Eumundi Voice - Issue 102, 19 September 2024

HISTORY

The Kiap story

Kiap is the term used for Australian government officials who patrolled Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) remote regions from 1878 to 1978. They helped administer rural Papua as an Australian territory inherited from Great Britain, and New Guinea as a League of Nations mandate and then a United Nations trust territory.

From 1878 field officers had the titles of Patrol Officer, Assistant Resident Magistrate and Resident Magistrate, and provided law and order in British New Guinea or Papua. In 1914 Australia captured Rabaul and Patrol Officers were called in to replace the German administrators of what was then German New Guinea. The term Kiap was used by the locals, so the Australian administration began using the term. Kiap is a Papua New Guinean creole (Tok Pisin) word derived from the German word Kapitän (Captain).

Kiaps were commissioned as officers of the Royal PNG Constabulary and as such, were members of the overseas serving police. They were also appointed as district magistrates. The role of the kiap was to provide basic services and administration to the local people as Australian government officials patrolling PNG’s remote regions. It was a dangerous job. As field officers, these young Australian men worked in often isolated and hazardous circumstances. The kiaps’ mortality rate was as high as 4.25%, compared to 1.04% for Australians serving in the Vietnam War. Of the 2,000 Kiaps who served, 88 died from violence, disease, losses at sea, aircraft crashes, volcanic eruptions, and executions by the Japanese during WWII.

From 1948 the kiaps were trained at the Australian School of Pacific Administration at Middle Head in Sydney, ceasing in 1978 just after PNG independence. There are now only around 300 surviving kiaps today from the cohort of 1,400 who served in PNG after the war. The kiaps never received recognition for their contribution and there were fears that the great work of these men would be forgotten.

This has been rectified with the 2023 visit of Prime Minister Albanese to PNG. PNG Prime

Minister Marape expressed his nations thanks to Australia for their assistance, and acknowledged the work of missionaries, kiaps and soldiers. He particularly remembered the kiaps when he said, “We remember the soldiers, but I want to remember the kiaps, those very young men who walked the hinterland of this country and helped develop our Nation.”

A memorial tree was also planted earlier this year by Prime Minister Marape in Commonwealth Park, Canberra to commemorate the important role Australian kiaps played in PNG.

The enormous contribution made by kiaps in building the small, disunited country of PNG into a modern-day nation, has finally been acknowledged and remembered.

Greg Ison