Reflections on writing The Chalkies1
When I opened my email in Brisbane one August day in 2024 I found this message:
‘Thank you for your application for access to an item held by the National Archives of
Australia.The following item has now been examined:
TITLE: Defence Planning Policy – The Army in PNG – 1968/71
LOCATION: Canberra
ACCESS STATUS: OPEN.’
The ‘date of access decision’ was 1st July 2024.
I hope some researcher can now make use of that file, because I no longer need it. You
see, I must have applied for access to that item at the National Archives back when I was
writing my book, The Chalkies: Educating an Army for Independence. I don’t have a note of
when that was, but it must have been before 2016, because that’s the year The Chalkies was
published.
I’m pretty sure that at the time National Archives advised that the likely waiting time for
a decision on access was three months. Somehow that had stretched to eight years.
Two visionaries
It would be interesting to know whether education figured in the Federal Government’s
Army policy in PNG 1968-71, especially for those of us who were posted there in those
years. However, for me one of the most satisfying outcomes from my research for The
Chalkies was pinning down how the idea of sending a ‘taskforce’ of teacher Nashos to the
then Territory of Papua and New Guinea (TP&NG) originated. It didn’t come directly from
Army policy, but mainly from the foresight and initiative of two senior Army officers in 1965-
66: Brigadier ‘Bunny’ Austin, Deputy Adjutant-General in Canberra, and Brigadier Ian
Hunter, Head of PNG Command in Port Moresby.
The Army Minister at the time of Hunter’s appointment, Malcolm Fraser, also played a
part when he told the Brigadier that one of his tasks in PNG was to develop an army that
would be completely loyal to the government, thereby tacitly supporting ‘education’ for
troops, alongside military training. Hunter himself described that order as ‘the real turning
point’.
At the time, official Australian Government policy was that independence for PNG was
many years off – clearly some ‘high-up’ individuals had a different view.
Those two visionaries, Hunter and Austin, hatched the plan that led to the posting of
some 300 conscripted teachers to Papua and New Guinea between 1966 and 1973 to
upgrade the educational qualifications of Pacific Islanders serving in the Army there.
Although the Army had identified the educational need earlier, when the two officers got
together, things moved fast: After preliminary talks, Austin visited TP&NG in late May and
early June 1966, and the first cohort of (somewhat surprised) Nasho instructors arrived
there in August that year, their sergeants’ stripes still fresh on their sleeves.
Reverberations
Ex-Chalkie Ian Ogston had already recognised that this was something special when he
published his two monographs, Chalkies: Conscript teachers in Papua New Guinea 1970-71
(2003) and Armi Wantoks: Conscript teachers in Papua New Guinea 1966-73 (2004). The
indefatigable Terry Edwinsmith cemented the significance of the Army’s venture as he
single-mindedly pursued ex-Nashos across Australia to compile a list of conscripted teachers
who’d been posted there with Army Education.
Another notable outcome for me when writing The Chalkies was to see in the survey
responses from over 70 of those ex-Nashos that for many of them it was a significant
learning experience, an unexpected recognition of their professional training in a different
cultural environment. Sometimes the posting was positively life-changing personally and
professionally. For a small number, however, even an educational posting to PNG was not
sufficient to balance what they saw as being robbed of two years of their lives by National
Service.
More recently, former Chalkies Max Quanchi and five of his ex-Wewak mates gave
voice to what their 1966 New Guinea posting meant to them in a book, Tales from the Sak-
Sak (2021). The reverberations have also been felt via a dedicated website, several reunions
across Australia, a ‘Chalkies in PNG’ display at the Army Infantry Museum, Singleton, video
interviews with ex-Chalkies by the State Library of Queensland, and heavy Chalkie
involvement in the Queensland -based PIB-NGIB-HQ-PIR Association, including editing Armi
Nius. In addition, Terry Edwinsmith circulates news and comments online from Chalkies
across Australia and organises regular coffee mornings for S-E Queensland Chalkies. On the
other hand, some Chalkies were happy to melt fully back into civilian life once they were
demobbed, and to leave their Army life completely behind.
The legacy
In any event, some of those post-Nasho activities will fall by the wayside as the number of
active ex-Chalkies inevitably declines. However, the books and videos and personal
memorabilia will remain, a continuing reminder of a small but arguably ultimately grounded
contribution to the development of the Army in Papua New Guinea in the years immediately
before the country achieved self-government (1973) and independence (1975).
And some day another researcher may add to that history when they become the first
person to access the now-open file, Defence Planning Policy – The Army in PNG – 1968/71, at
the National Archives in Canberra.
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1 Darryl R Dymock, The Chalkies: Educating an Army for Independence, Australian Scholarly Publications, 2016. This article first appeared in Armi Nius No. 1, 2025, Newsletter of the PIB-NGIB-HQ-PIR Association.
