Small church, big memories

The 1942 horror was the brutal slaying of Anglican missionaries. The chapel link is that it holds a memorial to one of the murdered – Australian nurse Sister May Hayman. She was bayoneted to death.
Today the chapel with her poignant memorial has a very uncertain future. The park has long been home to Mission Afloat, an important youth training facility for nautical skills. But Mission Afloat has been given until the end of this year to quit – the Anglican Church wants to sell the land for residential development.

The plight of the chapel and its memorial is timely in several respects, for the Sister Hayman connection was recalled last month when a reconciliation ceremony was held in Papua New Guinea for the 1942 killing of an Anglican missionary priest, Father Vivian Redlich – who had become engaged to May Hayman just a few months before both were murdered in separate slayings.

Originally from England, where he was ordained in 1932, Vivian Frederick Barnes Redlich served in Queensland before going to Papua on his missionary endeavours.

Like May Hayman he had long been listed as one of a dozen Anglican missionaries killed by the Japanese – the Gona martyrs.

But in recent years it has emerged that some were betrayed to the Japanese by the tribes people these medical and teaching missionaries were working among. And Father Redlich was, in fact, a victim of a native group. He was speared to death.

From this came a local belief his killing had brought a curse on the community, causing the region’s progress and development to be hit. Thus the hope that with the reconciliation ceremony the curse would end.

The ceremony was at Popondetta, at the northern end of the start of the Kokoda Track. The priest’s half-brother Patrick Redlich flew from Sydney for the reconciliation, unveiling a plaque to the slain Father Redlich in Popondetta Cathedral. Another plaque was taken to Sangara village, which had been Father Redlich’s parish.

Sister Hayman was based at Gona, which had its own mission, school and hospital. She had been in charge of the hospital since 1939. Originally from Adelaide, she went to Papua in 1937 after nursing service that included Canberra.

She was known as “Merry” – a small, sprightly person with bright eyes. Teaching at the Gona mission school was Miss Mavis Parkinson, from Ipswich. She was to meet the same terrible fate with May Hayman.

Vivian Redlich became concerned about his fiancee. In his last known letter, dated July 28, 1942, to his father (also a minister) in England, he wrote that he had no news of her and was cut off from contact. He had been ill with malaria, but despite his condition he set out to trek on a courageous but ultimately doomed attempt to save her.

As soon as Japan entered the war it was realised the missionaries on Papua’s north-east coast would be in extreme danger. That risk intensified when Japanese forces made their initial landing at Buna, not far from Gona, on July 21. They were heading for the Kokoda Track, with Port Moresby their aim.

By July 22 they were in Gona.

Sister Hayman and Mavis Parkinson had promised their bishop that if there was a Japanese landing they would head for an inland mission. Bishop Philip Strong was Bishop of New Guinea from 1937 to 1963, later Archbishop of Brisbane and then Anglican Primate of Australia, 1966 to 1970. He became Sir Philip Strong.

The women managed to get away and were in hiding near a place called Siai. One report, however, said a local sorcerer threatened to kill all Europeans, saying they were a threat to the villagers. May Hayman and Mavis Parkinson were found and betrayed to the Japanese. They were taken to a coffee plantation near Popondetta where graves had been dug – and they were repeatedly bayoneted.

The exact date of their deaths hasn’t been recorded, but it was believed to have been late August. After the Japanese withdrawal the bodies were exhumed, in January, 1943, and reinterred at Sangara.

And that memorial to Sister Hayman at Montgomery Park? It is a large clam shell brought back from Papua New Guinea and given to the chapel. It has been used as a baptismal font.

It was a gift from Canon Oliver Brady, who had several family ties with Tasmania. He had gone to Papua New Guinea in 1940 and in all taught for 20 years there at St Aidan’s College in Dogura, training many Papua New Guineans for service in the Anglican Church.

There are many Tasmanian elements in the story of Papua New Guinea and the Anglican missionary martyrs.

One is covered by the following extract from Dorothea I. Henslow’s book Papua Calls. This redoubtable Tasmanian made an eight-month visit there in 1954, a sequel to an earlier visit which she recorded in another book, Papuan Post. She wrote of the Martyrs Memorial School, founded in 1948 at Sangara as a boarding school for boys.

It was destroyed in the nearby eruption of Mt Lamington in 1951 that caused 3,000 deaths. After being moved briefly to Gona the school was rebuilt a bit further inland from Sangara.

Some of Papua New Guinea’s leading citizens have been educated there – and both Hobart’s Hutchins School and Launceston Grammar have been affiliated with the Martyrs School.

But Papua New Guinea ties go back even further.

Anglican missionary work there dates from 1891 when two ministers, Albert Maclaren and Copland King, were commissioned by the church to work there. Reverend Maclaren died soon afterwards, but Reverend King laboured on in his pioneer work for 27 years.

Miss Ethel King, his sister, visited North Hobart’s Holy Trinity Church for the Australian Board of Missionaries in the early 1930s. It was a year before her death and her bequest to Holy Trinity was in the form of Papua New Guinea curios collected by her missionary brother. She felt they would be best used for good purpose by Holy Trinity Parish and beyond for spreading missionary interest. They included valuable specimens of native craftmanship and were used for missionary talks around Hobart and in country areas.

Memories of those brave early missionaries are still with us.