Additional information for Chapter 25 – Back to the Highlands at Wabag and discovering gold at Mt Kare

 

Wikipedia at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meg_Taylor states that “Dame Meg Taylor DBE is a Papua New Guinean politician who served as Secretary General to the Pacific Islands Forum from 2014-2021. She was previously an athlete, lawyer and diplomat.”

 

As described in the August 2019 article by Debra Vermeer on the website of Sisters of the Good Samaritan of the Order at St Benedict at goodsams.org.au/article/trailblazing-woman-of-the-pacific-helping-build-a-stronger-future/ “Born in the highlands of Papua New Guinea in 1950, Meg is a former student of St Scholastica’s College, Glebe” (New South Wales Australia), “a Good Samaritan school. ’I was born in the Wahgi Valley but grew up in another valley outside Goroka,’ she says. ‘In those days, in the early 1950s they were remote, beautiful valleys with majestic mountains and great agricultural land, populated by tribes, which were very organised societies.’

 

Meg’s father was an Australian who led one of the first expeditions to make contact with the people of the Wahgi Valley in the early 1930s. That’s where he met and married Meg’s mother” (Yerima) “and after Meg came along, the family moved to take up land outside Goroka where he became the first coffee grower in the area…….

 

‘I grew up in a situation like many others in my country of holding on to your traditions while absorbing Catholicism.’ Meg’s first experience of education was in the local village school. ’Our classroom had a dirt floor, we sat on benches and wrote on slates,’ she recalls.”

 

In athletics she represented Papua New Guinea at the 1971 South Pacific Games in Pirae French Polynesia where she came 2nd in the Pentathlon and 3rd in the 4 x 100m relay with a time of 50.4 seconds.

 

She received her LLB law degree from Melbourne University, Australia (the first PNG woman to achieve a law degree) and the Good Samaritan interview goes on “She soon put the degree to good use, working with (Sir) Michael Somare on PNG’s transition to Independence. ‘It was an exciting time,’ she says. ‘I knew that this was history in the making.’ When Independence was achieved in 1975, Michael Somare became Prime Minister and Meg continued working in his office.

Admitted to the Bar in 1976, she practiced law with the Office of the Public Solicitor in Mount Hagen, also read with Justice John O’Meally in Sydney and was admitted to the Bar of the Australian Capital Territory. She returned to PNG and practiced in the Madang and Goroka Public Solicitor’s Office from 1979 until she joined private firm Gadens Lawyers from 1983-1985, after having her daughter.”

 

in 1985, having won a Fulbright Scholarship she obtained her Masters Law LLM degree from Harvard University in the United States.

 

When she returned home, she took a two month trek through the Highlands, retracing the 1938 expedition of her father, the Australian explorer Jim Taylor, an experience which was filmed by Film Australia. David Marsh describes her visit to him at his house in Manly NSW when she was researching her father’s trek, as was discussed in chapter 25.

 

From 1989 to 1994, Meg was Ambassador of Papua New Guinea to the United States, Mexico and Canada in Washington DC.

 

She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2002.

In January 2016, Dame Meg was appointed to the High Level Steering Committee on Every Women Every Child by the Secretary General of the United Nations.

 

The Pacific Community website at www.spc.int/sdp/70-inspiring-pacific-women/dame-meg-taylor and The interpreter published by the Lowy Institute at www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/contributors/articles/dame-meg-taylor state :

 

“Dame Meg has served on the board of the Bank of Papua New Guinea and on the boards of a number of companies in Papua New Guinea in the natural resources, financial, and agricultural sectors, as well as on the boards of companies listed on the Australian Securities Exchange. She has also served on the boards of international conservation and research organisations.

 

She was appointed to the post of Vice President and Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO) of the World Bank Group in 1999 following a selection process led by civil society, industry, and academia. Having set up CAO, which is a key part of the governance structure of the World Bank Group, Meg Taylor led the office for 15 years and established a rich body of work. CAO provides independent accountability and recourse for communities impacted by projects supported by the private sector arms of the World Bank Group - the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA). Through her leadership, CAO has become internationally recognised for its cutting edge work in addressing corporate - community conflict around the globe, with a model that has been replicated by other multilateral institutions. She concluded her term at CAO in August 2014.

 

Dame Meg Taylor would go on to become the Secretary General to the Pacific Islands Forum a position she held 2014 to 2021, and the first woman to hold that post. The Forum is an intergovernmental organisation that aims to enhance cooperation between the independent countries of the Pacific Ocean.

 

Dame Meg is also currently the Pacific Ocean Commissioner, and as such advocates for the secure future of Pacific people based on the sustainable development, management and conservation of the Pacific Ocean and its resources.”