OBITUARY Sir Barry Blyth Holloway. Patrol officer and Papua New
Guinea politician. Born Kimberley, Tasmania, September 26, 1934. Died
Brisbane, January 16, aged 78.
THE generation of Australians who grew up in the 1940s and 50s heard much from their older brothers and fathers about war.
The
best of them volunteered for their own challenge. At an astonishingly
young age, they travelled to the remotest corners of their country's big
tropical colony to administer vast areas and populations of Papua New
Guinea.
They were magistrates, police chiefs, road and bridge
builders, health and education supervisors, all roles wrapped in one,
that of the patrol officer or "kiap" - a word derived from the old days
of German New Guinea.
This afternoon, appropriately Australia
Day, the best of those best is being buried at St Michael and All Angels
Anglican Church in the tiny north Tasmanian township of Kimberley,
alongside his parents.
He is Barry Holloway, the most prominent Australian to stay on in
independent PNG and the best-known of a generation of patrol officers
who effectively ran the country until independence in 1975 and
maintained a key role afterwards. He was still playing a central role in
PNG life until recent days, almost succeeding in recapturing his
Eastern Highlands constituency at last year's election, aged 78.
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| Sir Barry Blyth Holloway |
Prime
Minister Peter O'Neill said in a tribute to the man his country
knighted: "At independence, he was one of the first to take out
citizenship.
"He had no hesitation in embracing the new nation of Papua New Guinea."
Sir
Barry, a hard-living, empathetic intellectual, typical of the best of
the kiaps, arrived in the then Australian territory in 1953, aged just
18, following a six-week orientation course.
He told ABC radio:
"We were given basic, multi-functional activities to do, such as
learning how to map, how to handle government stores, and all sorts of
clerical work, which really dampened our spirits somewhat, because we
were coming up for high adventure."
Which he certainly found.
He
was one of about 1000 kiaps who each ruled and helped develop vast
areas of the country during the 25 years leading to independence.
He
described an early assignment to settle a tribal conflict involving
hundreds of fighters. He was accompanied by a handful of PNG police
armed with .303 rifles, which he said appeared to the combatants to be
mere sticks.
"We demonstrated the power of the rifle by lining up
about five shields, and showing how the bullet would come out causing a
great gap at the other side."
Sir Barry established himself as a
political systems reformer, so impressing Paul Hasluck, as minister for
territories on a visit to his Kainantu district in the Eastern
Highlands, that Hasluck put him on his aircraft and flew him to
headquarters to brief senior officials.
He was also a founder, with Michael Somare, of the Pangu Party that pressed strongest for independence.
Tony
Voutas, a fellow patrol officer and then a fellow MP, and also a
founder of Pangu, described Sir Barry as "a combination of a political
mastermind and an exceptionally generous person".
"He made a
substantial personal and financial contribution in 1966 and onwards to a
nascent 'Left Bank salon' in the new Port Moresby suburb of Hohola,
built for Papua New Guineans recruited into the public service."
The
political salon was centred on the basic fibro houses of the then union
activist Albert Maori Kiki and of Sir Barry, about 150m apart. Voutas
said: "The Information and Broadcasting Department's new recruit,
Michael Somare, had an identical house about 400m away."
To push
for independence before the 1968 elections was an especially brave move
by Sir Barry, Voutas said, "as his electorate was in the Highlands,
where many people were as frightened of self-government as if it were an
apocalypse".
But Sir Barry won his seat, and later became Speaker, from 1972 to 1975.
He was appointed to the cabinet at independence, and held a series of senior portfolios during his 20 years as an MP.
These included education and finance - thus effectively making him the country's treasurer.
He eventually fell out with Sir Michael and formed a new party, with the late Anthony Siaguru.
Sir
Barry had three wives, Liz from Australia, and Ikini and Fua from PNG,
12 children and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
