by Colin Hayter

Australian Lutheran men and women played a major role in mission work on the islands of Siassi in New Guinea. This year 2011 is the 75th anniversary of the Australian Lutheran Mission, which was set up by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Australia (ELCA) in 1936 to send missionaries to the Sepik River area in New Guinea.

But the Siassi story begins much earlier. For this year also marks the centenary of Lutheran mission work on Siassi, as well as the 125th anniversary of Lutheran mission work in Papua New Guinea (PNG).

The third German Lutheran missionary to join missionary Flierl in his fledgling Lutheran Mission Finschhafen was Rev Georg Bamler. When he was stationed on Tami Island he came into contact with the inhabitant’s trading partners, the Tuam Islanders. This led Bamler, together with layman Wahnes, to go to Tuam, where they spent six weeks exploring the Rooke-Siassi Islands by canoe and on foot. They returned home on a Tami trading canoe across the often treacherous open waters of the Vitiaz Strait.

On 28 April 1911 Bamler arrived at the Rooke-Siassi islands on the mission schooner Bavaria to start a mission station on the south-eastern side of Rooke Island, the large island of the group. It was an isolated place and Bamler once noted that he went for nine months with no contact with the outside world. The first baptisms were at Tuam in 1914. Later he established a permanent station at Karapo, where, tragically he was killed by a falling tree on 12 November 1928. Then followed vacancies, short stays by two missionaries and the relocation of the mission station to Awelkon on the western side of Rooke Island.

You can read the full story in the September 2011 edition, available from LCA Subscriptions. Full columns become available online three years after publication date.