“This looks as if it is developing as a meeting of epic proportions, sufficiently awesome to make me nervous,” Ken McKinnon says of the reunion as we discuss his presentation to the Grand Reunion Dinner. Ken began working on his talk a couple of weeks ago “but it is hard to stop the flow of memories of PNG, so it got far too long.” As a result Ken’s decided to speak as the mood and the moment dictate.

In exchanging emails about such matters, Ken provided me with some rare photographs of some of his PNG experiences and I’d like to share these with you. The first is from fifty years ago, 1957, when Ken had been in the Territory for some three years and was posted as District Education Officer, Western District. Here he stands in front of a long house at Balimo, a dwelling accommodating about 600 people.

This next shot is of a 1968 meeting in Madang of all the senior officers in the Department of Education.  I don’t know whether the guy holding the chart is Kwamalo Kalo, but it sure looks like him. Some of you may be able to help out on this and the other characters in the photo.

The final exhibit here is the spoof cover of a special Education Gazette published to mark Ken’s departure from PNG in August 1973 when he moved to Australia to establish the Schools Commission. Ken says it was produced by “some irreverent people, no doubt ex-ASOPA folk”.

Catch up on all reunion information and the laughing crocodile at Bill Bohlen’s website here.