One of those is a memoir of a reforming missionary who worked among the people of Mornington Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria.

The late Douglas Belcher was ordained as a Minister and served on Gununa (Mornington Island) in the Gulf of Carpentaria for three terms between 1953 and 1980.

Prior to that, however, he was a non-combatant member of the Medical Corps attached to the Seventh Division Engineers group serving in New Guinea during World War II.

After arriving in Port Moresby in 1943 he was posted to Dumpu in the Ramu Valley where the 18th Brigade was in action against the Japanese around Shaggy Ridge.

“From the flat alluvial valley foothills led up to the higher mountains and forest of the Finnistere, truly magnificent country, with Mount Helwig in the distance,” Rev Belcher writes.

“I did a few sketches and water colours at this time and managed to make a trip to the coast from the Ramu Valley.

Douglas Belcher's sketch of the Ramu Valley,  February 1944

“Hitch-hiking by jeep into the mountains, I made my way by foot from one staging-post to the next, making sketches of the Jap road bridges, camps, vehicles and equipment on the way.

“There was no action of any importance going on, otherwise I would not have been permitted to proceed through to the coast.”

Belcher was later posted to New Britain where he had a couple of close calls with the Japanese but managed to make it to Rabaul for their surrender.

His sketches are now held by the Australian War Memorial.

He died in 1999 and his family were determined to see his memoir published.

The  memoir is an enlightening account of the Lardil and Kaiadilt community with whom he worked and the affectionate relationship he and his family developed with them.

Rev Belcher recognised the importance of their culture and encouraged Elders in their efforts to continue cultural practices and to maintain leadership roles.

During this time similar situations were being played out on mission stations all over Australia.

Most of these stations, including Gununa, were eventually ceded to government control and then community control under policies of self-determination very similar to those developed by Belcher.

His memoir is an important historical record of the transition and decolonisation of the people of Gununa.

Rev Belcher’s family had been searching for a publisher for his memoir for several years without success when his son Ross mentioned their dilemma to Glen Miller, a Buchulla elder from Wide Bay in Queensland.

I had been involved on a heritage project with Glen and the Buchulla on K’Gari, Fraser Island, and he knew about my publishing endeavours and suggested Ross call me.

When I received the manuscript I immediately recognised it as historically and culturally significant but also knew it was unlikely to interest a mainstream publisher.

I also discovered that he had worked in the Pitjantjatjara Lands in northern South Australia when I was there and that we had probably met each other on several occasions.

So I broke the promise to myself and decided to crank up my old desktop for one last publishing effort.

And in saying that I must tell you that the poor old thing is so dated and temperamental it wouldn’t survive another go.

Windward Leeward is the 81st book that I’ve published in a corpus focussing on Papua New Guinea and the Indigenous people of Australia.

Mornington Island (from Wikipedia)

Mornington Island is an island in the Gulf of Carpentaria in the Shire of Mornington, Queensland. It is the northernmost and the largest of 22 islands that form the Wellesley group.

Commander Matthew Flinders named the island after Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley who was known when younger as the Earl of Mornington.

Its largest town, Gununa, is in the south-western part of the island.

The Lardil people are the traditional owners of the island, but on the island there are also Kaiadilt people, who were relocated from nearby Bentinck Island, as well as people of other Australian Indigenous nations.

The Mornington Island Mission was established in 1914 by Robert Hall, the Presbyterian assistant superintendent from Weipa Mission, who ran it until his murder in October 1917.

Rev Wilson took over, serving as superintendent until about 1941; mission staff were evacuated during World War II.

James (Bert) McCarthy[19] was Superintendent from 1944 to 1948, and he imposed a strict regime of adhering to Christian customs and eroded the authority of the elders.

It was during this time that all of the Kaiadilt people living on nearby Bentinck Island were moved by the missionaries onto the Mornington Island Mission.

The missionaries removed the children from their parents and placed them into separate dormitories for boys and girls, while their parents built humpies around the mission.

It was 10 years after the relocation, completed in 1948, before one of the removed Kaiadilt woman gave birth to a child who survived.

The final relocation of the people was spurred by the pollution of the islanders' water supply by seawater after it was badly damaged by a cyclone, with the relocation assisted by the Queensland Government. It was reported that some of the people had to be "induced" to move.

Douglas Belcher arrived when Taylor was superintendent, taking over as superintendent in May 1953. Belcher ran a more humane administration than his predecessors, and respected the Lardil culture.

Mission conditions were not as severe and restrictive as they were at the Doomadgee Mission, and by the late 1950s the practice of separating children from parents in dormitories had been abandoned, so many residents of Doomadgee moved to Mornington Island.

In 1978 the Queensland Government took over the administration of both Aurukun and Mornington Island mission stations.

The book in a nutshell

Douglas Belcher's sketch of Astrolabe Bay,  PNG,  March 1944

Douglas Belcher was ordained as a Minister and served on Gununa (Mornington Island) in the Gulf of Carpentaria for three terms between 1953 and 1980.

His memoir is an enlightening account of the Lardil and Kaiadilt community with whom he worked and the affectionate relationship he and his family developed with them.

He recognised the importance of their culture and encouraged Elders in their efforts to continue cultural practices and to maintain leadership roles.

During this time similar situations were being played out on mission stations all over Australia.

Most of these stations, including Gununa, were eventually ceded to government control and then community control under policies of self-determination very similar to those developed by Douglas Belcher.

His memoir is an important historical record of the transition and decolonisation of the people of Gununa.

Windward Leeward: The people of Gununa (Mornington Island) by Douglas Belcher, Independently Published, 2024, ISBN 979-8329693263, 338 pages. Paperback available from Amazon Australia for AU$18.11 plus postage