Grave robbers wreak havoc in Lae cemeteries

There are some things in life that are so hard to comprehend.

These things make you wonder why some people have the audacity to carry out such acts, which include desecrating the memory of loved ones that families and relatives have laid to rest. These people can stoop as low as stealing brass plaques from graveyards to sell to unscrupulous scrap metal dealers for a fast buck.

In my home town of Lae, this practice has been going on ever since these dealers - who prey on Papua New Guinea's massive unemployment problem - set foot.

Today, a visit to cemeteries in Lae, will show you many headstones on graves that are missing brass plaques.

A case in point is the old graveyard up the road from the famous old Lae airport.

This graveyard is the final resting place for many of the pioneers of Lae and Morobe province, mainly expatriates, and was a relic of a bygone era where visitors could learn so much just by reading the plaques and headstones.

Rest In Peace - RIP - those buried here are supposed to be.

However, this has not been the case over the last 10 years or so, as grave robbers without a care in the world have plundered basically all the brass plaques.

In my younger days, as a journalist in Lae, one of my hobbies used to be wandering old graveyards and reading the plaques and headstones as I could learn so much history. Sadly, I can no longer do this, as many of the plaques are gone.

And the irony is that people are not making any noise about this daylight robbery going on in front of their own faces.

The grave robbers are desecrating graveyards at the old Lae airport, Second Seven (Malahang), and even my Butibam village, to name a few.

Heaven knows what would happen to the Lae War Cemetery if there wasn't tight security around to prevent these intruders.

We never thought that this practice would come to Butibam until a few years ago when plaques started disappearing overnight.

In May 2006, while on a working trip to Lae, I visited my father's grave at Butibam and took pictures.

A short time later, I was surprised to receive a call from my mother, who was in tears as she told me that Dad's plaque had disappeared to these unprincipled grave leeches.

The entire family, just like me, was shocked as we wondered what exactly Dad or we had done to deserve this.

The plaque, to this day, has not been replaced as I somehow have to find the exact wording for a replacement.

My father, the late Mathias Nalu, died on September 17, 1993, after more than 35 years of service with the Education Department as a teacher and later a school inspector.

He had just retired and received his final entitlements, however, never got to enjoy the fruits of his labour as he suffered a severe stroke from which he never recovered until his untimely passing.

Dad was one of those old Dregerhafen and Finschhafen boys who was always proud to call Michael Somare, Paulias Matane, the late Alkan Tololo, and many more, "old school mates".

Dad's school mates went on to become great leaders of this country while he chose to take the backseat as a humble teacher and school inspector.

Hundreds of teachers and public servants packed the St Andrew's Lutheran Church at Ampo in Lae for his funeral service.

The Nalu family was humbled by this show of respect from so many people from all over Lae, Morobe province, and PNG.

I realise that times are hard, but to steal brass plaques from graves to sell to some dodgy scrap metal dealer for a quick buck is unforgivable.

The government should put in place tough legislation to combat those who steal plaques from graves and those who buy them.

These offenders, as part of their rehabilitation, could be sent to Salamaua where the villagers there will teach them how to look after and respect old graveyards.

The old Salamaua cemetery is a relic of a bygone era of the 1920s and 1930s when fevered gold miners from all over the world converged on this idyllic part of the world.

To visit the old Salamaua cemetery is to step back in time, to a rip-roaring period when gold fever struck men from around the globe.

Today the old Salamaua cemetery, or what remains of it, is well tended to by the local villagers.

The graves are mute testimony to the days when European man, running a high gold fever, was claimed by a fever of a different kind.

I have a very simple message for those who removed my father's plaque and those who bought it.

"May God forgive you.

"I find it very hard to do so."

History being rewritten with Bulolo Airport

Many people who have been long fascinated by the story of the gold rush days of the 1930’s feel that history is being rewritten with the re-opening of the Bulolo Airport.
The greatest airlift the world had ever known started from Lae to the Bulolo goldfields in the 1930s.
Built in June 1930, originally the Bulolo strip was 1,150 yards by 120 yards.
Later it was expanded to 1,300 yards in length, covered with grass.
This airstrip was used in conjunction with flying supplies and equipment for gold dredging at Wau and Bulolo.
On January 21, 1942, Japanese Zeros and bombers attacked Bulolo.
At Bulolo, they set fire to three of the Junkers G31 tri-motors on the ground, destroying them.
Gold dredging work ceased as most of the men employed entered military service.
Five days, later, on February 5, 1942, Bulolo was bombed at 11am by five twin-engine bombers.
The discovery of gold at Edie Creek above Wau in 1926 sparked off a gold rush which led to the exploitation of the rich deposits of the Bulolo-Watut river system by large-scale mechanised mining.
The rigours and cost of the eight-day walk into the goldfields and the difficulty of building a road from the coast led to the early introduction of an aviation service.
The driving force behind the development of the goldfields was Cecil J. Levien, a former Morobe District Officer, who has been described as a “rare and formidable combination of opportunist, practical man and visionary”.
Levien persuaded the directors of Guinea Gold N.L. that startling profits would be made by any aviation company that could provide a service to eliminate the arduous walk between Salamaua and Wau.
He secured an option on a small DH-37 plane in Melbourne and engaged a pilot, E. A. “Pard” Mustar, to bring it to New Guinea.
The aviation service was a success from the start.
After two unsuccessful flights around the mountains south of the Markham no one knew exactly how to find Wau from the air.
Mustar landed at Wau for the first time on April 16, 1937.
He began the service the next day with a shipment of six 100 lb bags of rice, charging a shilling a 16, and, making two trips a day, five days a week, carried 84 passengers and 27, 000 lbs of cargo in the first three months.
Rival aviation companies were not long in arriving to share the profits.
Ray Parer, the proprietor of Bulolo Goldfields Air Service who had been competing keenly with Mustar to be the first to land at Lae, came from Rabaul after many delays, and A. “Jerry” Pentland and P. “Skip” Moody soon joined them.
There was ample business for all, and by April 1928, a year after the service began, Guinea Airways (the aviation company that grew from Guinea Gold N.L.) had acquired two extra planes and was employing three further pilots and two more mechanics.
Then in March 1929 a new company, Morlae Airlines, began a weekly Lae-Port Moresby run, meeting ships from Australia and bringing passengers and frozen foods across to Wau, Bulolo, Salamaua and Lae.
At first Bulolo Gold Dredging Ltd and its parent company, Placer Development Ltd, had thought of building a road to the goldfields, but the length of time it would take and the high cost of construction and maintenance persuaded the companies to accept Guinea Airways' proposition that “skyways are the cheapest highways”.
On the advice of Mustar, Bulolo Gold Dredging purchased three all-metal, tri-motored Junkers G-31 aircraft from Germany, which Guinea Airways was to operate under licence for the gold mining company.
Guinea Airways also purchased a Junkers G-31 of its own.
They were huge planes, each capable of carrying a payload of 7100 lbs or 14 short tons together.
The airlift began in April 1931 and continued for eight years: the first dredge began work in March 1932, the eighth in November, 1939.
Another crane at the airstrip lifted the heavy machinery into the planes and a rail crane unloaded them at Bulolo.
Eventually operations became so efficient that nine round trips a day were possible.
The airlift was a remarkable undertaking.
It pioneered the use of aviation in the transport of heavy cargo and, in the words of one writer, “in every respect it constituted a world record”.

Amelia Earhart and Papua New Guinea

Last year 2007 marks the 70th anniversary of one of the greatest unsolved aviation mysteries of all time. ]

The mystery – that of American aviatrix Amelia Earhart – intimately involves Papua New Guinea as Lae was her last port of call before she disappeared somewhere over the vast Pacific Ocean.

Amelia Earhart, darling of American aviation, went missing in July 1937, after leaving Lae for the longest stretch of her around-the-world flight.

The mystery and a long fruitless search –costing many millions of US dollars - had begun. Today, 70 years after her final takeoff – from Lae in Papua New Guinea’s Morobe Province – the mystery is still to be solved.

World attention was focused on Lae in 1937, and continues to this day, when it was the last port of called for Earhart before she disappeared.

Old Lae residents used to recall entertaining the couple in the Hotel Cecil the night before their departure, and then seeing them off the next morning.

Their plane was so overloaded with its eight tonnes of fuel that it was still barely clearing the waves as it disappeared from sight, flying east along the Huon Gulf coast on its way to Howland Island, 4600 kilometres to the north.

On such occasions Lae-ites, regardless of class or social position, felt they were part of history.

Today, a plaque to her memory stands at the Amelia Earhart Park, opposite the famous old Lae airport.

Up the hill from the park, at the Melanesian Hotel, the bar is named Amelia’s after this great woman.

For the last 69 years, hundreds of rumours and theories – some practical but most the products of over fertile imaginations – have kept the memories of Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, alive for millions of Americans.

One of the popular crank theories is that Earhart and Noonan were on a spy flight for the US government and were captured by the Japanese and executed, something that has been vehemently disclaimed by the Japanese to this day.

Some have searched the sea, believing the plane ran out of fuel.

Others think she survived a crash landing but died on a deserted island.

The conspiracy-minded claim Earhart survived and lived out her life under an assumed name as a New Jersey housewife.

There are even bizarre, out-of-this-world urban legends that she was captured by aliens on a UFO.

To US aviation buffs, she is still ‘Amelia’ and they talk about her as though she only went missing yesterday.

The 39-year-old pilot took off from Oakland, California, on June 1, 1937, on what was reported to be her last record flight.

Slim, almost boyish, reminding one of Katherine Hepburn, Amelia Earhart had been setting records for 10 years.

In 1932, she had set a solo record for her Atlantic crossing and earned the nickname of ‘Lady Lindy’, because her slim build and facial features resembled that of Charles Lindbergh.

A year later, she married New York publishing magnate, George Palmer Putnam.

A university graduate, Earhart spoke five languages.

When not flying, she spent most of her time on welfare work in the Boston slums.

Never satisfied with her records, she was always planning something greater.

This was to be IT – the ultimate in long distance flying! She wanted to be the first woman to fly around the world!

Navigator Fred Noonan, senior navigator of Pan American World Airlines, was considered as good as any in the United States.

He had already crossed the Pacific 18 times, directing the flight of the company’s famed China Clipper.

Their aircraft, a twin-engined Lockheed Electra, fast and sophisticated for its day, was well suited to the task.

They had reached Darwin, Northern Australia, 40 days after leaving Oakland.

Possibly to save weight for the long over-water legs to come, they had then unloaded their parachutes.

From Darwin, it was a short trip over to Lae.

New Guinea was the departing point for the most grueling leg of the flight – near 4600 kilometres over water to Howland Island, the longest ocean crossing ever attempted. Their destination was a speck of sand and coral in the mid-Pacific 2.5 kilometres long and just under a kilometer wide.

The Lockheed was to be the first aircraft to land on its newly-constructed airstrip. “Even with a first class navigator on board, it would be an incredible feat to find the island by celestial navigation and dead reckoning alone,” wrote Australian aviator and Earhart researcher Terry Gwynn-Jones in 1977.

“With an error of only one degree in reading, they would miss the island by 72 kilometres.

“Thus it was that the US government stationed the fleet tug Ontario half way along the route and the Coast Guard cutter Itasca at Howland.

“Besides voice communication radios, the Itasca had a radio direction finder and a radio beacon that could be picked up by the aircraft’s Bendix radio compass.

“Once the Lockheed got to within a few hundred kilometers of the island, the Itasca could guide them in.

“Or so it seemed!”

Earhart maintained radio contact with New Guinea, and then later the Itasca and Ontario, until this was lost.

Her last words were: “We are in a line of position 157-337. Will repeat this message on 6210. We are running north and south. We have only a half hour’s fuel and cannot see land.”

The message blasted through loud and clear over the radio of the United States Coast Guard ship Itasca.

The woman’s voice betrayed anxiety.

Quickly, the operator switched to the 6210 kilocycle band and waited for her call.

It never came.

Her silence was shrouded by the crackling of static interference out over the vast Pacific Ocean.

Amelia Earhart, darling of American aviation, was missing

The old Lae Airport

The old Lae airport has played a significant role in the history of the town, Papua New Guinea, and the whole world for that matter.
Mordern day Lae and PNG grew because of the airport (picture above shows the old Lae airport in its heyday in the 1970s).
The greatest airlift the world had ever known started from Lae to the Bulolo goldfields in the 1930s.
World attention was focused on Lae in 1937, and continues to this day, when it was the last port of called for the famed American aviatrix Amelia Earhart before she disappeared somewhere over the deep-blue South Pacific ocean.
Lae airstrip was bombed out by the Japanese on January 21, 1942, however, recovered to become a major player in the development of post-war PNG.
I still have unforgettable memories – as a child - of flying to Wewak, Rabaul, Buka, Kavieng, Goroka and many other places in that trusty old Ansett, TAA and later Air Niugini DC3s and F27s.
The old Lae airport started losing its thunder in 1977 when Nadzab, an American World War 11 strip, became operational.
Fierce political squabbling over the pros and cons of Lae and Nadzab continued until 1982, when, in an unsolved mystery (just like Amelia Earhhart), the Lae airport terminal was burned down.
Nadzab had taken away its glory; however, Lae continued to be used by Air Niugini and other third-level airlines until 1987.
Lae continued to be used as the base for the PNG Defence Force Air Transport Squadron until it was transferred to Port Moresby in 1992.
After that, one of the greatest icons of PNG history was literally left to the dogs, and became covered by bushes.
It was only recently that the land was sub-divided for commercial purposes as well as given back to the traditional landowners.
The story of the old Lae airport is a fascinating one, and is well-documented in the book Lae: Village and City, written by pioneer University of Technology lecturer Ian Willis.
The discovery of gold at Edie Creek above Wau in 1926 sparked off a gold rush which led to the exploitation of the rich deposits of the Bulolo-Watut river system by large-scale mechanised mining.
The rigours and cost of the eight-day walk into the goldfields and the difficulty of building a road from the coast led to the early introduction of an aviation service.
The driving force behind the development of the goldfields was Cecil J. Levien, a former Morobe District Officer who has been described as a “rare and formidable combina­tion of opportunist, practical man and visionary”.
Levien persuaded the directors of Guinea Gold N.L. that startling profits would be made by any aviation company that could provide a service to eliminate the arduous walk between Salamaua and Wau.
He secured an option on a small DH-37 plane in Melbourne and engaged a pilot, E. A. “Pard” Mustar, to bring it to New Guinea.

He then selected Lae as the best place for the coastal airstrip and without bothering to obtain official permission, took on about 250 labourers to clear and level a landing ground under the supervision of Tommy Wright, the foreman of the agricultural station.
The construction of the airfield was perhaps the biggest enterprise ever undertaken at Lae and greatly perturbed the local villagers, who watched amazed as a vast area of bush was torn down and gardens were flattened.
They were in for further surprises when Mustar and his mechanic, A. W. D. Mullins, flew in from Rabaul, where they had been assembling and testing the plane.
Their arrival brought the full power of Western technology home to the villagers with a shock.
Mustar's account of his landing in Lae on 30 March 1927 gives a sharp sense of their mixed excitement and confusion: “Our staff welcomed the machine . . . And the Kanakas! Good Lord! They came in droves to see the `big feller pidgeon'. My engineer, Mullins, was over six feet tall, while I am only 5ft. bins. short, and the Kanakas couldn't understand why the little man was `Number one masta longa pidgeon'. They examined the machine and decided it was `strong feller too much. Me no savvy this feller fashion belong white master'. Some of these natives had travelled for days down the mountains to see the 'pidgeon' .. . They took full measurements of the wings and all parts of the machine with lengths of cane to carry back to wondering villagers.”
The mastery of Europeans, previously seen in their goods and possessions, was now indisputable.
The aviation service was a success from the start.
After two unsuccessful flights around the mountains south of the Markham ­no one knew exactly how to find Wau from the air.
Mustar landed at Wau for the first time on 16 April.
He began the service the next day with a shipment of six 100 lb bags of rice, charging a shilling a 16, and, making two trips a day, five days a week, carried 84 passen­gers and 27, 000 lbs of cargo in the first three months.
Rival aviation companies were not long in arriving to share the profits.
Ray Parer, the proprietor of Bulolo Goldfields Air Service who had been com­peting keenly with Mustar to be the first to land at Lae, came from Rabaul after many delays, and A. “Jerry” Pentland and P. “Skip” Moody soon joined them.
There was ample business for all, and by April 1928, a year after the service began, Guinea Airways (the aviation company that grew from Guinea Gold N.L.) had acquired two extra planes and was employing three further pilots and two more mechanics.
Then in March 1929 a new company, Morlae Air­lines, began a weekly Lae-Port Moresby run, meeting ships from Australia and bringing passengers and frozen foods across to Wau, Bulolo, Salamaua and Lae.
This service cut the time needed to get from Port Moresby to the goldfields from six days to one.
The town developed quickly as the volume of traffic increased.
What had been a rough clearing in the bush in early 1927 soon acquired workshops, hangars, storage sheds, offices, houses and barracks.

At first the growth was unsupervised and chaotic.
Guinea Gold N.L. had built the airstrip without permission and had no power to prevent other operators from using the land or erecting buildings.
As a result early Lae grew as a large European squatter camp.
Each new arrival simply set himself up wherever he pleased without concern for ownership.
Levien in particular was concerned at the uncontrolled building, which he believed was becoming a hazard to aircraft.
No one was sure who owned the land, but that the local villagers may have had rightful claims does not seem to have been considered.
The question of ownership was finally settled in favour of the administration.
The government, with might on its side, ended the squabbling between the various contenders by resuming a large area including the airstrip in August 1927.
Earlier the land had been put up for sale by tender by the Custodian of Expropriated Properties, who had control of it because it was the property that had been expropriated from the Neu Guinea Compagnie.
The administration had been a tenderer, but concerned that it might be outbid by an ambitious, go-getting company like Guinea Gold N.L., it withdrew its tender and resumed the land instead.
The government took a huge slice-the entire 11721 acres of the Compagnie's holding­ stating that it needed the land for an aerodrome, a shipping depot, an agricultural station, and native reserves.
Those wanting to build now had to arrange a lease with the government.
The administration was strongly influenced by an officer of the Department of Civil Aviation, W. J. Duncan, who had been seconded by the Australian government to the New Guinea administration to report on and supervise the founding of aviation services in New Guinea.
Duncan's report, which he submitted in late 1927, recommended that the administration should take responsibility for airport construction and maintenance, that it should sub-divide the area around the airstrip into a series of blocks, each three chains wide and five chains long with a roadway between them and lease each for £20 a year.
Lae thus became the prototype for New Guinean towns built around airstrips.
In such places the airstrip dominates the shape and form of the town, usually occupying the central position. (Later air­port towns were Goroka, Mount Hagen, Kainantu and most sub­district headquarters opened since World War I1).
The airstrip in New Guinea is perhaps analogous to the railway station of an earlier era in America and Australia, because it has generally decided the shape and the settlement pattern of the town.
In early Lae this was obvious: the workshops and hangars clustered between the end of the airstrip and the wharf, the Europeans lived to the east of the strip, near the river terrace, while the New Guinean labourers generally lived on the far or western side.
An important impetus to the growth of Lae was the decision of the gold mining interests to airlift in sections the heavy mining machinery they used for treating the Bulolo and Watut River gravels.

At first Bulolo Gold Dredging Ltd and its parent company, Placer Development Ltd, had thought of building a road to the goldfields, but the length of time it would take and the high cost of construction and maintenance persuaded the companies to accept Guinea Air­ways' proposition that “skyways are the cheapest highways”.
On the advice of Mustar, Bulolo Gold Dredging purchased three all-metal, tri-motored Junkers G-31 aircraft from Germany, which Guinea Airways was to operate under licence for the gold mining company.
Guinea Airways also purchased a Junkers G-31 of its own.
They were huge planes, each capable of carrying a payload of 7100 lbs or 14 short tons together.
The airlift began in April 1931 and continued for eight years: the first dredge began work in March 1932, the eighth in November, 1939.
It proceeded smoothly because of the spirit of co-operation existing between Bulolo Gold Dredging and Guinea Airways, and because of their streamlined operation.
At Lae they had a wharf 75 feet long, with half a mile of railway running around the foreshore to the storage sheds at the airport.
Because of the unsatisfactory harbour facilities at Lae-unstable foreshore, open anchorage and steeply sloping seafloor-all cargo had to be lightened ashore in barges, which were then unloaded by steam crane.
Another crane at the airstrip lifted the heavy machinery into the planes and a rail crane unloaded them at Bulolo.
Eventually operations became so efficient that nine round trips a day were possible.
The airlift was a remarkable undertaking. It pioneered the use of aviation in the transport of heavy cargo and, in the words of one writer, “in every respect it constituted a world record”.
While it lasted the power of Western technology was daily impressed on the local people, who stood by bemused as the town grew around them.
The airlift stimulated the steady development of the town and by 1942, when it was destroyed by Japanese bombing; it had about 120 European residents, about sixty Chinese and perhaps several hundred New Guineans.
It became a bustling, busy place, and though it remained chiefly a centre of the aviation industry, it developed a distinctive town life of its own.
Something of its busyness can be seen in a 1935 report in the Pacific Islands Monthly:
“Lae is now a township ranking high in the Mandated Territory of New Guinea. It is a centre of great activity . . . and one of the biggest (if not the biggest) aircraft centres in the southern hemi­sphere. The European population is now around the hundred mark and is increasing with each steamer. Accommodation is being taxed; so much so that a new hotel has been commenced and is expected to be completed in a month or two."
A death that momentarily focused world attention on Lae was that of the American aviatrix, Amelia Earhart Putnam, who vanished with her navigator, Fred Noonan, after leaving Lae in June 1937 on the longest leg of their trip around the world.
Old Lae residents used to recall entertaining the couple in the Hotel Cecil the night before their departure, and then seeing them off the next morning.

Their plane was so overloaded with its eight tons of fuel that it was still barely clearing the waves as it disappeared from sight, flying east along the Huon Gulf coast on its way to Howland Island 2600 miles to the north.
On such occasions Laeites, regardless of class or social position, felt they were part of history.

Old Lae pictures (point cursor to picture for caption)

Feedback to the Errol Flynn story

I received this comment from one Dianne Gibson in regards to the Errol story below (which has been used previously in this Blog): "I was fascinated to read the article you posted on Errol Flynn. So much of what you write is known to me as my father owned a copra plantation on the Edie Creek during the time Errol Flynn was in PNG. In fact he "borrowed" 5 pounds from dad and (as you say in the article) when dad wrote to him in Hollywood asking for the money, he was sent an autographed photo. Dad also told me the story about the dentist. However, my father didn't like Flynn at all, mainly because of his womanising and brawling. He later refused to watch any film that featured Flynn due to his intense dislike of the man.

"Dad spent 17 years in PNG and then came to Sydney. Prior to that he served with the 8th Light Horse in Egypt during WWI and after his stint in PNG came to Sydney. Like Flynn, my father also wrote for "The Bulletin". His pen name was "Maliesh" but his name was Leonard Wignall. Unfortunately he died in 1961 when I was only 16 and I'm sure he had many untold stories.

"Thank you for your article, it brought back memories of my father.

"With kind regards
Dianne Gibson"

Come in like Errol Flynn

Papua New Guinea's rich and colorful history is littered with the names of likewise gaudy characters that have carved a niche for themselves.

Few, however, have made more of an impact than the flamboyant and swashbuckling Errol Flynn.

With the discovery of very good paying gold in 1926 at Edie Creek above Wau - six days walk from Salamaua - a gold rush of massive proportions started, not only from Australia but from beyond.

With the major discovery of gold came the last two categories of what the White population of New Guinea was divided into: Missionaries, Moneymakers, and Misfits or Fools, Freaks, and Failures.

Not least among the Misfits was the one who became a Hollywood star - Errol Flynn.And none, probably, has done more to promote PNG than this lovable rogue who went on to become the world's top sex symbol.

The superb scenery, glorious hills and harbours, white beaches, and shady copra plantations are still today as Flynn describes them in his famous autobiography, My Wicked, Wicked Ways.

Even though Flynn is long dead- through excessive drinking and womanising - he still lives on in PNG.

Places like Salamaua, Wau, Bulolo, Lae, Finschhafen, Port Moresby, Laloki, Rabaul, Kavieng, Madang, and the Sepik River have become famous because of My Wicked, Wicked Ways.

His book remains a bestseller to this day and, in places like Salamaua or Wau - just to name two - people still talk about him."Flynn used to drink here,"they'll tell you in Salamaua, or, "this is where he went mining for gold", they'll reminisce in Wau.

Legendary Australian patrol officer, JK McCarthy, recalls in his book, Patrol Into Yesterday, how Flynn stepped in once to protect a small man from a bully: "It was done in the most dramatic style and all of us should have foreseen that he had a movie career ahead of him. There was the noisy bar, the crowd of onlookers, the challenge and the hero knocking the loud-mouthed one cold, right on cue."

Flynn has been called many names: adventurer, thief, lover, liar, murderer, and Hollywood legend.

He probably didn't do much good while he was here, but nevertheless, he placed PNG on the world map as a place where a young man can find himself.

The true-life story of movie superstar Errol Flynn was more dramatic and incredible than even the wildest of his many Hollywood-starring roles.

He may have more swashes then anyone before or since, but Flynn was also a liar and a thief, an incurable seducer of women (and men), a fraudster, hustler, and even murderer... all before the age of 21!

Before the age of 21, Flynn was tried for murder.

He was a thief, a liar, a bad boy in every instance,he was a gigolo, a hustler, and was even accused of being a spy - then he conquered Hollywood.

Wildly promiscuous from an early age, his teenage years were a frantic roller coaster ride of sex, adventure, ill-gotten riches, drink, sex, fighting... and more sex.

Panoramic portrayals of his amazing past have brought the true legend of Flynn explosively to life, blowing the lid off his rabble-rousing time in the gutters of Sydney, and his death-defying escapades searching for gold in the jungles of New Guinea.

Flynn was simply the sexiest, most charismatic star of the Golden Era of Hollywood.

The epitome of a lusty, virile hero, Flynn turned the World into his stage as millions fell for his wicked, wicked ways.

Superstar and legend, Errol Flynn was Hollywood's symbol of male virility during the Golden Era of moviemaking.

He was adored by fans worldwide, admired by millions, despised by many.

Flynn was the quintessence of the swashbuckling hero, but his on-screen exploits were pale echoes of his real life adventures.

Flynn's prowess with women was so infamous that the expression "Come In like Flynn" became a common phrase used to describe the ease with which a man might conquer a woman.

In fact, after a life rocked by success and scandal, Errol Flynn died under dubious circumstances aged 50, supposedly while having sex with a woman.

As an actor, Flynn built the foundation for characters later elaborated by Mel Gibson, Arnold Schwarznegger, Harrison Ford, and Kevin Costner.

He died at age 50 of a heart attack, having had a good run in Hollywood with 53 films - some for Jack Warner, others contracted out to MGM - across from great female players such as Olivia De Haviland, Maureen O'Hara, Bette Davis, Greer Garson and others.

Errol Flynn was born Errol Leslie Thompson Flynn on June 20, 1909 in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.His parents were Professor Theodore Thompson Flynn and Lily Mary Young.

Professor Flynn was a well-known marine biologist and zoologist who later went on to receive an MBE for his work at Queens University, Belfast.Errol also was a direct descendant - on his mothers' side - of Midshipman Young from the infamous HMS Bounty Mutiny of 1789.

The 18-year-old Errol Flynn - with an already shady background - arrived in New Guinea in October 1927 to make his fortune on the newly discovered goldfields at Edie Creek, Wau.

From his arrival he tried unsuccessfully to bluff himself into money as a cadet patrol officer, gold prospector, slave recruiter, dynamiter of fish, trapper of birds, manager of coconut and tobacco plantations, air cargo clerk, copra trader, charter boat captain, pearl diver and diamond smuggler.

He was also a prolific writer and contributed regularly to Australian newspapers and magazines with absorbing tales about the untamed jungles of New Guinea.

Flynn soon discovered that the Australian government had a severe shortage of patrol officers, and he hoped to bluff his way through in Rabaul, but this colonial career was short-lived when his background was discovered.

He moved restlessly from one job to another, acquiring many different skills but no great competence.

Hoping to get rich fast, he lived by his wits and ran up many debts.

In Rabaul, although considered a likeable and capable young man, his reputation for roguery quickly spread and he ceased to be with the Administration.

His best memory of Rabaul was of "a wonderful saloon where you encountered everything the world could yield up - miners, recruiters, con men, thieves, beachcombers, prospectors - cubicles both downstairs and upstairs, several phonographs playing, cards".

Long after Flynn had left he was remembered around Rabaul, mostly for the unpaid bills he left behind.

Even after he became famous as a film star, he never paid any of those bills.If people wrote asking him to pay, he would send them autographed photographs of himself, saying these were much more than what he owed them.

The story is told of the famous occasion when a film of Flynn's was showing in Rabaul, and at the end of the credits, a dentist to whom Flynn owned a large account jumped up and shouted: "And teeth by Eric Wein."

In 1928, with money from his work on a coconut plantation and a loan from a shipping company in Sydney, Flynn bought a schooner and took an American film company to make a documentary about headhunters on the Sepik River.

He recalls: "The last place in the world I wanted to go was the Sepik River, a human graveyard. I cruised to the north-east coast, where the red, muddy Sepik River flowed into the sea.

"We moved into the broad stream, running against a strong current.

"The Sepik is a monster waterway 600 miles long.

"No white man has been up the river more than 200 or 300 miles and the nature of the river or the land beyond that was practically unknown and remains little known to this very day.

"The waterway was heavily populated with mosquitoes, kanakas, and pukpuks (crocodiles).

"As we traveled the garamuts, tomtoms made of crocodile skins, kept up a steady communication: 'Outsiders, big magic on the water, beware'.

"When we came in close to shore and tried to get film of the natives, we got arrows instead, real ones, and poisoned.

"In 1929, Flynn sailed from the offshore islands to Salamaua, to fulfill his original ambition.

He hired eight men, bought marching gear and gold-digging equipment, and set out for the goldfields at Edie Creek.

The tough march from Salamaua to Wau - through a region filled with blackwater fever and poisoned arrows - tested men's limitations.

The rigorous walk between Salamaua and Wau took up to a week, Flynn writing of how the gold fields had to be approached from Salamaua by 10 days'smarch through leech-infested jungle, in constant fear of ambush, and at night wondering 'whether that crawly sound you heard a few feet away might be a snake, a cassowary or maybe only a wild boar razorback...I have seen Central Africa, but it was never anything like the jungle of New Guinea'.

At Edie Creek, temperatures were high during the day and fell steeply at night.

There was an epidemic of dysentery and malaria, with no trained doctors to attend to the sick.

His men left, and Flynn quickly realised that, "I had neither the provisions, nor the money, nor the necessary men to work a claim properly. The competition with other prospectors who were better set up was too much".

He lost everything he owned and was forced to take a job as manager of a tobacco plantation in Laloki, near Port Moresby.

Six months later, Jack Hides, a flamboyant patrol officer and old Papua hand, turned up at Flynn's place and noted in his diary that Flynn was doing a creditable job.

Flynn had criticised the Australian administration in a letter to his father in Tasmania.

Writing to The Bulletin soon after his arrival, he protested against a government policy that affected his own plantation, the high import taxes imposed on tobacco: "Papua is one of the natural homes of the tobacco plant, and, as Papua is part of the Commonwealth and is in receipt of a yearly subsidy of £40,000 from the federal government, the obvious market for its tobacco is Australia. But the market is closed by a prohibitive tariff."

At Laloki, the man who was to become the world's top sex symbol, wrote about his affair with Tuperselai, a beautiful Papuan girl: "We let ourselves be carried down by the current of the stream and, on the shores, in a secluded nook of shade, at last we made love.

"I can only say that I don't know when again my heart pounded so.

"I was less alone and soft-aired Laloki River is one of my most precious, poetic memories."

In January 1933, in the bush near Finschhafen, Morobe District, Flynn began to 'blackbird' local labourers.

His diary recorded that enslaving human beings also involved an element of trust - which was frequently betrayed - and described his conversation with a tribal chief who said he "had given me all their young men and I must look after them well. He enjoined me that I must not sell any of them and when their time had finished must bring them back myself".

Flynn later observed that, "If you spend more than five years in New Guinea you were done for, you'd never be able to get out, your energy would be gone, and you'd rot there like an aged palm".

In April 1933, he sold his property and suddenly left the island with some smuggled diamonds and a case of malaria that would plague him for the rest of his life.

During his years in New Guinea, from the age of 18 to 24, Flynn came to maturity and formed his adult personality.New Guinea brought out the worst and the best in him.

He was willing to try anything, but wouldn't work at anything for very long.

He said, "There is no thrill like making a dishonest buck" and always expected others to support him when he had no money of his own.

He lived by his wits, bluffed his way through crises, and used his fists when he had to.

One of Errol Flynn's greatest loves was writing.

Apart from his autobiography My Wicked, Wicked Ways, he wrote two semi-autobiographical novels Beam Ends and Showdown and in addition wrote articles for the Sydney Bulletin whilst in PNG under the pen-name "Laloki"; for the magazine Photoplay during his first years in Hollywood and his "holiday" in Spain during the Civil War; and then in 1959 he wrote about the Cuban Revolution during which time he was present alongside Fidel Castro.

These writings are compiled in a book called From a Life of Adventure: The Writings of Errol Flynn ed. by Tony Thomas.

Errol Flynn loved many women, but he is said to have once confided to a close friend that two of his greatest loves were New Guinea, and writing.