I have to be honest and admit that I had no idea what a Kiap actually was until I met Doug Robbins & his family over a drink on the verandah of Tufi Dive Resort’s main lodge.
Doug had been a Kiap in Papua New Guinea for 4 years from 1969 to 1973 during the Australian colonial rule, and two of those years had seen him & his wife Annette stationed at Tufi.
Kiaps were officers of the Australian colonial administration stationed in remote locations to provide the overall management of that area.
They were very much multi-functional and required to cover a wide range of tasks, from basic law & order through to census surveys and collection of customs duties.
Like many Australians, I had no concept of the role the country played as the colonial administration of Papua New Guinea so it was interesting to learn about those days from people who had actually been there.
I spent many hours chatting with Doug about what Tufi and the Oro Province region had been like back then.
This article was published in Our Way, the in-flight magazine of Airlines PNG.