March 2016
The Harp in the South is a well known
novel about the Irish in
Australia, specifically in Surry
Hills, Sydney. The following
mini-memoir is about some Irish
in the Territory of Papua New
Guinea, specifically Mendi.
In the Southern Highlands a
long time ago Barney Madden,
the District Education Officer,
complained to Des Clancy, DO
Mendi, about one of the senior
schoolboys sexually interfering
with younger pupils. He insisted
that the offender should be
courted.
Mr Clancy told Pat Dwyer, then
a very new cadet patrol officer, to
locate and mark the appropriate
section of the Criminal Code
and leave it on his desk, while he briefly went out. Pat, at a loss,
was grateful for the assistance
offered by Gordon Smith, a
senior patrol officer, who inserted
a red marker in the Code.
Only a minute after the ADO
returned to his office he was
heard to shout, ‘Dwyer, get in
here!’ On doing so Pat was told,
‘You are only a bloody cadet,
don’t get smart.’ The red marker
had been placed in the section
covering ARSON. This taught
Pat to be wary of gratuitous
help offered by a brother officer,
particularly an English one.
Some nights later a knock on
Pat’s door turned out to be
that of a policeman bearing the
blood-stained uniform of a newly
appointed Village Constable
who had been assassinated on
his way home from Mendi. This
was taken to the ADO’s quarters
where he was found entertaining
fellow kiap Stumpy Corrigan who
had just come in to District HQ
after sorting out a tribal fight
near Lalibu. After a few questions
Pat recalls Mr Clancy turning to
him and declaring, ‘Prepare for
Patrol’.
Pat says he felt like an innocent
sightseer at Cape Canaveral being
mistaken for an astronaut and
ordered to get ready for blast-off.
However the solution was found
by good old Sergeant-Major
Duba. He knew how to take
care of pikinini kiaps, assembled
80 carriers in no time, and the
patrol set off next morning. Pat
remembers it well because while
he was miserably staggering along
at the rear ‘breaking in’ his new
heavily studded hiking boots, Des
Clancy was cheerfully leading the
charge wearing what appeared to
be dancing pumps. However he
wasn’t going to query the choice
of footwear by the leader of the
recent 130 days patrol gloriously
publicised as the discovery of
Shangri-La.
Jim Toner,
District Office Kuskus, Mendi
and possessor of an Irish greatgrandfather
(who was a coffinmaker
in Downpatrick)
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