At 80, reflections on a life in journalism
12 January 2025
KEITH JACKSON
NOOSA - Time can play strange tricks. Just past my 80th birthday, I find myself inhabiting two worlds: one where my mind remains as agile and adventurous as ever and another in which my aging body increasingly has difficulty in matching its desires.
Yet this contradiction has given me an unexpected gift - the ability to traverse time effortlessly in my thoughts, particularly back to that sweltering day in August 1975 when, just weeks before Papua New Guinea’s independence, I graduated from the University of Papua New Guinea.
My journey to the graduation platform began with a humbling moment in the sandhills of Palm Beach at Sydney's northern coastal extreme.
It was a January morning in 1961 and I sat among the dunes with the Sydney Morning Herald in my lap scanning the Leaving Certificate results.
My marks were, not unexpectedly, inadequate - barely enough to earn the certificate and nowhere near sufficient for university entrance.
Yet unlike my father, who saw this as another entry on a long list of disappointments in me, I harboured a secret optimism.
Months earlier, recruiters from the Department of Territories had visited Nowra High School seeking young Australians who might elect to be trained for two years and thereafter teach in New Guinea. In their offer, I saw my escape.
Two years later that escape materialised when, just after dawn on a Saturday in November 1963, our DC6 carrying 45 newly-trained teachers from the Australian School of Pacific Administration touched down in Port Moresby, the capital of the territories of Papua and New Guinea.
At 18, having never flown before, I found myself caught in a heady adventure that would see my passage shrink from a four-engine DC6 to a two-engine DC3, and finally to a single-engine Cessna 180 threading through mountain passes and afternoon storm clouds to reach my posting in Kundiawa in the Chimbu District of New Guinea’s central highlands.
Around that time, Australia's Minister for Territories, Charles (Ceb) Barnes, had proclaimed that Australia would remain in PNG for a hundred years.
Fate had different plans and Ceb missed the mark by nine decades. A biy over 20 years later I would be an eyewitness to history as Australia ceded its colonial sovereignty to a new Indigenous government of PNG.
Teaching wasn't my dream - journalism was. Since age 14, I'd reported sport for the Nowra News, edited the high school magazine, been a precocious member of the school’s debating team and won its public speaking competition in three successive years.
But with no means to break into Sydney newspapers, my family understandably unwilling to subsidise an attempt and the Nowra News and Nowra Leader not hiring, it was teaching that became my lifeboat away from a dull country town.
What I didn't realise then was how this ostensible detour to New Guinea would shape my entire life's journey.
In Kundiawa, I found a way to blend both worlds. While managing my one-teacher school with its dozen pupils, I started a fortnightly newsletter, the Kundiawa News, talked my way into becoming a freelance correspondent for the Australian Broadcasting Commission and immersed myself in this new life.
The remote location that might have seemed a career dead-end became my exclusive beat - tribal conflicts, ancient rituals, frontier chaos - and I was the only journalist around to tell these stories.
Two years later, when I was deployed as head teacher to an even more remote tribal area north of Kundiawa, I deepened my association with the ABC who contracted me to write radio scripts for which I was paid $15 a time - a sum that would purchase a carton of beer flown up from the coast.
And, as an antidote to feelings of loneliness, especially at weekend, I acquired a motorcycle on which I ventured far and wide along the dirt tracks and stony roads of the Highlands.
Living in New Guinea transformed me, although not always in ways I'm proud to recall.
Initially I embraced the colonial lifestyle, complete with its casual racism and assumed superiority.
But the stark contrast between the racial intolerance of many expatriates and the genuine affability and enthusiasm of Melanesians eventually forced me to confront these contradictions.
I learned that what I had first adopted as entitlement was actually privilege. That what was termed an underclass was in truth an ancient and complex array of cultures.
As I worked, played and later attended university with Papua New Guineans, my lazy prejudice gave way to clear-eyed respect and enduring friendships.
Meanwhile, my freelance news gathering and script writing had come to the notice of Education Department chiefs in Port Moresby.
Initial warnings not to 'stir controversy' or bring the Department into disrepute paradoxically led to an unexpected elevation – I was asked to relocate to headquarters as editor of school publications.
This twist of fate opened new doors: first as a radio producer with ABC, then into management of government radio stations. Within the space of a few months, what had begun as a side pursuit had become a career.
Throughout these professional transitions, my personal life was equally transformative.
A chance meeting while on leave in Sydney led to marriage, two children, and the decision to pursue that university education that had once seemed out of reach.
When my parents flew up for my graduation from the University of Papua New Guinea, their presence marked more than my academic achievement.
It erased my history of scholastic failure that seemed to have been confirmed by those disappointing Leaving Certificate results in the sandhills of Palm Beach.
And when, after 13 years, the time came to leave this nation of 850 tribes, countless languages and a remarkable people had become integral to my own identity.
As I pursued a career in media management in Australia and Asia, Papua New Guinea's influence never waned.
In those misty mountains where people adorned themselves with pig fat, feathers and pearl shells, I had found not just stories to tell but people who treated me like a member of a long-lost family and offered me their friendship and protection without condition.
Today, although illness and age have diminished my ability to act, my affinity with Papua New Guinea remains undiminished.
Fifty years after leaving, I see a nation beyond its leaders who, in truth, treat their subjects badly and the rule of law as an inconvenience.
I am pleased that I established PNG Attitude in 2006 and that it became a means of strengthening home grown literature and promoting critical thought in Papua New Guinea.
Through the blog itself, the Crocodile Prize literary awards and Pukpuk Publications – the brainchild of Philip Fitzpatrick - we helped nurture a new generation of Papua New Guinean writers and published 50 books and anthologies many of which found their way into schools across the nation.
Age and infirmity have now slowed this work, but not the conviction behind it.
My journey from that naive 18-year-old teacher to where I sit today taught me that life's apparent detours often become its main roads.
That early decision to leave Nowra opened a path that would shape not only my career but my entire worldview.
The Chimbu gave me more than just my stories as a journalist - it taught me that personal growth comes not from holding rigidly to our attitudes but from allowing our experiences to reshape them.
So now at 80 I find myself returning often in my mind to those misty mountains, where people who had every reason to see me as an outsider treated me as a friend.
Perhaps that's the most valuable lesson from my time in Papua New Guinea.
The simple acceptance of remaining open to change, to new perspectives, to the unexpected kindness of others, can transform not just a career, but a life.
Keith - Who is that scholar you shook hands with during your graduation? Is he a native (asples). Am curious and want to know!
_______
I don't know for sure, Sil, but most likely it was the deputy vice-chancellor Gabriel Gris, who the following year became vice-chancellor - KJ
Posted by: Kela Kapkora Sil Bolkin | 01 February 2025 at 10:23 AM
Angra, Keith.
Thank you for arriving in Simbu in those nostalgic days and giving us your best.
You have done the needful for us and deserve the break.
I feel that you fortunately saw nature's aesthetic beauty, plumed Simbu men and beautiful Ambais scavenging the mountains with fur skirts.
I am a bit late and wading through plastics, beetle nut stains and pale humans clothed in western wrecks scavenging the shitholes of capitalism and state-building (not nation building).
Anyhow, am positive and keeping a vigil for the moment when a Simbu man or woman (or another Christ-like human) that will take the reins in our beautiful country and steer us to the promised land.
Posted by: Kela Kapkora Sil Bolkin | 30 January 2025 at 12:09 PM
There is a cow in the savannahs of Western Province with a PNG family ownership.
There's another in Enga that went under some triparty ownership arrangement, whose outcomes are scheduled for good assessment in 10 years from now.
Some cows are pivoted for change of ownership in a new arrangement called Production Ownership this year.
That must happen without a fuss because who in their 50's tolerates strange guests to control the paddocks, abattoir, factory, marketing and sales arrangements - the whole value chain really?
Posted by: Corney Korokan Alone | 20 January 2025 at 07:22 AM
Hi KJ - Powerful storytelling from your current sharp mind and reminiscence chair.
You deserve a 'Kondom Agaundo Friendship in Naivety Medal in 2025' for the situation-led reframing of your perspective about Papua New Guinea.
Then of course remaining a committed comrade to this day - exposing talents here and the ancient Melanesian society of collective Paradise life.
The medal above is an imaginary one as I don't have any affinity whatsoever for the soiled and superficial medals from the so-called kings and queens of Anglo-Britannia, whose relevance are no longer necessary in the last quarter of the 21st century.
_______
Thanks for the imaginary medal. Fortunately I have a vivid imagination. I did meet Kondom during my stay in Chimbu. I also met his cow. Unfortunately I also had to report on his death after his vehicle went off the road. Best wishes to you and Tanya - KJ
Posted by: Corney Korokan Alone | 19 January 2025 at 03:25 PM
Salute Keith, Welcome to the 4 Score
Club. Slainte
Posted by: William Dunlop | 14 January 2025 at 11:27 AM
Congratulations Keith. You're an excellent example of using your skills to achieve success and, best of all, helping others to achieve their full potential.
Very kind regards....
Posted by: Paul Oates | 14 January 2025 at 09:34 AM
Keith - May I quote you: " The simple acceptance of remaining open to change, to new perspectives, to the unexpected kindness of others, can transform not just a career, but a life."
Well said. And many thanks for all the work and time you have put into PNG Attitude.
Posted by: Garrett Roche | 14 January 2025 at 05:09 AM
Keith, it is good, as always, to read your fascinating reminiscences.
My eyes almost popped from my head when I saw the photo of you, Sam Piniau and, I think, Luke Sela (of the PNG Post-Courier) on the air for 'The Electric Pacific' programme back on the 4th April 1976.
As you might recall, I initiated and produced the entire 3 hour 'live' show from the studios of Radio New Zealand in Wellington, where I was employed as a Senior Producer at the time.
This era was, of course, pre-Internet and we had more than 60 participants from 10 nations across the Pacific involved via the PEACESAT educational satellite and the COMPAC undersea cable. Fiji and PNG came in via COMPAC, with Tonga, Hawaii, Saipan (Mariana Islands), New Caledonia, American Samoa, Cook Islands, Niue, Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati) all using PEACESAT.
PEACESAT (Pan Pacific Education and Communication Experiment by Satellite) was an early project of the University of Hawaii using a side-band of the very low-powered NASA ATS-1 weather satellite in geostationary orbit over the Pacific. Basic receiving antennae and simple, often home-made, equipment enabled sites to be established at educational facilities of the USP across the region.
You might recall, Keith, that the 'live' programme ran for three hours and we also incorporated telephone talkback from listeners, where possible, and even linked by Aeradio with the Captain of an Air NZ DC-10 aircraft then flying over the Pacific.
The show was carried live by RNZ nationally and the TBC in Tonga, with edited highlights going out on many other networks, including the NBC in PNG.
I called the programme 'A multi-media experiment in communications, development and cooperation' and it had the avowed intent of "enabling Pacific participants to become the originators, rather than just the recipients, of ideas and suggestions."
The programme's chair was Ian Johnstone, a major radio/TV talent in NZ and whom some PNG Attitude readers may remember from his four years as Educational Broadcasts Officer with the South Pacific Commission.
One thing you may not know, Keith, is that 'The Electric Pacific' was submitted by Radio New Zealand in the talk category of the Prix Italia, the top international radio prize. We didn't win, but we did open up new communication ground.
And all before the Internet was even in the imagination of most people.
Thanks for the memory, Keith. And I would love a copy of the photo please.
______
I had forgotten that Martin was the man who put the Electric into the Pacific. I've emailed him the photo which, apart from Sam and me, (left to right) shows Reg McDonald, managing editor of the Post-Courier, Junius Turrow, economist at the Posts & Telegraphs Department and (in profile) Coleman Moni, NBC information officer - KJ
Posted by: Martin Hadlow | 13 January 2025 at 12:38 PM
Congratulations and heartfelt admiration.
Posted by: Bill Brown | 12 January 2025 at 08:22 PM
You are so right, Keith, our time in PNG was indeed a privilege. I was privileged in so many ways - not least of which was, as you know, assuming responsibility for the Education Department's school publications, including the (still) much-loved character Yokomo, when you moved to the ABC.
And, through you and Phil and the Crocodile Prize, I have continued to garner friendships (Marlene Potoura, Manu Peni, Baka Bina et al) as I endeavour, through mentoring and editing activities, to give back to a country and people who gave so much to me - and to continue, in my own small way, to do good.....
Posted by: Ed Brumby | 12 January 2025 at 04:17 PM
Apropos of your opening statement about an agile mind in an aging body allowing for the “ability to traverse time effortlessly in my thoughts” let me recommend an appropriate theme song (which Simon might also endorse).
It’s called “I love to go awanderin” and is a new song by an old Irish folk/rock band called The Saw Doctors. It appealed to me for the same reason it might appeal to you.
Congratulations on the birthday too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biI7Nlr3svE
Posted by: Philip Fitzpatrick | 12 January 2025 at 01:18 PM
Precocious, not only 'still', but active too.
Posted by: Lindsay F Bond | 12 January 2025 at 08:17 AM