I read 'Bamahuta Leaving Papua' this week and am glad to have done so. I was enlightened and re-educated about the role and immense contribution of the kiap to PNG's history (inc PNG-Aust relationship). So much more than 'policeman' as what I'd heard kiaps referred to in my younger years.

What I appreciated about the book was the depth of personalities presented - particularly that of Administration staff. It is interesting to hear the reasoning of the Administartion as well as the perspectives of how kiaps approached their job and the PNGns. The inclusion of West Papuans crossing into the border and how kiaps were to deal with such incidents is quite interesting.

I took an immediate liking to two female characters, espeically Ihini. I daresay a good number of PNG girls and women of today would identify with her - her outlook on life as a woman in PNG, and universally. Of course, the descriptions of the many rural and isolated villages (and people) patrolled by kiaps had me in awe and wondering if one day I will ever see these places for myself. It's hard not to think about the survival and livelihoods of our people in the rural areas and after reading this book.

Phil - a read that was engaging, informative book, at times quite emotive and filled with well-placed humour.

Just who was Ihini – a confession of sorts.

The recent availability of my early book, 'Bamahuta: Leaving Papua' as a downloadable PDF by the Australian National University has strangely prompted a range of questions that I thought had been retired to bed years ago.

Of all the characters and the events in the book people mostly ask me about is Ihini, the young journalist in the narrative.

I lot of people say, ‘I knew you in Papua New Guinea before independence but I never met Ihini, who was she?’

Others make the assumption that Ihini was actually a young Ikini Yaboyang, who went on to marry Barry Holloway.

I tried to make it clear in the introduction to the book that it had been necessary to rearrange some events for narrative purposes and to change the names of some characters to avoid, as my publisher advised, possibilities for litigation.

To make it all work I also had to invent, or at least stretch the truth of some events. That’s why the book was published as fiction, even though it was 95% fact. Or at least fact as I perceived it. I believed then as I believe now that facts often get in the way of truth.

Ihini was two things. First of all she was an amalgam of three different people I knew at various stages in those early days; they are all now sadly passed on.

Secondly she was a clumsy attempt on my part to create a metaphor for Papua, a place I grew to love. In those days I had pretensions to literary writing.

In my mind, then and now, Papua reflects the feminine side of Papua New Guinea. I think this reflects the gentleness of the coastal people more than anything else.

There’s nothing sinister or deeply psychological in this, it is just the way my mind works.

I did, in fact, know Ikini Yaboyang when she was a very young journalist. I first met her at Olsobip when the exploration for Ok Tedi was gearing up and I spent time with her in Port Moresby and elsewhere.

It was a largely platonic relationship because we simply enjoyed each other’s company. And she wasn’t anywhere near as feisty in those days as she later became. And, of course, she wasn’t a Papuan, she came from Finschhafen.

The other parts of the Ihini character I will keep to myself. Neither of them had high profiles and you wouldn’t recognise them.

Let me explain what I tried to do with Ihini as a metaphor.

There is an early scene in the book where I go searching for her because I’m afraid she has met with some sort of accident at a bathing place. When I find her she reveals herself in all her glory.

Quite a few people scoff at this event but what I was trying to convey was the point in my life when the true sense and spirit of Papua was revealed to me.

Following on from that I portray the metaphorical character as a young woman striving to find her place in the world, just as Papua was then doing. To do this she adopted all of the modern western trends of the time, in the way she spoke, thought, dressed and adopted causes like feminism.

It is a theme I attempted to pursue through the rest of the book.

Towards the end, however, she comes to re-evaluate her motives. She goes off in a lakatoi on a modern and untraditional version of a Hiri voyage and eventually marries the man her parents had chosen for her and to whom she had been promised as a child.

That was the point when I realised that although I had come to love Papua my future didn’t lie there and I had to let it go and return to Australia. Many Australians went the other way, of course, and I admire their courage and commitment, it is no small thing.

In some ways I think my re-engagement with Papua New Guinea many years later was some sort of atonement for not staying.

Not that I’ve regretted in any way my subsequent life and the many different worlds I have inhabited.

What I don’t do now, however, is try to create complicated metaphors in my writing, I’ll leave that to the literary crowd.

Among other things it raises too many questions that are hard to answer. It is a lesson now well-learnt and one I hope I have left far behind.

Thanks you very much Pandanus Books and Phil Fitzpatrick.