I’d received this when I was the officer in charge at Olsobip in Western Province.

When I re-read it more than half a century later, I discovered the booklet provided a succinct explanation of what kiaps did in Papua New Guinea.

All these years later it occurred to me that the booklet is probably an important historical document.

But a search of the catalogue of the National Library of Australia yielded no indication that its extensive collection of PNG material included this significant document.

Explaining the work of kiaps in a clear and concise way has always been a vexed problem.

The easy answer is ‘everything’ but a useful definition has proved more difficult to develop.

The booklet was so useful that I decided to create a PDF of the document in the hope that people will share it widely, including to libraries and educational institutions.

You can link to it here

As you look through the booklet, you’ll see that Papua New Guinean kiaps feature, especially in the photographs.

One of the features that distinguished the Australian administration of PNG from colonial administrations in other parts of the world was the close and cooperative relationship its field officers had with local people.

This was achieved by ensuring that officers lived as close as possible to the communities they administered and also that constant patrol visits were undertaken to villages and other settlements.

This exposure carried a level of risk, especially to officers in newly contacted areas, but its success is indisputable.

The young men who brought the outside world to people who mostly had no contact with it had the job of creating a nation from PNG’s fragmented communities which spoke about 850 different languages and which had a vast range of cultural practices.

Kiaps were representatives of the colonial Administration and had wide responsibilities in bringing an understanding of what a nation was, how government worked, its laws and its judicial system, the importance of economic development, the need for community participation in developing infrastructure (especially roads, bridges, airstrips, wharves and other structures).

As September 2025 brings the half-centenary of PNG independence, the importance of kiaps to the people of PNG remains in the continued personal relationships between retired officers and the Papua New Guinean people they served and worked with to build a nation.