The 1952 shearing season had cut out leaving 21-year-old Graham Hardy at a loose end. Early aspirations by the dairy farmer’s son to become a wool classer were fading with the realisation that, thanks to post-war training programs, there seemed to be more wool classers than sheep out in the shearing sheds of Queensland.
Graham was looking at his options when an advertisement in a week-old copy of the Brisbane Courier Mail newspaper caught his eye. The Commonwealth Department of Territories was recruiting cadet patrol officers for service in Papua and New Guinea.
Graham applied and, four months after arriving in the territory in October 1952, he found himself on a remote patrol post in the vast Papuan delta with nothing more than an eight-week introductory course behind him and a thirst for adventure ahead.
Over the Hills and Far Away spans the years 1952 to 1975 and is Graham’s personal hand-written memoir about work and life during a defining era of Australian and Papua New Guinea history.
Over the Hills and Far Away is the journey of a young man who worked his way from a solitary cadet in Papua’s delta backwaters to a Kiap in the mountainous highlands and arrival as deputy district commissioner in Port Moresby on the eve of Papua New Guinea’s nationhood.