Anne McCosker - At Birth I Heard the Drums

At birth I heard the drums

Comment on Australian Women in Papua New Guinea by Chilla Bulbeck

"At birth I heard the drums, witch doctor shadowed me" - the opening line of my poem 'New Britain Birth'.¹

The opening sentence in Chilla Bulbeck's book Australian Women in Papua New Guinea - sub-titled Colonial Passages 1920-1960 - is "Although a few white women have been born in Papua New Guinea, and indeed spent all or most of their lives there, the great majority lived in the Territory for only a few years." She continues,
"For most expatriate women, Papua New Guinea was a passage in their lives, a brief moment . . ." ²

Perhaps these two quotations are not contradictory. I think, however, they arise from very different mental and spiritual perceptions. Because of my birth in New Guinea and subsequent life, I know of many women - too many to be dismissed as lightly as Chilla Bulbeck does - whose lives were, and sometimes still are, profoundly affected by New Guinea. This is true regardless of whether they were born there or not, or lived there for a very long time or not.

Some women, of course, were not affected by the Islands but these were as tourists compared to the many women to whom New Guinea was physically or emotionally home for five, fifteen, thirty years or more. What made Bulbeck decide to emphasise those women to whom New Guinea meant little; thus, in effect, ignoring the many to whom New Guinea meant so much? Are not the latter the women she should have chosen as her source of information on Australian women in New Guinea? Perhaps, then, her opening sentences would have been less misleading.

As it is, Bulbeck seems to have failed to take into account the inner reality active in all humans. Intense involvement in a particular situation can have a greater and longer lasting influence on a person than years of humdrum living.

My life has been greatly influenced by my birth there - "Fire of birthplace equalled fire of blood"³. In one sense it is my country and Rabaul "bright harbour in the stars, my home."⁴ To a lesser or greater extent, I think this is true of all the other Australian women of my generation born in New Guinea.

My mother, Marjorie McCosker, found her life dominated by the Islands from the moment they first touched her in 1927, and they were the main cause of her death at a relatively early age in 1957. Other members of her family were also affected, through her, by New Guinea. Women who have not lived in the Islands since World War II still have New Guinea Club meetings, a bond existing between them of amazing depth.

The New Guinea Islanders were not a servile people of no spirit or character. There was far more interaction between the races than Bulbeck seems to realise or accept, even though she writes. "For all, it meant an abiding interest in a close neighbour."⁵ Nor does she seem to value the fact that a land can have the power to influence people, not only while they live there, but long after they have left it, although she writes, "Annie Deland will always remember 'that strange morning and evening light.'"⁶

I shall not comment on any statements about Papua. It was, and still is, a foreign country to me- I am a daughter of the Islands of New Guinea. It is also not possible to give a historically accurate picture if both countries, not formally united until 1949, are pushed together.

I shall not comment either on any of the considerable amount of material in the book dealing with other parts of the British Empire. I do wonder, though, why there is so much of this in a book called Australian Women in Papua New Guinea.

In her 'Introduction' Bulbeck writes, "In contrast with official histories, the gender axis is central to this book."⁷ Why then has she completely ignored all my published poetry on New Guinea? The first three books have been in major libraries - since 1973 - classified under the heading NEW GUINEA. Does she not think that my voice, the voice of a poet, is of any importance when considering the Australian women of colonial New Guinea?

It seems, too, that she has not interviewed any women of my generation born in New Guinea. According to her 'Biographical Notes' she has talked to only two elderly ladies who were in PNG before World War II.⁸ Women of my generation are living in Brisbane and other capital cities of Australia and there are several ladies in Brisbane, for example, who were in the Islands well before World War II.⁹

If "In contrast with official histories the gender axis is central to this book,"¹⁰ how then can Bulbeck be so confused about the founder woman of New Guinea? Any serious student of New Guinea surely knows that Queen Emma was never called Parkinson. It was her sister's married name.¹¹ How can an academic claiming to be writing about the colonial women of New Guinea - and thus assuming the mantle of an expert on the subject – not get the name of the woman founder of New Britain and thus New Guinea correct? Even all the male historians knew about Emma.

However, this is some improvement on Bulbeck's early paper on New Guinea. In Slavic m Line or Getting out of Place, '¹² Queen Emma is not even mentioned. One can understand the reluctance to mention Queen Emma for to do so makes nonsense of many other theories regarding women in the Empire.

This determination to see the world from a 'woman's axis' can and does lead to many errors.

"Women accepted the Independence of Papua New Guinea as inevitable and fair; men saw it as a defeat."¹³ Bulbeck's next sentence, part of a quotation from an unfinished thesis, is almost the same as one given in another of her papers - "The consensus among the women of this group was that they could see long before the men that it was time to go."¹⁴

I repeat my answer first given in the 'Notes' of my paper Empire?

"I was in New Guinea in 1971 and 1974. The few Old Timers left in the Territory - men and women - were well aware of the true situation and were reacting to the political events in a similar manner. Those who intended leaving - some for various reasons did not - were settling their affairs as quickly as possible."¹⁵

I shall now discuss some of the inaccurate statements - and omissions - Bulbeck makes regarding World War II.

She touches on the trauma of evacuation for the Australian women and their children but she gives misleading and/or one-sided material. For instance, "The administration's plans were to send the civilian population bush during this period."16 In fact, the Administration suggested all women and children leave the Islands.17 The McCoskers of Matala Plantation left soon after this advice was given. They were aware of Japanese behaviour in China.¹⁸

The Administration never intended storing food in the bush for the civilians,¹⁹ as Bulbeck suggests. There was not even such a plan for the army.²⁰

Bulbeck mentions the arrival of the women and children in Australia and then, except for a couple of extracts, leaves it at that. Does she not think it important to discuss the life of those Australian women of New Guinea as they struggled to cope in Australia during the war? She ignores them as did the Government of that time. From original material, I have written in detail of this tragic episode in Australian history - in Masked Eden.²¹

She then repeats the myth that all the New Britain men were lost on the 'Montevideo Maru'.²² Hardly anyone of pre-war Rabaul accepted that story. Even those wives who at first believed it were, over the years, to grow increasingly sceptical.²³ Only generations of academics seem to believe it.

I am not sure how to interpret the statement "(Marjorie) discovered that he had been captured when, coming home . . . she picked up the Courier Mail. Across the front page was a headline 'Japs claim capture of Australian spy'-"²⁴ If John Murphy's name was not mentioned in the paper, is Bulbeck implying that Marjorie Murphy was a gifted clairvoyant who knew it was her husband, (even if Marjorie Murphy had been told John was missing, so were other men), or is she suggesting that John Murphy was the only Australian intelligence officer behind the lines whom the Japs could capture? If the latter, then it is a grave insult to brave men - black and white - who were behind the lines in New Britain.

Chilla Bulbeck's handling of this material also raises the question whether she realised what happened following Murphy's capture. Has she, for example, read Eric Feldt?

"The Japanese extracted a complete account of the coast-watching parties in New Britain from Murphy .... There can be no doubt that drugs were used to make him talk. Had it been torture, Murphy ….. would have left out some items on which the Jap could not check. The information he gave was correct to the last detail. ....

The information which the Japs obtained gravely endangered all the parties in New Britain. … ..... The worst result of all was that the Malay, Johannes, his wife and family were executed in Rabaul for the assistance he had given."²⁵

Bulbeck also states, presumably having heard the information from Marjorie Murphy, that "he (John) and six Americans were the only survivors of the prisoner of war camp in Rabaul."²⁶

Other sources present a different picture. On 13th September 1945, 'Ramale Day,' an Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit (ANGAU) party headed by Major Bates, including Lt. John Gilmore, arrived in Rabaul. They freed four civilians - Thomas, Creswick, McKecknie and Ellis. These were the only men of the New Britain civilian population, captured by the Japanese, still alive. By then they were in caves in the Ramale valley with a party of missionaries. Scattered about Rabaul were POW camps of military personnel from many armies - British, Indian, American.²⁷

Was the information given by these elderly ladies not checked?

In the chapter 'War, a Watershed in Race Relations?', Bulbeck seems to have little background knowledge of New Guinea. I give just a few examples. "Australian B4s 'ran away' in defeat".²⁸ Most were killed long before they ran anywhere. Some left, promising the Islanders they would return, which they did. Others like Father Harris were tortured to death, rather than betray white soldiers or leave their flock. A few Old Timers hid in the bush for some months before joining up with the intelligence parties. And some brave men, such as the coast watcher C. L. Page, remained until they were murdered by the Japanese -without giving away information during captivity.²⁹

Soon small groups of Allied Intelligence Bureau (AIB) parties were organised and moving about New Britain - an area ignored by Bulbeck. Old Timers were working with New Guinea men like Rombin/Robin in New Britain, in conditions requiring great degrees of trust. These Australian men were obviously the only ones who knew the local conditions and were thus capable of leading such expeditions.³⁰

Bulbeck does correctly state that the Americans gave no recognition to their Papuan 'Joes' after the war.³¹ She does not say, however, that they were also ungrateful to the men and women of the Islands, particularly New Britain, who saved American airmen. It was men like Stan McCosker - an Old Timer - who, without success, fought the American government for years as they tried to make them recognise the loyalty and courage of New Guinea men like Rombin. Eventually, in 1948, the Australian government rewarded these New Guineans with medals.

Salmon Gauis might have worked for the Japanese³² but Rombin, also in the Bainings area, was certainly not working for them. He was busy hiding an American airman and generally hood-winking the Japanese. He then led the airman to safety and joined the AIB. ³³

As a bridge between comments on World War II and on life before and after the war, I shall ask a question. Why does Bulbeck not explore any of the tragic consequences for the Australian women caused by the death of so many of the men of Rabaul? She writes, "Records of women's experiences in Papua New Guinea are largely absent from the official narrative"³⁴ yet she herself has almost entirely ignored their suffering.

It is not possible to understand post-war New Guinea unless one understands what happened in January 1942. Does she not think that was as important a factor in post-war New Guinea as any intervention of American troops? So many women lost husbands, brothers, sons. And the women of my generation lost their fathers.

MEN OF RABAUL

On the 23rd January 1942 Rabaul, the capital of the Mandated Territory of New Guinea, was invaded by the Japanese. The town and surrounding area held more than a thousand European men, mostly over military age, a few European women and an army garrison. At least three-quarters were captured and killed by the Japanese. The actual manner of many murders still remains a mystery. On the fiftieth anniversary of this invasion, I placed flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Westminster Abbey.

Fifty years fade into stone
That crafted arch by arch
Lead to an altar.
Time is silenced, distance inched
Spheres meet in vaulted order.

Rabaul so loved
Is blooded.
Men run like ants
As ants are killed,
Sight splintered.

A sea of blue is red
I kneel now beside poppies
That guard a grave.
'Unknown soldier,'

Yet my parents knew those men betrayed.³⁵

(See Witch Doctor)

I shall now consider a few of the misleading or inaccurate and/or contradictory statements which I have taken at random from various chapters of Australian Women in Papua New Guinea.

Bulbeck quotes Doris Groves as writing, "before the Second World War very few white residents knew much about native village life."³⁶ I seem to have had great luck in my parents and their friends, Stan and Marjorie McCosker were both writing articles about native life on the Witus in the early 1930s. Walford King had managed to obtain a long description in the 1920s of the 1878 eruption in Rabual from Tomaran, an old man from Matupi. Noel Barry, my sister's godfather, translated into English Richard Parkinson's book, Dreissig Jahre in der Suusee (Thirty Years in the South Seas'), a task that included checking the various statements made by Parkinson regarding the native peoples.³⁷

Like everywhere else in the world, some people were interested in their fellow men and women, others not.

Take another statement she makes - "Thus white society in New Guinea developed a code against manual labour, work fit 'only for blacks'."³⁸ However, earlier Daphne Brigland is quoted as saying, "If you are a plantation manager you are everything."³⁹

Is Bulbeck suggesting that Daphne Brigland was talking only about post-war New Guinea and that life on a plantation was not like this pre-war - that planters did none of the work Daphne Brigland describes. If they did not, then who did the work? Stan McCosker always worked manually on his plantations.40 However, Bulbeck then says that the people pre-war worked beside their employees on the plantations.⁴¹

What is the point of this roundabout tale? People living on the land always do more manual work, either on their own or with employees, than those in a town for no other reason than there is much more manual work to be done. However, in New Guinea as elsewhere pre-war, European men frequently worked on their cars, both in town and on the plantations; cars in that environment needed a great deal of maintenance, especially pre-war!⁴²

One can only wonder why Bulbeck bothered to interview even a few Old Timers or read any original documents after reading the statement, "Although the accounts gathered in this book do not tell tales of economic exploitation or physical violence, such exchanges clearly marred much of colonial life."⁴³ How does the student cope with such statements? Only someone like myself, an historian, with a personal knowledge of colonial New Guinea, can distinguish fact from fiction. Yet, I presume this book is to be considered a reliable source of information on colonial New Guinea.

I give two more examples of confused and misleading statements. First, she quotes Pat Murray as saying, "every blasted bob, or 99.9% that the plantation community got, went back into the country, and we were exploiting the country, according to them" (the government officials).⁴⁴

Then Bulbeck says, "They (the plantation community) were the only group that neither collected taxes nor expected gifts from Papua New Guineans - Any lack of reciprocity in their relationship was hidden beneath the surface equality of cash or rations payments for services rendered. But even this relationship was rendered in terms of a gift to the labourers."⁴⁵ What does this last sentence mean?

The second example - Chilla Bulbeck says it rankled Papua New Guineans that they were prevented from wearing European clothes on the upper parts of their bodies.⁴⁶ However, as far as New Guinea was concerned, a random look at photographs in my collection shows:

Two New Guinea men wearing European tops in the Witu Islands in 1933; one has on a type of T-shirt, the other a singlet.
Three black men are wearing European tops while working on Londip Plantation in 1935. Two are wearing singlets and one a shirt.
Another photo taken at Londip at about the same time shows one black man wearing a singlet.
One black man waiting at an unknown wharf in 1935 wearing a singlet.⁴⁷

In Empire7 I suggested that a make-believe structure was erected by those who wished to denigrate ALL of Empire and that Bulbeck and others were now beginning to prise a few bricks off this construction - a structure that should never have arisen in the first place.⁴⁸ Much of Australian Women in Papua Hew Guinea confirms my opinions expressed in that short article. In this book, Bulbeck argues about and reassesses ideas regarding colonial New Guinea that would not even be considered, let alone taken seriously, by those who knew the Empire well.

The last two chapters particularly are, to me, full of theorising fantasy and contradictions. In her 'Introduction' she writes, "Chapter 7 argues that there was a circumscribed place for everyone ..... Because white men were located at the top of the hierarchy, they can be said to have a 'position'."⁴⁹ How can one base theories on this idea and then write '"These contradictory responses reveal the complexities of a society where hierarchies are volcanic rather than sedimentary. Race and class and sex are not separable structures deployed with the symmetrical precision of a layer cake."⁵⁰ Which is it to be?

In Reflections I tried to show that colonial women - and men - were just like women and men anywhere - good, bad and indifferent.⁵¹ Their behaviour in any situation was determined by their character, regardless of any real or imagined hierarchical structures. One has only to look at how everyone behaved before and after the fall of Rabaul to see this.⁵²

Where, for instance, does Bulbeck place the following extract in her hierarchical structure?

". . . . Stan's boss-boy had rushed up the stairs on to the verandah. Stan knew that Yetia's woman was very pregnant with her first child. The day obviously had come, but something must be very wrong. The women usually dealt with childbirth among themselves. Stan had never been called before. He went into the bedroom and took his medical box from its special shelf, then turned and quickly followed Pongi.

About five minutes later they reached a collection of huts. . . . Stan entered.

It was dark and stuffy inside and crowded with people. He dimly saw .... a woman kneeling on the floor, clutching a post as was their custom in childbirth She was obviously in great pain.... What could he do? Why had he been sent for? It was already too late.

All eyes were now on the white master. Stan took control of himself.……

The mary died a few hours later. Stan was not surprised; her condition had seemed hopeless from the moment he saw her."⁵³

So much of the chapter 'Matters of Sex' is anecdotal. Surely Bulbeck knows, as nearly everyone knows, that people everywhere are always likely to lie about their sexual life and thoughts. Again, is she not just proving that we are all individuals?

In this chapter Bulbeck repeats many of the statements made in Staying in Line. For example, "Almost all white women in Papua New Guinea had male assistance with household tasks, …… Why men were recruited to perform tasks normally done by women has puzzled commentators . . . ."⁵⁴

I shall reply with an extract taken from Reflections, altering only the Notes numbers.

"The various commentators who were puzzled by this supposed situation should not have been. Even to this day in wealthy households throughout the world, there are male butlers, footmen, chefs, chauffeurs, gardeners and handy men.

"However, at Matala Plantation in March 1941, a photo was taken of the family and house servants. One photo shows all the females - black and white - of the family household. There was the Missus, her aunt, two children and five New Guineans. Four of these 'maries' (women) were house maries while the other was the elder child's playmate.⁵⁵ "It was not uncommon for maries to work in white households besides that of Matala Plantation, as did 'monkeys', young male New Guineans."⁵⁶ And I presume Molly [sic] Parer, as quoted by Bulbeck, was talking about black girls when she said 'girls'.⁵⁷"

I find it very difficult to take seriously the section in Chapter 8 headed "White Women - the Ruin of Male Empire?", the last section of the book. She justifies and/or refutes arguments that are academically inspired instead of being based on reality. Sir David Lean's comment, for example, that she quotes, "It's a well-known saying that the women lost us the Empire, It's true-"⁵⁸ only shows that Sir David, amongst others, had no idea of 'realpolitik'.

Again in Chapter 8, Bulbeck says she is exploring "the relations between white women and indigenous women in colonial settings" as well as "the debate concerning white women's role in the 'ruin of Empire'."⁵⁹ Why then does she not analyse the impact birth in the Islands had for, at least, some white women?

“This land where I was born
Pushed me out of that racial shape
Into which my parents had conceived me.”⁶⁰

Why has she not explored the relationships between the white children, the black children and their nannies? Bulbeck states "Childhood was a time when race relations were less rigidly enforced,"61 yet it was the parents who allowed the child the black nannies and black playmates. Bulbeck does not analyse this fact either.

"Race ignored, race explored,
Birth shaping roots
In rootlessness."⁶²

Tibby, a little black child at Matala Plantation, was often in the house with the young Robin McCosker,⁶³ in contrast to Pat Murray who is quoted as saying that the black children "weren't allowed in the house".⁶⁴ The mother who allowed this was as close to the black nanny, Tibby's adopted mother, as was Robin.

"I loved you so
White child of mine.
Born to my world
I gave you a gift,
The rite of my people"⁶⁵

Bulbeck writes “even the expatriate women's accounts collected for this book barely mention interactions and relations with indigenous women.” ⁶⁶ Masked Eden tells of Tibby and Robin, Klearwat and Marjorie and their love for one another - white and black, child and adult. It tells how Robin and Tibby played and had lessons together ⁶⁷,⁶⁸ Robin speaking several tribal languages. It tells of Klearwat's death during the war and the great distress this caused Robin and Marjorie.

In her 'Introduction'. Bulbeck writes "Unfortunately, despite our attempts to include them, indigenous women spoke little during these interviews."⁶⁹

"I loved you so

White child of mine.

Long now apart

We are together,

My work well done." 70

Perhaps the black women of New Guinea are talking, talking through one of their white wantoks - a woman born in their country - who is a poet. Sadly, it seems that neither Chilla Bulbeck nor any other academic is listening. Is it because what these women are saying is not what the academics expect or want to hear?

NEW GUINEA - MY COUNTRY

Thunder moves towards the mountain
Clouds press their sullen rain
Upon a sea frown-forming.
Stones and pumice stir
Uneasily with bones
Around cratered Rabaul.

Eyes watch from kunai grass
Forms shoed in ignorance
Mirror themselves, then vanish
Before dark dancers can
Face them with their craft,
Test strength in single combat.

The sun fidgets towards night
And a new moon breeding shadows
From where ancestors speak –
Tattooed, shelled and speared –
Of a past denied
By smug superstition.

Blackbirders of the soul
Would make this land impotent,
As they challenge from a distance
With clever, twisted tales
A country whose spirits
Have power only in place.

Who really cares
About this 'nowhere land'
This elemental earth
Of energetic passion,
It is used, abused,
Made play-thing by arrogance.

Yet this, my country, is no 'nowhere land,"
She has the right to choose
Her destiny,
Rise from her own roots,
Know her past unhindered
By lies masked out as learning.

Fronds slender, nervous,
Finger day with agitation.
A wind arises, tears
Thatched roof and roped canoe.
Blood-red berries split
Their juice across old tracks.

Thunder moves towards the mountain
Lightning drags the sky
Into feverish shade-
A figure pauses, squats,
Medium of movement
Around the tribal hearth.71

(See Witch Doctor)

NOTES

Anne McCosker, 'New Britain Birth', Camp Fires.Matala Publishing Co. 1972, p. 8.
Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, Cambridge University Press, 1992, p. 7.
Anne McCosker, 'Potter's Clay', Potter's Clay, Matala Publishing Co., 1973, p. 65.
Anne McCosker. 'Rabaul', Potters Clay, p. 16.
Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 6.
Ibid., p. 37.
Ibid., p. 4.
Ibid., Mollie [sic] Parer p. 255; Isobel Patten p. 256.
All attempts on the author's part to give this information to CUP - before the book was published - were treated with contempt.
Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 4.
Ibid., pp. 9, 14 and 91 and in Index.
There are many books, handbooks, articles and papers that mention Queen Emma and her extended family.
See NOTES for Reflections on Staying in Line or Getting out of Place in this publication, p. 13, Note 6.
Chilla Bulbeck, Staying in Line or Getting out of Place, SRMCAS 1988.
Chilla Bulbeck. Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p.245
Ibid., p.246; similar quotation in New Histories of the Memsahih and Missus: the case of Papua New Guinea. Journal of Woman's History, Vol.3 No.2 (Fall) 1991, p. 80. There she omits the words 'of this group'.
Anne McCosker, Empire?. Unpublished article written March 1992.
For the rest of the text of this Note, see NOTES for Empire?
in this publication, p. 17, Note 2.
Chilla Bulbeck. Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 15.
Lionel Wigmore, The Japanese Thrust. Series 1: Australia in the War of 1939-1945, Canberra, Australian War Memorial 1957, p. 392.
Personal family knowledge of author.
Chilla Bulbeck. Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 15.
Lionel Wigmore, The Japanese Thrust, p. 398.
Anne McCosker, Masked Eden, Chapters 11-13. See NOTES for Reflections in this publication, p, 13, Note 3.
Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 21.
Anne McCosker, Masked Eden, Chapter 12.
Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 43.
Eric Feldt, The Coast Watchers, OUP, 1946, p. 345.
Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 43,
Books, newspapers and magazines have this information in full or part.
See, for example, Sydney Sun, 12/10/45; Pacific Islands Year Book, 1950, p. 32. In author's possession letter from John Gilmore.
Anne McCosker, Masked Eden, Chapter 12.
Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 160.
Anne McCosker, Masked Eden, Chapter 10.
Lionel Wigmore, The Japanese Thrust, Appendix 4.
Eric Feldt, The Coast Watchers, Chapters IV-VI.
Eric Feldt, The Coast Watchers, p. 356.
Gavin Long, The Final Campaigns, Series 1:
Australia in the War of 1939-1945, 1963, p.247.
Chilla Bulbeck. Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 159.
Ibid.,159.
Anne McCosker, Masked Eden. Chapter 11. Personal family knowledge of the author; she has photographs showing Rombin with his medals.
Quentin Reynolds, Seventy Thousand to One, Cassell and Company Ltd. 1947.
Eric Feldt, The Coast Watchers, p. 356-
Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 2.
Anne McCosker, unpublished poem written 1992.
[See Witch Doctor]
Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 172.
Letters, articles and photographs in author's possession.
Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 174.
Chilla Bulbeck, ibid., p. 48,
Letters, articles, photographs in the author's possession.
Chilla Bulbeck. Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 176.
Chilla Bulbeck. ibid., p. 48.
Letters in author's possession.
Chilla Bulbeck, ibid., p. 125.
Chilla Bulbeck, ibid., p. 61.
Chilla Bulbeck, ibid., p. 197.
Chilla Bulbeck, ibid., p. 166.
Photographs in the author's possession. Nos. 2, 3 and 4 are in an album of photographs taken by her aunt, Miss W, F. Martin.
Anne McCosker, Empire7 In this publication, pp. 15-17.
Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 4.
Chilla Bulbeck, ibid., p. 220; when the author said something similar in simple language in her paper Reflections, she was patronizingly dismissed by an anonymous referee. This person was unable to spell the author's name correctly, had no idea of all the meanings of the word 'reflections' and implied that the author had written a 'memoir'. (In fact. Reflections discusses a period almost entirel before the author was born.) This flawed comment was readily accepted by several leading academics - even after attention had been drawn to its faults. Reflections was therefore not published. (Referee's comment and author's Response in author's possession.)
Anne McCosker, Reflections, in this publication, pp. 9-11.
Anne McCosker, Masked Eden, Chapter 10.
Anne McCosker, Masked Eden. Chapter 1, Section 1. Stan McCosker told the author this story in the mid-1960s. It still troubled him - forty years after the event - that he had not been able to save the woman.
Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 215
A photograph in the author's possession.
Lilian Overall. A Woman's Impressions of German New Guinea, John Lane, The Bodley Head. 1923. inter alia. Chapter IX, p. 164.
R. W Robson, Queen Emma. p.198 (Note p.181).
Anne McCosker, Masked Eden. many chapters.
Photographs in author's possession.
Chilla Bulbeck, Staying in Line. "We'd have a siesta after lunch and the girls would wake you up to say afternoon tea was waiting." p. 13.
For the two following paragraphs which were written in the original article, see Reflections in this publication, p. 11.
Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 237.
ibid., p.221.
Anne McCosker, 'Potter's Clay' Potter's Clay, p. 65.
Chilla Bulbeck. Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 124.
Anne McCosker, 'Frangipani and Daffodil', Potter's Clay, p.12.
Photographs in the author's possession.
Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women m Papua New Guinea, p. 124.
Anne McCosker, 'Possession', Beyond the Sunset, Matala Publishing Co., 1992, p. 18
66. Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 230.
67. Anne McCosker, Masked Eden, several chapters. Tibby was being taught with
Robin before World War II. See Note 68. Photographs in author's possession.
Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, "in the years leading to Independence .... Plantation women asked their houseboys to join their white children's classes; Heather Searle suggesting this was never done before the war." p,246.
Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea, p. 3.
Anne McCosker, 'Possession', Beyond the Sunset, p. 19.
Anne McCosker, 'New Guinea - My Country', unpublished poem written 1992.
[See Witch Doctor]