Interview with Roger Boschman

by Evelyn Ellerman

(assisted by Drusilla Modjeska)

“PNG Then and Now” Conference

Sydney, Australia

July, 2002

RB. [showing the interviewers some documents] And here’s the invitation to Writer’s Day, the

Writer’s Day seminar and presentation of prizes of the third annual. So by 1971, we had started

the National Writer’s Day. Here are some things from the newspaper. This is from the Saskatoon

Star Phoenix, which is a taken verbatim from the press release. I sent the press release to my

mother about myself, “What’s a wonderful person from Saskatchewan doing all this?” She put a

photo of me in that press release and sent it to the Star Phoenix.

EE. Who did you have as competition judges? [Roger Boschman initiated the first Short Story Contest

in PNG in 1968.]

RB. Douglas Lockwood was very helpful; he became a judge of the contest right away. He was an

Australian writer – quite comical. He was managing editor of the newspaper [Papua New Guinea

Post-Courier] for some years and he helped me with all of these things. Whatever idea I had, he’d

think of some funny little way of putting it in the newspaper; it was the most powerful thing in

the newspaper, was “The Drum”; everybody read it, so if you got in there, this was terrific

publicity. So here he’s sort of jokingly complaining that Paulias Mathane, Ulli Beier and I have

bitten off a heavy dose of overtime. We agreed to be judges of this short story contest from

Boschman. Now we wish we hadn’t because we’re going to be burning the midnight oil to read all

these entries. So he’d always turn it in a comical way but it was terrific publicity for us. And then

in April 1971, we had the 3rd Annual Territory Short Story Contest. This was carried in the South

Pacific Post, which was very good. Every move we made was advertisement, advertisement,

advertisement and these were all free, and from a commercial newspaper.

EE. Why was Lockwood doing this for you?

RB. He was the managing editor so, a few times he said he would just call the editor in; his name was

Jack Pinkston. The Pinkstons were a very, very small family, apparently. There’s Mark Pinkston in

Hong Kong and there was Jack Pinkston in Port Moresby. He told me that there were very few of

them left and that he and his brother were not getting married and there weren’t going to be any

Pinkstons very soon. So, “Have a good look while we’re here on earth!” So, Pinkston was one of

the people I met from the newspaper; because of Lockwood, everybody in the rest of the

newspaper did whatever I asked.

EE. How much was the prize for the Short Story Contest?

RB. It was $150 for the whole contest.

DM. That was a lot of money in those days!

RB. It was quite a lot, yeah.

DM. No, but I was thinking it was a big thing for people to win. If you think what wages were.

RB. Imagine a Form 1 kid could win 50 Australian dollars. Yeah, it would be a fortune. So we had a lot

of these ads all free of charge from The Post.

EE. Tell me how you got to PNG and what you were doing before you got to the Literature Bureau.

RB. Oh, Ok, it was in the 60s and everybody my age who wasn’t a lawyer, doctor or a dentist or a

student went to hitchhike around the world. We put on our backpacks and our boots and we set

off to hitchhike around the world in 2 years. So, because I had been a schoolboy in New Zealand, I

knew that the other side of the world was not so mysterious and dangerous. So in 1965 I took off

by myself. No one would go with me. The other guys my age just had never been anywhere and

they weren’t going to. They were staying in Saskatoon.

So I took off and I flew straight to Auckland because I had been there before; it was the one

country I did know. It was raining and it rained day and night for seven days. It was July and so it

was the middle of winter and I did make one foray out of the hotel and hitchhiked up to Cape

Reingar and back. And by the time I got back I thought it’s not going to stop raining this month or

next month. So I jumped on a plane and went to sunny Australia where I had the idea that I

wanted to work outside. In fact, someone had already found me a job at the Menzies Hotel in

Sydney, which would have been great. I said no. I’m doing an outdoors thing, I didn’t come here

to work inside a hotel. I want to do something outdoors so I went to the Employment Office and

asked for a job outdoors. And they said, “It has to be outdoors? Yes, Ok. How would you like to be

a gardener, landscape gardener for the Atomic Energy Commission? And I said, “ I don’t know

anything about it.” They said, “You don’t need to. All you’re doing is mowing lawns and watering

the plants.” So I said, “ Oh great, that’s perfect.” So I started there, worked there for a few

months, saved up money and bought myself a little motorcycle, a 1960 BSA Bantam Major, a little

British bike, one cylinder.

Then I got the idea that as soon as I had enough money, I’d take off and ride up the coast. I’d just

work a bit and ride a bit, work a bit, so not hitchhiking but having my own transport. And I set off

in 1966, I think around April. Somewhere along the line around Brisbane, and I mentioned to

someone that I thought I would go to Cape York. And they said, “ Oh, you can’t go there because

there’s no road.” So I said, “ But I’m on a motorcycle; I don’t need a road, do I! Is it really

necessary to have a road?” This was 700 miles to the end of the road and I went on up the Cape

on this little bike right up to Cape York, the first person ever to do so on a motorcycle.

Having done that, I got to Thursday Island and there in fact was the person who helped me cross

the Jardine River. I couldn’t have gotten across it by myself. I won’t go into the details of the story

because it’s long, but it took me 3 weeks to do those 700 miles. And I got to the Jardine River and

it was deep and wide and I couldn’t figure out how to get this motorcycle across. I walked across

one place but it was up to here flowing. So there was no way I could handle it. I found a bunch of

drums and I also had a lot of my own empty fuel drums tied on the bike, and I found some more 4

gallon ones. I tied them on and I was just getting ready to try -- and I knew that if I couldn’t hang

on to the bike, I’d be in trouble -- I’m not a great swimmer. If I lost the bike, I would just have to

say goodbye to it and I would walk on another twenty miles to the Cape. So, I would get there,

but without the bike. Then a Torres Straits islander appeared on the other side. “What are you

doing?” I said, “I’m trying to figure out how to get this bike across”. And he said, “Wait a minute.”

He was a big guy, fuzzy haired, and he just dived into the water and came over like a steam boat,

bawump, bawump, bawump! When he came over, he said “What are you doing? You want to

take this motor cycle across there?” “Yeah!” “So what’s all this?” I said, “ These are floats. It will

keep it floating a bit.” “Oh, OK,”he said. “OK, you go on that side.” He says “The two of us

together.”

We jumped off the bank with this motor cycle between us. Well, he did most of the work. I was

sort of slopping along trying to keep myself afloat and he was swimming like a beaver, you know,

and he was more or less taking the bike and me across. And about half way across you could

touch down. So then we pulled it out and said “OK, bye.” And I spent another 24 hours on the

bank there trying to get this bike started. I had to take it apart. Anyway, the point is that when I

got to the actual tip of the Cape, there were Torres Strait Islanders. And this was something that

was completely new to me. I’d seen Aboriginals before but these were Torres Strait. And

somebody said “Oh, yeah, they come down here all the time.” He said, “ Do you realize that

Papua New Guinea is 90 miles from here, from Thursday Island. It’s just across there, across the

Coral Sea, across the Torres Strait. New Guinea’s an interesting place, you know.” So I thought

maybe I should go up there. So I got a job on a ship, and worked my way back to Sydney….”

DM. What did you do with the bike?

RB. I left the bike there leaning against a tree. There was no way for me to get it to Thursday Island.

So I left it there and went to Thursday Island.

DM. With the keys in so that someone could have it!

RB. Oh, I don’t know, I can’t remember if there were keys or not. Anyone could have taken it, sure. I

just left it leaning against a tree. While I was there, I met the person who owned Cape York,

another young guy, a rich kid from Brisbane. And he said, “I’ll bring the bike, I’ll get the bike for

you. And I’ll send it wherever you want,” Which he did. He sent it to New Guinea later. Yeah! The

bike went on and on for years. And so I was on Thursday Island when a ship came in and I said,

“I’m looking for a way to get back to Sydney and work my way back. They hired me as assistant

cook; it was an oil exploration boat. One of those that drop charges and it echoes back; they were

looking for oil in the Coral Sea. They were running a 24 hour pattern, back and forth.

I finally got back to Sydney and got a job with the wheat harvest and went up to NSW and worked

for a few months. Fantastic pay. We were working 20 hours a day and double time, triple time. I

had enough money by this time, after just a few weeks of wheat harvest in NSW, to get to New

Guinea. So I went up to Brisbane and took a ship. I wanted to take a ship. They said “Why don’t

you just fly; there are two planes a day, you know.” I said, “No, no, no. I’m a writer in the South

Pacific. I was thinking of Somerset Maugham. I must arrive on a ship with all these planter folk.

So, I took this ship. It took a couple of days to get there. I met all sorts of people who worked in

Moresby. It was a good introduction to Port Moresby, to the Territory, taking a couple of days to

get there and arriving at the dock and seeing these labour lines, black labour lines carrying things

on, unloading the ship and all that…..

EE. Which year would this be?

RB. January ’67, and so it was just a totally strange, strange…..the strangest thing I had ever seen

going into Port Moresby in 1967. I bought a newspaper. And it said, “ Tribe discovered. First

contact with outside world.” They had flown in and landed and contacted this tribe, the previous

day or the previous week. And here was the report. These people were bringing food to feed the

airplane, since this “bird” hadn’t eaten for hours. It had sat there and they wanted to give food,

to feed the bird so it would be strong to fly back and all that…..And I thought, “Oh my god, this is

the Stone Age here!” So I was hooked on it completely. I thought, “Oh well, I must have a look at

this for a few months at least.” And then I stayed 8 years because of getting involved in the short

story contest.

DM. What did you start doing when you got there?

RB. I think I went into the drama group. They were doing a play or something. And they said, “Why

don’t you stay longer and work in….”; they desperately needed people in the Education

Department. I think, through bad management or something, work had piled up. They were years

behind on paperwork so they just wanted clerks. They said, “ Do you know anything about

clerical.” I had no idea. They said “Don’t worry, no problem. Just you check these things and put

them in files. Things hadn’t been filed for a year or something and suddenly we were working

overtime. You could go in and you could work 4 or 5 hours at night, at double time and all that.

And then someone said, “You know, why don’t you join the Public Service. As long as you’re like

this, a temporary employee, you’re getting half of the salary. If you join you get 100%.” “Well,” I

said, “I’m not staying, I don’t want to stay and sign a 2 year contract.” They said, “ Don’t worry

about it. You sign the contract, they guarantee to employ you. Nobody’s keeping you. You can

leave anytime, you know. And if you leave they can get someone else. No big deal. Don’t feel that

you’re tied to this administration.” So I said, “OK, I’ll do it.” And it turned out to be incredibly easy

to join. Then they said, ‘” Now we have to examine you to see if you’re a typical Aussie, to see if

you’re fit to join our Public Service here. We’ll put it this way. “Do you have any questions?” I

said, “No.” He said, “Right, right you’re in. Hold up, hold up your right hand and put your left

hand on the Bible and swear allegiance. Right, mate, you’re in. Now you’re a public servant.”

OK, so I continued in the Education Department for a while but someone said, “ You know, if

you’re here to see Papua New Guinea, Port Moresby is not it. This is just another Darwin, just

another Queensland town. If you want to see the real thing, you should get out in the jungle

somewhere.” So I said to the Education Department, “Could I transfer? Frankly, I want to see

other parts. I want to get away from the city.” They said, “Ah, we need a clerk in Kerrima in the

Gulf District.” And that is about as far as civilization as it gets. Although it is only a hundred miles

up the coast, it’s a backwater, a barely administered place. It was even considered a penalty. “We

used to … when someone arrived there, we used to say, ‘What did you do wrong? How come you

were sent to Kerrima. You’ve been caught doing something. This is your penalty, 1 year in

Kerrima. And then we’ll see if you’re still fit for some real work or something like that.’” Anyway, I

wanted to be out in the jungle and this was it. It was on the coast, I went there by boat again. I

had my little Honda motorcycle by this time, so I said, “I want to go on the boat.”

I took the steamship’s trading company’s weekly provisions boat. Once a week they took

everything out and dropped it off along all the little patrol posts along the coast. I think they went

all the way to Daru. So I had, I think, a 24 hour trip. Got on one morning and chugged along in this

22 ft. launch. And to me, this was so great. I mean, I’ve still got the notebooks. I was just

scribbling, just writing about everything. Holy God, this was just so strange. Every time I looked

around there was some incredible thing to notice and write down. So this was a writer’s paradise.

And I thought, nobody is going to believe this when I write about this place. I’ll have to tone it

down for anybody to accept what goes on in this place.

So I got to Kerrima. My boss there was Tal Boga. He was an inspector of schools. Each district, I

think, had the Inspector and his staff. So there was myself as his clerk, a typist and a clerical

assistant and an office boy. So, there we were in our little cubicle in the district. There was almost

nothing to do. Once, just to find out, I didn’t do anything until Friday at 3:00 o’clock and we

finished at 4:00 o’clock. Well, phone calls from Port Moresby, yes, but anything else, I let, I let

things pile up in my in-tray for an entire week and it still was only about this deep and at maybe

3:06, OK, take care of this, write a letter, draft a letter, have the typist type that please and this

and this and this and about 3:45 my tray was empty. It wasn’t always like that but if no one was

coming in and there was no supply of books to be distributed, you know…. There were other

times I had to work overtime, but a lot of the time we sat back and enjoyed ourselves.

DM. Did you have to stay in the office or could you go out and about?

RB. What I could do is things like, for example, this. I took a 7 day patrol into head hunter country.

While being the District Education clerk, I said to Tal Boga, “They’re taking a patrol, a broadcast

patrol. They’re going to walk up into the jungle and meet the Kameyas -- Kuka Kukas, they used

to call them. Their language is Kamea. The Kuka Kukas, are so famous for being head hunters and

they had been contacted 6 years earlier. So they were still totally primitive. The DIES [Department

of Information and Extension Services] Broadcast Division had the idea that to reach people you

would send messengers up to all the villages to say, “ There’s going to be a government patrol

and we will deliver radios to you.” And these were nice mantle radios, you know, big plastic case

things. They told people that they had to build a house, a special house for the radio, waterproof,

this was the big thing, it had to be waterproof to keep the rain off. “We will have the patrol look

at the house, and if it’s good enough, we’ll give you a radio and some batteries.” And then we

had a weekly broadcast in their language. We had one little guy in the Kerrima patrol post who

was a kamea; the translator brought him down and we trained him to read the news. So we did

this patrol, it was getting out and about, wonderful.

And, so this article ]showing a print article to the interviewers] is “Journey into the Stone Age.” It

was eventually published in 6 newspapers around the world. It was published in Papua New

Guinea, in Hong Kong. After this 7 day patrol, I went on leave a few weeks later. And everywhere

I went I would walk into a newspaper office with these photos like that one and 2 or 3 others. I

would show the photos and I’d say, “I’ve just been on a journey into the Papuan jungle, into the

Stone Age to visit the head hunters.” They said “Oh, my God. Yes, yes. We want the story.” And I

would just show these photos and I’d say, “OK, I’m on my way to Canada. I’ve got 3 months leave.

While there, I’ll get more photos made and I’ll write the story. I hadn’t written the story yet. I just

got back from the patrol and went on leave. So I said, “I’ll send all this to you from Canada.” And

they said “OK.” So I did this. I sent one off to the Hong Kong Sunday Post, and one to the Japan

Times, one to the Vancouver Sun, one to the Saskatoon Star Phoenix. And then on the way back I

stopped in at each place to get copies and my money. And they all handed me $15 or $20 dollars

or something. That didn’t matter. But getting it published did.

On the way back, I went to the Japan Times and said, “ Hello, and here I am. These are other

photos, not from the patrol. Just a village. This is the broadcast officer. There were two of us: two

Caucasians. He was really the leader. And I just went along. And this is our carrier. We had forty

carriers. This is why I think of it as, the Stanley and Livingstone scene from the movie. You know,

when I look back, we had 40 men carrying our stuff. And then there was this curving trail. My

God, I thought, “ I’m so lucky. This is never going to happen again.” You know, Africa’s already

been explored. And here I am just on the edges of …. This area’s still being explored, you know.

So I consider myself very lucky.

EE. It was part of the allure.

RB. Yeah, and this photo. You can’t imagine how dangerous that situation was. When we came to this

river, they said, “ Anybody who falls in, don’t even look for him.” Because the river is going about

30 m.p.h. and it goes into a gorge and a waterfall and then it goes somewhere. No one knows. So

if anybody falls in there, we just “bye, bye.” Don’t even look for the body. And then I, of course,

had to take this photo and make it 10 times more dangerous than it already was. Because this is

not one tree, it’s a bunch of saplings tied together, from there to there, bundled to reach about

40 feet across this raging torrent. So just getting across there was dangerous enough. I had to

multiply that by saying “Oh! I want to shoot a film scene.” I’m shooting a movie through this

whole patrol. And we’d say, “Our senior broadcast officer is the leader of the patrol. He’s doing a

patrol into head hunter country.” So, I went all the way back and then I came out like this ….

EE. Backwards!

RB. I think I came out forward and turned around and lay down and then I said to him, “ OK, Action.”

You know, and then he became “Leader of the Patrol.” He came across like this. And then I would

say, “Ok. Cut, go back, turn around, go back.” Then I would go back and he would go down to

there. “Stay there!” I would shout. And I would crawl down to here and lie down and say,

“Action” and He would start to cross the bridge again. Just to shoot this little sequence must have

taken us an hour. And I was hanging out there; falling off would have been …. God!

EE. This is the sort of thing you do when you are very young.

RB. When you’re 27, you will do the most ridiculous things.

EE. We should get you into the Literature Bureau fairly soon here, I think.

RB. After I had been transferred to Kerrima, I wandered into the pub one day. It was the Kerrima

Hotel, run by Harry Wilson. I don’t imagine he’s around any more. And there were these

paintings. Amateur, but very nice. I said “Wow, what’s this?” And they said, “Oh. These are the

winning entries in the art competition from Coronation High School.” Wow! You know, this is the

western style. I didn’t realize that the local kids could do, you know, European style painting. Ah!

What could I do? I could do something. I think there were a lot of us, especially single people, just

in PNG to make money and they hated the place. They read the Sydney Morning Herald every day

and never laid eyes on the South Pacific Post and didn’t want to know about it. They were there

for a certain number of years to get a certain amount of money and get out of the place. They

weren’t enjoying it one bit. But I think there were also a lot of single, idealistic, adventurous

young people who wanted to do something. So I said, “Oh, I’ll start a short story contest.”

So, I started the contest and pushed it very hard to get it going. But I never imagined it was going

to be anything more than a short story contest.

DM. Were you doing it from Kerrima?

RB. From Kerrima, yeah, in Kerrima. And you know, not having even been a well-educated person -- I

was only a clerk after all with no particular authority or background or anything -- I just felt like

doing this. I decided to do it by sending a press release to the morning South Pacific Post and at

that time. I don’t think they knew me at all. I don’t think I had met Lockwood or anything. But I

sent this press release in wondered if I would ever hear another word. They might say, “What’s

this rubbish?” But, about 5 or 6 days later, because the newspapers arrived, I think, once a week

or something, in a bundle. It was a daily, but we didn’t receive it every day. It was the national

newspaper, Papua New Guinea’s national daily, but not really national, and not daily.

Anyway suddenly, I opened up the newspaper and found it said “Short Story Contest. The Papua

New Guinea National Short Story contest is born.” It’s advertised, it’s organized. I mean the

newspaper made it official. Everyone read it. “Oh,” they would say. “A short story contest. Send

the entries to Boschman in Kerrima.” And I thought “It’s done. Now, I need a judging panel.” I

told 2 or 3 people, “I’m having a short story contest and if we get any entries will you be the

judge?” And they said, “Sure, why not!” So, as I say I got a few entries, so I sent off a press

release, not saying that I was getting thousands of entries, but that entries were coming in from

all over Papua New Guinea. That sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? It was really 7 or 8 entries, but they

were from all parts of Papua New Guinea. And I could tell that they were sent by teachers. The

student writers must have written something and said “ Sir, would you send this for me or

something?” But what I said was, “ Teachers all over Papua New Guinea are sending in the

entries.” Then, of course, every teacher read this and said, “ Oh! I don’t want to miss out on this.”

So, they would tell their class, “You’re all going to enter the short story contest: write a short

story. So, then each class had 30 or 40 entries and they would put them in a big brown envelope

and addressed to me and I would get these packets of entries.

EE. How on earth did you judge them? You could not have had anything worked out ahead of time.

RB. For judging. Yes, that’s right. I think I told the panel “You know what a short story is in the

European mode.” Naturally, there will be a twist at the end and it has to be a complete story. The

writers have to have everything in there, even in two or three hundred words, or in five or six

hundred. But I think most of what we were getting was two or three hundred words. Every once

in awhile there was a story that every one of the judges looked at and said, “Look at this, look at

this!” Then, they asked, “Is it original? We’ve never heard anything like it. It was all about….”

You see all of these stories were in English but they were all about Papua New Guinea. These

people were writing….. something happened in the village, you know, here your aunty or your

uncle went hunting, or something somewhere. They were all Papua New Guinea stories. So this

winning story had something different about it … the way the kid had written, it you were

thinking along one path and then discovered, “Oh!” At the last two paragraphs it all turned

around and everybody said, “Oh! Interesting. This is a short story. That’s exactly what you get

from Canada or the US in a short story. So this is just outstanding, this one is it.” But, at the time,

I don’t think I had written down any criteria.

RB. The judges were all from Kerrima. I just went around. There were about 70 white people on the

station. And I think I got a magistrate, an Australian magistrate. After all, he was a judge. And I

said, “ You’re a judge. Can you judge some stories?” Really, I think he just had a Bachelor of Arts

or something before he had gone up there. Anyway, and I asked a missionary, so that should

make the judging good, honest and true! And a teacher, of course, because they are used to

judging written work. And I think we just sat down at my living room table. And I said “OK. I’ve

short listed it. I’ve been through the lot and here are 30; any of these could be winners.” So they

just passed them around and put little marks on them. But as it turned out, there was this one

that was so outstanding.

Lots of the stories came to me in poor condition. A lot of them were barely readable, written in

ball-point and just a scrawl. And some of them you literally could not read. And others you could

make some sense of. But that continued right through even 3 or 4 years later I was still getting

long sheets, the foolscap sheets of scrawly writing, but I could often find a short story in there

somewhere, you know -- on page 8, lower half there was a short story. The author just rambled

and rambled and accidentally wrote a short story. I just kept reading until I thought, “Here’s the

short story!”

EE. When you were writing back to people, would you give them any advice or say this is what we

liked about it or any of those sort of things?

RB. No. As far as I can remember, I just said congratulations! You are the winner and, watch, your

name will be in the morning South Pacific Post and congratulations and so on.” And I tried to do it

in a way that the person could keep the letter, you know, they’d get the cheque and this letter (….

Like a certificate….) keep it for a long time. I tried to make it not a certificate but a nice looking

letter. You know, I don’t think I wrote back to say “Your story was good, because of this and

this…” I don’t think I did that.

EE. Did people ever write back to you and say “Thank you very much. This has made a difference or

anything…..?”

RB. I can’t remember getting letters like that. Probably by the time it became a really well known

thing, it had been taken over by the Literature Bureau. I think I got some letters there, or letters

came in. But very often it was from teachers saying, what a difference this has made sort of thing.

Sort of saying, “We really appreciate what you are doing; this has really stimulated our students”

and so on and so on. So I think, I had a few letters like that. And once, in a while in the latter

stages, I would have some big coal black Bougainville man walk in and say, “I’m so and so. You

know one of my writers,” which I had already published. I didn’t get to see these people, you

know. It wasn’t like the Chakravarti in his classes; he had all his students there and others. They

saw the people who were already doing the writing. I didn’t see anybody until they happened to

be in town 3 years later and were in the University and came around and looked for me.

EE. When you took over New Guinea Writing from Don Maynard, it was re-named Papua New Guinea

Writing. Was that your idea or was it because Independence was coming? What was that

decision meant to do? And you also changed the format of the journal.

RB. I don’t know how we decided. I suspect that we had the idea of independence and that probably

the country would be Papua New Guinea so we wanted it to be called Papua New Guinea

Writing. These were decisions that I took with Richard Pape. Yeah. He was quite an inspiration to

me. Among other things, he was the author of the memoir “Boldness be my Friend,” a memoir of

his years as an RAF pilot in the Second World War.

EE. So you worked quite closely with him in setting the direction of the Literature Bureau.

RB. Yes. He was the supervisor of the Literature Bureau. So anything we did, anything we were going

to do, we had to go to him and say, “We’re going to do this.” And when we’d done it, we had to

take the proofs into him and tell him what we still wanted to change.

EE. Did you feel that the administration at any time was looking over your shoulder at content and

making sure that the content was okay from their point of view?

RB. Sure, sure they were. I’m sure they were watching for any anti-government things but I think

because of Richard Pape, we had it easy. He was a born rebel himself and I think he would allow a

bit of that.

EE. Was he Maynard’s boss as well?

RB. Ah, now I’m not sure. There was a big shift. Shortly before I took over the Literature Bureau or

shortly after there was a shift and I think then, suddenly Pape was in charge of the Literature

Bureau and the Art Department. He was Hal Holman’s boss [Hal Homan was artist to the colonial

administration. He was responsible for designing the country’s emblem and its national flag.]

Anyway there was a lot of tension because Hal was a rebel; Hal was more of a rebel than anybody

you ever met. He’s the kind of person who hast his own idea and knows he is doing the right

thing and he doesn’t want bureaucrats interfering.

There was always a battle and Pape would come in from a meeting with the administration and

Pape liked to give orders. He liked to be the sergeant major. He’d say, “You’ll do this” loud and

would walk into the Art Department and say, “OK. From now on you’re going to do this and this

and this.” And Hal would walk out and get in his car and drive away. Maybe went to the pub for a

couple of hours thinking, “Am I going to quit or am I going to put up with this nonsense or not?”

EE. So there wasn’t any obvious any overt censorship over what you published, just the knowledge

that there would be a response if you wandered too far away from the administration’s message.

RB. I probably knew I couldn’t publish something that outright said the government was bad, but

there were some fictional stories that made fun of the government. There was one story, I

remember, called “The Entertainer,” by Arthur Jawodimbari, that might have been too long to

publish because I had a limit. I had to get 4 or 5 stories in plus some poetry so I could never do

the really long pieces. And there were some very good stories that were too long. But, I’ll always

remember “The Entertainer,” because Arthur described a patrol officer who came to the village

and said, “There was a very great person coming and you have to go to Goroka” to see him. And

this message went through the entire district. “You’re ordered to go there with your family.

Everybody go there. This is an order from the government on that date.” OK, so I guess, we’d

better go. And they all gathered up their things and apparently all these other villagers.

Thousands of people trekked for 2 or 3 days over the hills and came into Goroka and they were

ordered to go to the town square. This aircraft landed and a white man got out and they didn’t

really say who he was but he was a very important person. And this white man, big white man

had a piece of paper that he read out loud. Then he finished that and he went with the other

administration people into the town. And then someone came around and said, “You can all go

home now. You’ve seen the administrator, the High Commissioner whoever it was. You all go

now.” OK. And they all turned around and trekked back to their homes. Oh! Part of the trip was

by truck. They had to walk a couple of days and then they could get a truck which they had to pay

a lot to go on the highway into the highlands and into the town. And on the way back, the truck

went crooked and it went over the side and several people were hurt and one of them were

killed. And it was Arthur’s father or his brother or someone, one of his family, was killed. So they

eventually gathered up the body and went on to their village. I realized later that this whole

episode was to show the High Commissioner that all these people respected him so much, they

would travel for two days, just to hear him talk for 15 minutes. So, Arthur is such a good writer.

He wrote a few stories along that line which I’d publish.

EE. What did you do with the things that were too long, that you couldn’t publish? Would you send

them over to Kovave? [the literary journal at the University of Papua New Guinea]

RB. Sure. Sure.

EE. Can you tell me what was your relationship was with Beier at the University? Did you have a

relationship with him at all? Did you talk back and forth about things?

RB. Yeah. Yeah…

DM. When did you meet him? When you came up back to Moresby?

RB. I met him before I went to Moresby. He came to Kerrima for some reason. Oh. He was a great pal

of Albert Maori Kiki. They’d met in Brisbane at the airport or something and flown up on the

same aircraft and Albert said, “You must come up to my village, Orokolo.” I think, Orokolo was

the next stop past Kerrima.

DM. But he came down to Kerrima.

RB. Yeah, he came down, I think, to see Albert and Ulli looked at everything. Ulli was just one of those

observers. He would just look at everything whether it was his subject or not. He just looked at

everything and observed and maybe he wrote it down when he got back, but he would ask

questions about everything. And I don’t know if I was running the short story contest at the time

but I remember Ulli being in the Kerrima Club. He came into the club and we were having drinks

and sitting around and so on. And he was there for a day or two. I think he was visiting someone

else. He’d been to see Albert and then he was sort of making his way back to Port Moresby and

stopping in and looking at everything and so I remember him from there. Then, as I soon as I was

in the Literature Bureau, he was in touch. He came around and I don’t recall any animosity. The

main bone of contention through my time there was “Was it right for me to be editing these

stories.” I was turning them into perfect English, British English.

DM. And Ulli didn’t like that a bit.

RB. No! I think if you look through Kovave, you’ll find another person and I can’t remember this

person’s name. I vaguely remember a very tall American and he came into the Literature Bureau

and he was saying “I really wonder if it’s right …”

EE. Was that Greicus… Mike Greicus?

RB. Yes, and I’m just seeing the name here. Was he on the judging panel or something.

EE. Yes, he was there.

RB. Michael, was he American?

EE. I think that was Mike Greicus.

RB. Was he the editor of Kovave? Seems to me …. Or a professor of English.

EE. He was a lecturer there and on the board of the journal. But Beier never had any other European

editing it. He had his own students on the board and editing it after he left.

RB. I vaguely remember this big American coming in and saying, “You know I wonder. Because

everyone is saying, We’re misrepresenting. We’re both doing the same thing, we’re getting

stories which are a mess and we are turning them into these lovely little short stories, beautifully

written.

EE. So, he was even doing that in Kovave?

RB. He was doing it. And he said, “I wonder if we’re right. I’m seriously (or we’re) thinking starting to

publish them the way we get them.” So, we were all doing the same thing. I think maybe they

were doing less because I had Richard Pape who absolutely insisted on the Queen’s English. He

said, “It shall be done in this way.” Not this is language up with which I will not put. Not quite to

that level. But absolutely clear. He says “Don’t have a word in there that doesn’t have to be

there.” So there it was …. I’d say my editing was more strict that theirs. One difference, though,

was that in Kovave, they could take much longer pieces. I had to get 5 stories into this little

journal. In Kovave they had plays. I could never put a play in. So maybe they had more leeway to

leave it a bit the way it was and only correct English to be grammatically correct, but still fairly

loose overall….

But, as I said, Pape insisted, and I said, “You know, what do you want, because we are giving a

false impression. Everyone says in Australia that all these students are writing these superbly

written stories, which they’re not. So, are we right to edit them into the correct English?” And I

said, “I think that I am doing the right thing because of the way I’m doing it. No matter how long

the story is, I’m getting the poor typist to type out the whole thing. And it may be that

somewhere in this biro ballpoint scrawl is something that I think is good, I’ll say “OK, type it up. If

it’s 8 pages, take these three pages where I know there is a story; I spotted a short story, lovely,

really a complete story. OK, so type these 3 pages.” And the typist would type. Sometimes she

couldn’t even read the handwriting. And I would tell her, “Whatever you can type, type it.” So I’d

then go through and would take those 800 words, and go through it and just correct it, not

change anything, not one thought was changed.

EE. Just making the grammar more correct.

RB. Just correcting the grammar without altering… I was trying to preserve the person’s style, so it’s

not my style. I’m just making it grammatically correct. I’m preserving the story, the way it’s told,

the idiom, the… as much as possible in their way… so that particular village way of doing things is

kept in. Much of the time the edit would be almost unreadable. I’d give it to the typist and say,

“Again. Please type this again as much as you can make out of it.” And she would type it again.

Now it would be 600 words. OK, take out unnecessary words. We said the same things three

times. OK, this is what amateurs do so take out 2 of them, make it one. And so on, but still

preserved the style.

EE. You were publishing this stuff, Roger. Did you find that people were taking that as a model then

and that the things you got in subsequent years were changing for the better?

RB. Oh yes, people were reading Papua New Guinea Writing and then they knew. And by this time, of

course, the senior secondary schools, especially the Sogeri people, realized what a short story

was. In one of the issues, I got one of the journalists, Aloysius Aita, to write a thing called, “What

is a Short Story?” or some title like that. It was a bit of a guideline and I was starting to get short

stories that showed they understood what was required and they were writing along certain

lines.

DM. So when did you think Ulli stopped doing this sort of editing? And was there any kind of

disagreement or conflict between you and him over this issue?

RB. I don’t think there was a conflict but I wanted to mention one thing is that eventually Greicus or

Ulli, or whoever it was, made the big decision to publish a story without changing it. It was in

Kovave, I believe, and this caused an international incident because they took a story, it was long,

and it was rambling and it was in atrocious English barely readable in some parts and at one part

of the story it described how this missionary had beaten this boy with a bamboo cane, drawing

blood. Rev. Sheridan, or whatever his name was, was named as the person, along with the

mission and the year and how this all happened. And this reverend was still alive in Australia. Oh

my God. Well, this caused a furor that went on and on. And I think they never did it again.

DM. But was it the naming of Sheridan rather than the furor over the improper English

RB. Yeah, it was two things. The reporters found this missionary and said, “So, this is the way you

Christianize people!” He said, “No, no, no, I never did that. It never happened, absolutely, I don’t

know what he’s talking about. I don’t know this kid; he wasn’t in my class. I wasn’t there. I was on

leave at the time. I know nothing about it.” And I thought, well, you have to be careful about the

content, but the story looked so bad because of the poor use of English. I had a kind of loyalty to

my writers. I didn’t want people to know that they weren’t writing that well. I wanted people

everywhere in the world to think they’re pretty good. I wasn’t turning it into a Boschman short

story. I had my own style, but I could see that each one had their own pattern and I would try to

preserve this, the poor old typist would do the corrections 6 or 7 times.

EE. Don Maynard must have been doing the same thing.

RB. I don’t know.

EE. I think so, I’ve seen all the issues of the journal and I don’t see that the stories in there when he

was editor are noticeably filled with all kinds of grammatical errors or anything like that.

RB. He must have been editing.

EE. I think so; but, mind you, you were both working for the same guy.

RB. Well, Pape certainly said, “This guy is irritating us.” Because when I first took over the Literature

Bureau, no one would speak to me. I said, “What’s going on here?” Last week, I was in the Film

Unit and you were saying “Hi, Roger!” Now, I’m in the Literature Bureau and you don’t speak to

me. I said, “Oh! Well, they just don’t like the Literature Bureau.” Maynard, oh God. You know, he

had gone around and individually upset each person apparently, including Pape, so Pape said,

“He upset us. Don’t talk to us about Maynard.” So I guess he worked for Pape at that time. And

then another thing is that Maynard hated me because I’d taken his place.

DM. What about the Short Story Contest?

RB. Maynard had taken over my contest when I moved to the city, along with the poetry contest and

the playwriting.

EE. How did you come to be at the Literature Bureau?

RB. Maynard had threatened to resign once too often, they were all waiting for it and said, “Oh,

you’ve resigned.” They didn’t ask him to stay. Then they needed somebody else. I’m sure Maynard

never imagined that I would take his place, because he was a university graduate and never failed to

let people know this. And I had high school and a diploma of journalism -- that was it. So, they actually

altered the job requirements for me; they had to send them back to Canberra to change the wording. I

was right there, so they wanted me to do the job. They said, “You’re the man to do the job but it says

‘Must have a degree,’” They changed it to “Must have appropriate tertiary qualifications.” So, my

Diploma of Journalism from the University of Queensland did the trick. The salary came down a bit,

they lowered it one notch, because of no degree. It dropped a few hundred dollars

EE. Now one of the things that I really loved about Papua New Guinea Writing was that centre page,

pages 12 – 13, I think it was….

RB. We tried to do that every time so we could have a balanced…. We were looking for a nice layout.

EE. Yeah, and it just made that whole journal. It was fantastic. Was that your idea or did…. ?

RB. Yeah, yeah, I said, “Let’s have a centre spread.” So I had a way of editing, a way of laying out,

because I did the rough layouts and then took it to the Art Department to do their copy fitting

and all that. I would lay out all the pages roughly myself first. But I started with the centre spread.

Then I went to the first page and the last page and worked up to the centre spread. So there was

a nice balance there, you know, you’re going to have this to start and this to finish and then

what’s going to be in the centre.

EE. Well, and there were a lot of interviews suddenly as well. You were doing interviews with people.

I assume it was you doing the interviews, was it?

RB. I can’t remember if I did interviews or not.

EE. Well, there were interviews with Arthur [Jawodimbari]. You know that might have been later with

Jack [Lahui], I don’t know. But there were interviews with writers and a lot of those centre

spreads were about drama troupes. I remember a particular picture of the van; I think they had it

all painted and everything and they were going off on a tour somewhere….

RB. I remember Arthur doing that.

EE. The other thing that always impressed me about that journal was that you had photographs of all

of the people who had put their articles in plus a little bio for all your authors.

RB. Oh yes, I wanted to promote them. I wanted them to feel, you see, the thing was nobody

understood that writing could be a profession, I think. They couldn’t quite understand that and I

was saying, “You can be a writer for a living. You win a prize, you write a good story and you win a

prize. Then you can go and work for a newspaper and do writing and they pay you every month.

You know, this can be a job, really, you know, just sit and write things and you get paid.” It was a

new concept. And I said “Sure.” I wanted all these people to be really, to see themselves. That

was really to show themselves, to look in the magazine and see their short story and their photo

and the little story about them. “Wow, I really did something here. You know, this is not a joke,

this is not school. This is …. I’m a writer.”

EE. I know you were selling the journal, but did you distribute the journals as well through the school

system.

RB. Oh, everywhere.

EE. Everybody got them?

RB. Secondary schools, I think.

DM. You didn’t break even; presumably the government was putting money in for it.

RB. Oh, yeah. These advertisements that you see. We were told to try to get some ads. If we wanted

to have a better quality production. The funding was very short and we had to show someone

that we were getting some support from the community. That was another thing, that we could

go to companies like Steamships and I think, the new Metric Board, some of them were

government. Actually we were going to government agencies who had lots of money and saying,

“Give us a hundred dollars (or something) and we’ll advertise your service.” I got the idea of

selling the back cover.

EE. What effect do you think that advertising had?

RB. Well, if you take Metric Conversion as an example. I got Michael Somare [PNG’s first Prime

Minister] to sign off on a thing we wrote for him. I said, “Just think metric,” and the Metric

Conversion Commission paid us a certain amount. I remember saying, “Metric Conversion, who’s

going to read this….! I mean, we don’t mind taking an ad, we don’t mind helping you out. But is it

actually going to do any good?” Then I thought, “You know, this is the kind of magazine that

people do not throw away. They keep it for a long time. In schools they are binding it. They’re

keeping them in order for students to read like in a library. And another thing -- as far as in the

homes, there are only two ways that a magazine can be: kept or thrown out like a newspaper.”

EE. Now let me ask you a quick question about sending them to schools. You know that there is a

tradition of having administration-produced journals in the schools. They started off with the

Papuan Villager in the 20s and 30s and then the Papua and New Guinea Villager from 1950-60.

And I wonder if you had ever seen any copies of those at all, or whether you had them as a

reference.

RB. I can remember seeing those.

EE. So, you were just carrying on from Don and doing what you thought was right?

RB. I just took over. He had started this as a quarterly journal and he said, “You’ll do the same. Keep

this up.” I think we delivered them to every senior high school and the University. And we had

another long list of libraries and places where it would likely be seen. And we had, I remember,

because we had this list to sell the advertisements, we had to show, that educated people were

going to read it and that those were the people we needed to reach if the ads were to be

effective.

EE. You had an adult or nearly adult audience in mind….

RB. Yeah, I would say. Let’s say, any high school we should send at least a few copies. I can’t

remember how many. We had a distribution system. I think we just delivered it to the Education

Department and said “Ok, so there’s 10 for Kerevat, and 10 for Coronation, and all the list of

schools. Please send it out with your other things that you were sending. So we were reaching all

of the high schools.

EE. To some extent you were publishing literature competition submissions. But did you have people

sending stuff into you all the time?

RB. Oh yes. We had some that were never in the competitions.

EE. You’ve had lots, I’ve done a count.

RB. Have you!

EE. Actually there’s a significant number of pieces that were not in the competitions. But I just

wondered how you came across material. Was it basically people sending things in to you?

RB. Well, first, we had to publish the winners, of the poetry and short story competitions. We had to

get them in somehow and say these are the winners. Other pieces came in from writers like

Russell Soaba. His short stories were turned into radio dramas. I mainly had to look for pieces

that were short enough. That was always my problem – getting 4-5 stories in each issue. I wanted

to get as many in as I could and show the writer and his name and his photo and so on….

EE. What would you do if people sent you something in Tok Pisin or Motu?

RB. Oh, Jack [Lahui] could do it; Jack could do the pidgin.

EE. I wanted to ask you about that because, of course, Jack Lahui took over after you left and you

were training him obviously.

RB. I prepared him to take over.

EE. How did that happen? Was there a formal training program or just…

RB. No, no just in the office.

EE. He’s just doing his job and watching you and gradually taking over from you.

RB. Right, I kept giving him more to do. I tried to do things in the last year, where I would say “OK,

here’s what we do, we do this every year. Here’s how we do it. Remember. We do this and this.

So we’ll take this story and this poem. And you’ll have to send this off and you have to go to the

people with the press release and so on.” I’d say, “Go ahead and I’ll be back later.” And I’d stay

away for 3 or 4 hours. Then I stroll in and say, “How are you going”. He’d say “Oh! What did you

say? What do we do after, you know, that first thing that you said, the second thing, what was

it?” OK. And we’d go through it again and then I was trying more and more to leave him to do it;

otherwise, he’d never really get into it, as long as I was there doing it. Do you know when I, when

we switched over?”

EE. ’74 …

RB. A day came, probably in late ’73, somewhere there. There was such a huge push for localization

and everybody was swapping around. I said, “Do you feel we’re ready? We’re going to change

desks now. You’re going to come in and sit in my office. And I’m going to go out there. I’m going

to get another sign that says “Advisor.” I’m going to be your advisor and you’re the head of the

Literature Bureau. Are you ready for this?” And he said, “Yes.” So then we went and told the

department.

EE. So how long did you stay there in that capacity after he took over?

RB. It seems to me maybe 6 or 8 months or maybe a year. My wife was really agitating to get out of

there. She was terrified. So I went much earlier than I planned to. Since all through this, you’ll

see, I planned to stay forever. And I decided this is home. And I’m staying for whatever I can do.

And various people just said to me, “People like you can stay forever. Just don’t worry. You can

do this as long as you’re needed. If you’re not advising here, you can advise somebody else. But

the country will always need a few people like you around.” So, Ok, that suited me fine. But my

wife was saying, “Get me out of here before I am attacked. There were just getting to be so many

rapes.”

EE. Even at that time….

RB. Yes, yes, it was getting like that, partly paranoia and partly not. Ten doors up from us, this native

had come in through a wall, which was so easy. These houses were constructed quickly. The ends

were fibro, which you can just about punch through, and the sides of the buildings on the long

walls were louvres; they were all windows. You opened the windows and the breeze went right

through, even at night (before we discovered aircon), we opened all the louvres at night and the

wind just sailed right through the whole house. So if the woman was alone, a local person could

come in and pretty much hit all the louvres and climb in through the screen and come in. It was

so easy. I think most expatriate women were terrified of the place and it was just happening

more and more often. I mentioned it to Steve [Winduo] the other day and he said, “No, no, no,

no! A bit of that after independence maybe but not before.” He’s got his history and I’ve got

mine. At the time it seemed like an incident every week.

RB. And maybe it wasn’t every week but my wife said, “Get me out of here! I’ve gotta go.” If I had to

do it again, I would say, “OK, why don’t you go to the UK for a year or something and I’ll just stay

on here and see through independence and see what happens. If things get worse, maybe I’ll also

leave. If things get better again, maybe you can come back but I felt somehow, being a good

polite nice Canadian. So I left in August of ’74. And only this week I learnt that Don Maynard came

back in after I left.

EE. As an advisor to Jack Lahui?

RB. I think so! Now, who mentioned that. Maybe Nora [Vagi Brash] or Anna [Solomon]. And I hadn’t

known that.

RB. I think Jack was going to him surreptitiously with the poetry.

EE. Ok, because Maynard was a poet.

RB. Yeah, Maynard was a poet and I was editing short stories. But I said, “Jack was a well known

poet.” He’d published a couple of things and I said, “You’re the poet, so you edit the poetry and

I’ll edit the short stories.” And I think once in a while, I couldn’t figure out where Jack was and I

realized later he had gone to the…. somehow there was an ANU office [Australia National

University]….

DM. Yeah, there was.

RB. In Moresby, out in Waigani.

DM. Yeah, there was, up on the hill on the other side.

RB. Maynard somehow became an employee of theirs. Not teaching, but he was somehow in the

office.

DM. There was a research office: ANU research institute.

RB. Research Institute, yeah. So Jack would go there and say “Don, don’t know what to do. Fix up the

poetry, make it, you know, make it…. Is this right? So I think this is what was going on, but

Maynard wouldn’t speak to me. He could never get over the fact that he would be replaced by

somebody like myself.

EE. So he had an ego.

RB. Oh yes. And I remember, they said, “So when are you going over to your new office? You’d better

get over there and get started.” So I went over and I said, “I’ll go and take a look anyway.” And I

went over and looked and while I was standing there Maynard walked in and said, “Oh. You’re

not in this chair yet.” Something like that. He knew it was still a few days before I was officially

director of the Literature Bureau. He was very upset. And for the whole time I was in there, he

didn’t speak to me.

EE. Tell us something about how you went from the Film Unit to the Literature Bureau.

RB. After I transferred from the Education unit to DIES, I decided I wanted to be a film director. I

wanted to get into the film unit and once I got in there, I thought, I’ve been waiting ages to get in.

Now I’m in, and then suddenly I was …. I never mentioned before I was reluctant to take on the

Literature Bureau. When they promoted me, I had several days of saying, “No way.” They said,

“But you get paid twice as much.” And I said, “Never mind pay, I want to be, I want to do a film.

I’m working with film here.” And they said, “You take this promotion or you’re fired. This is an

order, this is a lawful command you are promoted.” “Oh,” I said. “OK, I guess I’m promoted.” In

the meantime, I had started the Papua New Guinea National Film Award and announced just in

the same way, send a press release to the newspaper that there’s a National Film Award. And I

was offering $100 for this. One of the winners was Les McLaren [well-known Australian

filmmaker].

EE. No kidding!

RB. Yeah. So he walked into the conference the other day and he said, “National Film Award” and I

said “Oh god … because it was much too soon. That was really a fairy tale. I should never have

instituted that award; it was too soon for the local people. People didn’t have cameras and

dubbing and the editing equipment and the projectors and things. Anyway, I said, “OK, if I’m

going to take over the Literature Bureau, I will also run the National Film Award as part of the

Bureau’s work.” And they said, “Fine. You’re giving the prizes yourself, you’re putting in the $100

yourself and you’ll use the Bureau to send out the press releases.” OK, no problem. So I said, “OK,

I’ll take the Literature Bureau.” So I ran this National Film Award for 3 years, I think….

EE. I remember the advert.

RB. Yeah, and I was only getting 5 or 6 entries and all from expatriates. So it really, I was just 10 to 15

years too soon. Later, Les McLaren started the Film School. That would have been the time to

start my awards.