40s and 50s Memories
fish - duly returned to the reef when we left.
Many years later I learned from a colleague in
Canberra that one of our favourite snorkelling
spots, the wrecks of two American bombers
that must have crashed on take-off and that
lay partly exposed just offshore, was also the
favourite basking site of salt-water crocodiles.
Just inland were the foothills of the towering
Owen Stanley Mountains, with a much easier
climate, where good walking country was to
be found with much lower temperatures and
humidity. Beth taught the children herself for
their first year in PNG, but the next year we took
them down to schools in Australia. Beth found
interesting voluntary work teaching long-term
child patients at the Port Moresby hospital.
In due course we moved down to Canberra
where I now had to face degree-course
teaching on a massive scale. I had to lecture
twice a week to one class of 250 and another of
300 in the basics of organisation theory, and to
lead a couple of tutorial groups of about twelve
people each in both courses every week.
After a year or so I had full responsibility for
both courses, which meant also overseeing a
large group of tutors for each course. After a
few years I was asked to start a new course
on the practicalities of 'getting the job done',
for which I drew on many of the ideas I had
used in my Kenya course. One day my Head
of School, happening to stand beside me in the
loo, came out with, 'By the way, Dr Richardson
wants you to help him run an international
conference of schools of administration from
around the world. It was to run in a year's time,
with about 400 attending. I was to lead the
team responsible for all arrangements, and as
things would get busy nearer the time I might
have two hours relief out of my twelve hours
contact time. I was sent on a round the world
trip to promote the conference in the States,
Canada and the UK. My most vivid memory is
of a day at the UN, being guided around the
General Assembly hall and the Security Council
chamber by a nephew of President Roosevelt.
My chief job in New York was to secure the
attendance of the Deputy Secretary of the
United Nations Development Programme,
Margaret Anstee. I explained that I was calling
on behalf of the International Association of
Schools which was most supportive of institutes of administration throughout the developing
world. 'Wow!' she said, 'what a mouthful!' But
she agreed. I also had to visit Washington,
getting a good response also from the US
Agency for International Development, who
had funded the vast expansion of our Institute
of Administration. In due course the conference
passed off successfully, with participants from
nearly fifty countries and representatives of
academic and professional institutions. In the
following years I went on to help Dr Richardson
with similar conferences in Berlin and at the
University of Indiana at Bloomington.
My contract with the college allowed a year's
study leave in every seven. One of these I
spent reviewing how field administration was
being managed in the early years of Papua New
Guinea's independence, and this led to several
further visits in a consultancy role. Later on I took
half a year to study new approaches to financial
management in government in Canada, the
United States and the UK. Towards the time
of my retirement from full time work I became an
adviser for international students and continued
in this role for a few years after retirement. We
had some 300 international students on the
books. I retired at 64 in 1992 but stayed on,
on casual terms, in the international students
adviser role for another three years. This gave
me the remarkable opportunity to go on a fiveweek tour
of six countries in south-east and
south Asia, with teams from a number of other
universities, recruiting international students. It
was in Bangalore (where my parents met while
working at the Bishop Cotton's School) that I
decided our Canberra team was not putting
its case strongly enough, so took over as lead
speaker for our own group and said to an
audience of four or five hundred at the start of
the day, 'I left India in November 1928 and only
got back on Tuesday, and I've been catching up
ever since.' This provoked roars of laughter and
brought people flocking to our table. One night
at Bangalore we were all woken up by a violent
earthquake; by the end of the day we learned
that large parts of the Deccan region, away to
the north of us, had been devastated, with the
loss of hundreds of thousands of lives. I had
also experienced major earthquakes in PNG,
thankfully without injury.
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