I would particularly like to acknowledge your personal role during the difficult times of the Gazelle Peninsula. I know that your knowledge, tact, and understanding helped in no small way to bring out about a peaceful settlement to that extremely tense situation.

I thank you for your sound counsel, always so readily available, and always so necessary to the important decisions in the political field. 

Sir Michael concluded his letter to Harry with the wish and hope that Harry could be with him on Independence Day.

Returning to Harry’s incredible career:  He became a private in the AIF at 19 years of age, and a Lieutenant in ANGAU a few years later. He became a Patrol Officer, an Assistant District Officer, a District Officer, a District Commissioner, the Australian Liaison Officer in Dutch New Guinea, Australia’s Special Representative to the Trusteeship Council, and ultimately the Head of our Department.

In the time available, I can only touch on the trivia of that great life.

At the end of 1945, with the war over, but still in ANGAU, he was given a forbidding task, to escort 300 Highlanders home—overland from Lae, on the coast, to Goroka, in the Highlands.

The Highlanders were not happy about the 10-day trek that lay ahead of them. They had been promised that they would be flown home. Instead they had to walk, through unknown and hostile Territory, carrying all their food for the journey, and carrying all their possessions.

Harry said he managed to get them all to Goroka with the assistance of Tom Fox, a legendary prospector.  He did not mention the trials of that 200 kilometre trek; the unmarked tracks, the innumerable unbridged rivers that had to be crossed by the 300 people entrusted to his care, none of whom who could swim.

Nor did he mention the heat of the Markham Valley grasslands, or the climb up the Highland escarpment, and the long ensuing transit through hostile Territory.

That was his first great trek in the Territory, there would be many others: more notable and more dangerous.

At the end of the war, he took up a new career, one that was very similar to his Army role. He joined the Civil Administration.

His appointment as a Patrol Officer, and the associated roles of magistrate, officer of police, inspector of labour, licker of stamps etc. all had to be notified in the Papua New Guinea Government Gazette.

Those formal proclamations were prepared and sent to the Government Printer, where an overzealous official editor made an editorial correction: Harry William West became Henry William West, but only for a short time; until the next Gazette, where the name change was reversed.

I spoke earlier about the more dangerous treks. The unusual thing about them was not the danger, or the wild country that he explored, or the incredible distances he covered. It was Harry’s attire. Even though had gingerish hair and a fair skin, he ignored the boiling sun. He dressed in a pair of blue, sometimes purple, shorts.

He did not wear shirts, preferring white sleeveless singlets that exposed his neck, shoulders and arms to the sun. Sporting a floppy cloth hat or a well-worn city-style Akubra on his head, short socks, and boots; he lapped up the sun.  Most people would have fried.

As Assistant District Officer at Telefomin, a post in the middle of New Guinea, just east of the then Dutch New Guinea border, Harry took the first Administrative patrols to the Oksapmin and to the Mianmin.

The Mianmin, at that time, were nasty little people who regarded their neighbours as their herds, they culled them, and they ate them. Harry had to pass through the Eliptamin on his way. The Eliptamin people were considered slightly more sociable, and certainly less aggressive than the Mianmin.

Just two years later those seemingly friendly Eliptamins simultaneously attacked two other patrols. They murdered the two officers (Szarka and Harris) and two of Harry’s former police (Burutori and Purari.) They hacked them to pieces.

Harry was ADO at Kainantu at the time but not unoccupied. Accompanied by Patrol Officer John Colman, he was exploring the Kukukuku country. He walked from Kainantu in the Eastern Highlands to Menyamya, in the Morobe District; a distance of 100 kilometres as the crow flies.

West and Colman probably travelled almost twice that distance, crossing mountain ranges and valleys, searching for, and finding, previously uncontacted people. When they eventually arrived at Menyama, they turned around and retraced their steps. They trudged back to Kainantu.

It was at Kainantu that Harry displayed his superb organisational skills. He gently nudged the District Commissioner, Ian Downs; into accepting that the route of the proposed road down the escarpment from the Highland’s to the Markham valley was in the wrong location.

Down’s had chosen the route, and one did not argue with Downs, but Harry’s new route, located by Lance Corporal Pokia, a Sepik policeman, is still the path followed by the Highlands Highway.

Downs decided to close a Patrol Post in the Goroka Sub-district and move it to a more densely populated area of the Kainantu Sub-district. He got on the radio to discuss the move, and directed that the new post would be at a village called Okapa. (He liked that name - it sounded like Okapi, the name of a small African antelope.)

West knew that the post should be located in the centre of the population, but one did not argue with Downs, especially over the airwaves, so he seemingly capitulated. Harry named the new post Okapa, but he located it in a different spot—where he wanted it, in the centre of the population, at Moke.

But Harry’s 10 years in New Britain, as District Officer and District Commissioner at Rabaul, were his greatest challenge. There were racial divisions and there were the unsolvable colonial land problems. Harry said that in 100 years of white domination the local people had gained little and lost a lot.

The government’s move to create a multi-cultural council only made the problems worse. The visits by Opposition leader Gough Whitlam, Prime Minister Gorton, Cabinet members and the Administrator created more problems and major security concerns for District Commissioner West. It was a “no win” situation. It cost him his health.

Harry West’s contribution to Papua and New Guinea went unrecognised by the Australian government, and he himself did not support the push for a medal for kiaps. He thought a library, or some appropriately named research facility, might provide more worthwhile recognition.

Harry West and his achievements are, and will always be, a more significant and lasting memorial than any other.

We honour him, and we will not forget.