“The Cadet (Patrol Officer) - who is usually aged between eighteen and 25 when he enters ASOPA for a grounding in such subjects as Colonial Administration, Law, Anthropology - gets experience soon enough. And if he goes into the field with a bright-eyed idealism, it is a good gleam for him to carry. Authority can so easily turn into arrogance - and even the Cadet is at once in a position of considerable authority over natives.

“The School also represents Australian realization that well-administered and well-assisted colonial peoples do not revolt and side with the governing nation in war… The School of Pacific Administration added modern training to a pre-war tradition. About this tradition there is nothing pukkah or military or old-school-tie. It was Made-In-New Guinea, and with it goes a spirit of belonging to something that belongs to New Guinea; and that means going through with a job when there would be reason enough to give up or turn back by ordinary standards - but not by New Guinea standards, of what men can do, or forbear to do, if they have enough of staunch wisdom and courage. It is a tremendously respectable thing in the eyes of the native people, this tradition. So it should be in Australian eyes and, indeed, in the eyes of a world which will have difficulty in pointing to anything quite like it anywhere else.”

[Source: ‘Recollections Of A Patrol Officer’, the story of Lloyd Hurrell, one of a fascinating array of Pacific anecdotes on Jane Resture's Oceania Page]