Lively Tales from Papua New Guinea

My main purpose in writing this account is to preserve a record of the experiences many Australian ‘expats’ like myself were privileged to have during their time in Papua New Guinea. These experiences formed us and shaped our future lives.
Another reason for writing Lively Tales is to create a brief history of the country known as Papua New Guinea. With the availability of the internet this may seem redundant. However, I have woven into this small account some of the historical issues that were of interest to me while I lived in PNG and perhaps in their concise form they may prove useful to anyone wanting all the information in one place.
I have used Wikipedia extensively to create a background for my own story. Where possible I have double-checked the information to make sure it is reliable. I have also corresponded with Wikimedia to request their policy on quoting from the various articles. Part of their reply is as follows:
‘In principle, all text in Wikipedia is subject to the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License (CC-BY-SA) andmay be used free of charge for any purpose.’
My own story which seemed fairly ordinary at the time now appears, even to me, to illustrate an era of Australia’s history that was quite exemplary. True, we were colonists. We were not perfect either as individuals or as administrators, but on the whole we succeeded in bringing an end to our responsibilities in PNG in good time and with good will.
It was an historic era and Australia played its part fairly well. We ‘expats’ gave our best for the country we grew to love. We left a part of our hearts there.
So, I would like to dedicate this small book to the memory of the people I met in PNG and the country I learned to love.