Table of Contents
… there is no such thing as the ‘balance of nature’ … It is a myth; an offshoot of the desire for stability — of an attempt to reduce the world to a tidy static, and therefore comprehensible and predictable place … The search for stability is the most constant — and the most fruitless, quest of all (Wyndham 1980:63-64).
The author was assistant district commissioner in charge of the Koroba District from 1974 to 1976, a period spanning self-government in Papua New Guinea under the Australian administration (the era of the kiap or patrol officer) and independence under a Papua New Guinea government. At that time my family and I could safely travel anywhere in the Huli and Duna tribal areas without protection and be welcomed by the people.
Rural Papua New Guinea often harks back to the peace, stability and service delivery of the kiap era and calls for a return to it. But as this paper will show, the kiap system did not survive the changing post-independence social environment, and there can be no wholesale return to it. There are, however, guiding principles of the system that could be successfully applied in the Southern Highlands today.