It was bizarre because, less than three years earlier, in November 1953, the Department had been publicly criticized when junior patrol staff Harris and Szarka and two police constables were butchered near Telefomin.

This led to a headquarters edict, in force in 1956 and for many years after, that Telefomin patrols must comprise at least two officers, one “an experienced Patrol Officer, Assistant District Officer, or District Officer.” The May River headwaters were in the Telefomin sub-district.

Redwood had just commenced his second term, was posted to the District Office in Port Moresby and was located more than 1,200 travel kilometres from May River. He had no river experience, and he no special attributes other than youthful exuberance.

By contrast, there were ten seasoned patrol officers and two others of Redwood’s vintage readily available in the Sepik District. One of the latter, Oakes, had just completed a 44-day patrol of the Yellow River, and knew the area.

The instruction “to select 12 native police from anywhere in the Territory, the best [he] could identify” - at Police headquarters – was also bizarre.

Redwood could only have undertaken a cursory search of some of the 3,500 members’ files - a random paper exercise. But he was lucky; one of the constables selected proved to be outstanding.

Redwood related that “several days later [he] was on the plane to Wewak, where [he] spent a week organizing supplies and assembling [his] police group as they arrived from all over. … flew into Ambunti … and left there several days later in the workboat for the three-day trip up the Sepik to the May River.”

George Oakes tells us that Redwood’s patrol took 93 days. My own records show that he established May River Post on 1 November 56, and left it on 18 January 1957, when he contracted hepatitis.

Redwood recalls that it took [him] about a month to capture the culprits (about 42 he recalled). In fact, 40 men from the May River were sentenced on 11 February 1957 and went to prison for long terms.

The Yellow River people were spoiling for revenge, the mountain-dwelling Mianmin were poised to strike, the May River community had been left defenceless; May River Patrol Post had to become permanent.

By March 1957, Brightwell was about to go on leave, and I had just arrived at Ambunti. Peter O’Sullivan, in Wewak, had drawn the short straw and was posted to May River.

Brightwell’s plan was simple. We would take O’Sullivan to May River, and, at the same time, re-supply the post. We would then head upstream, visit Green River Patrol Post, and turn around at the Dutch border - 1,000 km from the mouth of the Sepik. Brightwell would then go on leave.

Anything that could not get wet had to go inside the cabin; bags of rice, sugar, salt and wheatmeal - tea, ships biscuits, twist tobacco. And on either side of the stern, a 44-gallon drum - one benzene, the other kerosene.

The overflow, cargo that could withstand rain, and police, a medical orderly, some wives, went into the 50-foot (plus) canoe strapped to the starboard side.

We slept on board, on canvas bed sleeves stretched over the cargo. We were into bed before dusk, before the mosquitoes, and we stayed under the net till morning. Then, with still no room in the cabin, it was up to chairs on the wheelhouse roof, and breakfast ‘cooked’ on a single-burner brass primus.

There were no home comforts on the workboat. The river was churning mud and we floated on it, we drank it and we washed with it. A canvas flap at the stern gave some privacy for the morning shower - a bucket, tossed into the river, filled with water and retrieved with a rope. The ‘hangout’ seatless toilet: a thick rope with numerous large knots and tied to a cleat.

Redwood described May River as a “desolate place … [the] base camp on the highest ground in the area, on the river bank. The rest was swamp, all movement was by canoe, and all villages had elevated houses.”

And the operation: “Hard slogging. Early morning raids to trap them in the men’s house, pursuits for hours through the swamp, and the like. Millions of mosquitoes, and croc ridden. My nearest colleague, Max Allwood at Green River.”

Redwood did not use enough words - it was much worse than he described. He had only had four months to get to May River and build a base at the end of a shaky supply line - three and a half day’s travel by workboat from Ambunti.

At the same time, he had to establish the detail of murders, victims and culprits, and then thrash through the swamps to catch the murderers.

Not surprisingly, May River was not much of a station. The bush material houses, hemmed in by jungle, perched above a tepid stream and a muddy bank. The atmosphere was hot, humid and dank. The myriads of daylight mosquitoes seemed to have teeth. At dusk, they seemed a different breed: they were stingers.

Compared to May River, the dreaded patrol post at Green River was a tourist resort with a weekly aircraft, regular mail, groceries – even frozen meat and fresh bread. There was a permanent material house, tank water and solid ground to walk on.

A few months later I was asked to deliver an urgent letter upriver to Peter O’Sullivan. Another upset. It was a ‘Dear John’ letter from his friend Sue Rowlison, soon to become Sue Becker, later Australian TV fitness guru and host of the BBC program Boomph with Becker.

Redwood was back in the limelight in May 1957 when a question was put in the Australia Parliament:

Will the Minister confirm or deny reports that 24 New Guinea natives who were sentenced to death by the Supreme Court at Wewak yesterday were defended by a patrol officer who had participated in the apprehension of the accused? Are patrol officers generally regarded as legally qualified and as being sufficiently competent to defend persons accused of murder and was the defence counsel in this case so qualified to appear for 25 natives on a murder charge?

The Administrator telexed his advice to the Minister:

Accused defended by Patrol Officer Redwood who did not participate in any way in apprehension … Patrol officers are not legally qualified legal practitioners but undergo legal training and have considerable experience in presiding over legal proceedings as magistrates.

The Minister had a final waspish word, however, noting on the file:

I think the Administrator’s action in leaving the defence of the accused in the hands of a 22-year old officer with three years experience is indefensible ... in future more senior and more qualified experienced officers and, in major cases, qualified counsel should be engaged for the defence.

Redwood’s clients, the Mianmins, were the graziers and their neighbours were the herd, which the Mianmins periodically culled, slaughtered and ate - saving only the comely females for breeding stock.

Their foray into the Atbalmin in December 1956, when they killed and ate 17 men women and children and abducted two females, provoked a strong patrol.

ADO Ron Neville, Patrol Officers Geoff Booth and Paul Conroy, Medical Assistant Allan Kelly and 34 police undertook an operation in January and February 1957 during which the patrol was twice attacked, a police constable wounded, two Mianmin shot and 27 taken into custody.

ADO Len Aisbett and CPO Jim Fenton established the link between Telefomin and the May River Post in July-August 1958 - a 40-day patrol that worked its way through the Mianmin in the May River headwaters then travelled for three and half days in no-man's-land before meeting up with PO John Cochrane and his powered canoes some 50 km upstream from May River Patrol Post.

The Mianmin - garbed only in narrow cane waist bands, 15 centimetre working-dress phallocrypts, testicles in the breeze - considered the May River people to be under-clad “bush kanakas” - their attire being a small marine shell perched snail-like on the end of the penis.

Some six months after Aisbett’s patrol had passed through, a group of Mianmins made the next foray, selecting “the small settlement of Suwana in the Abaru group near May River Patrol Post.”

It took the raiding party the best part of five days, trekking, then drifting down the river on rafts and then trekking again to reach their objective.

The Miamin surrounded the village at dawn, killed three men and one woman, cut up the bodies and set off for home with seven female captives and the butchered bodies - leaving only the heads and entrails behind.

One of those women had difficulty keeping up so she was killed and parts of her body taken to be eaten.

Another of the abducted women subsequently escaped and reported to May River Patrol Post.

We sent a small expert team from Telefomin to Ambunti by air: Patrol Officer Jim Fenton, Interpreter Suni and Constable Kusinok (a Telefomin). Their brief was to proceed to May River post and assist the OIC, Jack Mater, in the investigation and pursuit of the Mianmin raiding party.

Hopefully, that would save many days of slogging through the Telefomin ranges, give the Mianmins a lesson about the government’s reach and accord with the headquarters edict of patrols by two officers.

Using outboard motor powered canoes, Mater led the patrol to the headwaters of the May River, and then they took to the hills. In all, it only took 14 days to reach the Mianmin settlement and surround it.

At dawn, they apprehended the 15 Usage men involved in the massacre, including the men who did the killings.

The operation went without incident and, thanks to their A510 portable receivers, District Officer Des Clancy in Wewak and me in Telefomin kept in daily radio contact with Mater and Fenton.

Mater later paid tribute to Senior Constable Augwi’s role in the operation, saying he was “the most outstanding NCO I have seen … largely responsible for the successful arrests of nine of the 15 prisoners.”

He may not have known that Augwi was also very well travelled, having visited London as part of the RP&NGC 1953 Coronation contingent. Augwi had sailed to England via Sydney in April 1953, returning by air to Sydney from London in June, and travelling back to Port Moresby by the MV Shansi.

Interpreter Suni MBE LSM, originally from Olsobip but adopted by an Eliptamin, missed accompanying only one Administration patrol to the Mianmin: Jim Taylor’s in December 1939. Instead, as a youthful camp follower, he had accompanied John Black from Telefomin to Wabag.

Suni did not see Telefomin again until a brief wartime stint when he and Mick Leahy were part of the US team that was dropped in by gliders. He next visited Telefomin, by a special Qantas flight from Goroka in December 1948 to join Des Clifton-Bassett at the newly opened government station.

That assignment, supposed to last for six months, continued for more than 30 years. Suni was to visit the Mianmin on many occasions, including with the first ever patrol to focus on the Mianmin led by Harry West in May 1950.

Nautical footnote

In October 1964, Captain Wally Blumenfeld RAE (32 Small Ship Squadron) took the AV1354 Brudenell White - an ex-World War II US LSM - up the Sepik River to the May River junction – a distance he calculated to be 595 km. The vessel was 62 metres long, with a beam of 10.4 metres, and no other ship of that size had ever reached so far up this river.

Blumenfeld recorded that the deepest water under the keel was 30 fathoms (55 metres) when the vessel was passing through the “Yambon gate”, 11 km upstream from Ambunti, where there was a 5 to 6 knot current. Overall the current varied between 1 and 6 knots and was 2.47 knots at the May River Junction.

A Tony Redwood footnote

While I was the Patrol Officer at Kainantu in the Eastern Highlands (Harry West was Assistant District Officer), the Police Sergeant Major, a veteran of the 1936 Hagen-Sepik patrol, reported a rumour that the station carpenter, from the Mekeo, had a revolver in his house.

At my behest, the brand new Cadet Patrol Officer Tony Redwood and the Sergeant Major investigated. The carpenter did not have one revolver, he had two, and, as the officers arrived, he stormed from his house waving the weapons.

Redwood took off. Almost six feet tall, with some puppy fat, he was a large, fast-moving target, but he could not outrun the fusillade. Fortunately, the carpenter’s Wild West gunslinger style sent the bullets in all directions and Redwood survived to later participate in the May River expedition.

Sources

This memoir is drawn in part from May River Cannibals by George Oates (Una Voce No 3 September 2009) which describes the prelude to the establishment of the May River Patrol Post. Oakes put that story together from his patrol reports, his memory, and from an email he received from Tony Redwood.

I have also drawn on Jim Fenton’s records and communications (including his copy of Ambunti Patrol Report 13 of 1959-60), on my own records and on other archives.

W T (Bill) Brown MBE is a former District Commissioner with the Administration of Papua New Guinea. He now lives in Sydney