ERNEST SCHUBERT, who died in Melbourne last July at the age of 87, arrived in PNG as a teacher in September 1960.

By the time he undertook the orientation course at ASOPA earlier in 1960, Ern had already spent six years teaching in Queensland followed by a posting to Pitcairn Island as Education Officer and Government Adviser under the then British Colonial Office in Fiji.

After a brief posting to Idubada Technical College, Ern, accompanied by wife Betty and two young sons, spent 1961 as headmaster at Sohano on Bougainville.  Then from 1962, Ern lectured and trained primary school teachers at Port Moresby Teachers College for the rest of his time in PNG.

During these 13 years, he not only influenced a generation of teachers, he encouraged Papua New Guineans to become writers, lawyers and - to his occasional embarrassment in later years - political leaders. He strongly encouraged them to become whatever they were best inclined to be and, in doing it, to be the best they could possibly be.

Ern had contributed to the Pacific linguistic text The Pitcairnese Language and written for Pacific Islands Monthly and educational plays for ABC Radio in Queensland. So it was almost natural that he produce his own reading books for PNG school children, Peoples of the Pacific.

This series was about PNG and other Pacific Island peoples and their cultures and was compiled and edited from material provided by colleagues, friends and other contacts in PNG and the Pacific.

In an era where there was little (often no) relevant material for PNG students, these books enabled them to become aware of other people’s lives: vital for the great nation building task in PNG.

Ern was active in the Papua New Guinea Society, one of the few places in the 1960s where expatriates and Papuan New Guineans met to discuss issues vital to an emerging nation.

He edited the Society’s journal for a couple of editions in the early 1970s and was forever encouraging, with modest success, Papua New Guineans to contribute to its pages.

In this same spirit, Ern helped his student teachers organise themselves into their cultural groups to host fellow students, staff and the community to experience their respective cultures.

He also helped the trainee teachers organise themselves to raise money and, with the help of the Australian Union of Students and community groups along Australia’s east coast, to travel from Canberra to Brisbane by bus so they could begin to grasp some of the world outside PNG looked like.

Beyond teaching, Ern was very concerned that student teachers had the capacity to deal with problems that the Western part of their lives increasingly threw at them. He recognised very early that “my job in this country is to do myself out of a job; and the better I do my job, the quicker I won’t have one.”

In December 1975 after Independence Ern and Betty returned to Australia. It was a migration they never really adjusted to. Ern never returned to the classroom.

In the late 1970s, he began working as a business migration consultant, his particular focus being Taiwan.

In more recent years, until his death, he and Betty worked hard to find ways for PNG landowners to raise money to use their forest resources without feeling the need to have them logged.

It was very a difficult endeavour, confronting corporations with concern only for forests as logs and with no concern for the people who have lived in those forests. 

Ernest Schubert died on Saturday, 24 July 2010 after a three year battle with cancer, something he thought, in his typically determined manner and with his positive attitude, he could and would overcome to live for another 15 years. 

He is survived by his wife Betty, sons Paul and Mark, and three grandchildren Dominique, Adam and Sabrina.