville was 80, few families had more than two living children and the periodic epidemics took a fearful toll. By 1970 more than half the population was under 16 and bright alert students in Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 34

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 the school presented a marked contrast to those of yesteryear who were plagued by chronic malaria and constant illness. Every missionary worker had to become a medical worker at times and those of us who had some medical training, and those of us who did not, found ourselves involved with giving injections, delivering babies, and first aid of all kinds. But it is our nurses who must take a large measure of credit for the results achieved. In the British Solomons, the medical work of the Methodist Mission has had a larger share in the development of health services and the control of both indigenous and introduced disease. While we rejoice in what has been accomplished, it is good to see the Government taking more and more responsibility. Ultimately they may free the church from routine medical care so that it can pioneer in some other field of human need. D. INDUSTRIAL TRAINING New Zealand wanted to bring the Solomon Islands into the 20th Century. They wanted to bring mechanical appliances to the aid of the church in the land where they had taken new responsibilities. They were happy to respond to suggestions that a sawmill, a radio broadcasting station and a printing press were necessary for the proclamation of the Kingdom of God. None were more eager to listen than John W. Court, the lay treasurer, who made the trip to the Solomons in 1920 and was to make it again in 1927. Enthusiastic, dedicated but rather given to extravagant and sometimes unrealistic gestures, he more than anyone else was caught by the vision of what could be. A sawmill cutting timber for the needed buildings, and supplying housing for the local people; a press turning out Christian literature in the native tongue and in English; and a radio station which would enable the Mission to be the best informed organisation in the group. All this . . . and training too. For essential to the vision was the picture of the local people being trained and introduced to manufacturing and commerce. Alongside this, of course, they were to be coverted and strengthened in the faith. This was already being done to some extent. Mission students were learning a little of carpentering and boat building and some milling of timber had gone on. Plantations too, would help. The idea that: "industrial development means character developments. We must begin in a modest way to build up a great technical institute in which instruction shall be given in the useful trades and tropical agriculture. The aim of the mission must be to produce a full orbed man, developed physically, mentally, morally and spiritually."17 This echoes much of what Goldie had said in an article in the Missionary Review in 191618, and it echoes what Jack Crump, Matthew Gilmour and Charles Abel were saying at the turn of the century. When J. W. Court went back in 1927, he returned to New Zealand very disillusioned. The sawmill was not operative, the radio was little more than an expensive toy and the Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 35

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 printing press had never materialised, because J. F. Goldie, year after year, had postponed action. One can have real sympathy with Court at this point. His fine dreams were buried in the dust. The Board now decided to sell Banga Plantation, and move right out of the field of 'industrial training' as they had understood it up to that time. The failure had been in many fields. First the 1920's were not a good time for commercial ventures in many areas. Second, business at any level and in any land requires a degree of whole-heartedness about it which was simply not forthcoming from J. F. Goldie. Finally, it failed because every decision had to be made by Goldie and therefore his long absences (necessary enough) and his infinite capacity to put off decision-making meant inertia and failure Frank and Gladys Chivers were part of the first missionary party from New Zealand, and this was their special field. Frank, an engineer by trade, was to run the sawmill, set up a lighting plant, run the printing press, and be the general odd job man around the place. In addition, he was expected to train the locals and was grandly called a 'technical instructor'. That Frank Chivers stayed for five years, until Gladys died in 1927, is a tribute to the man, his faith and his courage. He did not find a very cordial reception from the Chairman, if the letters of the period are any guide, and he was being asked to do too much. As we have seen with C.R.T.S. in Bougainville, it is not possible for men to adequately carry out a major maintenance programme with considerable and erratic demands and at the same time conduct a major training programme. In Fiji technical training succeeded because it was just that. Any jobs done by the staff or trainees were subsiduary to their main task. Plantation work under Crump in New Britain succeeded in its main aim of helping and guiding young men and bringing some of them to the Christian faith, and at the same time build up a large plantation, because Crump himself rolled up his sleeves and got into the job without thought of the cost to himself, and then out of this the school developed as a separate unit alongside the plantation. The plan to sell Banga fell through, not because of Goldie's opposition, but because of the world-wide slump. After Frank Chivers left, the sawmill continued under various Chinese carpenters, but the rest of the scheme became no more than a movement from one expedient to another. This is not to say that success could not attend practical training by practical men in the field, but as with an apprenticeship the numbers need to be limited and the objectives clearly defined. The training of carpenters has followed this plan. Each man coming to the Solomons for building work, gathered a limited team of local men around him with the prime purpose of erecting buildings. Each of them approached the matter in his own way, but the buildings were erected — and very good ones at that — and a few men were trained. The best of them were able to carry on major building jobs with minimal help

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A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 in later years. One is glad however that in these days, it is now possible for young men to have proper technical training which starts them at a great advantage in regard to any apprenticeship or other training. The same would be true of engineering staff. Chris Palmer the first post-war engineer, as we have seen, did a good job, cut short by illness. His successors. Bob Mannall, John Gatman, Terry Kehely and Denis Moor each continued with the same tradition. Always their major pre-occupation was with boats, the life-line of mission communications. Then there were an increasing number of lighting plants, telradios and telephone services. Always there were refrigerator doors, and missionaries watches, transistor radios and local people with clocks that wouldn't go. So no district engineer ever had time to be bored, nor lacked variety. Yet they achieved something in the training field also. John Gatman, for example, who had been to sea as a ship's engineer, and was not frightened to scrub a deck, lifted the standard of ships crews tremendously. He won the confidence of his fellow workers over the years and this too lifted morale. A generation earlier his aunts, Miss A. Cushen and Mrs Suckling had won the same kind of confidence from the people in Fiji. Now that a Solomon Islander, trained in New Zealand has become the Regional engineer, new patterns will emerge and training will become a matter for the technical schools E. VOLUNTEERS No account of the overseas mission work would be complete without reference to the volunteers. The people who for short terms served without pay, or with only the barest 'pocket money allowance' Some of them went out to serve in countries and churches overseas under the Voluntary Service Abroad. For many it was a rather informal sort of thing. Miss Burton went to Fiji to keep house for her brother, the Rev. J. W. Burton in 1902 and became so useful she was given a token payment by the Synod. Miss Irene Fillery travelled back to the Highlands with her friend, Sister Bev. Baker for a few weeks holiday . . . and stayed for three years. Sister Vera Cannon accepted for service in the Solomons but not able to be paid because of the depression, went out nonetheless in 1934 and for a year lived by the generosity of friends, until she came on to the permanent staff. Herbert Newton of Christchurch, leaving his business in that city, went out to serve for 18 months in the Solomons as a general handyman. There are so many and their line is not yet ended, that one cannot do more than list a few of them in the appendix to this book. But we would pay tribute to them all. A special place among these volunteers must be kept for the Order of St. Stephen. This Order initiated in New Zealand in the 1940's, asks young people to give a full year of full time service to the church, in whatever way the church likes to use them. They receive their keep and nothing else. This involves them in drawing on their own savings for incidental expenses, for clothing and personal things. It is done as a Christian service and a Christian witness. After a year of work and satisfactory

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A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 reports, the candidate may be accepted into the Order and receive the badge. The Solomons and the Highlands have been greatly enriched by some of these young people. Jack Murray, a carpenter from Christchurch was the first to go to the Solomons under the Order. Like many others, he not only did a good year of service, but stayed beyond the allotted time to see the particular task through. Even now, twenty years later, the men who worked with him speak with great affection of 'Master Jack', and pay tribute to his skills. Bernice Birch, a pharmacist from Palmerston North, was (and is) a vivacious person, who like a dancing light, illumined dark places and brought joy to a great number of folk. After her year was over, she took brief holiday in New Zealand, and then returned to help out for another two years, not only in the hospital, but also with the girl's boarding school. Few women in the Solomons have ever been so much like quicksilver, few have proved to be such pure gold. A clutch of missionaries' children remember with gratitude her Sunday School taken especially for them. The Solomon Island people remember her enthusiasm and responded to her love. Her colleagues of all races enjoyed her fellowship. After the Solomons she went as an N C.C. fraternal worker to India where she worked at the Francis Newton Hospital at Ferozapore, with the same zest and Christian joy. Now she is married, and with her husband, is at work among the teeming millions of Bombay. Several members of permanent staff also served for a year under the Order. In this case it was usually to allow some special piece of work to be done, and as a witness to the way in which all Christians should sit loose to the affluence that comes to some in the modern world. As early in 1956, some of the Solomon Islands people began to respond to this and seek ways of serving themselves in some sort of comparable conditions. This was not easy, partly because those who offered were often not being paid at all, or were getting only a pocket money allowance. But the road opened slowly and their witness was fine. One recalls Jonah Gege, the carpenter. Allen Rutter (namesake of the doctor) and Sakiri Ropete who did a fine job in difficult circumstances. Each of these first three has gone on to further Christian service, but none has perhaps made a better witness than they did in that special year.

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CHAPTER 2: MINISTRY IN THE SOLOMONS The Conference of 1924 was in high fettle. Not only was it designating three people for overseas service but one of them, the Rev. E. Oliver Haddon was a Maori. This was the first time such an appointment had been made, and not only did the man carry the support of the New Zealand Church but his father the Rev. Robert Tahupotiki Haddon, brought a special message from Mr. T. W. Ratana: "The 34,000 Maoris who have signed my pledge are behind Oliver's back as he goes forth to spread the Gospel on the foreign field."1 When Oliver Haddon rose to speak at the missionary meeting, the whole assembly rose to their feet and gave him an ovation. But the high moment passed and with passages booked and bags packed, Mrs. Haddon took ill, and was refused a medical clearance. By some strange oversight the husband had been medically examined but not the wife. It was a sad anti-climax for the pakeha and for the Maori. There have been other Maori volunteers both before and since2, but not one has ever gone officially from the Methodist Church. Yet from the point of view of Oliver Haddon and his wife, Moringa, it was probably a good thing. J F. Goldie had no background against which to appreciate that the Maori, though a Polynesian, was not to be classed with the Tongans and Samoans. It was clearly his influence that made the deputation of 1920 report concerning the appointments of Maoris to the Solomons that it was "inadvisable and impracticable". Though Mr. Haddon was to be paid at the current rate for Maori ministers ($360 per annum) Mr. Goldie felt he should be paid the same and treated the same as Tongans. This led Mr. Scrivin even in the 1930's to refuse an application from a Maori on the quite reasonable grounds that he would not be able to live on the "$50 — $72" paid to Polynesians.3 Goldie advised the Board that he intended to send Haddon to Ontong Java, that lonely Polynesian atoll 200 miles north of Roviana which the Mission District had in fact abandoned several years before because of its inaccessibility. It did not seem to occur to him that Mr. Haddon and his talented wife (she was an A.T.C.L. in music) could not be expected to live at the level of the Ontong Java people in spite of a common Polynesian heritage. Had the Board known more about the Solomons they would not have agreed. To do Mr Goldie justice he may well have changed his mind when the Haddons reached the Solomons, and he had had a chance to assess them at first hand. We can never know now, but from many points of view the failure of the Haddons to go was sad, and it is sadder that no other has had the opportunity to go and make his own special contribution to the church overseas. We have talked of the New Zealand contribution to the Solomons in terms of teachers and medical workers, but even there the names of ministers have crept in. For the missionary minister must be a jack-of-all trades and master of quite a few. He needs versatility to an amazing, and perhaps rather frightening extent. Yet there is room for men of very diverse temperaments and skills. This diversity is well illustrated in the ministers from New Zealand who served in Bougainville between the wars. Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 39

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Allan H. Cropp, the Australian who pioneered in Bougainville from 1922 onwards, if he had been a soldier, would have won medals for gallantry (and for foolhardiness which is its first cousin) and been the complete despair of his commanding officer in everything relating to discipline and team work. The first New Zealander to join him was Hubert G. Brown who was appointed to Teop in 1924.

Rev. H. G. Brown Whereas Cropp would scramble over the wall, Brown was more likely to pull it down brick by brick and leave a permanent path for others to follow. He was only in Bougainville for three years, yet twenty-five years after he had gone, the people still spoke of him with respect and affection. Though his Fijian colleague, Eroni Kotosoma, already spoke a little of the local language it was Brown who reduced it to writing and began the first translation work. Looking back now, one who came to know the language very well still marvels at what he accomplished in such a short time. His biggest frustration was lack of staff. He wrote "It is really tragic the way Mr. Cropp and I have to carry on with only one native helper each. We need a couple of dozen or more at once, and until we get them we are really only holding on,_trying to persuade the natives to remain friendly—by promising them teachers in the future. A little constructive work is being done, but we are so sadly in need of workers that we cannot do very much. On every side men are asking for teachers, and it becomes disheartening when time after time we have to ask them to wait. However, we rejoice in the opportunities given to us and trust that before very long our prayers for more teachers will be answered."4 Brown's chief local helper was a young man named Aririo, who later when he was baptised took the name of James. This man not only was a great help in learning the language and translating, but was in fact appointed as Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 40

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 teacher, before Brown left, the first local person so appointed and the first to go out as a missionary to another village. Had Brown been given another three years at Teop it would have been interesting to see if he could have continued the translation work and the training of local helpers in a way which would have made him independent of outside help. However it was not to be. His fiancee had come out in 1926 and they had been married in Bougainville, but the climate was not kind to either of them and on the eve of returning to the field, Hubert Brown was judged unfit by the doctors. The next to be appointed was the Rev. A. Harry Voyce. He and his wife, Beryl, left New Zealand in 1926, and travelled with the future Mrs. Brown to Bougainville They were appointed to Siwai, the inland area in the south of Bougainville, where Methodist witness had begun almost ten years before with a handful of Solomon Island teachers. They therefore had the advantage of having some local assistance right from the beginning. But this was one of the very few advantages. With no port near at hand they and their goods had to be landed on the open coast in an area noted for its treacherous surf, and then travel inland for ten miles or so over rough bush tracks to their appointed place. In the 'Open Door' of December 1926, the account of the first attempts to get into Siwai is told both by Mr. Voyce and Mr. Cropp, and it makes stirring reading: the attempts to get from the nearest safe anchorage at Torokina 25 miles away, the need for people going ashore, often to swim through the violent surf, the times when nothing could be done at all, the losses of goods and the danger to lives in the turbulent sea; the pouring rain (and in that area 240 inches a year is not uncommon); and the dependence on carriers, who were always a rather unpredictable quantity. When they went ashore and settled in, they were soon on the road. From village to village they went responding to those who called them, seeking to influence those who did not. The next few years were turbulent ones, among some of the most pugnacious, though most likeable people in the whole area. Mr. Voyce with a good measure of strength and courage was a man to inspire his colleagues and to carry the banner to the farthest corners. His tremendous journeys became legendary and also the speed at which he accomplished them. Some of his Bougainville friends dubbed him affectionately, the 'great hurry-up'. Even with his limited staff he pushed back the frontiers and managed to occupy an amazing number of places, and when reinforcements came from the British Solomons in 1929, there were plenty of openings for them. Those adventurous years in Siwai were very demanding and costly but both Beryl and Harry Voyce, not only survived them, but enjoyed them, and they built firm foundations. The biggest problem was that of communication. To go to the Siwai coast with no assurance of being able to land goods through the surf, or to go to Buin Bay forty miles away, and have to carry everything back that long road, or to go twenty five miles to Torokina, was a very real problem. Whether it was letters or flour, medicines, or soap, everything had to be carried on men's backs for there were no roads and no transport. Seeking a base near the coast, the Mission was at last able Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 41

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 to get land at the beach in Buin Bay in 1936. Harry Voyce had meantime made a name for himself not only as a pioneer, but also as a medical man, giving hundreds of injections to cure people of the dreaded yaws, and as a teacher, developing the school work in his area. It was decided that he should transfer to Teop, where he and Mrs. Voyce had already spent a year on a temporary basis. Newly appointed Don Alley was to take his place. But at the last minute there were changes made and the Voyces remained in Buin. Out of swamp which people had said was uninhabitable, in spite of the huge tree said by the locals to be inhabited by the spirits, in spite of the mosquitos, and opposition from the local people, many of whom were Catholics, the Voyces created out of the wilderness a station that must have been very near to a botanical garden! Keen gardeners both, the station seems to have had a tremendous variety of plants including 33 different kinds of bananas! But they were not just building a garden. They quickly made this a key station, and when Sister Ada Lee was appointed to Kihili (as it was called) in 1937, things went ahead educationally at a much faster rate.

Rev. D. C. Alley With Sister Ada, the Voyces and their children went on leave in late 1941. While they were absent the war descended on the Solomons, Kihili became a Japanese air base, and the work of years was swept away. After a period of deputation in New Zealand, the Armed Forces found Harry Voyce an invaluable resource for information about the Solomons, and especially Bougainville. He had travelled widely and had an observing eye and a good memory He obtained an appointment as a chaplain with the 3rd Division of the New Zealand Army and in this capacity was able to return to the Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 42

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British Solomons as soon as the tide of war began to turn. He was with the Division on Vella Lavella, and with the co-operation of the officer in charge, was able to make contact with the church people in the various islands of the western Solomons. Back to New Zealand for a time, and then when the war ended, the Board got permission for him to make a quick trip to Torokina, Bougainville, the allied centre from which the Japanese defeat had been organised. He went to secure war surplus material that would be suitable for the church and for restoration, and was to stay for a fortnight. During that period word came that the missionaries could return and he stayed on for four years before leave. When Mrs Voyce and other members of staff rejoined him they were for a long time confined to Torokina and its environs, but that did not stop contact with the local people, many of whom had to be brought to that place to be fed. They were in very bad shape, suffering from malnutrition and with their gardens (the only source of food) destroyed. Some of the mission teachers, who were among the few local people with any pretence at education, got caught up for the time being in the attempt to re-establish civilian control, and to re-establish the apparatus of normal Government. But this meant they were close at hand for consultations and advice. When weather and other things permitted quick trips were made into Siwai and Buin and to the north. By 1947 the overseas staff were able to move back into their areas where things were beginning to return to normal though scars of war were all too evident, not only in the remnants of planes and tanks, trucks and searchlights, but also in the poor health and the insecurity of the people. The missionaries, old and new, represented security and the stability of the past and were doubly welcome on that account. Kihili had been devasted. First the Japanese, then the saturation bombing of the allies, and the fine garden and plantation had become some three hundred acres of bomb craters linked by mud. A new, and as it proved temporary site, was found a couple of miles away at Koau and the work of re-establishment began. If it is true that man's reach ought to exceed his grasp, then Harry Voyce exemplifies this virtue. He reached at every straw of assistance offered by the re-established government, gathered every conceivable kind of war material that could possibly be of any use, and then besieged the Synod and the Board with clamant demands for more staff. A teacher, an engineer, a nurse and a builder came from New Zealand, and an agriculturist from Fiji. But this took time, and the years of tremendous toil were beginning to take their toll. The frustrations of dealing with a Government centred in Port Moresby, a thousand miles away, with shipping that was so scarce as to appear at times nonexistent, and the problems of staff, both local and overseas, who, however dedicated they were, could not fully understand his vision, because they themselves knew nothing of the background ... all this must have been a tremendous burden. Though all the dreams did not become reality, nor all the seeds planted grow to fruition, yet much was accomplished. Kihili was re-established and the church in Siwai-Buin strengthened. When the Voyces retired from the field at the end of 1958, after 33 years service, they Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 43

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 were the last of the preiwar staff except for Sister Ada, and the world in which they had done their best work was gone forever. Yet it was out of that world that the new one was being born and their influence had been considerable. Donald C. Alley, with his wife, Ruth, was appointed to the Solomons in 1936 and they eventually went to Teop Island. The work in that northeast comer of Bougainville had suffered from too many changes of staff, and while in many ways the local grass roots church was strong, there was need for a longer period of continuous leadership. Hubert Brown and John Metcalfe had each done a great deal to build the church, and it was on this foundation that Don Alley was to build. Like Brown he was a man whom people found it easy to love; like Voyce he had some of the restless spirit which sent him exploring into the mountains of Bougainville seeking ever new pastures in which the Gospel might be proclaimed. He took the translation work that Brown and Metcalfe had inspired, and added to it, and got the first hymn book in the language published. He began to make some headway with Scripture translation, and at the same time began to give more attention to the Rotokas people who spoke a language belonging to a completely different family from that of the Teop people. With Solomon Island teachers like David Voeta5 and by a growing number of local helpers, things seemed set for growth. In the same year, 1936, the first Bougainville men were permitted to go to Munda for training as pastor teachers. When the Alleys returned from leave for their second term of service, things were all set for major developments. Then came the war. Mrs Alley was evacuated and Don remained, determined to stay with his people and see it through. The story of what follows, should be told in the words of Mr Simon Rigamu of Teop, friend and fellow worker of Don Alley and a leader of his people to this day:— In the year 1942, the Government sent a letter to the Europeans working on their stations, saying, "All of you Europeans working here must leave your work and go up into the bush because the enemy have already arrived in Bougainville". But Rev. D. C. Alley, thinking of his people in the Teop Circuit, did not go although all the other Europeans left and hid. When Mr Read (the government officer at that time) sent a policeman with a letter telling him to leave at once, Don Alley went up to Namatoa but only stayed there a week. On the Wednesday before Good Friday Don Alley returned to Teop Island to take the Good Friday service and all the people came too as Teop Island was the place where they usually gathered for Circuit meetings. The next day, Thursday, a white man named Mr Urban who had a cocoa plantation near Teop, came to the minister's house. He was an Austrian. They talked together for an hour then Rev. Don Alley asked Mr Urban if he could go with him to his station. He called S. Rigamu and asked him to find two boys to paddle them in a canoe to Mr Urban's plantation. Rigamu replied that it was not a very good time to be going any distance but Mr Alley said they would

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A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 return at 2 o'clock so they began to prepare for the journey. They set off and as they were paddling two warships suddenly appeared. We called to them in the canoe but they were too far off to hear us. The Teop people immediately fled to the hills. When Rev. Alley and the others looked round they saw the warships. There was nowhere to hide so when the warships came near and they were ordered to go aboard they had to obey. They were taken before an officer and Mr Urban gave him a paper which could have been a paper saying he was a German as he was allowed to go, but Rev. D. C. Alley was tied up. When the boat came to Teop there was no one there except Rigamu and Busiana who were so frightened they climbed up a tree They were frightened because there were 100 soldiers or more on the island who were guarding our minister as he was taken to his house to collect a few things like pyjamas, shaver and some clothes to help him while he was in prison. When he was walking along the road with the soldiers he whistled to attract our attention so when I heard I climbed down the tree and went to him. I was not allowed to talk to him nor he to me but he spoke a few words to me when I was helping him to collect his things. Like this: "You must be strong in the Lotu". We turned and walked round the room . . . "Don't be frightened to conduct the services. Tell the teachers to work well in the Lotu" . . . We turned round the room still walking . . . "Tell my friends to stick to the Lotu, and you, Rigamu, must look after everything, the pastors, teachers and all the people." And then we set out for the ship with the soldiers but as we neared the Church our minister asked the captain of the soldiers if the three of us (Busiana as well) could go inside for 10 minutes. The captain hit him on the head because he did not want to allow him to go in. So our minister asked again for five minutes and the Captain agreed. The Church was full of soldiers and when our minister went up into the pulpit and the two of us had knelt down, he prayed and the soldiers laughed. When he had finished we shook hands then went out to the ship where we would say our last farewells. There was no service on Good Friday because everyone had run away to the bush.6 Simon Rigamu was to see his friend no more. On the 22nd June, 1942, Don Alley with some 900 allied prisoners of war, embarked on the ship, Montevideo Maru and sailed for Japan. They never reached their destination. Off the coast of Luzon, in the Philippine Islands, a torpedo found its mark and the ship went down, carrying most of her human cargo with her. With Don were ten members of the Australian Methodist Mission staff from the Rabaul area. No news of this disaster reached the outside world until after the war was over. Don Alley was captured because he could never refuse the call to serve people. He had gone back to the dangerous coast for the sake of his people and for the sake of two white women who remained on a plantation there. Perhaps his heart ruled his Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 45

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 head, but he left a fragrant memory with those same people that has not been forgotten. Clarence T. J. Luxton and his wife, Mavis, were sent out in 1939 to replace Allan Cropp at Buka. The pioneer's stormy years had achieved much but also left a considerable amount of turbulence. Clarence Luxton quickly began to gather up the positive results of the Cropp era and make a name for himself as a very practical man of affairs. A good seaman he was appreciated by the sea-going coastal people, and as a builder he was to commend himself also. But Luxtons had hardly got established when the war struck and Mrs Luxton was evacuated with the children. Mr Luxton intended to stay at his post, but travelling on the ship 'Bilua' up the Bougainville coast he and his vessel were commandeered to take evacuees to Port Moresby nine hundred miles away. His hopes of return came to nothing when his vessel was taken over by the Military. There remained nothing for him to do but to travel on to New Zealand. The story of that epic voyage from Kieta to Port Moresby through storm and minefield is numbered among the other sagas of the war. Mr Luxton was helped in his work on the boat by another New Zealander, Mr Cyril Pascoe, a Seventh Day Adventist missionary. He also called at Iruna on the south coast of Papua and had a joyful reunion with a friend who had been at college with him. Eight days later the friend, the Rev. John Gilkison, Congregational missionary of the L.M.S., was dead of blackwater fever. John was one of several Congregational ministers who trained at Trinity College and served overseas.7 When it was possible for missionaries to return to the Solomons after the tide of battle rolled back, the pioneer Chairman returned first and next came Mr Luxton. He had this privilege because he was a skilled builder and had some skill in medical work. So in April 1945, he was back in the Solomons with a tremendous building job ahead of him. He went out west, first to Patutiva in the Marovo Lagoon and then at the beginning of July to Bilua, Vella Lavella. For the time being this central point was to be the headquarters of the church, though Mr Goldie still remained in the Roviana area, and it was necessary that buildings be erected to house the expected 'invasion' of returning staff. Here Luxton became the focus of the reviving institutional life of the church. The church in the hearts of the people had never died, but its outward forms and its visible service to the community began to take shape again. As Mr Luxton built, and ministered to the sick and wounded he reported: "The natives everywhere are in good heart, and greatly rejoice that the mission station has reopened, they are rallying round in good style; as soon as the mission gardens are ready there will be a big influx of school folk. In the meantime all who come to the station to help must bring their food with them."8

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Rev. C. T. J. Luxton He was very busy, which was just as well. At one stage he was six weeks without news and the war had actually been over for a fortnight before he knew of it.9 It is not surprising therefore that he was caught by surprise at the arrival of the "Matai" on the 20th November with a cluster of returning staff. It was however a very pleasant surprise. Mrs Luxton and family were on board. A Synod was held and the next move was for the Luxtons to go on to Torokina, Bougainville. Here Mr Voyce had been preparing for them and they soon settled in. Their months there were very busy and demanding, but sorrow also laid its hand upon them. On the 27th April, 1946, their three year old daughter, Moyna, died of cerebral malaria. Before too long the Luxtons were back at Buka with the task of rebuilding their own station In the hope of having the Synod of 1947 there, the folk pushed forward with the building of the church. This was done under Clarence Luxton's direction and was one of the finest native style church in New Guinea in its day. It combined sound building practice with native crafts and for years was a show piece for visiting dignatories. Early in 1948 they were due for leave. Mr Luxton returned from leave alone, because of the health factor, and the Synod of 1948 decided to replace him at Buka and make him assistant to the Chairman at Roviana. He waited in vain for the ship that was to take him to his new post. In the meantime he welcomed a number of new missionaries and shared his limited stocks with them as they passed through. His replacement, the Rev. Gordon Comwell and Mrs Irene Cornwell arrived, and then sickness overtook Clarence Luxton and required him to leave permanently the islands

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A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 where had had made a name for himself as a builder — of houses, churches and the Church. Arthur A. Bensley was actually appointed to the Solomons prior to New Zealand taking over control, but his appointment was made in the expectation of that change. He went to Vella Lavella to take over from the Rev. Reg. Nicholson. Within a short time of his arrival, Vella was deprived of the services of Daniel Bula who had made such a big impact on New Zealand, and who had been the main pillar of the church in his home island. This meant that Arthur Bensley was deprived of the sage counsel he might otherwise have had. He had arrived in the Solomons a single man, but it did not take him long to put that right, and he married Sister Constance Olds, who had been sent from New Zealand in 1919. A humble man of deep spirituality and dedication, Arthur Bensley was also a good linguist. He was however anything but an impractical mystic. While he spent a good deal of time in his study, he was also quite capable of milking a cow, fixing a boat engine, treating the sick, supervising the erection of a house, or the firing of the copra drier. Bilua station has always been something of a crossroads and even in the 1920's the number of people who came and went was quite astonishing. For them Mr and Mrs Bensley were friends and helpers when needs so arose, whether they were black or white. He worked hard at the difficult Bilua language and did a great deal of translation work. So good was his grasp of the tongue that twenty years after he left the area he was able to go back for the Jubilee and not only preach in the language, but start again on the task of translation. Later he brought to New Zealand Mr Belshazzar Govasa so that they could go on with translation together. Mr Bensley had a way with people, and he had a deep and abiding conviction about the foreign mission work. For six years he was editor of the children's missionary paper "Lotu", and during that time stirred the youngsters into raising more than £1000 to build a church in the Solomons. At one stage in the 1960's there were several young women serving in the Solomons who had been influenced towards offering for service by Mr Bensley. But if he was deeply concerned for the overseas work he was also a wonderful pastor and minister, and the people in his various New Zealand circuits responded as those in the Solomons had done. In all this Mrs Bensley shared with him. Tom Dent, unlike Arthur Bensley, was not New Zealand born, but he came to this country in 1915 and entered the ministry here. He offered for the Solomons and was accepted as the minister to go with the first group sent out after New Zealand took over. Like J. R Metcalfe and A. A. Bensley who had gone out just before him, he found a wife in the Solomons, marrying Sister G. May Mansfield in 1923. He was appointed to the Marovo lagoon at the south end of New Georgia.

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Mr. B. Gosava helps Rev. A. A. Bensley translate (New Zealand) The work here had been pioneered by a Tongan teacher, Paul Iliofaiva and his wife, Kezia Uta, in 1912, and the Tongan influence was continued when Paula Havea was appointed, but for a few years Tom Dent lived at Patutiva, the principal village, and strengthened the work there. The number of young men who are called Dent or Tom Dent is evidence of his popularity with the people. Tom Dent was something of a schoolmaster and he was frequently called back to the head station at Kokenggolo to take charge when someone was on furlough. He also took charge there when Mr Goldie was absent, notably during 1929. He had rather more sympathy with the Chairman than some of his colleagues and seemed to work with him without friction. His best work was probably done in the Marovo where he built up the church considerably, though he is affectionately remembered by men and women from other areas that he had taught or worked with at the head station. He continued to write to some of them and they to him for a long time. He prepared the translation of the Gospel of Mark in the Marovo language, a work which was later taken up by the Seventh Day Adventists who completed the whole Bible. Though Marovo was part of the Roviana circuit, Tom Dent was given freedom to conduct his own quarterly meeting, and he introduced the practice of having Holy Communion for the assembled leaders. He tells of the first occasion, "I thought I had trained them in the taking of the Sacrament. We had only one drinking vessel and I had told them only a sip was to be taken. Lo and behold, when the 'wine' was handed to the first man, he drank the lot in the twinkling of an eye! The service was held up until I sent back to the parsonage to ask Mrs Dent to make a fresh supply!"10

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Rev T. Dent Mrs Dent's health brought them back to New Zealand in 1933 and they went to Thames for a period Later they transferred to Queensland, Mrs Dent's home. After retirement they went to England and there Mr Dent died in 1961. Wherever he went he was an ardent advocate of overseas missions. He did deputation for the Methodist Missionary Society and the British and Foreign Bible Society right up to the time of his death. Reference has already been made to the work of the Revs. F. H. Hayman and E. C. Leadley. Clarence Leadley was asked by the Solomon Island Synod of 1964 to return to the Solomons in 1966 as Chairman. This he did and for a term of three years guided the District and helped the Chairman-elect, the Rev. Leslie Boseto, prepare himself for this task. Leslie Boseto became the first Bishop of the area under the United Church and later the second Moderator in 1972. A. Wharton E. Silvester, as his name was written in the Minutes of the Church Conference, was a fairly impressive collection of syllables But in real life the man who was usually known as 'Wattie', or 'Bish', was more impressive than any high sounding name. He and his wife, Moyna, had been appointed to the Solomons to succeed the Bensleys and so came to Bilua and the island of Vella Lavella in 1935. They continued the work that was being done and helped to expand it. One of their special concerns was to help in preparing the way for the re-establishment of the medical unit at Bilua which was planned for 1938.

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Rev. E. C. Leadley revisits Solomans as President of the New Zealand Conference. Left to Right: Rev. J. R. Metcalfe, G. G. Carter, T. Piani, D. Pavavi, J. V. Bitibale, J.Rotoava, I. Buadromo, D. I. A. McDonald They ably backed up Sister Edna White when she came in 1936 and were an ever present help to Dr Rutter and his staff. With the war, Mrs Silvester and Ngaire, their daughter, were evacuated, but Wattie stayed on as did Sister Merle Farland. After the war he came back again and served till 1952.

Rev. A. W. E. Silvester

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Though he gave valuable service and is well remembered, it is his war time exploits which 'made the headlines'. Behind the Japanese lines, he moved constantly ministering to his people and helping them in time of need. He also became involved in the rescue and care of downed airmen and shipwrecked sailors. The most famous of these occasions was after the Battle of the Kula Gulf when he was instrumental in caring for 161 men from the U.S.S. Helena. For this he was awarded the Medal of Merit by the President of the United States in 1946. His peace time services and his war time service were however not two different things. They were two parts of the same. The resourcefulness, the cheerfulness of deep faith and the commitment to Christ and his people were the marks of 'Wattie' Silvester's service in peace and war. In the post-war era the missionary minister's task has been changing rapidly. The first men appointed had as colleagues, the veterans. Like them, they were caught up in the sheer physical toil of rehabilitation and re-establishment. This not only involved buildings and boats, but also long patrols and lengthy meetings with people singly and in groups. It involved learning and listening, as well as speaking and teaching. When the war was over the first thought had been to return to the situation as it was before the war. The missionary had represented security and the strength of traditional life and ways. This phase passed. The very foundations of the pre-war world were no longer secure. As first one and then another of the pre-war staff retired, the new men found they did not have the status that had been given to their predecessors. All sorts of new forces were at work, and new ambitions and new aspirations were becoming apparent. Educational and medical work, while demanding, was reasonably straightforward. The task of transforming the mission into a church was infinitely more complex, slower and less spectacular. The need was not so clearly seen, the path was not clearly marked out, and the local people themselves were much less sure about what they wanted. At Circuit level, the Quarterly Meetings became forums where it was discovered dissent could be expressed The Native Conference, which met periodically after 1950 was attended by representatives of all circuits. The white staff kept in the background and gradually the Conference found a voice and was amazed to find it was listened to. Synod gradually was transformed as local circuit representatives were admitted, the number of local ministers and deaconesses increased. Bougainville and Buka were growing away from the rest. The political boundary line, however artificial in the beginning, began to represent a real division in the social, economic and political development. All these factors made the task of the missionary minister more complex and more difficult. In the village the superior status which had for so long been enjoyed by the pastor teacher was eroded by the presence of better qualified schoolteachers, artisans and government officials. The minister, whether white, black or brown no longer was accepted unquestioningly. In the new increasingly secular world the missionary Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 52

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 minister had to find a new place, he was led, rather than leading, he listened rather than talked and became increasingly the junior colleague instead of the 'ngati hiniva' (fount of all wisdom). Mistakes were made, battles were fought on the wrong issues and foolish things were said and done. But the understanding of the new role of the missionary minister grew all through the 50's and 60's. When the United Church came into being, the ministers and the church were prepared for their new role in a changing and exciting world. The story of that change and the men who made the transition cannot yet be written. We are still too close to it. When our children can look back with clearer eyes, we hope they will see, not what we did, but what God did, for always we were conscious of His power at work among us.

1. O.D. Mar. 1924 p. 4 & 5. 2. e.g. in 1919 M. Tauroa, then a student for the ministry 3. Scrivin to A.R.Vosper Aug- 1938 re Rev- Te Uira Tuteao 4. O.D. June 1926 p.12. 5. Carter "David Voeta" monograph. 6. O.D. June 1967 p. 14-15. 7. O.D. June 1942 p. 8 & 9. The photos of John Gilkison and Don Alley hung together in Trinity College Library 8. O.D. Sept. 1945 p.3. 9. O.D. Dec. 1945 p.4. 10. Personal communication T. Dent.

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CHAPTER 3: FOUNDATIONS OF NATIONHOOD FIJI, TONGA AND SAMOA

A. EDUCATION When Fiji became independent in 1970, a census of prominent Fijians in government and the professions would have revealed that a very high proportion of them owed their early training and education to the Methodist Church. This was not just because the majority of the indigenous population are at least nominally Methodist, but also because, through the years of the 20th Century the Methodists had pioneered in almost every field of education. Teacher training, technical education, education for women, education for ethnic groups and general education. It is an outstanding record which has yet to find its chronicler. In this story New Zealanders have played a very notable part for over 70 years. Each of them would happily acknowledge that they were but one part of the team and Australians have also contributed tremendously. In essence Fijian Methodism did what the Methodist Churches in the Pacific did but it did it more successfully. In part this was due to the long service on the part of many key members of staff, in part because of the constant stimulus of the clash of cultures. Not only did Indian pressure on Fijians grow during the century, but Fiji developed a sizeable group of permanent residents who were of Caucasian, or part Caucasian descent. Again Fiji claims the title of "the crossroads of the Pacific" and with some justification. For a century it has probably had more contact with the outside world by way of short term contacts than any other group in the South Pacific. All these factors helped, as did the fact that, outside Papua New Guinea, Fiji has the biggest population in the South Pacific, much of it concentrated on the island of Viti Levu. None of these by themselves would have produced the present fine school system which has provided a fitting setting for the second university in the South Pacific outside Australia and New Zealand. Methodist concern for education has been a notable feature of its activities in many countries. In Fiji, as we have already seen, R. B. Lyth can claim to have laid the foundations of medical education and the system of training home missionaries. John and Mary Polglase and William and Elizabeth Fletcher in turn played their part. Gradually a system of circuit schools grew up. On each mission station where there was an overseas worker there was established a circuit school which gave basic instruction to those who could come. The first students always tended to be adults and often it was argued that education was too important for children. The female sex were of course excluded. Their function as child bearers and providers did not seem to make it necessary to give them schooling though missionaries' wives did what they could in sewing groups and household instruction. From these circuit schools the best young men would be sent on to the 'Vuni levu' (the big school) where after suitable Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 54

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 training they might become catechists and appointed to a village. These home missionaries would not only take responsibility for worship and the pastoral care of the people but would also conduct elementary and rather primitive schools. Later the very best men might be called back again for further training at Navuloa or later Davuilevu as 'talatala' (ministers). If successful this was followed by a six year probationary period before ordination. This system which is basically the one followed everywhere in the Pacific by the Methodists, was effective and reasonably efficient in its day but tended to perpetuate itself after it was no longer useful. In Fiji the growth of primary education under government control, and governed by newer concepts of education made the circuit schools an anachronism by the 1930s though some of them persisted until much later. One teacher recalls a man of 38 still in school in 1935. New regulations, and a new understanding of the nature of education soon put an end to such things. Technical education owes its beginning as a systematic arrangement to a Mr Wham who came from Australia about the turn of the century. He was a master builder and craftsman who before going into private business in Fiji developed a training establishment at Davuilevu which began to produce good craftsmen. Even after he went into business on his own he continued to be actively associated with the training establishment and the training of young men in the building industry. Mr B. E. Sutherland from New Zealand spent many years at the D.I.I. (District Industrial Institute) building on this foundation. In 1919 R. A. Derrick from Victoria came to Fiji. In the next 30 years he put his stamp on education in general and technical education in particular, giving to his adopted country an approach to and a system of technical education which might be well copied in other lands. He broadened the base of technical education, gathering into it arts and crafts as well as skills that lie at the root o£ the building and engineering trades. He was capable and determined but his genius lay in his ability to adapt the curriculum to the local situation without compromising the standard of the work. He used local materials for art and craft work constantly bringing in new ideas and adapting them to the Fijian situation. Within the Methodist school system he created a prototype which the government followed. Later he moved into government service and it is fitting that the Derrick Technical Institute today stands as his perpetual memorial. In the field of teacher training the Methodists began early and at a critical point in Fiji's history, provided the sole teacher training for the colony. The Methodist training centre for this as for all educational activities was Davuilevu, and here training of a high standard was taking place before the government began a teachers college in 1926. There was no tension because Methodists were still deeply involved in primary education and the philosophy of leaving education to voluntary agencies which is still to be found in British territories in the Pacific, meant that no hasty attempt was made to take over the schools. No doubt each learnt from the other. In 1942 war brought the Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 55

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 threat of Japanese invasion and the realities of an "American-New Zealand invasion". Every suitable building in strategic areas was commandeered for the troops including those of the government teachers' college. The students and staff were brought to Davuilevu and integrated in to the Methodist college under the principalship of Mr Alfred J. Birtles, M.A., M.Sc., Dip.Ed., of New Zealand. Alt Birtles had gone to Fiji from New Zealand in 1938 and was one of the most highly qualified members of the Methodist staff. The government recognised this and was grateful for his leadership of the combined college with all the problems that integration posed under wartime conditions. By the time the tide of war had begun to recede and the government was able to move back into their own buildings at Nasinu, it had been made clear that one effective college was the way ahead and so Methodist teacher training did not resume as a separate entity. Since that time all teachers have been trained by the government. Inez Hames is the only one of New Zealand missionaries to date to have published her reminiscences. That book "I Remember . . ." is a fascinating collection of memories and lightens up much in the history of Fiji education. She went there in 1920, and though officially retired, she, like other 'old hands', cannot keep away from the place that is as much her home as New Zealand. Perhaps someone will gather up her other writings, published in the "Missionary Review" and in other places. Together they would make a fascinating study of one aspect of Fiji's march to nationhood. B. GIRLS’ EDUCATION Even in the 'western' world the education of girls and women has not, until the last two or three generations, received any high priority. We cannot then be surprised if in societies where the whole economy depended on subsistence gardening and where women were the chief gardeners, where the survival of the tribe or clan was more important than the survival of the individual, there has been, and in some cases still is, stout resistance to the idea of education for women at all. Both in Fijian and Indian cultures women's role did not seem to call for the education that the white man brought. Earlier, education was seen as the magic formula which would transmute the metal of traditional culture in the glittering gold of the more affluent society—and therefore was too important for women. Later, education became a key to status and to the earning power which substitutes for prowess in war as a means of social acceptance and advancement, but still no need is necessarily seen for women to share in such a venture. The idea of the separate personhood of women, the importance of their roles and wives and mothers, and the need for education to fulfil these roles does not take root easily. In Fiji, as elsewhere, it was the Christian Gospel and the Christian teacher which made the first changes in traditional attitudes. The story perhaps begins with the Rev. William Slade who, in 1886, came from New Zealand to Fiji as a missionary. He had come to New Zealand from England in 1878 Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 56

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 as a home missionary, and during that years was received as a candidate for the ministry. He was approved by his quarterly meeting 12 days before his 19th birthday. In 1879 he began his studies under the Rev. Alexander Reid and in 1881 was appointed as a probationer to the Raglan Circuit. Here he met his future wife, Margaret Jean Gilmour. They were married after William's ordination in 1885 and stationed in Port Chalmers. In the meantime, Slade's offer for service for foreign work had been accepted and he was appointed to the Cakaundrove Circuit in Fiji. It was symbolic that the Slades were farewelled from Auckland on the last day of April on a stormy wet night and that they arrived in Fiji to find that the house that they were to occupy at Vuna was partly demolished by a hurricane. For William Slade's service was to be marked by intense physical toil and some very stormy passages. Leaving wife and child at Navuloa, Slade got busy and in a very short time had the station at Vuna returned to order. He quickly became immersed in the round of missionary activity, and because he was a prolific and graphic writer he conveyed to the folk back home in New Zealand something of the kind of life that every missionary lived in those days. In one article published in the "Methodist" he described a routine tour during these years.1 Setting out in a whaleboat called "Ruve" (the Dove) at 7 a.m. on the 8th May 1888, he returned at 6.30 a.m. on the 24th, Queen Victoria's birthday, an absence of 16 days. One day he rose at 5.30 a.m. for early morning bath and at 6 a.m. conducted a prayer meeting. After breakfast a business session commenced at 9.30 continuing until 3 p.m., lunch being postponed lest the natives drag out the meal hour, oblivious of time, and the business be unfinished. The late lunch was interrupted by news that a boy had fallen from a tree and broken his arm. Improvising splints from pieces of a packing case he set the limb, and in due course was gratified to learn the bones had knit successfully. After the meal he had an interview with the local chief, to reprimand him for sailing his cutter on Sunday. Interviews with visitors took up the evening until a very late hour when he drew a mosquito net around him and curled up on his sleeping mat, but not to sleep because a crowd of boys chanting outside the guest house. Finally at 2 a.m. he had to rise and order them away. Just one day in an endless round of journeys and concerns. In 1889, at the request of the people, the missionary station was changed to Ba District on a site at Nailanga. His son recalls the change over in these words: "There was no house and temporary quarters were occupied in a native thatched roofed one until a new mission house could be erected. My father arranged with the Board of Mission for him to receive what a house would have cost had a contract been let, so that he could erect one himself with the aid of native labour. By such means, a more spacious mission was built, well braced against hurricanes. A mile or two distant was a large spring. He installed settling tanks there and was able to pipe clear water, not only to his own home, but also to the village further down towards the river. The Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 57

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 solid kauri building, after 50 years, was moved in sections to Lautoka and is still in use there. That he was not only able to develop his own skills, but also to train local helpers spoke well for his technical ability. One day he was the carpenter up the ladder nailing joists in place, on another he was the blacksmith at the anvil, forging and making tierods, plates and angles of steel to prevent the spreading of rooms under hurricane pressure. On yet another he would be seen as a plumber working with stock and dies on the water pipes, or as a painter mixing leading and oil or plying the brush on the walls. When the house itself was finished he was to be seen at his treadle lathe turning chair and table legs for household furniture. None of this was at the expense of administration, preaching and pastoral duties. Nor did he fail to find time for general reading and study. An avid and quick reader, possessed of a retentive memory, he ranged over a wide field. He was deeply interested in history and biography, but also kept in touch with world affairs and scientific progress, and when the time came to return to New Zealand, he did so with a mind well furnished." This account is supported by the report given in the "Advocate" of the 26th November, 1898, by the Rev. T. J. Wallis, who had worked with Mr Slade at Ba. He said: "The station at Ba is the creation of the Rev. William Slade. He built the house with his own right hand; and by a system of water works he has supplied, not only the station, but the neighbouring future town with an abundance of pure water. The whole station is a monument of energy and skill." Slade's deepest concern was for the people and the expression of that concern led him into occasional conflict with the administration which took its responsibilities with self-conscious seriousness, and whose staff at the local level did not always live up to the idealism of their instructions. Many missionaries have been in the same situation and have been seen as irritating cranks, or dangerous stirrers by government officers. Only a few however have been threatened with deportation as William Slade was in 1900. In that year the Board of Missions in Sydney received a request for them to remove this "political agitator" from the colony. Quite properly the Board refused to act until a proper trial had been held. In the event the Chairman of the District, the Rev. A. J. Small, went and saw the Governor and with the transfer of a government official the matter was quietly dropped. It was in the field of education that William Slade made perhaps his most lasting contribution. He had established a boys' school at Vunativi when he built up the station at Nailanga, as most missionaries would have done. But he and his colleagues in Synod had for long been concerned about the girls their well trained young men might marry. Too often promising men went back and married village girls with little or no education, who could not support them in their work or indeed understand what their husbands were about. Certainly a true Christian marriage partnership was denied to many of them. All the missionaries were concerned, but it was left to Mr Slade to

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A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 bring forward the first practicable proposal for a girls' boarding school. With Synod approval, Matavelo Girls' Boarding School was opened in 1899. Not only did Matavelo and Vunitivi become the forerunners of the present Ba High School, but Matavelo became the spiritual mother of all the other girls' boarding schools in Fiji. If it was Mr Slade who founded the school, it was another New Zealander who was to teach in it for many years, and by her dying act spark off other developments in girls' education. She was Mary Ballantine who was born on the 29th October 1867, during the unsettled time of the Land wars in the North Island of New Zealand.2 William Ballantine and his wife lived at Brookby in the Papakura Valley. Mary had rather a hard life in those pioneering days on a small mixed farm where her father scraped a living from the soil, while mother cared for the family. Her school days were limited to a few years, and as a young girl she found few of the opportunities and comforts which children of today enjoy. These she shared with her brother John, and sisters Margaret, Elizabeth and Jane. Even church and community activities were limited. When she grew older Mary went to the city of Auckland where she found her early training at home helped her to obtain work in a laundry, but did not realise how important this would later be. After some time she took up the challenging and difficult task as a prison wardress in Auckland. Here, to keep the women usefully employed, she also helped teach a little bit about good housekeeping, washing, ironing and mending, all of which would be useful at home or in finding work after release. The contact Mary had with these women led her at times to the Auckland Central Mission where Sister Francis helped conduct the "Door of Hope" and "Helping Hands Centre" of the Methodist Church. Some of the women had been in contact with the mission either before or after their time in prison. While off duty Mary and another wardress went one evening, about 1895, to hear Sister Francis speak of the work of the church overseas. She heard of the need of the church in Fiji for mission sisters to help the few ministers provide Christian teaching for girls, and also aid the women in the care of children and the provision of better homes. It was the challenge of this need that became God's call to Mary Ballantine. She wanted to try and help the girls in Fiji but she was aware of her own lack of education and her limited contact with the church. However, she was willing to leam and committed herself to Jesus Christ. She became a member of the catechism class and was eventually accepted by the Board of Missions when she was 33 years of age. She arrived in Suva in August 1900, and was met by the Superintendent Minister who was then stationed at Rewa. But in this appointment, and in her next one, she found that asthma troubled her and so she was moved on, as the Chairman sought to find a place where she could serve. Eventually she came to the drier side of Viti Levu and at Matavelo School she found the home that she was to occupy for the next 16 years. She and Miss Butt began the 1902 school year by moving out into practical fields.

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She arranged with the nearby sugar mill employees for the girls to do their washing. It is said that while she taught the girls how to do the washing she herself usually starched and polished the stiff white collars which the men wore. The girls learned these skills and the income helped to pay for materials needed for the school. Her first superintendent minister, the Rev. William Heighway, wrote shortly after her arrival, "Miss Ballantine is a gem". And so it proved. Always conscious of her own lack of basic education, she worked hard to teach the girls and to guide them, not only in practical skills, but in academic studies as well. That her work was adequate and successful the record bears witness. A great many young women who passed through her hands achieved great things in later days. One of them, Mere Walesi Ratu, became a teacher on the distant island of Rotuma, Lolohea Ratu studied in Australia and became the first Fijian trained in kindergarten work, a craft which she put into practice in Suva. Another, Oripa, went as the first woman missionary from Fiji to New Britain where she was a craft teacher. Sickness took Miss Butt away from Matavelo and later Miss Forward, who came to lelp Mary Ballantine, also left, but her own health seemed good. However, in 1915 while on leave in New Zealand she had an operation from which she seemed never to fully recover. Ill health plagued her during the following years and when her next furlough was due in 1918 she was ordered to have immediate treatment. But after a brief stay in Auckland she returned to her beloved Fiji. The doctors did not expect her to reach Suva alive but he did. After a brief period in Suva Hospital, she summoned the strength to travel back to Matavelo. She died in the Sugar Refinery Hospital on the 26th June, 1918. In life Mary Ballantine had given generously of her small store of knowledge and ability. Almost her last act was to write her Will in which she left one £100 for the furtherance of girls' education in Fiji. Her life and witness and the story of this gift proved the inspiration which led the church on to the establishment in 1934 of the Ballantine Memorial School. Mary Ballantine was the first of a considerable company of New Zeaand women who have given long service to Fiji. Perhaps few of them would have been classed as outstanding teachers but all of them had a deep devotion and commitment to the people which have made them loved and respected, and made their contribution through the school and through their social contacts of great value. Another such was May Graham of Rangiora. She heard through the family of the Rev. J. W. Burton of the desperate need of the Indians in Fiji and she volunteered to go out and help. She was accepted and left for Fiji in 1910. Apart from two breaks in New Zealand to care for her aged parents, and occasional furloughs she has been there ever since. Appointed to Dilkusha as a teacher she was left, within a few months, to manage a family of 17, the school to supervise, the whole station and church to care for, and only one Fijian to assist her. Neither she nor Jojiana spoke Hindi at that stage. Mr Burton had departed because of his wife's illness and the Rev. Cyril Bavin, who like John Burton was New Zealand born, was still on leave prior to replacing him. In a sense that set the pattern for the future. While Miss Graham, as a teacher, was a Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 60

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 constant and able worker, Miss Graham the pastor was always to the fore. The girls she taught grew up and married and Miss Graham moved in to live with them in times of need, when babies were coming or sickness overtook them. She lived among and with the people and moved out visiting from house to house, helping, witnessing and serving. And still she goes on, known and loved by countless Indians, Christian and non-Christian.3 Maud Griffin did for the education of girls, particularly Indian girls, what R. A. Derrick did for technical education. Daughter of Lydia Augusta de Cartaret of Jersey, sometime schoolmistress of Driving Creek School, Coromandel, she lived up to that imperial sounding name as well as inheriting her mother's love of teaching. Miss de Cartaret left Driving Creek to marry the Rev. T. N. Griffin, a young Methodist minister not long come from England, and the family moved, in typical Methodist fashion, every three years. But three primary schools did not deter this clever child, Maud, who in 1901 won a senior scholarship while at Christchurch Girls' High School and then proceeded to matriculate in 1903 and go to training college and university. While completing her Bachelor of Arts she taught at both public and private schools at primary level, and then in 1910 went on to the staff of the Invercargill Girls' High School. In 1912 she went to Fiji where for the next 30 years she was a powerful force in education. Her service was not however continuous and perhaps this was one of her advantages. Given her brilliant mind, commanding personality, and deep dedication, every experience was an aid to her ultimate service. She was in New Zealand from 1915 to 1918 because of ill health but taught at Napier Girls' High and Palmerston North Secondary Schools. In 1925 she was again in New Zealand, this time to study. She completed her Diploma in Education with credit in Psychology. In 1928 it was the first Pan Pacific Conference of Women that took her to Honolulu; in 1932 it was the desire for a better knowledge of Hindi and Indian culture that took her to India where she taught for 8 months in a school for missionaries' children, travelled far and wide and saw schools at all levels and attended university She went to the All India Women's Conference and learnt much from outspoken women about the need for training. Back in Fiji 'Grit’, as she was affectionately known, swung into action. In her first term she had taught English to Fijian and other Pacific Island students. In her second she taught Indian students and supervised the practical training of Indian teachers at Dilkusha. Then in 1926 she cared for the Boys' Orphanage. In 1927 she had begun Dudley House School, a primary school for Indian girls. As far back as 1913 she had helped the Rev. Eric Ingamells to organise a staff conference on the teaching of Hindi and the development of a suitable curriculum for such students. Now 14 years later she was putting into practice the things she had learnt, this time in a school of which she was the unquestioned head. She complained that she got very little help from the Mission or the Government but that did not stop her and soon she was training Indian girls as teachers, and even a few Fijians, the first women teachers to qualify in all Fiji. If government and church did not share her vision they soon Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 61

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 found it was easier to cooperate than stand out against her. For 'Grit’ would not take 'No' for an answer. It was said that every governor of Fiji for 20 years knew her from personal contact. But she succeeded. The first fruits were in 1929 when those first three Indian girls and one Fijian received their government certificates as teachers. After her visit to India her convictions were reinforced and her ideas widened. About this time she and her school were visited by a Mr Mayhew, Secretary of the Advisory Council on Colonial Education in the British Government. It is significant that he incorporated many of her ideas and ideals in his final report. Her concern certainly did not end with the classroom wall. She was for many years a regular visitor to the jail. She formed the first group of Guides in Suva (though not in Fiji), in the late 1920s. In the mid forties health took her back to New Zealand. But even though she was officially retired nothing could dim her vigour or blunt her concern. She went back in 1958/59 to try to "get something done for the four out of five Indian women who could not read in any language". For this she ordered books from India, talked to the children in the schools and told them to go home and teach their mothers to read. Many did this. In 1959 she spent some time at Dudley High School, the coeducational school which was the successor to the work she had begun so long before. Her final trip back in 1962 gave her another chance to see something of her harvest that was being reaped and she returned to New Zealand for the final years, by no means content, but quite sure that it had not been all in vain.4 While Maud Griffin stands out she was not by any means alone in her endeavours for girls' education. Frances H. Tolley was another who followed in Mary Ballantine's steps and who, at one stage, worked quite closely with Maud Griffin in the field of teacher training. Miss Tolley went to Fiji in 1927 and was appointed to Matavelo where Mary Ballantine had served. She met many of Miss Ballantine's old girls and no doubt heard many tales of that beloved lady. She knew of the plans being made to use Miss Ballantine's legacy and the other money that had been raised for a special school. Shortly she was chosen to help with the preparations and she was transferred in 1932 to Butt Street Fijian School in Suva. Here she came into association with Maud Griffin and together they tackled the task of training women teachers. When Ballantine Memorial School was opened in 1934 Frances Tolley was chosen as the first principal. It was a well deserved honour and she spent six profitable years establishing the school as a valued part of the educational system. Her interests were wide and she was not content with any narrow definition of education. In later years she gave a cup for "meke" (dancing) competitions — a sign of her broad interest in culture and education. It was health that forced her retirement at the end of 1939. Years later one of her colleagues wrote, "She continued to be> deeply interested in Fiji and in her former students, maintaining a correspondence and sending books. When she was able to visit Fiji later it was obvious that she was deeply loved. Her vision helped to raise Fijian women and prepare them to take their place in their own community. Her example inspired many who are today serving in Fiji."5 Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 62

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C. THE INDIAN CHURCH The coming of the Indian to Fiji presented the church with a problem which it found hard to solve. Indeed it found it hard to even face the problem at all. When the first coolie labour was brought to work in the cane fields, the missionaries tried very hard to pretend there was no problem. It is true that they were very busy men and women, with far more on hand than they could possibly hope to accomplish. It is also true that they were scarcely fitted by training or experience, nor yet by basic philosophy to face the issues. They believed that their task was the winning of souls and all else was subservient to this. In Christian compassion they ministered to the sick and the needy, and schools sprang up here and there, but in the main all these endeavours were ancillary to the task of converting people. They believed as did all their contemporaries in the superiority of the white races and though they took up, for Christ's sake, the "white man's burden", it was from a position of superiority and to some extent in a spirit of condescension. We have tried to show elsewhere that they were outstanding people, these missionaries, but they were very much products of their time, and these things together with their comparatively low standard of educational attainment, simply did not equip them for meeting the "coolie problem". The "Coolies" far from being "ignorant savages" were people, some of whom were very well educated, and all of whom were heirs to a very long and noble religious tradition, whether it was Hindi or Muslim. They were by nature conservative, and as sure of the rightness of their religion, and as filled with the conviction of their superiority to other men as the white man himself. They had come to Fiji for a variety of reasons, some honourable, some dishonourable, some of their own choosing, some because they had been in effect kidnapped. But they were prepared to work and to wait. They saw in this land, peopled by "savages" a place to live which would give them a chance such as Mother India could never offer them. They were the victims of cruel and inhuman practices, they suffered and died, but with that tremendous patience that the Anglo-Saxon does not understand, and therefore affects to despise, they endured. At first the missionaries saw only the threat to their protégés, the Fijian, and the work they had built up. Then when they did see the Indians as people in need of the Gospel they found themselves quite unable to meet the need. William Slade at Ba had been aware of it, and prepared to fight for some action, but he himself was over burdened, and could do little directly. He and his colleagues at the Synod of 1891 asked the Australian Church to seek help from India and they rejoiced when a catechist was appointed in the next year. This man did not make much impact, but one can suspect that his was a very lonely task. The white missionaries did not understand him, nor the nature of the task he faced. The next move was made by the appointment of Miss Hannah Dudley in 1897. She had had some years in India and she brought to the task the understandings from that experience. In particular she realised the need for social Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 63

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 concern—the concern for people as people, to whom service and love should be given without any overriding attempt to convert them. Hannah Dudley struggled, contending against ill health, misunderstanding from the Synod and the community, scarcely seeming to make any impact on the people she sought to serve. At various times her sister, Lily, and her mother stayed with her and worked, officially or unofficially alongside her. But it was Hannah Dudley who is the "mother" of the Indian Division of the Methodist Church in Fiji today. In the course of time, when health finally made retirement from Fiji imperative she came to Auckland and settled in this land. With her were the children she had gathered into her own family. Of these Raymond entered our ministry and was elected President of Conference in 1956. Many people, and the church as a whole had reason to praise God for the Rev. Dr Raymond Dudley, M.A., D.D., F.R.E.S., and for the home in which he was nurtured. We have been slower perhaps to acknowledge that he was also a gift to us from the Indian Community in Fiji. The period from the arrival of Hannah Dudley until 1920 was not only a period when the basis of the Methodist work among Indians was being laid, but it was also a time when the attitudes of the workers among the native Fijians were being transformed. The process was painful and there were many tense moments and plenty of misunderstandings. But it seems clear that 1920 marks a complete change in the approach of the church in Fiji to its task. For the first time education was taken seriously in its own right, not as an adjunct to conversion. Institutional and social work was increasingly done for the service of the people rather than for some ulterior motive, and it was realised that the approach to Indian people had to be on the basis of selfless service, which might or might not act as leaven within the society. That this change took place was due very largely to the staff of the Indian mission and the reaction they made to the challenges of their task. The process of change was not easy and even within the Indian work there was never complete unanimity. But in this task of transformation New Zealand has some special interests. While Hannah Dudley compassionately and slowly laid sure foundations of understanding and concern, it was a John Wear Burton who challenged authority and the accepted attitudes of the time both among the missionaries and the Mission Board.6 Burton was born in Taranaki and was a candidate for the ministry at the Nelson Conference of 1895. In 1897 he was received on probation and sent to Upper Thames Circuit. After two years there he was sent to Malvern, Canterbury for two years and then had a year at Edgeware Road. Here he heard the call to missionary service and was appointed to Fiji in 1902. As the first minister appointed to work among the Indians he was faced with a pioneering task of a different kind. Cross and Cargill had faced primitive savagery, suffering and death. Burton had comparative physical

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A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 comfort and little physical risk, but he faced demands just as challenging and in some ways more demanding. His biggest obstacles were the almost complete indifference of the Indians and the lack of understanding of the Board, his colleagues in Fiji and the government, and at the same time the hostility of the commercial fraternity. To this task he brought many gifts and though he was only in Fiji eight years he, more than any other person, began the process of change, which in later years was to continue at an accelerating pace. Christian work among Indians was faced with the indifference or hostility from the planter community. Many of them did not want the deficiencies of the indenture system brought to light and did not want their own unsavoury practices exposed. Yet John Burton got on well with many of them. It is significant that when he retired the European settlers and planters of the Nausori area to whom he had ministered, presented him with a cheque for £25. He quickly gained a knowledge of Hindustani and became as fluent in that language as he was in English This ensured him a hearing among the Indian folk even if he did not gain conversions. His fluency of speech was matched by a fluency with his pen. He took over the role of William Slade as a prolific writer on Fijian affairs. Never one to disguise his convictions he spoke out with forthrightness that attracted attention, and at times made enemies. Though he was a staunch evangelical he quickly saw the value of Hannah Dudley's approach and his mounting antagonism o the indentured labour system made sure that he saw his calling, as much to change the social, political and legal system, as to make individual conversions. Within a few years he was being heard and attacked. In 1905 he wrote "Our Indian Work in Fiji" which exposed the iniquities of the indenture system. It showed that he, and almost he alone, saw the issues very clearly. Among his colleagues there was division and uncertainty C. O. Lelean with whom he travelled to India in 1908 supported him in many things, and Richard Piper another Australian colleague also caught the vision. But others were antagonistic. Cyril Bavin the New Zealand born son of the Rev. Rainsford Bavin who had spent a short time teaching in India and then a term as a lay missionary in the Fiji Indian work, was absent for several of Burtons early years before returning as an ordained man. While he was sympathetic and shared Burton's concerns he did not want to see the indenture system abolished, as Burton did. It may well be that personal antagonism had something to do with it, and it is also said that he had a financial interest in a sugar plantation.7 The men in Fijian work were jealous for their particular section and did not want to deprive it of any support. They reflected the attitude taken by the Mission Board. A deputation of George Brown, George Lane and R. S. Callaghan had visited Fiji before Burton came8 and seen something of the need for extension of the work among the coolies but advised the Board to be very cautious about the required moves. The move into Papua had made tremendous demands on the resources of the Australian Church and now they were to go into the Solomons. They could not Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 65

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 sanction advance elsewhere. The influence of George Brown was strong and as we have seen, the Conference itself forced the move into the Solomons. The "romance" of taking the Gospel to headhunters was far more attractive than the prospect of a work among labourers that was almost sure to offend powerful commercial interests. There was also the reluctance to embark on a completely new, and little understood type of work. The Solomons was a further chapter in the same saga as had already been written in Tonga, Fiji, New Britain and Papua. To become involved in Indian work was to start a new book! Burton was not only involved in a pioneer missionary effort but he also shared something of the intolerance of the pioneer. Like Chalmers, Brown, Goldie, Abel and the rest he could be very difficult to work with and impatient with others who were just as dedicated as himself but did not see things in quite the same way. One particularly sore point was his derogation of the Fijian and the Fijian work. This was probably not intentional, but was rather the by-product of his concern to make it clear that the Indian work not only made clear demands on the church but was also of a different nature from the rest of Pacific missions. "Thus the Fijian, because of limited intelligence, was predisposed to accept as truth whatever the missionary told him", he wrote.9 Even after 60 years such a statement raises antagonism in people at a distance from Fiji. What must it have done to the men who were deeply involved emotionally and in every other way with "their" Fijian people—and probably began with a latent antagonism to everything this upstart said! It is true that as a recent writer (Andrew Thornley) has noted "Burton and Piper were reflections of a transforming current, centred in India, with which the Methodist Mission was hopelessly out of touch." That reflection came not so much directly from India as because Burton was sensitive to his time and detected that transforming current among the people with whom he daily worked. The culmination of Burton's missionary work came with the publication of "The Fijian of Today" in 1910. This book not only summed up his 8 years of work and study but put into blunt language the conclusion, of a very acute mind. It hit Fiji like an atom bomb. The Chairman of the District, the Rev. A. J. Small, who had been persuaded to write a foreword to it, was left to stand the storm that broke while Burton who had returned to New Zealand for health and family reasons was out of reach. Burton had never been very sympathetic to the government and had defied them over Indian marriage laws (or the lack of them) and attacked them over maladministration of the labour laws. Now he was holding them up by implication, at least, to public shame. It is scarcely to be wondered at that the Governor branded him as a "careless, prejudiced and untrustworthy critic".10 The Missions Board in Sydney took fright and dissociated itself from the book and the Synod did likewise. The Synod, Thomley says, were instructed by the Board to do this, and they certainly needed no urging. They had

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A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 given Burton permission to consult the records and write a popular history of Fiji11 and they felt he had misused the opportunity. Also they felt it necessary to come to the defence of the Chairman whom they felt had been "used", and the Synod of 1911 passed an angry resolution about that. But the basic reason for the strong adverse reaction in both Church and State was that this young man was challenging the comfortable position that they had settled into and exposed it as untenable in the modem age. In 1910 they had farewelled him with a fine resolution in which they recorded him as senior minister in Indian work and also active in district work especially development schemes, "as superintendent of the industrial mission he has done a work. of high value which it is scarcely possible to overstate." They had gone on to speak of his genial disposition and wealth of sympathy. Now they felt that they had been betrayed. The book attracted international interest and brought the great C. F. Andrews from India to investigate. His report written after his visit in 1915 was, according to Burton "a scathing yet perfectly true indictment of the indenture scandals in Fiji".12 Burton himself had won commendation from Andrews and Tagore for his work and this did not make him any more popular with the authorities. One may regret that he did not stay in Fiji to face the storm and to carry on his work, but perhaps it was best he was not there. He had exploded the dynamite. Others to whom the odium was not attached were able to build a new edifice on the ruins without having to engage in a running battle with their colleagues. During the first 20 years of the century there were other New Zealanders in Indian work. Thomley lists Miss May Graham and Miss Maud Griffin of whom we have already spoken, Miss Mary Austin and Miss Christine Weston who came in 1919. To this we should add Miss Burton who went to Fiji to keep house for her brother, but quickly became involved in the work. The Synod granted her an honorarium of £20 a year! Miss Christine Weston was a schoolteacher who served for 40 years, all of it in the Indian work, and all except for the first few years at Dilkusha. On the Rewa River, adjacent to the great Davuilevu complex it was developed by J. W. Burton as the Indian centre and became orphanage, boys' and girls' school, home for the lost and the wayward and centre for Indian work. Born of a farming family at Alfredton, Wairarapa, Miss Weston was first persuaded to offer for Fiji by Burton himself during his ministry in New Plymouth, where, as a young teacher, Miss Weston was one of his congregation. She finally arrived in Fiji in May 1919, while the influenza epidemic was still raging there. Undiscouraged by her strange surroundings she took up with enthusiasm her first appointment as acting headmistress of the Suva Methodist Boys' School, pending the arrival of a lay missionary from Australia. Later she served at Ba, but transferred to Dilkusha after ten years, and remained there until her retirement.

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When she took over Dilkusha, there were about 35 girls at school, made up mostly from those at the mission orphanage nearby. Those were days when few Indian parents sent their girls to school. "It was not a question of their coming to school—we had to go for them," Miss Weston said. "Each afternoon after school, we spent two hours and sometimes more going round to houses and persuading parents to let their children come to school. We certainly got good results but it was hard work." From the 35 with whom she started, the school at Dilkusha had grown to 400 day school girls and 33 inmates of the home, before her retirement. Miss Weston taught there through years of "make do" and only at the last did she see the fine new buildings which a growing school needed. Prior to 1947, when the Fiji Government took over teacher training, many of the teachers in Fiji were trained at Davuilevu, under Methodist Mission auspices. As head of a nearby school, Miss Weston had responsibilities for teacher practice, and also as a part-time lecturer in the mission college. She also shared in the production of mission textbooks. She was a foundation member of the Fiji Teachers' Union. "Miss Weston has been a Mr Chips type of teacher," said a friend who knew her well. "Her interest in her pupils has been close and personal, and has continued long after they left school. The amazing amount of letter writing she has managed to do has been an expression of this interest. I have heard two men, prominent in public life in Fiji, say recently how much they were encouraged, while studying overseas, by the letters they regularly received from Miss Weston. They were old pupils of hers and early students to go from Fiji for overseas training. Miss Weston has a clear memory and an enormous fund of information at her disposal. Her advice and judgement have been greatly respected and her contribution to the Synod and especially to its Education Committee has been especially valuable."13 D. SECONDARY EDUCATION A few years ago, talking with a Fijian friend, we speculated about who should be included in a book on "Makers of Modern Fiji". My friend, himself a schoolteacher, was sure that two names that could not be left out were R. A. Derrick and W. E. Donnelly, the "fathers" of technical and secondary education respectively. Of R. A. Derrick we have already spoken. William E. Donnelly grew up in the Thames Valley and turned to teaching as his vocation. After some years of experience and one year as travelling secretary of the Bible Class movement of the Methodist Church, he and his wife, who was also a schoolteacher, offered for missionary service in Fiji. Accepted, they travelled out with their small daughter in 1934. Mr Donnelly was appointed to Toorak Boys' School in the heart of the Indian population of Suva. A good organiser and a fine teacher he immediately began to make his mark on the school and on the boys, both Indian and Fijian, whom he taught. One of his fellow teachers wrote recently, "his vision for his pupils was an inspiration to us all".14 That vision did not

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A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 include any stereo-type of the "low intellectual development of the natives . . . half devil and half child".15 For Bill Donnelly every pupil, Indian, Fijian, or European was capable of maximum development and should be taught as such. During the years at Toorak, Mr Donnelly became "a one man Mission Board" recruiting teacher after teacher to serve in the schools of the Methodist Church. Almost a score of teachers went from New Zealand at his behest and stayed for varying periods. As far back as 1888 the Fijian Synod had said that Fiji ought to get more help from New Zealand and though direct financial aid did not come, all through this century workers have gone from New Zealand and in the thirties their numbers reached a peak.

Mr. W. E. Donnelly As "Mission Supervisory Teacher" for the Indian Division, Mr Donnelly became more and more involved with educational strategy and planning. He was transferred to Davuilevu in 1942 to the Lelean Memorial School. The following year he began secondary classes and the school has continued to develop into a full high school. He laid firm foundations on which succeeding teachers have built. He left Fiji at the end of 1945 for family reasons and then took up teaching in New Zealand. The students he taught numbered among them men and women who grew up to become leading people in government, church and commerce in their country. But it was not only the students who were influenced. He became the friend of men and women who today hold the highest office in the land and commended himself to them. Fifteen years after the Donnellys left Fiji the call came again. The Council of Chiefs had decided to establish a secondary school for Fijian students in Suva which would provide education at its highest level. They decided to call it after another of the makers of modern Fiji, the Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna Memorial School. It was a natural choice, and just as naturally they wrote to W. E. Donnelly and asked him to become Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 69

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 its first principal. He accepted and in the five years of his term of office he established the school as a soundly run establishment with a high standard of education and an impressive record of academic achievement. In 1965 Mr Donnelly was Executive Officer of the New Zealand Overseas Missions Department acting for a titular General Secretary away in the Solomons, and he has since that time been a member of the Board and for some years its Chairman. But Fiji was not finished with him! Three times more he was called back. Once to establish a Church department of stewardship, once to take over the Government High School at Levuka for a year, and finally and tragically to go back to his old school, Lelean, for a term in 1971 in the wake of the murder of its principal, Miss Phyllis Furnival, to re- establish confidence and put the administration back on a sound footing. Some day that book about the "Makers of Modern Fiji" will be written and it is to be hoped that it will be a Fijian citizen, whether of Asian or Melanesian descent it matters not, who will find the right words to sum up the tremendous contribution that Mr Donnelly has made to the country. Second only to' this is his contribution to the New Zealand Church which made him its Vice-President in 1967. Another New Zealander who should find a place in the book suggested is one whom Mr Donnelly recruited for service in Fiji as a teacher in 1938, Stanley G. Andrews. Meticulous to a fault, an outstanding organiser, and with a clear discerning mind, this rather shy young teacher put all he had into the service of Fiji and its schools. After working with Mr Donnelly at Toorak, he was sent in 1942 to the Lomaiviti circuit as lay missionary in charge, with special oversight of the educational work. In the same year he offered for the ministry and was accepted and placed on probation. While at Lomaiviti he learnt Fijian with his usual thoroughness. He returned to Viti Levu to succeed Mr Donnelly at Lelean Memorial School, and in the following year was given full charge of Davuilevu. In 1951 he became Acting Chairman of the Fiji District.16 Retirement from Fiji having become necessary for family reasons, he was asked to accept the post of General Secretary of the New Zealand Overseas Missions Board. After 13 years in that position, during one of which (1958) he was also Chairman of the Solomon Islands District, residing for eight months in that country, he returned to Fiji, to succeed Mr Donnelly as principal of Ratu Sukuna School. Mr Donnelly, as we have already noted, came to the Auckland office for a year.

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Rev. S. G. Andrews – General Secretary 1952-64 The Fijian Church was glad to have him back in their midst, but it was not long before they wanted him more closely related to the life of the church and asked him to become Connexional Secretary. He was now right back at the heart of the life of the church where in a sense he really belonged. All his gifts of administration, all his tact and understanding, and all his experience are needed in this task. The Indian leaders who talk of him as "Uncle Stan", and the Fijian leaders who admire his impeccable command of their language are both agreed in their respect and affection for him. Within the church of Fiji New Zealanders in the 20th century have made a notable contribution. It has been distinguished by length of service for a considerable number of people, some of whom we have mentioned. It has also been marked by flexibility. People like Miss Olive Duder who went out to teach and stayed on to become the District Accountant, and keep the best set of books the Board in Sydney had ever seen, or Rita Griffiths, another teacher who became a district worker and thus touched the life of the people at many levels. They helped the church to see the distant horizon and helped it to build a road towards it. Even when we have listed all the people we know who have gone to serve with the Church in Fiji, we have done less than justice to the contribution of New Zealanders and New Zealand Methodists. For many have gone in government service, in the course of their business, and for other reasons to that land which is our northern neighbour. The contribution that they have made has on the whole been a worthy one and many New Zealand names have an honoured place in the story of the last 70 years. When Fiji came to nationhood a great many New Zealanders had a very personal interest in its development and followed with eagerness the progress of the leaders whom they had known and work being done in places with which they were very familiar. Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 71

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TONGA & SAMOA Was it true that Tonga was suspicious of New Zealand in the early 1920's? Did past history prevent closer relationships? Probably it is true that the embattled members of the Methodist Church, loyal to Australia, were suspicious of the New Zealand Church to which King George Tupou I had appealed, and the country to which Shirley Baker went for comfort and assistance. During the war of 1914-18 when New Zealand took over Samoa from the Germans, the Prime Minister made some remarks about Tonga, no doubt intended to be reassuring, but which may have been interpreted as another threat to Tonga's freedom. If suspicion was there, the news that a senior New Zealand Methodist minister was going on a visit to the President of the Free Church would certainly have been a cause for concern. That the Rev. M. A. Rugby Pratt's visit in 1922 was a purely private matter would not be understood.17 But the New Zealand Church was anxious to build good relations with Tonga and was urged by Mr Goldie to provide a 'quid pro quo' for the Tongan missionaries sent to the Solomons. Early in that same year the new Foreign Missionary Society voted $500 for educational work in Tonga as a response to a request for aid from the Rev. Roger Page, Chairman of the Tonga District. Before long it was advertising for teachers for Tonga. Meantime the union of the Tongan Churches took place. In this new climate of partnership in Tonga itself, there was opportunity to put our relationships with the church there on a new footing. It may well be that if the depression had not hit the New Zealand Church so hard, further financial help would have been offered. The teachers appointed were Miss Gwen Blamires and Miss Ruth Fabrin in 1926, Miss Muriel Harford and Miss Dorothy Ferguson in 1927 and Miss Hazel Gaulton in 1928. Ruth Fabrin and Gwen Blamires spent some time in Fiji on the way out and met up with a young Australian minister named George Harris who was also on his way to Tonga. Within the year he sought Ruth as his bride and they served together until 1934 when the depression took them away. After years in Australia the Harris' were called back to Tonga in 1962 where George Harris served as President of the Tonga Conference until his retirement in 1968. Gwen Blamires, daughter of the Rev. H. L. Blamires, was a spritely lass who soon mastered the language and won the affection of the girls at Queen Salote College where she became Principal. Mr Page wrote enthusiastically of her in 1929 when she was due back on leave. While she was in Tonga she wrote a series of letters which were published in book form under the title "Little Island Kingdom of the South".18 Though she left Tonga in 1932 she retained a deep interest in the people and in the kingdom. In 1963 she and her husband (she was by this time Mrs Ernest Peterson), went on a holiday to Tonga as guests of Mr and Mrs Harris. While there Mr Harris asked if they would come back for a few months in 1964 so that Mrs Peterson could establish Tupou High School. The Petersons agreed and while Mr Peterson turned his hand to whatever practical tasks needed doing, Mrs Peterson got the high school away to a good start. Miss Harford stayed for seven years

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A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 and gave outstanding service at Tupou College. Miss Patterson went to Vavau and Miss Gaulton to Ha'apai. Each of these ladies made a valuable contribution and helped to maintain a link with the New Zealand Church. The Rev. John Churchill began his association with Tonga during the war when he was an R.N.Z.A.F. Chaplain. His duties called for visits to a detached flight in Tonga. In the course of these duties he met the Rev. R. C. G. Page, President of the Tonga Church. Mr Page was attracted to John Churchill as many others were, and when he discovered he had a farming background shared with him his hopes for an agricultural training scheme which would give students leaving Tupou College some training in this field. John Churchill, a practical farmer before he was a minister, responded very warmly to this. He took a course in tropical agriculture through the Services Training Scheme, and in due course was released both from the Service and by the New Zealand Conference for service in Tonga. He had the task of making about 750 acres of land on the new site of Tupou College, both a food supply for the 400 and more students at the college and a training farm. It involved the growing of root crops, the management of a beef and dairy herd and many other things. The training opportunities were more limited than had been expected but John Churchill demonstrated clearly what effective land utilisation could do. Muriel, his wife, a trained teacher, aided Tongan staff with their preparation and planning. It was unfortunate that Mr Churchill became a victim to a tropical disease and had to return to New Zealand after only three years service. The Tongan church appreciated this service and Mr and Mrs Churchill are still spoken of with affection. In 1971, Mr Bob Springett and his wife and family went to Tupou College from Taranaki to do the same kind of job, for a much enlarged school. He has been supported in part by the New Zealand Church and in part by C.O.R.SO., an organisation which had not been dreamed of when John Churchill served there, but which now does a great deal for developing countries in the field of development of basic food supplies. In 1959 Miss Beryl Weston of Napier was appointed to the staff of Queen Salote College where she served for eleven years, returning to New Zealand at the end of 1970 to undertake further study. Miss Jennifer Harkness, a grand-daughter of the Rev. E. S. Harkness, once a minister of the Free Church, went in 1972 to the same college as a teacher. The New Zealand contact with Tonga has never been limited to the official church contacts and a considerable number of New Zealanders have, at one time or another, served the Government of Tonga. Tonga has also served New Zealand. A Tongan, Mr John Tonga, served as a Maori Home Missionary for a number of years. But the biggest impact on New Zealand and the church has been through the presence of 'Atalanga' in our midst. The Rev. W. A. Sinclair had represented New Zealand Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 73

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Methodism at the Centennial Celebrations in Tonga in 1926 and any lingering suspicion of New Zealand was laid to rest As we had noted it was immediately following this that the lady schoolteachers were sent to Tonga. Her Majesty Queen Salote Tupou III also began to visit New Zealand. At times she required medical treatment that was not readily available in her kingdom. She also needed a holiday home closer than Sydney. Thus it was that a property in St. Andrews Road, Epsom, was acquired and called 'Atalanga'. She asked Mr and Mrs W. C. Bagnall to take charge. Mrs Bagnall was Tongan born, the grand-daughter of Mr Cocker, a former British resident. Mr Bagnall had gone from New Zealand to work for the Government in the Treasury and succeeded Howard Watkin after his death as head of the Treasury. He served a number of years as Minister of Finance. Mr and Mrs Bagnall not only helped to establish 'Atalanga', both as a royal residence and as a hostel for Tongan students in Auckland, but also to maintain the links between the people and the church which was so desirable. Epsom Methodist Church has been greatly enriched over the years by this. Its ministers have had the privilege of serving the Tongan people in a very special way. Now in the 1970's, with great numbers of Tongans coming to New Zealand for short periods, and more students than ever in this country, we are growing closer to the Tongan people who live in this country. Perhaps we shall resume the partnership which was developing in the 1820's. It was the teaching profession that kept us in touch with Samoa, as it was with Tonga. Mr and Mrs George Beckingsale and family went out to Samoa in 1956 and gave three years service. They were followed by Mr and Mrs George Forster who went out the year the Beckingsales returned, and served for four years. Miss Dorothy Gilchrist went to Samoa in 1966 to teach. Mr Colin Law, a broadcasting engineer, offered his services under the Order of St. Stephen in 1964. As the church had no opening for his special skill, he was seconded to V.S.A. who sent him to Samoa to work for the Samoan Government. When his period of service was up he became a teacher at the Methodist High School. Colin Law and Dorothy Gilchrist were married in 1968 and returned to New Zealand in 1969. Several other folk have gone for brief periods in more recent years.

This chapter depends heavily on personal conversations with many people, noteably W.E.Donnelly, P.R.Singh, A. Raratabu (for Fiji), and Mrs Bagnall and Mrs. E. Peterson (Tonga) As far as possible all material has been checked with the F.A. M.C. records and published material in O.D. and M.R. Manuscripts from Dr. Slade and the late Miss Griffin have helped. Also Miss Hames' book. 1. Personal communication Rev. W. G. Slade. 2. Rev. R.J. Miller, Fiji, has placed his own researches at my disposal. 3. O.D. 4. Autobiographical notes by the late Miss Griffin. 5. Fiji Church press release 10 July 1973. 6. Thornley M.A. Thesis covers whole area. Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 74

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7. op cit p.161. 8. op cit p.l6. 9. Burton "Fiji of Today" p.334. 10. Thornley p. 158. 11. F.A. M.C.(F/4/D 1910 p.49). 12. Burton Modern Missions p. 179. 13. O.D. Sept. 1959 p.l3. 14. Personal communication from Miss Lapthorne. 15. Burton Fiji p. 166. 16. O.D. Mar. 1952 p.8. 17. Goldie to Sinclair 28 April 1922. 18. Published by Stockwell, London.

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CHAPTER 4: NEW FRONTIER -— THE HIGHLANDS New Guinea is big. New Guinea is old. New Guinea contains a tremendous diversity. New Zealand is small. New Zealand is young. New Zealand is, in population, comparatively homogeneous. It is important for New Zealanders to remember this when they look at the story of the church in Papua New Guinea. That country which contains only the eastern part of the large island of New Guinea but adds the off shore islands groups including those of the Bismarck Archipelago, of which the main ones are New Britain, New Ireland and New Hanover, and the northern most of the Solomons group, Bougainville and Buka, has a land area some 70% greater than the land area of all New Zealand. Most of its larger islands have central mountain areas of a great size. New Guinea itself has a mountain massif of tremendous extent, where the mountains are often 10,000 and more feet in height, so that they would tower above our Southern Alps. The mountain valleys at heights of 5,000 feet and more above sea level are numerous and some of them very large. The river system is correspondingly large. One river, the Fly, is navigable for over 600 miles. People have lived in New Guinea for many thousands of years. Only now are archaeologists pushing back the frontiers of time but it seems likely than men were living there more than 40,000 years ago. Many of the cultures of which we have learned in the last few decades may well have been established long before the Maori came to New Zealand. We do not know when men first penetrated the central mountain areas, but we can be sure it was a very long time ago. Probably they were hunters and food gatherers, until comparatively recent times. Then, along the trade paths that had never been closed, the sweet potato (kumara) was introduced. The cooler climate of the Highlands suited this staple food and the nomadic people began to settle down, to clear more and more of the bush and to multiply. With no malaria (restricted to the coastal regions) and perhaps fewer of the 'tropical' diseases, these are sturdy people, vigorous in mind and body. Endemic intertribal fighting did not stop their growth in numbers, and it seems possible that had there been no invasion in the last fifty years by an Allen civilisation, they would gradually have spilled out of the Highlands and begun the conquest, and the colonisation of the lowlands. The diversity of New Guinea is not only in its geography and its flora and fauna ... an ever changing kaleidoscope of seemingly endless variety. It is also a veritable tower of Babel of people. The diversity of racial and cultural origins is seen most dramatically in the diversity of tongues . . . perhaps more than 750 distinct languages, belonging to several major language families, and with an uncounted number of dialects. Most language groups are small, some miniscule, but in the Highlands, because of the factors we have noted above and other things, the language groups are large . . .

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A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 perhaps 30,000-60,000 people—large that is within a population which contains all that diversity shared among perhaps two and a half million people. The epic story of the penetration of the central mountains of New Guinea by brown skinned men many centuries ago can only be guessed at. The invasion of 'pale faces' is more easily documented, if only because it is so recent. Spurred on by the explorer's restlessness, by the quest for gold or knowledge, and by the desire to spread the Gospel, they pushed into the interior in the period between the world wars and began very slowly to contact some of the peoples. In the mid 1930's, while the rest of the world went on its way heedless, Roman Catholic and Lutheran missions were establishing themselves in the area of Mt. Hagen and in the headwaters of some of the great river systems. Karius and Champion of the Papuan Administration performed an epic journey across the widest part of New Guinea (where it is about 450 miles wide) by way of the Fly and Sepik river systems. All of these were aware of many people and huge spaces. The intrusion of the second world war into the Pacific, and the bitter fighting which engulfed the old Territory of New Guinea (the northern part) and burst in on the colony of Papua (the southern part), opened up vast areas and made the world aware of the "last unknown" as someone has called it. The Lutheran Mission, well aware of the vastness of the problem, and realising that time was now no longer on their side for the slow but sure methods they had used heretofore ,made it known they would welcome the participation of the missions already at work in the country. It was this challenge the Methodist Church took up in 1950. It should also be noted that after a valiant effort by the Administration to 'zone' the various missions, it was forced by outside pressure to give in. The result has been an influx of mission groups, weak and strong, until a tragic religious tribalism has been added to the natural diversity. It was unfortunate also that many of the groups being new, and holding theological presuppositions which sprang out of nineteenth century imperialism, were attracted by the last area on the face of the earth, where it was still possible to present a "white man's gospel" with impunity. The older missionary societies who had brought some hard won lessons with them from the coast were not always able to apply them as they would have liked because of the aggressive competition. Having decided to accept the invitation to enter the Highlands area, the Australian Methodist Church desired that this should be a partnership between itself and the so called 'coastal districts' ... the New Guinea Islands and the Papuan Islands. They also hoped to bring in missionaries from Tonga and Fiji and perhaps Samoa, as they had traditionally done. So the Rev. E. A. Clarke of Papua and the Rev. G. H. Young of New Guinea Islands, with some helpers from each area, carried out a preliminary survey in to the Southern Highlands.

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In October 1950, Gordon Young who had been appointed to lead the new mission was invited to accompany the first Administration patrol from Mt. Hagen to Mendi, which was the area chosen for the first mission station. The patrol passed over a shoulder of Mt. Giluwe (which itself is over 14,000 feet high), and in doing so they climbed to 10,000 feet above sea level. Because they had to cut their own paths in places the journey took seven days to cover a distance of about 75 miles. The return took five days. In the November Gordon Young went back with Tomas To Mar and Kaminiel Ladi, both from New Ireland, and settled in. As the need to establish educational, medical and agricultural work became evident, and the vast size of the populations with which it was possible to make contact became apparent, the Australian Board asked for the help of the German Methodist Church with which it had shared its pre- 1914 work in New Guinea, and two deaconesses were sent. It also turned to New Zealand and to the Solomon Islands as part of the New Zealand Church. In 1919 when the division of mission work between Australia and New Zealand was agreed upon, a clause in the agreement provided for future cooperation "particularly in connection with work among Indians in the Pacific, or India itself".1 No one seems to have quoted this, but it was in this spirit that the work in the Highlands drew the two churches together. It was the Solomon Islanders who took the lead. At their Jubilee celebrations in 1952, the second of the Natives Conferences was held. Here the local leadership responded to the challenge of the Highlands and agreed to send two missionaries and support them. Synod, later that same year, endorsed the proposal and selected from among several volunteers, two married men. John Pirah came from Bougainville and Alpheas Alikera from the British Solomons. They proceeded to the Highlands early in 1953 and from then on the Solomon Islands, on both sides of the political boundary line, was committed to this missionary enterprise. They sent a considerable number of people, including ministers, pastor teachers, carpenters and medical workers. They have continued their monetary support of this work also. New Zealand was slower off the mark. The Annual Board meeting in 1953 was attended by the Rev. C. F. Gribble, the Australian General Secretary, and as a result recommendations were made to the Conference. It was really the culmination of several years of letter writing and discussion, between the Mission Boards and a movement towards "closer relations with Australia". It had been felt by some that the New Zealand Church would gain a closer association with Australia in some unspecified ways. The only obvious field was that of mission overseas. When the Conference considered the recommendations of the Board, there was a widespread, if somewhat amorphous, feeling in favour of closer relationships which was responsive to the proposals. It was agreed that the two churches would participate on the basis of joint responsibility for the work, with the newly created Highlands District responsible to both Boards. Each Conference would be responsible for its own staff, but would have to approve all stationing, which would be made with regard to the best interests of the work as a whole This rather strange arrangement, could have resulted in some Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 78

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 major problems, but in fact it did not do so, largely because there was a strong will to make it work. As a side effect, it did limit the power of either Board to dominate the field and gave the Highlands Synod an independent attitude which left it free to go ahead, sometimes without too much regard to either Board. New Zealand was to provide the finance for establishment of the third station. Mendi and Tari were already in being and new developments were planned, though it was not known at that stage where the next move forward would be made. For this purpose the Conference agreed to an appeal for $20,000 as a basic fund. We were also to provide four staff members: a minister, a teacher, a nurse and a carpenter. This was estimated to cost us $4,000 a year. Among other conditions it was agreed that all missionaries going to the Highlands should do the course at George Brown Missionary Training College in Sydney, and that New Zealand staff in the Highlands should be paid at the same rates as Australian staff. In pursuance of this objective, a minister was designated by the Conference for appointment to the Highlands and he was to go to George Brown College the following year for training.2 At the same time, various other resolutions acknowledged that organisational unity of Australian and New Zealand Boards was not possible but expressed the hope that New Zealand staff from the Solomons and Australian staff from other Pacific fields would do deputation in each others country from time to time and so enlarge our mutual vision. Some efforts were made to implement this, but the days of missionary deputation were numbered, and so it did not really achieve very much. The M.W.M.U. was as usual to the fore in missionary matters and in anticipation of the Conference decision had already allocated $2,000 for the Highlands Fund. The first missionary chosen for the new field was the Rev Clifford J. Keightley, a young married man with one child. Cliff Keightley came out of a farming background and after war service had been received as a candidate for the ministry. He had already served five years in circuit work and so had a good background in his chosen profession. He was certainly more experienced than most of the ministers sent out to the Solomons in those days. From March to November 1954, the Keightleys were in Sydney and this course, though demanding, greatly helped their preparation for their task. From Sydney they went to Tari where the Rev. Roland Barnes of Queensland and formerly of the New Guinea Islands region was in charge. It was from here that it was expected the next forward move would be made, probably into the Korapa area of the Duna sub district. Cliff could not have had a better colleague. Here his association with the missionaries from the Solomons, New Guinea Islands and Papuan Islands, ripened into real friendships. After a full term at Tari, the Keightleys went on leave and before returning did the linguistics course provided by the Summer Institute of Linguistics (Wycliffe Bible Translators) which was entering the Pacific mission work

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A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 as a very strategic and important 'service mission' . . . aiding other more orthodox types of missions to do their job.

Rev. C. J. Keightley talks to carriers before a pioneering patrol. Times had changed, and it now appeared that the next move ought to be made into the Nipa valley, which was a Mendi speaking area. Cliff Keightley therefore returned, not to Tari, but to Mendi and began to prepare for the move forward This involved learning a new language, and Highlands languages are not easy. It involved getting to know a new set of people. Because their stay at Mendi was to be only temporary it was a frustrating business in some ways and the whole family were relieved when in December 1959 it was possible for Cliff to go into the Nipa area and begin the pioneering task which had been entrusted to him. Let him tell the story in his own words:— "We received word on Saturday, November 9, that the Rev. Gordon Young and I were permitted to move into this new area to commence mission work and we were told that a Government patrol would be made available to escort us in. The date fixed for entry was Wednesday, December 2. We immediately sent out messengers asking for carriers to come in on Monday to take our patrol boxes and cargo over to the Lai Valley where the Rev. David Mone and two teachers are stationed. At first the men were slow to offer, but by midday on Monday we had all the carriers we needed. At 2 p.m. the long line moved on the first stage of the trek, led by Daniel Amen of New Britain, and John Teu of the Solomon Islands.

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The Chairman and I waited until Tuesday afternoon, when we set off on the motorcycle, going as far as Wambip before we dismounted and struck over the hills to the Lai Valley. Heavy rain unfortunately slowed our pace down, so that we did not arrive at Kip until well after dark. The last half hour of travelling along steep and slippery tracks with the aid of a dimly lit torch, through mud up over our boots, was not much fun. A bruised shin was also causing me considerable pain, so I was very pleased when after five hours of walking we arrived at the Catechist's station. A meal had been prepared for us and we found an escort (Mr Jordon and two native police) waiting to take us further on our journey in the morning An early breakfast, and we were soon on the move again. It proved to be a much longer than we had anticipated—eight and a half hours along native tracks, up and over five mountain ridges, up and down grass and pitpit slopes, through long stretches of bush and across mountain streams, the sun beating hotly down on us all the time. The scenery was some of the most glorious I have ever seen. Imagine my thrill of joy, however, when we mounted the last ridge and looked down upon our future dwelling place in the Nembi Valley. After a momentary pause, I hurried down the hill to the newly-constructed airstrip—not yet open to aircraft_ and into the Government patrol post, Nipa. The Rev. Gordon Young and Mr Jordan followed a little later. Quarters vacated by one of the initial Government officers in this area were kindly made available for our use until such time as we can build our own. Two teachers and three boys we brought with us are living meanwhile with the Government native staff. On Thursday Mr Jordan voluntarily escorted us on a five hours walk around a section of the valley. This took us well beyond the half mile radius of the Government patrol post, outside of which we are not permitted to move without official escort. We appreciate his kind gesture. By Friday morning Mr Young's time of departure had come round, as it was necessary for him to return to Mendi. After breakfast we exchanged goodbyes and I was left with the sobering thought of the great responsibility now resting on the shoulders of myself and my teachers — the responsibility of beginning God's work among these people."3 We have mentioned the Summer Institute of Linguistics as a 'service mission'. Another very important such organisation was the Missionary Aviation Fellowship, These folk provide air transport for missionaries and their work Advance in the Highlands would have been almost impossible without them. Everyone, Government, commerce, church, depended heavily on the aeroplane as a means of transport, and though New Guinea provides some of the most dangerous flying country in the world, it has a very high density of air services and an enviable safety record. Even in such elite company, M.A.F. as it is known to everyone, stands as a quite outstanding group, with a safety record second to none, and service record that has been to the glory of Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 81

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 our Lord and Saviour. So it was that all development in the Highlands has tended to begin in a place where an airstrip could be built (often very rough, cleared literally by hand) and all work fans out from that point. Thus it was at Nipa. Another factor new in Pacific missions was that, whereas almost everywhere else, Methodism, in common with other missions, had been there before Western Colonial governments had established anything like effective control, in the Highlands the missionaries could only go when and where the government (called always the Administration) allowed them. Thus Cliff Keightley was limited in his first contacts with the people. In due course land was acquired at Puril, a short distance away and a mission station built. As staff became available and the local dialect learned, more and more people were contacted and medical and educational work begun. The Keightleys worked hard. Though this station was regarded as the 'New Zealand station', and New Zealand provided the money for its initial buildings and other equipment, it was never an exclusive New Zealand preserve and was never intended to be.

Whale boat given for work in New Britain Cliff was appointed as Chairman of the District in 1963 and both he and his wife, Noreen, while continuing to reside at Nipa increasingly influenced the whole district in these critical years. The planting of the Word in the Highlands has been a long slow process. It was not until the very end of 1959 that the first folk at Tari professed their allegiance to Christ and sought Christian baptism. From then on the flood gates were opened. From a professed membership of 15 at the Synod of 1960, the numbers jumped to 7221 in 1966. This phenomenal growth brought its own problems . . . Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 82

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 problems of Christian nurture for the largely illiterate converts and problems of witness and development. Through this period Mr Keightley gave sound guidance and when he left, the church was moving forward with confidence. Gordon Dey was a man who went for a year and stayed for 17! A builder from Hamilton he offered to serve overseas under the Order of St. Stephen, and was appointed to the Solomon Islands. After his year was over Gordon felt called to offer for the Highlands which was in serious need of a builder and so he was transferred there in 1954. He quickly established himself as a master craftsman and was soon involved with all phases of the work from cutting the logs in the bush, pit sawing them into manageable lengths, and then building sizes, as well as putting up structures in both local and European style. While Gordon Dey was transferring from the Solomons, Edith James was offering as a nurse. She was highly qualified both as a person and a nurse. She was sent to George Brown College in Sydney for training in 1955 before going on to Tari where she was to work. Her service there among the sick folk and among the well ones, was very highly commended.

Sister Edith James Here at Tari, Sister Elizabeth Kessler from Germany had established a leprosarium, and this was the special work which gradually became Edith James' special care. A visitor in 1959 noted with interest her care for the numerous lepers and their obvious affection and respect for her. Though the Highlands had been free from malaria, Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 83

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 leprosy had flourished and there were hundreds of folk suffering from this dread disease. Later the Leprosy Mission took over full responsibility for the leper work at Tari, but Sister Edith built on the foundations which Elizabeth Kessler and Helen Young of Australia had laid, and built well. It was a sad day for the Highlands when health forced her retirement. The problem of finding the promised fourth member of the Highlands mission team, troubled the Board. They had simply not been able to recruit the promised teacher. Finally they compromised, by supporting an Australian teacher, and by appointing a much needed secretary to assist the Chairman. Miss Joyce K. Rosser of Auckland was appointed in 1959 and it was not long before she was making her mark as an indispensable assistant to the Chairman. Though she resigned at the end of 1962 to marry Mr Gordon Dey her association with the Highlands continued until her husband's task was done and she returned with him to New Zealand. As Mrs Dey, new fields of service were opened to her, in the field of literacy for adults, work among and for the women, and a role of friendship which one tied by official commitments could not perhaps have given to the same degree. In this she was typical of missionary wives all through the years. As time went on more New Zealand staff were appointed to the Highlands and the old formal ratio of one to two in buildings and quota of four staff members was forgotten as the partnership with Australia attained the flexibility which true partnership ought to have. New Zealand sent other ministers and nurses, builders, engineers and teachers. Some went for a year, some for longer periods. Always alongside them have been the Solomon Islanders, the Papuans and the New Guinea Islanders; the Tongans and Fijians, Australians and Germans which made this from the beginning an international witness to the universality of the Gospel of Christ.

1. N.Z. Minutes 1921. 2. N.Z. Minutes 1953 3. N.Z. Minutes 1960 p.3.

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Chapter 5: THE UNITED CHURCH AND THE NEW WORLD As we have already seen, the year 1952 was the beginning of a new era in overseas missions There was a new Chairman in the Solomons and a new General Secretary in the Auckland office. Talks were already under way for us to enter into partnership with the Australian church in the Papua New Guinea Highlands and this meant a new kind of relationship to a church overseas. The Solomon Islands church was given more and more freedom. The Board learned to accept decisions it did not like, and to pay the piper even when it could not call the tune. At one annual meeting, for example, some members of the Board were known to be strongly antagonistic to the proposal to shift a minister to a new appointment. The General Secretary introduced the business just before morning tea and the whole matter went through without a comment. Several years later, one of the opponents of the move commented on how successful it had been. At another point the Board found a very large sum of money to meet debts incurred in the islands, without in any way censuring the policies, or lack of them, that had brought this situation about. It was the kind of thing that could not be repeated, from either side, but it did make clear that the Solomons were increasingly 'on their own'. The credit belongs very largely to the General Secretary, the Rev. S. G. Andrews, who from the beginning saw a 'church' where others still only saw a 'mission'. The move into the Highlands was an interesting development. In one sense it fulfilled a promise made in 1921 that the New Zealand Church would cooperate with the Australian Church when any new missionary venture in the Pacific was being mounted.1 It was, however, a true partnership and the Papua New Guinea Highlands became a mission district of the New South Wales Conference, and of the New Zealand Conference. A legal monstrosity, of course, but pragmatic Methodists have never been worried by what was in the law book. The net result was a happy one. First, there was a valuable partnership with our big brother Australia from whom we had too long been estranged, and we were enriched thereby. Second, it forced us right from the beginning to accept the fact that we could not dictate . . . there were too many other people involved. So we got used to having a say, but accepting that it was not the final say. The third strand in the new pattern was that of church union. There had been a growing awareness of each other between the four Methodist Districts, brought about largely because each of the older three contributed to the youngest. From the Solomons, the New Guinea Islands and the Papuan Islands, missionaries went to the Highlands and discovered each other, as well as their new brethren there. Contact between the Districts was fairly casual and tenuous until 1959. Then the four Chairmen, met at the Administration Missions Conference in Port Moresby towards the end of the year. The Rev. Ralph Grant from the Papuan Islands was the senior

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A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 among them and the only prewar man; the Rev. Wesley Lutton from the New Guinea Islands was a sensitive Irish-Australian; the Rev. Gordon H. Young, who had served in the New Guinea area, had led into the Highlands. He was the rugged pioneering type. The Rev. George G. Carter from the Solomons, the New Zealander who brought the problems of the border line between Papua New Guinea and the Solomons forcefully to mind and had eleven years experience in both countries. We did combine experience, sensitivity and a wide experience with a deep concern for grass roots evangelism in a changing cultural and social situation, and for thorough training. None of us were tied to the past. Ralph Grant, for example, probably had been a bit of a renegade in his pre-war days, but while he brought the wisdom of the past, he did not seem to be worried by its inhibitions. If we were inclined to forget it, Gordon Young kept before us the need of the unevangelised. Wesley Lutton lived in the most politically sensitive area in the country at that stage, and had just lived through the so- called Navunaram massacre.2 As we consulted together the conviction was borne in on us that if we, the four districts, were to be the church in Melanesia, if we were to be true to our calling, and witness in relevant terms to a society what was on the brink of rapid and possibly cataclysmic change we would have to get together. As a result of that meeting and others which followed it, action was taken on several fronts. First teacher training. Each of the three older districts had training establishments. Each sought to help its students qualify for the Government certificates, and each was faced with the growing inefficiency of small isolated units. After much planning and discussion, a combined institution was set up at Halis near Namatanai, on New Ireland. Mr Rex Crabb came from Papua and Sister Norma Graves from the Solomons, and the work began. But Halis was an unsuitable site, too isolated and too far away from adequate centres of population for teaching practice schools to be sufficiently numerous. From there the institution moved to Gaulim on the Gazelle peninsula of New Britain, where on rich and fertile soil, sufficiently high above sea level to get a cooling breeze, there was a large population. From the beginning at Halis in 1962 to the present considerable establishment at Gaulim with a large international staff and a considerable student body, has been a long journeyThose who dreamed the first dreams about this, can say that it has more than fulfilled its promise. The second move towards joint action was in the field of theological education. As far back as 1957, the New Zealand Board had approved a proposal sent down by the Solomons for a joint theological college, but nothing happened for a year or two. Then a Commission on the subject was set up in Sydney. This brought in some very competent people but was remote from the Islands where the college was to be. The College actually got going in 1962 under the Rev. C. W. J. Mannering, a pre-war missionary as acting principal. A site had already been chosen at Rarongo, also in the Gazelle Peninsula. The appointment of a permanent principal was difficult. The Islands folk wanted someone experienced among Islands people. The two mission Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 86

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 boards in Sydney and Auckland each wanted someone with high theological qualifications. In the end, not being able to get the man who combined both qualities, the United Synod accepted the appointment made by the Australian Board of a man with very high academic qualifications, but no islands experience. The verdict of history has yet to be passed on this appointment. But it is notable for another reason. It must have been almost the last time that the Board in Sydney or Auckland imposed an appointment on the islands church with only the barest minimum of consultation. A third activity which was to serve all the district was a move in the field of Christian Education. A work party from Australia raised the money to bring themselves up by chartered aircraft, and pay for the materials out of which they erected a magnificent building high on the hills overlooking Rabaul harbour. This project, originally for the New Guinea Islands alone, soon became a cooperative venture and then spread until we have the large centre that exists today, at Malmaluan. These various joint ventures demand joint structures and a series of meetings held in the Solomons at Goldie College in 1961, in Rabaul from time to time and in Port Moresby resulted in the formation of a United Synod which was approved by the various Conferences in 1962. The present writer was elected as first Chairman of the United Synod, while still remaining Chairman of the Solomon Islands District. In 1965 he handed over to the Rev. Salmon Gaius, a minister of the New Guinea area. This first indigenous appointment reflected the growing willingness of the leading missionaries to take a subordinate place and help their islands brethren to assume the role of leadership which was rightfully theirs. It had been assumed that this would lead to a Methodist Conference of Melanesia, and the New Zealand representatives had insisted that it be quite independent and outside the General Conference of Australasia. A measure of Australia-New Zealand tension was clearly apparent at this point, but in the event the discussion became irrelevant. For while the Methodists had been following this course, the London Missionary Society (now known as the Congregational Council for World Mission) had been loosening the ties that held the old Papua District to the parent body. The Papua Ekalesia came into being in January 1963, the first fully autonomous church in the country. But at their assembly they voted strongly to seek union with other churches. The Methodists responded wholeheartedly. The United Church, Port Moresby, which worked mainly among Australians in that city and was technically a branch of the United Church of North Australia, and the Kwato mission responded also. Kwato which had broken away from the LM.S. forty years before soon joined the Papua Ekalesia without waiting for the others. Negotiations went ahead. The Lutheran Mission and the Anglican Diocese of New Guinea were interested observers and very helpful to the discussions but did not feel in a position to officially join the negotiations.

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Progress was made helter-skelter, we were driven on by a sense of urgency that none could quite explain at the time, though looking back, we can see clearly the hand of God in the matter. Yet the documents prepared embodying the basis for union, and the proposed structure were anything but slipshod. They were thorough and well done. Much of this was due to the Rev. Fred Kemp, an Invercargill born, Australian Methodist, who was a most thorough worker and who tidied up each meeting's discussions with a great ability. On the 19th January 1968, the United Church in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands came into being, autonomous, and under God, responsible and free. The new church was still, and is still, heavily dependent on overseas staff and overseas finance, but the stage was set for a growing development into independence of the type which is not given by formal documents or constitutions. Already there had been many signs of the awareness among the leaders of what it means to be responsible directly to God and not to a Mission Board. Mostly these had been negative. A few Australian and New Zealand staff had been quietly but firmly told that they were not to come back from furlough, Board directives had been resisted or ignored, and a new mood was already apparent. So we had to work now at a new approach to the whole question of missionary partnership. At first there was a strong tendency to defer to the Mission Boards on matters where they were involved or where finance was wanted. The Boards, on the other hand, had to face the question, have we any right to say what happens to our money? The New Zealand Board felt its responsibility to the New Zealand Church keenly, and year by year as it brought its estimates under the scrutiny of the Finance Committee it had to ask itself the question, Is it right in terms of Christian stewardship to hand over money without tags? What do we do when we are asked for money for the projects of which we do not approve? More acute in some ways was the relationship to staff. Had the United Church any right to shift staff we had sent to them without consulting us? Did we have any pastoral responsibility for such people? What about our relationships with the Solomons where we ruled for so long? For almost five years these problems were worked at. Alongside them was the quite real one that people are sometimes not nearly as keen to give money when they cannot control or approve the use of the money. At the same time there was a growing antagonism to "overseas missions" in the New Zealand Church which was quite unrelated to the reality but did not make the Board's task any easier. November 1972 marked the end of that first stage of uncertainty. In that month we were represented at a consultation with leaders of the United Church, held on their own ground in Port Moresby. We came from three denominations in England, Australia, New Zealand, Samoa, Fiji and Tonga, and collectively we presented an imposing array of experience and age. But the United Church had come of age. Its

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A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 indigenous leaders were not overawed. Firmly, but joyfully they shared with us their hopes and fears and their developing understanding of their task. About to install their first indigenous Moderator, Bishop Leslie Boseto and knowing that political independence would not be long delayed, they were clear and firm in their purposes. They had already acted to reduce their dependence on outside finance and staff, but recognised they had a long way to go in both these areas. In the utilisation of their resources both from overseas and from their home area, they were showing independence of judgement and an insistence that God was speaking directly to them and they must answer Him. A most important overseas contribution to the consultation was interestingly enough made by the Rev. Morehu Te Whare. This is probably where the Maori is going to make a major contribution to our overseas church relationships in the next few years—at consultations such as this. Not all the problems are solved. The United Church still has problems in the pastoral care of its overseas (and indeed its local) staff. These will possibly grow more acute in the next year or two. The critical lack of skilled people continues to be worrying, and in the growing political and social ferment that is characteristic of new independence they are having real problems. Not that the ferment is bad . .. rather it is good, but it is complicating. The overseas churches who are proud to be partners with the United Church have now to consider whether their response should not move on to a more independent line. Perhaps the stage is set for a new type of dialogue. For we in New Zealand are also called directly by God to be His witnesses, both at home and overseas, and we cannot excuse ourselves by merely being suppliers of money and staff to others. The next decade should be full of interest.

1. N.Z. Minutes 1921. 2. In this incident Tolai people who had refused to join the government sponsored council system were being coerced into it by attempts to tax them. They refused and at the village of Nauvuneram a large armed patrol was attacked with sticks and stones. In the firing that followed a number of people were killed and wounded.

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CHAPTER 6: IN OTHER FIELDS The small church probably never offers its members sufficient opportunities of service, and when that church is as ecumenically minded as Methodism has usually been, it tends to suffer from a constant outflow of some of its brightest and best to other churches and organisations. A senior Presbyterian minister in Auckland once told of a time when he was talking with five of his colleagues and the question of Methodism came up. Each in turn confessed that they had been in their teen years members of Methodist Sunday Schools and Bible Classes. So it has been in the story of the church overseas. Methodists have gone out to other churches and missionary societies in considerable numbers. Those who have stayed at home have often given strong support to nondenominational groups outside their own church. While perhaps we may lament this, and deplore the loss to our own work, we ought also to count up the gains. Because of our openness folk have come to us from other churches, and where our own folk are involved, the narrowing of interest that had tended to take place in 1922 has been offset by the interest of our people in other missions. There is no way in which we can assess the extent of Methodism's contribution to other churches and missionary societies. Efforts to compile lists even of current missionaries with Methodist connections have been notably unsuccessful. Perhaps that is as it should be, lest we start counting up numbers and giving ourselves airs. But we ought not to forget them. There are many tantalising glimpses. For example, we know that in 1926 the Rev. and Mrs C. E. Dent were on leave in New Zealand from the South African Wesleyan Church and that they were both New Zealanders, Mr Dent, a Free Methodist, and Mrs Dent, the daughter of Mr Samuel Parker of the Helping Hand Mission, and founder of Parker Roller Doors. We can, however, look a little more closely at three of the folk we have given to the wider church.1 Jessie Graham was associated with the Birkenhead Methodist Church in her youth. It was during this time that she heard the call to missionary service in India. She joined "The Regions Beyond Missionary Union" and went to England for her training. There at Doric Lodge she spent two happy and fruitful years. She sailed for India in October 1906 going first to Chainpatea where she became involved in a new outreach to the women folk who were held in strict purdah. At the same time she also spent many hours in village evangelism. Later she shifted to Gopalganj where she began a fruitful partnership with a Miss C. Robertson which included Scripture translation into the Bhajpuri dialect. But theirs was no stay-at-home ministry. Not only were they out every day in the bazaars and visiting the homes of the people, but for years they undertook long journeys during the winter months camping out at whatever point seemed the best. Transport over sandy roads was by an unsprung cart pulled by a pony. We can imagine, with some amusement, these memsahibs in their long frocks and topees, with the inevitable large hat pin, sitting in the little cart journeying on from place to place. We can guess at the village gossip which now speculated on Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 90

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 where their husbands were, and now whether the hat pin was a "secret weapon", perhaps a Government plot to spread disease. We can laugh a little at the picture, not too far short of the truth. We must also admire these courageous souls filled with great zeal and tremendous faith who did not see the conversion of India's teeming millions as too great a task. What Jessie Graham did accomplish may seem little enough but an able linguist with a loving warm personality she endeared herself to families, Christian and non-Christian wherever she went. For forty-one years hers was a ministry of love and concern, and who shall say that this was a small thing? She came back to New Zealand in 1947 and went to live at the Caughey Preston Home in Auckland where she died in 1969.2 Doctor Owen Lamont Eaton who was killed in China in 1939 was the son of the Rev. Clarence Eaton, a much beloved Methodist minister. Owen's story has been told most effectively by the Rev. E. G. Jansen in the book, "Jade Engraved" and we acknowledge our debt to this book.3 Mr Jansen himself an outstanding missionary in China and the New Hebrides also has Methodist roots and says, "I look back on my Methodist upbringing with deep gratitude. I am a better Presbyterian for having been a Methodist first."

Dr. Owen Eaton (China) When Owen Eaton was dead and his sorrowing widow, Mary, was about to leave the compound at Kong Chuen, many people, Christian and non-Christian grieved, even some of the robber band who had slain him, it is said, also wept. The Rev. W. H. Paang, the resident Chinese minister came to Mrs Eaton with a small box and asked that she accept this gift. Inside was a coin of an ancient dynasty, a genuine rarity, Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 91

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 which had come to him as an heirloom and was his most cherished possession. Somehow that action seemed symbolic of Owen Eaton, his life and witness. The heirloom of the family had been the precious coin of high churchmanship and deep faith. From England to Nova Scotia and thence to New Zealand came the Eatons, descendants of a family tracing their line back to the 11th century, noted for three hundred years for their strong religious convictions. One representative family sailed on the "Mayflower", and others strengthened various churches, Puritan, Episcopalian, Baptist, Presbyterian and Methodist with their lives and witness. Of this stock came Clarence Eaton, Methodist minister and President of the New Zealand Conference in 1934. In his home the same tradition of the loveliness of faith was continued and here Owen was nurtured. A brilliant scholar, he was modest to the point of self-effacement about his achievements; a fine athlete with a passion for fair play on or off the field; a quiet wit which could cut through sham and indifference with a keen edge, but which because of his sympathy and insight was often a healing helpful thing. Deeply Christian, both by upbringing and by conviction, he confessed to what he owed to his family and to Bible Class at Taranaki Street, Wellington. When he moved to Otago and to medical school he stayed at Knox College and attended Knox Presbyterian Church. He owed a lot to the Christian nurture of that congregation and to the Student Christian Movement of which he was for a time secretary. After graduating from Otago Medical School he spent the year 1934 as a demonstrator in anatomy at the medical school. It was while he was here that a letter from an old friend, Dr Howie, reached him. Dr Howie had married a Methodist, the daughter of the Rev. A. J. Seamer. He was now serving at Kwong Chuen Mission Hospital in China. Would Owen consider service there? Owen would and did, and the conviction grew on him that this was God's will for him. After due preparation he was off to China. It was the end of 1936 and the world was plunging on heedlessly into turmoil. In China, age old custom, age old anarchy and the new invasion of foreign culture, foreign religion and foreign military powers were making life more difficult and needs so much greater. Though missionary regulations required two years of language study, the needs of the sick made sure that even in the first year Owen Eaton filled every spare moment with the medical service he had come to render. In the second year he became superintendent of Kwong Chuen Hospital since Dr Howie had had to return to New Zealand because of ill health. Dr Howie died shortly after his return to his homeland. Owen tried to keep up language studies as best he could. In December 1938 he was married to Miss Mary Mandeno of Te Awamutu in the Union Church, Hong Kong. In April 1939 the staff gathered for an Easter retreat at Kwong Chuen and while they were there robbers attacked in the early hours of the morning of the 10th April, Easter Monday. Paddy Jansen and Owen Eaton went out to do what they could for the folk under attack in another building and a stray bullet hit and killed the doctor. The Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 92

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 precious heirloom of faith housed in the tabernacle of a brilliant dedicated and loving life had been given at love's behest. A small boy sat entranced in the Birkenhead Methodist Sunday School hall. The speaker was clad in Chinese costume and was telling the gathering about being captured by bandits! No doubt the missionary talked of his work and of conversions, and of the church in the part of China where he lived and worked with the China Inland Mission, but the small boy heard nothing but the bandits. That evening so long ago invested missionary work with romance for the present writer and when this book was in prospect it seemed fitting that it should contain reference to Arnolis Hayman, the man from China. He was born in Ceylon of missionary parents on the 22nd April 1890. His folk were Salvation Army missionaries and he was given the name of a Buddhist priest who became a Christian, the first in all Ceylon. The family came to New Zealand in the 1890s and settled in Birkenhead. It was in the Methodist Church that Arnolis and his brothers and sister grew up. Some of the family continued to be associated with Birkenhead for many years and the names of Mr Len Hayman and their sister, Frances, were well known there. When Arnolis was called to missionary service, he offered to the China Inland Mission, as it was then known, and went out in 1912. He was farewelled from the Zion Hill Methodist Church, Birkenhead, and went first to Adelaide where he attended Angus College for a period of training.

Rev. Arnolis Hayman (China) In China he was sent to the province of Kweichow in the south. Not only did he have to learn Chinese but also a tribal language for he worked largely among the Miao' Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 93

A Family Affair by George G Carter Part Two 1973 tribes, China's aboriginal people. Those were adventurous years and bandits were a constant problem though they were usually after goods and money rather than captives. Mr Hayman married in 1919 a fellow worker with the C.I.M., Ruth Matheson, who had come from Sydney Methodism. She died in 1926 leaving four children. He later remarried in 1930 and had two more children. In 1934 the Communist armies were busy in South China. Desperate for supplies they often captured wealthy people or foreigners and held them to ransom. Mr Hayman and Mr R. A. Bosshardt, a Swiss member of the mission, were captured with their families. The families were freed, but the two men were kept for well over a year and finally ransomed from money largely supplied by Chiang Kai Shek himself. The story of that captivity has been told by Mr Bosshardt in "The Restraining Hand".4 Though now safe, Arnolis Hayman was physically very much weakened. He was placed in the Shanghai office as business manager and general factotum. This gave him a chance to recover his health and strength. He was barely well again when the Japanese invasion began m 1937. They were under Japanese rule then until 1945 and for the last five years interned. Mrs Hayman, with three young children to care for, stinted herself of even her meagre rations for their sake, and not long after returning to Australia she died. Mr Hayman then became Sydney Secretary of the C.I.M. or the Overseas Missionary Fellowship, as it was now becoming known. The older children had meantime grown up in Australia and Theo had entered the Anglican ministry. Archbishop Howell Mowll approached Arnolis and asked him to serve in the Anglican Church. This he agreed to do and was ordained in 1948 at the age of 58! He served as a parish minister until his retirement at 75, and then continued in part time work until three weeks before his death m January 1971. Arnolis Hayman was a man who never held high office or created newspaper headlines. But he was a wholehearted and hard working man who reflected his Master at all points. No clearer indication of this can be found than in the family he left. Two sons are Anglican clergy, a son and a daughter serve with the O.M.F. in Japan and Phillipines respectively. Thus another generation of Haymans is making Christian service a family affair.

Chapter 6 1. O.D. Dec. 1926 p.2 & p. 12. 2. Compiled from letters and documents lent by Mrs. M. Simpson, a sister to Miss Graham. 3. Mr. Jansen supplied most of the material used. 4. Rev. Theo Hayman, Sydney, son of Arnolis helped with information.

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VI The Next Half Century Daniel Bula, the 'Son of a Savage'. In 1917, he carried New Zealand by storm. Methodists saw visions of the power of the Gospel to turn cannibals and headhunters into Christian gentlemen. They responded with generosity, until then unparalleled. We moved on to take over the Solomons as our own mission field. Belshazzar Gina, the school boy at Wesley College in the '20's; the appealing young minister on deputation in 1937. Tremendously gifted, able to play every instrument in a brass band, sing with more than ordinary ability, and tug at the heart strings with his story of his own family history, he made a lasting impression. Even now thirty five years later one is regularly asked, 'How's Gina?' He gave glamour to the appeal to 'Send Back the Doctor' and build up the depression decimated staff. Each of these men came at a strategic time. Each influenced people in the pews (and outside the church) far more than we realised at the time. Others, too, have had their effect. They have come much more quietly, their influence has been more restricted, yet they have changed and influenced our approach to life and to the Gospel. In the last decade or two, most of those who have been there have come for training. They have lived among us, been part of local congregations and then gone back to take their place as leaders among their own people. We have spoken of Sister Vivien Mamupio, Mr. Nathan Ringgeo and Mr. Gillian Lai We could also mention the present Moderator of the United Church the Rev. Leslie Boseto, and his gracious wife, Hazel; Sister Lina Qaqa and Sister Ellen Kera, registered nurses, Mr. Peter Lanono now head of the Solomon Islands Region's building department. Mr. Roland Rodi who heads the engineering workshop, and Mr John Pio Hickie, electrician. This does not exhaust the list. We have been able to give them the facilities for training, we have been able to help them prepare for their careers, but it may be that m the long run, it is what they have done for us that will have been the more important. For the next half century will surely be a time for us New Zeaknders Maori and Pakeha, to learn from each other, and both together, to learn from the rest of the Pacific. For a few more years at least we will be a sending church . . . sending people out to other lands and other churches in Christ's name, but it will not continue for long unless we also become a receiving church and a listening people. Those whom we have sought to serve will become our teachers, and we will learn from them of what God has been able to say only to them, because they are Polynesian or Melanesian. Out of this learning together, surely we can build a new relationship, a new dimension in our understanding of Christ and His Salvation, and emphasise once again that the people called Methodist are part of the one family, and that witness and service is very much a FAMILY AFFAIR.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Manuscript Material ML MOM The Methodist Overseas Missions collection in the Mitchell Library, Sydney. FAMC The Methodist Church collection in the Fiji National Archives. M M S letters Correspondence between the Methodist Missionary Committee in London and missionaries in New Zealand 1822-55. Typescript in Trinity College Library. N Z M O M Records of the Overseas Division Methodist Church of NZ F.M. Exec) New Zealand. Private letters, diaries and papers lent by many people. Periodicals MR The Missionary Review (1891 to date) is the organ of Methodist Overseas Missions Australia. It was a monthly until recent years. It is now a quarterly. O D The Open Door (1922 to date) is the organ of the Overseas Division, Methodist Church of New Zealand, published quarterly. NZW The New Zealand Wesleyan Jan. 1871—June 1884 NZM The New Zealand Methodist July 1884—May 1894 Advocate The Advocate June 1894—May 1901 Outlook The Outlook May 1901—Dec. 1909 MT The Methodist Times Jan. 1910—Dec. 1966 All N.Z. Methodist Church papers. Minutes The Minutes of the Methodist Conference N S W (New South Wales) G C (General Conference) N Z (New Zealand) Vict. (Victoria & Tasmania) etc.

Books, Pamphlets and Theses Abel, R. W. Charles Abel of Kwato Fleming H. Revell, London 1934 Birtwhistle, A. In His Armour Cartage Press, London 1956 Blamires, G. Little Island Kingdom Stockwell, London n/d of the South Bromilow, W. E. Twenty years among Primitive Epworth, London 1929 Papuans Brown, G. An Autobiography Hodder & Stoughton 1908 London Burton, J. W. Our Task in Papua Epworth, London 1926 Burton, J. W. The Fiji of Today C. H. Kelly, London 1910 Burton, J. W. Modern Missions in the LMS — MOM 1949 South Pacific Carnachan, M. A. A. The Spreading Tree Typescript — bound loaned by Mr. G. G. Ennor, Auckland Carruthers, J. E. Lights in the Southern Sky Epworth 1924 Carter, G. G. David Voeta, The Story Printed privately 1973 of a Pioneer Missionary Colwell, Jed. A Century in the Pacific W. H. Beale, Sydney 1914 Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 96

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Danks, B. In Wild New Britain Angus & Robertson, 1933 Sydney Davidson & Scarr (ed) Pacific Islands Portraits A. H. & A. W. Reed 1970 Derrick, R. A. A History of Fiji Govt. Printing Dept. 1957 Suva Eason, W. J. E. A Short History of Rotuma Govt. Printing Dept. 1951 Suva Fellman, H. Brief History of the Work of the Church in the Bismarck Archipelago. Translated into English N. Threlfall 1973) (Published in Kunua. Fellows, S. B. Diary Ms in Mitchell Library Findlay & Holdsworth Wesleyan Missionary Epworth Pres, London 1921 Society Fletcher, C. Brunsdon The Black Knight of The Australian Publishing Coy, 1944 Pacific Sydney Fletcher, J. H. Sermons, Addresses & Essays Wesleyan Book Depot 1892 Fox. C. Lord of the Southern Isles Mowbray, London 1958 Hames, E. W. Walter Lawrv Wesley Historical Soc. NZ 1967 Hames, E. W. Wesley College 1844-1944 Wesley Historical Soc. NZ 1944 Hames, Inez I Remember Published privately 1972 Harwood. Frances, H. The Christian Fellowship Church Unpublished thesis a Revitalisation Movement in Melanesia. Henderson, G. C. Fiji and the Fijians Angus & Robertson, London 1931 Milliard, D. L. Protestant Missions in the Unpublished thesis Solomon Islands 1849-1942 Jansen, E. G. Jade Engraved Presbyterian Bookroom 1948 Christchurch Laracy, H. Catholic Missions in the Thesis 1966 Solomon Islands 1845-1966 Latukefu, S. King George Tupou of Tonga A. H. & A. W. Reed 1954 (in Pacific Islands Portraits) Auckland Luke, Sir H. Queen Salote & Her Kingdom Putnam, London 1954 Luxton, C. T. J. The Rev. James Wallis Wesley Historical Soc.NZ 1965 Martin, K. L. P. Missionaries and the O.U.P. 1924 Annexation of the Pacific Moor, Mrs. W. Thirty-seven years with the Printed privately 1945 Christchurch Methodist Women's Missionary Auxiliary Morley, W. A History of Methodism in MacKee & Coy, 1900 New Zealand Wellington Nicholson, R. C. The Son of a Savage Epworth, London 1926 Owens, J. M. R. The Unexpected Impact Wesley Historical Soc. NZ 1973 Pratt, M. A. R. The Pioneering Days of Epworth, London 1932 Southern Maoriland Pybus, T. A. Maori and Missionary A. H. & A. W. Reed 1954 Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 97

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Rutherford, N. Shirley Baker and the Oxford University Press, 1971 King of Tonga Melbourne Scarr, D. Cakabau and Ma'afu in Reed, Auckland 1970 Pacific Islands Portraits Spooner, T. G. N. Brother John Wesley Historical Soc. NZ 1955 Thompson, B. Diversions of a Prime Minister Dawsons London 1968 (Reprint — original issue 1894) Thornley, A. W. The Methodist Mission and Unpublished thesis the Indian in Fiji 1900-1920 Tippett, A. R. Solomon Islands Christianity Lutterworth 1967 Turner, J. G. The Pioneer Missionary Geo. Robertson, Sydney 1872 Vennell, C. W. The Brown Frontier A. H. & A. W. Reed, 1967 Auckland Watsford, J. Glorious Gospel Triumphs C. H. Kelly, Sydney 1900 Williams, W. J. Centenary Sketches of New "Lyttelton Times" 1922 Zealand Methodism Christchurch The Cyclopaedia of Samoa, McCarron, Stewart & Coy 1907 Tonga, Tahiti and the Cook Is. Australia Fiji Methodist Centenary Methodist Missionary 1935 Souvenir 1835-1935 Society of Australasia Suva History of the Lill Family Privately printed Golden Jubilee 1902-1952 Stanton Bros 1952 (Otago Methodist Women's Dunedin Missionary Auxiliaries) Golden Jubilee 1908-1958 Wright & Carman 1958 (Wellington Methodist Women's Auxiliaries) Auckland Methodist Women's Missionary Auxiliary 1908-1929 Diamond Jubilee 1902-62 Duplicated 1962 Duplicated (Otago M.W.M.A.) Semi Jubilee Souvenir M.W.M.U. 1914-39

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APPENDIX II PEOPLE WHO LINK THE NEW ZEALAND CHURCH WITH CHURCHES OVERSEAS TONGA Manihera Tonga 1822-23 Hukl Tonga 1827-31 Tungahe Tonga 1827- A young New Zealand woman, name unknown Rev. & Mrs. Nathaniel Turner Tonga 1827- Rev. & Mrs. J. W. Wallis 1868-70 Miss Bavin 1888 Rev. & Mrs. J. B. Watkin 1866-1926 Miss Gwen Blamires 1926-32 (as Mrs Peterson 1964) Miss Ruth Fabrin 1926-7 (as Mrs. Harris until 1934 and then 1962-69) Miss Marjorie Harford 1927-32 Miss E. Goulton 1929-32 Rev. & Mrs. J. Churchill 1945-48 Miss Beryl Weston 1959-70 Mr. & Mrs. R. W. Springett 1971- Miss Jennifer Harkness 1972 Among those who came from Tonga to New Zealand: Rev. & Mrs. Walter Lawry; Rev. & Mrs. Wm. Woon; Rev. & Mrs James Watkin; Rev. & Mrs. J. Ford; Rev. & Mrs. J. Whewell; Rev J. T. Shaw; Rev. & Mrs. E. S. Harkness; Rev. John Tonga. FIJI Ministers Rev. & Mrs. Wm. Fletcher, B.A. 1856-75 Rev. & Mrs. J. W. Rosewarne 1882-85 Rev. & Mrs. J. H. Simmonds 1888-91 Rev. & Mrs. Wm. Slade 1886-1902 Rev. & Mrs. T. J. Wallis 1888-1900 Rev. & Mrs. J. W. Burton 1902-10 Rev. & Mrs. H. H. C. Roget 1904-1916 Rev. & Mrs. C. L. Carr 1915 Rev. & Mrs. M. Evans 1917-1920 Rev. & Mrs. J. B. Suckling 1918 Rev. & Mrs. G. H. Findlay 1928-32 Rev. & Mrs. S. G. Andrews, M.A., Dip. Ed. 1942-52, 1965- Lady workers Mrs. John Polglase (nee Mary Fletcher) 1852-60 Miss Mary Ballantine 1900-1918 Miss Mary Austen 1906-1913 Miss May Graham 1910-25 1929-32 1936- Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 99

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Miss A. Maud Griffin, B.A., Dip. Ed. 1912-15, 1919-24, 1926-45 Miss Stella Parkin 1917-20 Miss E. Cowan 1919-21 Miss Helen K. Roscoe 1919-23 Miss Christine J. Weston 1919-59 Miss Lily L. White 1919-21 Mrs. A. M. Suckling 1919-21 (Subsequent service with Government) Miss A. Inez Hames 1920- Miss A. B. Cushen 1921-24 Miss Frances H. Tolley 1927-39 Miss Vera McMillan 1934-1938 Miss M. Jean Irvine, M.A. 1935- 1938-41 Miss Bertha Wingfield 1936 Miss A. (Nancy) Laurenson 1938 Miss Naida Goldsbury 1938-40 Miss Olive Duder 1939-45 Miss Enid Keeble, B.A. 1939-40 Miss G. May Sharpe, M.A. (later Mrs. Mclntosh) 1938-39 Miss Hazel White 1939-44 Miss Rita Griffiths, B.A. 1940- Miss Ulele Scrivin 1941-42 Miss Ruth Clarke 1948-52 Miss Myra Switzer 1956-58 Miss Vivienne Gash 1961-64 Miss Diane Rushton 1965 Mrs. J. P. Glanville 1963 Miss Janette Schnell (Mrs. Dau) 1967 Laymen Mr. & Mrs. W. E. Donnelly 1934-45, 69, 71 Mr. A. J. Birtles, M.A., M.Sc., Dip.Ed. 1938-43 Mr. & Mrs. S. G. Andrews, M.A., Dip.Ed. 1938-42 Mr. E. A. Crane 1938, 1946-53, 1968-71 Mr. T. G. M. Spooner, M.A. 1935, 1971-73 Mr. S. L. Edgar 1940-44 Mr. W. G. Poynton 1939-42 Mr. W. G. Patterson, M.A. 1938 Mr. & Mrs. B. E. Sutherland 1915-1929 Mr. & Mrs. D. Mclntosh 1939-47 Mr. & Mrs. J. W. Boal 1947-50 Mr. & Mrs. Graham Whaley 1973-

Among those who came from Fiji to New Zealand: Rev. & Mrs. T. J. Jaggar; Rev. & Mrs. R. B. Lyth; Rev. & Mrs. J. S.Fordham; Rev. & Mrs. S. J. Gibson; Rev. & Mrs. J. D. Jory; Mr. & Mrs. Wm. Collis.

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Miss Hannah Dudley; Rev. Dr. Raymond Dudley; Miss Grace Jenkin (Mrs. H. J. Beavis); Miss O. Green (Mrs. Mills); Rev. & Mrs. Wm. Green (who had also served in Papua). SAMOA Rev. & Mrs. George Brown 1860-74 Rev. & Mrs. J. W. Wallis 1870-74 Rev. Fred Copeland 1913-16 Miss Elizabeth M. Noble 1901-1903 Mr. & Mrs. George Beckingsale 1956-1959 Mr. & Mrs. George Forster 1959-63 Mr. Colin Law 1964-69 Miss Dorothy Gilchrist (later Mrs. Law) 1966-69 Miss R. Riley 1971-72 Mr. I. McKinney 1972

LINKS WITH ABORIGINAL WORK, NORTHERN AUSTRALIA. Sister Lorraine Flowers 1960-61 Mrs. Colin Albert (nee Phyllis Rudolph) 1966- Mr. & Mrs. E. T. Boyd 1967

NEW GUINEA ISLANDS REGION 1875-1935 Rev. George Brown 1875-1881 Rev. F. B. Oldham 1887-1894 Rev. J. A. Crump 1894-1904 Mr F. T. Broom 1913-1918 Mr H. A. Tunnicliffe 1914-1925 Dr C. S. James 1932-1935 PAPUAN ISLANDS 1891-1967 Rev. S. B. Fellows 1891-1901 Rev. Ambrose & Mrs Fletcher 1894-1906 Rev. Matthew & Mrs Gilmour 1901-1933 Mr and Mrs W. Charles Francis 1904-1908 Sister May Jenness 1905-1906 (as Mrs A. Ballantyne 1906-14) Miss Janet Vosper 1907-1909 Miss Florrie L. Thompson 1908-1909 Mr E. W. Harrison 1908-1914 Miss Maisie Lill 1908-1910 (as Mrs E. W. Harrison 1911) Rev. & Mrs W. W. Avery 1910-1914 Miss Margaret Jamieson 1911-1915 (as Mrs A. H. Scrivin till her death in 1921) Miss Julia Benjamin 1897-06 (from Australia) 1909-13 (from New Zealand) Rev. W. J. Enticott 1913-1917 Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 101

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Rev. A. H. Scrivin 1914-1931 (General Secretary 1933-52) (Miss Elsie Warner of Australia became Mrs Scrivin in 1926) Mr & Mrs A. C. Cuff 1950-1953

United Church in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands The Solomon Islands Region 1902— The Bougainville Region 1922— The Highlands Region 1953— Other Regions after 1968

MINISTERS Rev. & Mrs. John F. Goldie, 1902-51, Roviana. Rev. & Mrs. Vincent LeC. Binet, 1917-32, Choiseul. Rev. & Mrs. John R. Metcalfe, 1920-57, Choiseul, Teop. Roviana. Rev. & Mrs. Arthur A. Bensley, 1921-34, Vella Lavella. Rev. & Mrs. Allan Cropp, 1921-39, Buka. Rev. & Mrs. Tom Dent, 1922-34, Marovo. Rev. & Mrs. Hubert G. Brown, 1924-27, Teop. Rev & Mrs. A. Harry Voyce, 1926-58, South Bougainville. Rev. Frank H. Hayman, 1928-32, Roviana. Rev. & Mrs. E. Clarence Leadley, 1934-42, 1966-68, Roviana. Rev. & Mrs. A. Wharton Silvester, 1935-52, Vella Lavella. Rev. & Mrs. Donald C. Alley, 1936-42, Teop. Rev. & Mrs. Clarence T. J. Luxton, 1939-49, Buka. Rev. & Mrs. Allen H. Hall, 1947-61, Roviana (Trans, in N.Z. '62-65). Rev. & Mrs. Trevor Shepherd, 1947-57, Teop, Vella Lavella. Rev. & Mrs. Gordon A. R. Cornwell, 1949-63, Buka. Rev. & Mrs. Frank H. Woodfield, 1950-55, Roviana. Rev. & Mrs. George G. Carter, 1951-65, Teop, Roviana, General Secretary, 1965- Rev. & Mrs. D. I. Alister McDonald, 1952-63, Choiseul. Rev. & Mrs. Clifford J. Keightley, 1954-67, New Guinea Highlands. Rev. & Mrs. Alexander C. Watson, 1955-63, Roviana, Vella Lavella, Honiara. Rev. & Mrs. Gordon D. Brough, 1958-61, Teop. Rev. & Mrs. Phillip F. Taylor, 1958-66, Tonu. Rev. & Mrs. Stanley Andrews, 1958, Roviana (Chairman B.S.I.P.). General Secretary 1952-64. Rev. & Mrs. James F. Cropp, 1962-71, Vella Lavella. Goldie College. Rev. & Mrs. Peter S. Barker, 1963, Teop. Rev. & Mrs. Brian W. Sides, 1963-68, Buka, Kieta. Rev. & Mrs. Paul A. Garside, 1965-68, Roviana, Honiara. Rev. & Mrs. David L. Kitchingman, 1965-70, New Guinea Highlands. Rev. & Mrs. C. Seton Horrill, 1966-68, Teop. Rev. & Mrs. A. Kerry Taylor, 1967-69, Tonu. Rev. & Mrs. Frederick J. K. Baker, 1969-73, New Guinea Highlands. Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 102

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Rev. & Mrs. Maxwell L. Bruce, 1969-, Teop, Kieta. Rev. & Mrs. W. Geoffrey Tucker, 1969-, Honiara. Rev. & Mrs. Alan J. Leadley, 1970, Malmaluan. Rev. & Mrs. William D. Griffiths, 1971-73, Daru P.M.R. Rev. & Mrs. Robert G. Stringer, 1972, Choiseul. Rev. & Mrs. Brian H. Turner, 1973, Rarongo.

MEDICAL MISSIONARIES Dr. & Mrs. Edward G. Sayers, M.B.Ch.B. (N.Z.). F.R.C.P. (Lond.), F.R.A.P., D.T.M.& H. (Lond.) 1927-34. Dr. & Mrs. Clifford S. James, M.B.Ch.B. (N.Z.), D.T.M. & H. (Lond.), F.R.C.S (Edin.), F.R.A.C.S. 1928-31. Dr. & Mrs. Allen G. Rutter, M.B.Ch.B. (N.Z.), F.R.C.S. (Edin.), D.T.M. & H. (Lond.) 1938-42. Dr. Gerald E. Hoult, M.B.Ch.B. (NZ), B.D.S. (NZ), D.T.M. & H. 1948-63. Dr. & Mrs. Ronald W. Pattinson B.M. B.S. (Melb), D.T.M. & H. (Liverpool) 1964-72. Dr. & Mrs. Stafford Bourke, Locum, 1970. Dr. & Mrs. R. Scown, M.B., Ch.B., Dip.Obstr., 1973- MISSIONARY SISTERS Alice McNeish, 1911-1913. Ivy Stanford (Aust.), 1916-22 (married Rev. J. R. Metcalfe), 1922-57 G. May Mansfield (Aust.), 1917-23 (married Rev. T. Dent) 1923-34 Ethel McMillan (Aust.), 1914-41. Constance Olds, Deaconess, 1919-22 (Married Rev. A. A. Bensley) 1922-34 Lilian Berry, Nurse, 1922-33. May Barnett, Deaconess, 1922-33. Elizabeth Common, Nurse, 1923-42. Ada Saunders, Nurse, 1923-24. Lina Jones, Teacher, 1924-49. Jean Dalziel, Deaconess, 1925-30. Lily White, Nurse, 1925-28. Grace McDonald, Deac. & Nurse, 1927-34; 1939-50 Edna White, Nurse, 1927-32; 1936-38; 1955-1962. Vivian Adkin, Nurse, 1928-30. Muriel Stewart, Nurse, 1928-32. Coralie Murray, Nurse, 1929-31. Ruth Grant, Teacher, 1931-34. Isabel Stringer, Nurse, 1932-34. May Bartle, Nurse, 1932-34. Ada Lee, Teacher, 1934-42; 1952-66. Vera Cannon, Nurse, 1934-42. Effie Harkness, Teacher, 1937-57. Merle Farland, Nurse, 1938-43. Joy Whitehouse, Nurse, 1938-48. Winifred Poole, Nurse, 1946-54. Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 103

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Merle Carter, Nurse, 1946-61. Lucy Money, Deaconess, 1947- Eva Saunders, Nurse, 1948-53. Joyce McDonald, Teacher, 1949-52 (married Rev. B. W. Sides) 1963-68 Joan Brooking, Nurse, 1950-53. Davinia dark. Nurse, 1950-56 (married Rev. P. Taylor) 1958-66 Jessie Grant, Nurse, 1950-57. Myra Fraser, Teacher, 1950-71. Jane Bond, Nurse, 1950-54. Pamela Beaumont, Deac. & Teacher, 1951- 1 year 0 S S Nancy Ball, Teacher, 1951-60. Helen Whitlow, Teacher, 1951-54. Thelma Duthie, Teacher, 1952-63. June Hilder, Nurse, 1952-62. Rewa Williamson, Nurse, 1953-60. Norma Graves, Deac. & Teacher, 1954-72. Olive Money, Secretarial Work, 1954-56. Norma May Neutze, Nurse, 1955-57. Joy Thompson, Nurse, 1955-61. Edith James, Nurse, 1955-65, Highlands. Mary Addison, Nurse, 1956-68. Audrey Grice, Teacher, 1956-65. Beulah Reeves, Teacher, 1957-61. Lesley Bowen, Deac. & Nurse, 1957-63; 1968- 1 year 0 S S Beryl Grice, Teacher, 1957-58; 1960-73. 1 year O.S.S. Phyllis Rudolph, Teacher, 1957-60. Audrey Highnam, Nurse, 1957-63 (married Rev. M. Bruce) 1969- Audrey Roberts, Nurse, 1958-61 (married Mr. R. Fleury) 1966-68 Kathleen Shaw, Teacher, 1960-66. Gladys Larkin, Nurse, 1960-70. Patricia Hulks, Teacher, 1961-68. Patricia Jacobson, Teacher, 1962-72. Janice Palmer, Nurse, 1962-65. Vivienne Parton, Teacher, 1962-65. Catherine Scott, Secretarial Work, 1963-67, Highlands. Esther Watson, Nurse, 1963-69. Muriel McCormack, Nurse, 1963-71. Shona Couch, Secretarial Work, 1963-65. Lynette Sadler, Teacher, 1964- Beverley Withers, Nurse, 1964-68. Rosemary Bettany, Teacher, 1964-67. Ailsa Thorburn, Nurse, 1966-72, Highlands. Beryl Gray, Nurse, 1967-70. Muriel Davey, Nurse, 1967-70.

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Judith Milne, Teacher, 1967-68. Eileen Schick, Teacher, 1967- 1 yr. O.S.S. Joan Amesbury, Secretarial Work, 1968-69. Diane Bellamy, Nurse, 1968-69; 1971- Beverley Baker, Nurse, 1968- Highlands. Christine Lowe, Teacher, 1968-71, 1 year O.S.S. Marilyn Harkness, Nurse, 1971-, New Guinea Islands. Patricia Moodie, Nurse, 1972-, Highlands.

LAY MISSIONARIES Mr. & Mrs. Frank Chivers, Technician, 1922-27. Mr. Grenville Voyce, Lay Helper, 1946-54. Mr. Bruce Cole, Builder, 1946-48. Mr. & Mrs. George Carter, Teachers, 1949-52. Mr. & Mrs. Chris Palmer, Engineer, 1949-51. Mr. & Mrs. George Yearbury, Builder, 1949-52. Mr. Brian W. Sides, Builder, 1950-53. Mr. H. L. J. Newton, Builder, 1951-52. Mr. Phillip F. Taylor, Builder, 1951-53. Mr. & Mrs. Robert Mannall, Engineer, 1952-58. Mr. & Mrs. Gordon Dey, Builder. 1953-70, 1 year O.S.S. Mr. John Miller, Builder, 1954-60. Mr. William Sharples, Builder, 1954-57. Mr. Clarence Wills, Builder, 1956-59. Mr. Niven Ball, Builder, 1956-58. Mr. & Mrs. Rodney Fleury, Plantation, 1957-68. Mr. & Mrs. Robert Baker, Secretarial Work, 1958-61. Mr. & Mrs. John Gatman, Engineer, 1958-64. Mr. & Mrs. Bruce Smith, Secretarial Work, 1961-67. Mr. David Eason, Builder, 1963-70; 1972- Mr. & Mrs. Terence Kehely, Engineer, 1964-68. Mr. Kenneth Skinner, Builder, 1964-67 (New Guinea Islands). Mr. & Mrs. William Griffiths, Station Manager, 1965-67. Mr. & Mrs. Gordon Pavey, Secretarial Work, 1965-68; 1969-72. Mr. Bryan Jenkin, Builder, 1964-66, 1 year O.S.S. Mr. & Mrs. David Buchan, Plantation, 1966-72. Mr. & Mrs. David Crooks, Secretarial Work, 1966-67. Mr. & Mrs. Eric Harney, Secretarial Work, 1966-71; 1972- 1 year O.S.S. Mr. & Mrs. Hugh Dyson, Secretarial Work, 1967-70. Mr. Alistair Baxter, Printer, 1967-70 (New Guinea Islands). Mr. & Mrs. Bruce McKerras, Builder, 1967-69. Mr. Neil Clement, Builder, 1967- (Seconded to Leprosy Miss), Highlands. Mr. & Mrs. Donald Pentelow, Builder, 1968-71. Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 105

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Mr. & Mrs. Kenneth Munro. Teacher, 1968-71. Mr. & Mrs. Denis Moor, Engineer, 1968-71. Mr. & Mrs. Douglas McKenzie, Teachers, 1968-, Papuan Islands. Mr. & Mrs. Chris Nagel, Plantation, 1969-71. Mr. Alistair Munro, Builder, 1969-71. Mr. & Mrs. Eion Field, Station Manager, 1969-71; 1973- Mr. & Mrs. Donald Bennett, Teachers, 1969- Mr. & Mrs. David Golding, Printer, 1970-73, Papuan Islands. Mr. & Mrs. John Wishart, Secretarial Work, 1970-72. Mr. Colin Oates, Mechanic, 1968, O.S.S. 1970-, Highlands. Mr. & Mrs. Graham Cochrane, Teachers, 1971-72. Mr. & Mrs. Ian Shakespeare, Secretarial Work, 1972-

SHORT TERM WORKERS, VOLUNTEERS, ORDER OF ST. STEPHEN Mr. C. Carter, Builder, 1947. Mr. Jack Murray, Builder, 1953-54, O.S.S. Mr. Wesley Leonard, Engineer, 1955. Mr. David Peterson, Builder, 1956. Mr. Jack Freeman, Builder, 1960, O.S.S. Miss Bernice Birch, Pharmacist, 1961-64, 1 year O.S.S Mr. Alan Penny. Builder, 1962, O.S.S. Mr. Lawrence Jenkin, Teacher, 1962, O.S.S. Miss Nesta King, Secretarial Work, 1963. Miss Nancy Tiddy, Teacher, 1963, O.S.S. Miss Judith Marshall, Teacher, 1963, O.S.S. Miss Margaret Lavelle, Nurse, 1963, O.S.S. Mr. Noel Jackson, Builder, 1964-66, 1 year O.S.S. Mr. Keith Woodley, Teacher, 1964, O.S.S. Mr. David Dick, Electrician, 1964, O.S.S. Mr. Bruce Coaldrake, Builder, 1964. Mr. Keith Knox, Builder, 1965-66. Mr. Desmond Jack, Builder, 1965. Miss Heather Salmon, Secretarial Work, 1966, O.S.S. Miss Anne Shaw, Bacteriologist, 1966, O.S.S. Miss Barbara Leadley, Teacher, 1967-68. Mr. Leonard Daniell, Builder, 1967, O.S.S. Highlands. Mr. Keith Masters, Station Manager, 1967-68, O.S.S. Mrs. Valerie Masters, Teacher, 1967-68, O.S.S. Miss Esther Powell, Teacher, 1968-69, 1 year O.S.S. Miss Carol Crabtree, Nurse, J 968-69, O.S.S. Mr. Keith Elliot, Builder, 1968, O.S.S. Mr. Lloyd Stubbs, Plantation, 1969- Mrs. Julie Brown, Teacher, f969, O.S.S. Miss Diana Thornley, Teacher, 1969-70. Wesley Historical Society (NZ) Publication #28(3&4) Page 106

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Miss Mary Topp, Nurse, 1969-71. Mrs. Anne Vaughan, Teacher, 1969-70. Mr. Warren Vaughan, Electrician, 1969-70. Mr. Murray Small, Builder, 1969, O.S.S. Mr. Murray Sanders, Electrician, 1970. Miss Margaret Wharfe, Secretarial Work, 1970-72, 1 year, O.S.S. Miss Lesley Sommerville, Teacher, 1970-71. Mr. & Mrs. William Peddie, Teachers, 1970. Miss Dianne Lloyd, Teacher, 1970. Miss Jennifer Harkness, Nurse, 1970. Miss Rosalie Edmonds, Teacher, 1970-71. Mr. Noel Leslie Andrews, Secretarial Work, 1970. Miss Patricia Battersby, Nurse, 1971. Miss Justine Guest, Nurse, 1972, O.S.S. Miss Janet Antill, Secretarial Work, 1973. Mr. Leicester Cheeseman, Mechanic, 1973. Mr. & Mrs. William Simpson, Teachers, 1973.

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