Allan Henrey Skiller, Australian Army Medic & Collector

By Michael Hamson

Allan Henrey Skiller was an Australian Army medic who travelled extensively within New Guinea during World War II, and who stayed on after the war until 1956 operating a copra plantation in Milne Bay Province. During his stay in New Guinea, Skiller collected tribal artifacts from the Papuan Gulf and Massim region.

As a member of Australia’s 39th Battalion, Skiller saw combat in 1942 in the defense of Port Moresby against Japanese forces—mostly along the infamous Kakoda Track, that treacherous mountain path cutting across the Owen Stanly Range from New Guinea’s north coast to Port Moresby in the south.

Once Skiller’s superior officer found out that he could type, he was taken away from general combat to become the officer’s assistant. Later, in the madness of war, it was Skiller’s prior employment as a pharmaceutical salesman that steered him into a six-week medic’s course. The first artifacts he collected were given in appreciation for the medical treatment he freely administered. His son Phil remembers hearing his father’s tale of amputating a local’s gangrene-infected leg while reading up on the procedure in his medical handbook by the light of a kerosene lantern.

After the war Skiller decided to stay on in New Guinea. Initially he managed a trade store on Samarai Island for two years. Later he took over the land lease from the London Missionary Society of a copra plantation in Lawes Bay on the very south coast of Milne Bay Province. Excepting a return to Melbourne just long enough to get married in 1949, Skiller stayed another seven years. His son Phil said his father remained in New Guinea because he loved the people. Yes, he collected artifacts and ran a successful business, but it was the New Guinea people that drew Allan Skiller to the country. I think the accompanying photographs attest to that ease, comfort, and well-being he seemed to feel there.

Photographs of and by Allan Skiller circa 1942-1949.

11 Massim Figure, Ex. Valentine Museum

Massim area, Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea Acquired in 1901 by Ellie Bosher in Australia Donated to the Valentine Museum by Bosher in 1904 (V04.06.02) Deaccessioned by the Valentine Museum in 2021 Late 19th century 19 ¾” (50.1 cm) in height

This figure definitely belongs to a small corpus of late 19th century Massim figures potentially carved by the same hand. Older, authentic freestanding human figures are exceedingly rare within the Massim culture. Of the few with recorded functions, they all had to do with protective magic. One in the British Museum that was collected by Ellis Sillas in the Trobriand Islands in the 1920s was accompanied by a note card that read:

The wooden images (Tukwalu) were carved as protection against evil magic. A man expecting assassination would place one of these figures at the head of his bed. The figure was presumed to possess the power of jumping up and killing the assassin. What is more probably is that the image was taken to a sorcerer and evil magic was performed over it and when the assassin saw the figure he was afraid of the evil magic and retired. Harry Beran unpublished article entitled “The Human Image in Massim Art.”