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CHARLES ABEL

Letter from Kwato Mission to

his sons studying at Cambridge

My early morning walk around Samarai unveiled the islands of China Strait floating on glass, filtered through magenta gauze. Perfect silence reigned apart from the occasional fish breaking through the mirrored surface of the sea. The air was still and almost cool, the grass streets lightly scented with frangipani blossom. Scavenging dogs held their tails between their legs and cringed away from a lone fisherman heading towards the beach. Local children were screaming with joy as they entered the school in a crocodile line. I watched until lessons began; their enthusiasm and sense of mischief was electric. Papua New Guinea is a republic of children.

Wallace did not look too happy at breakfast. ‘I don’t sleep well these days. And then there is my arthritis. You will come down to the hospital with me, won’t you?’

‘Of course, but aren’t we going to Kwato today?’

‘Yes. I asked the pastor to come before lunch. His assistant will get a dinghy for you. But I won’t be coming. I’ve got accounts and letters to settle.’

I concealed my disappointment.

‘I suppose you don’t want the flying witches to get you!’

He suddenly became grave and serious. ‘If you fear the witches they have power over you. If not, they can’t touch you. I don’t fear them, Mr Michael.’ His tone indicated I had overstepped an invisible line.

‘Strange lights appear above the water at night and witches can kaikai you. On moonlit nights on Kwato, the spirit of Charles Abel appears. Ask the pastor about it.’

I changed the subject slightly. ‘Did your grandfather ever meet the Reverend James Chalmers?’

‘I’m not sure, but I do know after Chalmers was killed and eaten they tried to cook his boots! Ha! Ha! What do you think of that? Yes, the cannibals thought they were part of his feet. They boiled them for days but never could get them tender enough!’

‘Then, he must’ve known Charles Abel.’

‘Yes, we knew all the Abels. I was born on Kwato remember. I knew his son Cecil Abel. He was a good man. At Wagawaga Charles would walk up and down the beach at night praying in the moonlight. He was in strong communion with God.’

The cards were produced and the flight from reality began again. The government ministers came down for breakfast, faces transformed by friendly smiles. They ate quickly and headed off for the final day of the seminar.

‘Don’t forget the party tonight, Michael.’

‘Certainly not.’

‘We’ll send a councillor down to guide you.’

I ate a few more slices of sweet pineapple and perfumed paw-paw. The sun was up and the room heating slowly. The torpor of the day had already begun to set in.

The early European settlement of New Guinea is the scarcely credible story of competing missionary teachers of various denominations carving up the country – Lutherans, Roman Catholics, Evangelicals of the London Missionary Society (LMS), Methodists, Barmen of the Rhenish Mission, Anglicans, Pietists, Baptists, Protestants and Seventh Day Adventists. On first contact the indigenous islanders were described by both colonisers and missionaries as indolent, mendacious, ‘intractable little cannibals’, loathsome and depraved, filthy, ‘truculent mannikins’, sensual, lazy, and, in summa, ‘hopeless little degenerates’ – to list some of the more insulting labels assembled by the Governor, Sir Hubert Murray, in his book Papua or British New Guinea. The primary objective of missionaries was to save the endangered souls of the ‘natives’ from perdition and render them European in the shortest possible time.

The first LMS station had been established in 1871 on islands in the Torres Strait by the Reverend Samuel MacFarlane. By 1877 two local missionaries from the Loyalty Islands had established a presence on Logea Island in China Strait close to Samarai. Here the vividly-painted inhabitants impaled skulls on spears at the prows of their outrigger canoes. This was a region of enthusiastic cannibals, and the missionaries commanded respect often by force of character alone. They were also respected for their powerful possessions, superior technology and items they wished to trade. The evolution of what could be called ‘Oceanic Christianity’ was a slow process.

The following year Samarai was ‘purchased’ by MacFarlane from the local people as the LMS head station for 3s 6d. Parts of the island were cleared, houses and vegetable gardens established. The LMS flag of the dove and olive branch now flew alongside the Union Jack. Mission stations inevitably became part of the colonial structure. Through education of the mind and spirit, missionaries innocently prepared local people to accept European values, oiling the wheels of understanding during the imposition of European colonial bureaucracies. But there was a terrible price to be paid in loss of life.

Cultural observations taxed the Victorian mind and weird snobberies were noted with horror by the missionaries. The cannibals in the Milne Bay region considered themselves above their neighbours in the nearby D’Entrecasteaux Group, deploring that on those islands they ate every part