Rev. W.G. Lawes’s Exploring Party …

In April 1874 Lawes sailed for New Guinea and in November settled at Port Moresby with his wife and children as the first permanent European residents of Papua. Despite attacks of fever which decimated his Polynesian teaching staff and killed his youngest son, Lawes became an expert in the Motuan language and a respected friend of all the south coast tribes. In four years he had started eleven new mission stations and produced the first book in a Papuan language.

Rare engraving from the original edition of the Illustrated Australian News.