Fern Ridge (Safla Rama) Digest

Setting up the Broadband network on Nimowa I met Father Anthony Young, the Australian priest on Nimowa Catholic Mission Station, in the Milne Bay Province in late December 2012. I quickly got to admire for his dedication and unselfish life to serve as the head priest to the people of Nimowa, Sudest Island, Yeina Island, Panatinance Island, Panawina Island, and other neighbouring islands.   Father Young arrived in Nimowa in 1964 and remained there for most of his life. Father Young inherited a mission station with a school established soon after the Second World War. It was built on the land that a Catholic Philipino, Florentino Paulisbo had bought before the war to make a coconut plantation.   Florentino   married a local woman at Yule Island. They had one son, Joseph, from that marriage and an adopted son, Leo. Joseph lived at Panapompom where he ran a plantation and trade store. Leo offered land on Nimowa to the Catholic missionaries. After th...

Mount Rattlesnake in background, Sudest Island. The discovery of gold near Laloki and Brown Rivers in the 1870s did not make mining an economically viable option. It was the 1888 discovery of gold on Sudest Island in the Milne Bay Province that led to a gold rush of Europeans from the declining goldfields of North Queensland. Further discoveries of gold in Woodlark and Misima around the same time saw the heavy presence of Europeans in any one time on these islands. Eight years later The Brisbane Courier (Qld) of Saturday 17 October 1896 published Sir William Macgregor, the Lieutenant Governor of New Guinea, an account of this mining. “On the 23 rd the steamer anchored at the east end of Hula Bay, on the south side of Sudest island, some half-a-mile from the store built by the British New Guinea Gold Mining Company. It is at the head of this bay that the company is to carry on its operations.” “Some time ago certain gold-bearing quartz veins were ...

Sunrise in Louisiade Archipelago December 23rd 2012 I may have done little things this year that may not count as significant. In no way are they a waste of time. Many little things put together in a basket carry the weight of great things. It is the compound value that makes me proud as an individual. The year has been a little slow sometimes. Other times life was fast paced that to remember every second of it is impossible now.   We can only remember few that are captured in the Steven’s Window column of The National newspaper of Papua New Guinea. Steven’s Window has enjoyed one more year of satisfaction in providing informative reading materials for followers of this column. In reviewing the existence of this column I am both humbled and fulfilled as the author of this column. I remain committed to the community I write for. The weekly thoughts and observations about events, experiences, and effects of social political meanderings in our fast changing so...

Spent my 2012 Christmas on Sudest Island, Milne Bay Province, PNG Christmas starts for many people as a time of great expectations. I think of Christmas as a time of affirmation of our lives through the birth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man. It is the humbleness and simplicity that define this experience. It is not the pretense, pompous expressions of the rich and wealth of a person, but the expressions of celebrating the simple things in life. Most important of all is Life, which many take for granted.   As I write this in Port Moresby I am wishing that the many Christmas celebrations I had with my cousins, uncles, aunties, and many Bubus in the village unfolds again for me. Those years in my youth were times I spent more in the village without care about how much money we need, Christmas gifts, luxurious holidays, or those wild drinking parties and night-outs in the clubs. In some sense the simple village holidays were always eventful and sometimes ou...