When The Garamuts Beat had its Brisbane book launch last Saturday 18th March, what a lovely evening it was to be surrounded by such well-wishers, friends with long-held connections to Bougainville, and especially the great turnout from Brisbane's Bougainville community. In such company, I wasn't nervous as we all understood Fr Franz Miltrup's life was worth celebrating. Fr Harry Moore SM who translated Franz Miltrup's memoir from Tok Pisin to English co-presented. Harry was not only entertaining and very informative, but he also spoke 'off the cuff' with no notes required.

I feel so much gratitude also to Pat and Rudi Dreyer who hosted the event, having been such long-term friends of Franz Miltrup. Holding such an event at a private home made it all the more personal.

Thanks also to Peter Fenton for linking us up by phone with 96-year-old Fr Ed Duffy in Ireland. Ed gets a frequent mention in the memoir, as he was based, amongst other locations such as Fiji, and Nissan Island, at Koromira and Tubiana on Bougainville's east coast.

I've added some photos of the event. Hope to also add a video of Harry's and my presentations in due course.

For those who couldn’t join us on the night, this was my presentation which I delivered after Harry gave his.

Thank you everyone for being here this evening as we celebrate this joint effort in getting Fr Franz Miltrup’s memoir into book form. Special thanks also go to Pat and Rudi Dreyer for offering to host the book launch. It was a daunting prospect at first but as they reminded me, this was a joyful occasion and Miltrup’s life is worth celebrating.

My family was very close to the Marist community, it was a relationship of friendship and neighbours dating back to the mid-1950s when my parents Merle and Greg Wall first came to Bougainville. My mother Merle was often unwell with Angina and other complications when they started out on Tenakau Plantation, and Sister Mary Leo, an American medical doctor based at Tearouki mission hospital monitored her condition closely. Fast-forward a few years when they were on Aropa Plantation just south of Kieta, they came to know well the mission communities living at Tubiana, Rigu, and Koromira. Brother Xaverius introduced me to collecting stamps when I was about 11 years old, gifting me a beautiful stamp album full of European stamps. It's a hobby that stayed with me into my adult life. Mum too became a mad keen stamp collector.

I met Fr Miltrup a few times, growing up in Bougainville. I remember talking to him one day outside the Arawa Hospital. I’m not sure what we discussed but I remember his unique conversation style being a mixture of Pidgin, English, a little Tok Ples and maybe the odd German word thrown in.  As a young person I didn’t know him well but what was evident, was that he was a humble man, dedicated and focused on his responsibilities. 

When Harry Moore approached me in mid-2021 with the idea of editing Fr Miltrup’s Pidgin memoir and helping to put a book together, I was nearly at the end stage of my father’s family history, my first self-published book titled, The Wall Family weaving the threads of memories.  That project consumed about three years of my life and I was determined to get it done by the end of that year.

Even so, Bougainville’s social history has long been a passion of mine, and the prospect of working on Miltrup’s memoir was exciting. I jumped at the opportunity. I’m sure Harry envisaged the book to be much smaller than how it turned out, but as I read Fr Miltrup’s manuscript, I couldn’t shake the notion that all the Marists mentioned also had stories of historical interest, and who of the current generation with connections to Bougainville knows about them?  Harry was always supportive when I broached an idea to him, such as my adding sections to the memoir to include some brief biographies of the SMs and SMSMs, and sourcing their photographs.

I confess there are significant gaps in some of those biographies, largely due to my limitations as a researcher. I was also mindful of other constraints such as the ultimate size and cost of the book, so weighing up these concerns influenced some regrettable omissions and for that, I am truly sorry.

Pulling the writings from Fr Miltrup’s main memoir and his war diary was a challenge.  There were sections in the Pidgin manuscript without dates, and in places, pages bound out of order. It was as if a wind had blown through an open window one day, scattering loose pages all over the floor, and the typist gathered them up in a hurry, they were inevitably bound with several pages upside down and out of order. I’d love to know the real story of how it happened.

Harry and I had many a conversation about some sections of the original text; what did Fr Miltrup really mean by this word or that phrase? We also took some editorial license by taking out the occasion snippet to preserve someone’s privacy. Another act of editorial license was in the title. Fr Miltrup simply titied it “My Fifty Years in Bougainville.” Throughout the memoir he frequently referred to the Haus Garamuts and the importance they played in relaying messages and how they were so important culturally in the everyday lives of Bougainville people.  Fr Miltrup knew how to interpret the garamut messages. He was a priest first and foremost but he placed himself squarely in the lives of his parishioners. Garamuts are still important throughout Melanesia and they reflect how as a nation modernizes, some things remain important to the essence of the island societies. So the garamut found its way into the title, to alert the reader that this is a story of a time and place where custom and culture was important, along with a story of faith, adventure and peril.

I enjoyed every minute of editing and publishing this book. To be involved in this undertaking has been a great privilege and I hope to have done it justice. Please enjoy WHEN THE GARAMUTS BEAT.