They moved through swamps, crossed by launch between coral atolls and islands, followed giant rivers, tramped across vast grass landscapes or toiled over difficult mountain terrain. Patrols could be quite different in duration, conduct, aim and outcome but they had a great deal in common.

My pictorial essay, ‘Tapini Patrol No 9 of 1974-75’, a rare pictorial record, highlights these historical similarities in unusual detail. Every patrol would have interpreter, policemen, standard patrol equipment, carriers and most would camp at a series of pre-determined rest house locations. Every PNG kiap will recognise routines recorded during this 1974 patrol. Almost all Papua New Guineans born before 1970 will too.

The pictures and their accompanying text will also confirm, no doubt to the surprise of many people, that this type of colonial administration was still being conducted at the same time as the first humans walked on the moon and as the Rolling Stones dominated transistor radio airwaves. Indeed many younger kiaps of the late 1960s and early 1970s sported long hair and drooping moustaches modelled on San Francisco hippies.

That said, however, events like the population census and the village court, were common features of PNG’s bush administration system, and this makes the first-hand account of ‘Tapini Patrol No 9 of 1974-75’  a valuable historic record.