Death of ex-Boroko priest, Victor Haste
12 June 2021
BILL WELBOURNE
MELBOURNE – The Reverend Victor Haste who sadly passed away this week aged 85 after a short illness, spent the early part of his ministry in Papua New Guinea.
Victor trained for the Anglican priesthood in England and came to PNG as a young man with his wife Barbara, a nurse.
He was the parish priest at Boroko where our families first met in 1971 and amongst his exploits was a trek along the Kokoda Track.
He baptised our sick daughter Angelique in a small private ceremony at our house in Gerehu with godmother, Margaret Poyser, in attendance.
Upon moving to Australia, Victor and his family settled in the Adelaide Hills of South Australia before moving to Melbourne.
Always a great organiser, he became head of the Australian Board of Missions.
We connected again in Melbourne and our family shared many wonderful memories with Victor and Barbara over the years.
In the photograph at right, he proudly holds a teddy bear mascot at the Gallipoli Centenary service held at Mordialloc to honour those Anzac men and women who served our country in the Great War.
HMAS Cerberus gifted the flagpole and yardarm to be erected as a memorial at the front of the Anglican Church in Mordialloc.
Farewell dear friend. Our family extends our deepest sympathies to Barbara and your family. In God’s care.
All manner of folk make contribution to that which was the earlier-ness of the Independent State of Papua New Guinea. Vic did his bit.
By anecdote wafting in his 'wake', I had come to know of Vic as who was builder of the 'Mission House' at Sasembata, Oro Province, in which Maureen and I were resident in late 1960s.
A fine building, that would be normative in suburbs across Queensland, yet constructed distant even from the rudimentary traffic-way northeast of Kokoda, and closer to Sumbiripa (Mount Lamington), the residence was as surprising in location as the view from it's western front patio/deck, affording survey of Owen Stanley Range, Mount Victoria, and uplands that surround Kokoda.
It had and has such a grandeur of location, that every day I was grateful to the builder who it was told, was Vic.
All that was compiled on word-of-mouth, in the wake of the builder-ship of Vic.
Posted by: Lindsay F Bond | 13 June 2021 at 09:41 AM