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| Samarai - Outpost of Empire$49.50 AUDSamarai - Outpost of Empire by Lloyd NolanISBN 978-1-921452-59-8 Companion to Savage Frontier - Pacifying a Payback Culture by the same Author The story of the East End of Papua and its principal administrative outpost, Samarai, begins when European navigators first visited its waters, and tells of the adventurers who followed. Scores of vulnerable whites were massacred, eaten, and their heads taken, and in retaliatory clashes, rifles accounted for the deaths of an uncounted number of tribesmen. Establishing the Pax Britannica was a sometimes grisly business. The book tells of the military campaigns following the Japanese invasion of 1942, the aftermath of the war and the country's sometime stuttering path to Independence in 1975. Restoration of the gutted and burnt out Samarai was never pursued seriously, and the progressive development of airline networks throughout the now combined Territories of Papa and New Guinea relegated shipping to a subsidiary role in the movement of people. Consequently, Samarai was stripped of its geographic importance and thereby its principal raison d'être. By the late 1960s there were numerous dissident groups throughout TP&NG challenging the Australian Administration's approach to government. Many were from distant parts of the Territory, but their actions, and the Australian Administration's responses to them, impacted on all the indigenous people of the Territory, and the trajectory toward Independence. The actions of the more influential of these groups are detailed, as is the country's rocky path to Independence. ABOUT THE AUTHOR The author first visited Samarai and the East End while serving in the Roval Australian Navy and was quickly captivated by its outstanding beauty. Once out of the Navy he became an 'outside man. serving in pre-Independence Papa New Guinea for more than a decade. That service began at Abau and ended at Tufi, Government stations that played important roles in the early history of the East End. A career change prior to Independence resulted in him being engaged in the planning profession in Australia for the greater part of the next three decades. In 2000 he accepted an assignment as Provincial Planning Adviser for the Milne Bay Province and this renewed contact with PNG resulted in further planning assignments elsewhere in PNG in the ensuing years. The story of Samarai, and the East End, embraces his major interests, the history of colonial Papa and early town planning practice in colonial settings |
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