At the spearhead of this governance were the patrol officers (kiaps), who explored new territory, made contact with their peoples and brought structured and integrated administration to what then, and is still, known as ‘the land of a thousand tribes’.

Before World War II,  since the age of 18 months, I'd been brought up on the goldfields of Edie Creek. After the war, my father, a metallurgist, was in charge of the processing plant at the newly established Golden Ridges mine near Wau and, when I returned from boarding school, I went to live there with my parents.

Not long after, the opportunity to join the Administration as a cadet patrol officer came along. On 1 July 1952 I was appointed and soon found myself in Sydney on that introductory 'short course'.

What followed then was three years in the field as a patrol officer until 1956, when I returned to ASOPA for what was the first ‘long course’.

This was a full year studying law, policing, government, public administration, anthropology and other subjects relevant to the creation of a fully-fledged field officer.

At the end of that year I remained in the Administration of PNG until its emergence as an independent nation in 1975, after which I became a business executive in Sydney and also began my voluntary service with the Papua New Guinea Association of Australia.

With that background, it's  understandable that I have read and thought much about a draft master plan covering the Middle Head area in Sydney of which ASOPA was such a significant part.

I was not far into studying the plan when I felt significant concern at the lack of recognition accorded to ASOPA, which for some 30 years was the institution that trained the field force – mainly in district administration and education - that undertook Australia’s responsibilities in the administration and development of Papua New Guinea.

Without ASOPA training an expert field force, it is hard to imagine just how the early development, and later swift move to nationhood, of PNG would have occurred.

Part of the plan’s vision for Middle Head, the traditional home of the Borogegal and Cammeraygal peoples, is to provide an important place of:

‘Enshrined memory, immersive learning and interpretation excellence …. an iconic site and place that is established and bound by its inherent First Nations, military and natural heritage values of place.’

Nowhere in the scope of the plan is the role and legacy of ASOPA nominated as part of that heritage.

In undertaking what is its seriously limited vision, one of the plan’s key actions is said to be:

‘The establishment of a permanent place of interpretation – an authoritative and curated home for the stories and significance of place reflecting First Nations, military and natural heritage values.’

Again, nowhere in this plan does there emerge any consideration of preserving the significant heritage value of ASOPA and its critical role in guiding Papua New Guinea to self-government and independence in an orderly and peaceful way.

That said, it must be noted that, during Australia’s administrative control of what became PNG, 85 field officers died as a result of illness or injuries incurred in their service.

In this context, the late Major-General Michael Jeffery AC CVO MC, a past Governor-General of Australia, commemorating the 30th anniversary of PNG’s independence, in 2005, recalled that:

‘On the 15th of September 1975, when the Australian flag was lowered in Papua New Guinea, PNG’s first Governor-General, Sir John Guise, noted poignantly that ‘the Australian flag was being lowered, not torn down’.

‘Sir John’s statement reflected the positive spirit in which the Independent State of Papua New Guinea was established – to the credit of both the leaders of Papua New Guinea and the Australian Governments.’

ASOPA was not only the primary training institute underpinning the development of PNG, it was a place of significant academic consideration of Australia’s colonial role and experience.

This itself surely deserves substantial recognition as a clearly defined case exhibiting what the plan designates as ‘value of place’, and what we might call ‘what’s the value of the place?’.

A question that can be answered by the intellectual contribution of the prominent Australian administrators and scholars who graced its old Army barracks.

People like the military strategist Colonel Alf Conlon (who conceived and briefly led ASOPA), Colonel JK Murray, the first peacetime Administrator of PNG, and the distinguished social scientist Charles Rowley, ASOPA’s principal for 14 years, who historian Ken Inglis relates “wrote the first study of the combined territories of Papua and New Guinea to put at its centre not the colonisers but the people colonised.  In plain language, he drew on history, anthropology and political science, and years of discussion at ASOPA.”

In addition to these luminaries, ASOPA had on its staff Sir John Kerr (its first principal) and his fellow lawyers Professor Julius Stone AO OBE and Professor Hal Wootten AC QC, anthropologists WEH (Bill) Stanner CMG, Dr Ian Hogbin, Professor AP Elkin CMG, Lt Col Camilla Wedgewood and Dr Ruth Latakefu, the influential literary figures James McAuley and Harold Stewart, diplomat Sir James Plimsoll and it was to train as a student the eminent Australian educationist Professor Ken McKinnon AO.

It should also be recorded that ASOPA was instrumental in training patrol officers working within the Northern Territory Department of Aboriginal Affairs. One of these men, Ted Egan AO, was to become Administrator of the Northern Territory from 2003–07.

My wife and I have long associations with PNG over generations, pre-World War II and in my wife’s case, pre-World War I. My career in the Administration of PNG was full and creative, experiencing exploration, first contact and pacification patrols as well as normal administrative patrols.

Later in my career, before retiring to Australia just prior to Independence, I was a senior adviser in the Department of Social Development and Home Affairs. 

These days I'm a life member of the Papua New Guinea Association of Australia, which has been seeking to generate greater support from the Harbour Trust for using part of the Middle Head precinct to better communicate the heritage values associated with ASOPA and those who taught, studied and trained there.

I am knowledgeable of the heritage values of place associated with ASOPA: its functional commitment to enlightened decolonisation, its first-hand relationship with the Indigenous people of PNG and Australia and the substantial body of scholarship it produced.

The values, policies and heritage remain as crucially relevant today as they were when locked into the ASOPA model 70 years ago. Australia’s relationship with PNG and other Pacific Islands nations remain critical to Australia’s self and regional interest.

The Harbour Trust should resolutely rebuke and refuse the draft master plan proposals that would develop Middle Head as military theme park and popular entertainment centre and so capriciously ignore the rich heritage of ASOPA.

Field Marshal, and later Governor-General of Australia, Viscount Slim, referred to this heritage in a more vivid way, when he said:

“Your young chaps in New Guinea have gone out where I would never have gone without a battalion and they have done on their own by sheer force of character what I could only do with troops. I don't think there has been anything like it in the modern world.”