The District Commissioner
Addendum 64: "Ma" Stewart, Amelia Earhart & Errol Flynn
Additional information
“Ma” Stewart was one of New Guinea’s most well known characters and pioneers. Below is an obituary from the PNG Post Courier from 8 June, 1979 which summarises her life and work :
“GOODBYE TO A WOMAN WHO MADE PNG HISTORY...
By MAC MORRIS
Ma Stewart, the legendary Mother of the goldfields, a pioneer, and a woman of great character, has made her final farewell to the country she loved and lived in for more than 73 years. With her passing, a large chapter of the history of the Morobe Province passes as well, as time streams into the future of Independent Papua New Guinea. In Flora Shaw Stewart's life, no greater compliment could have been paid to the woman who was affectionately known as "Ma".
Born in Scotland in 1886, she arrived in Samarai in 1906 as a young bride to a country as remote and untamed as the moon, where head hunters were a fact of life and modern-day appliances such as running water (other than in the rivers), electricity and refrigeration were a dream of the future.
Ma, a woman of action, direct approach and courage, put on her gum boots and went to work. It takes a special kind of woman to tackle a country which to most people in the early 1900's, if they were aware it existed, was a volcanic upheaval of tropical islands, a vague outline above the Australian weather map, a tiny island racked with fevers, and peopled with savages, missionaries, and blackbirders. Even fewer people recognised it as a strategic uncut jewel shimmering in the Coral Sea.
She survived two world wars — one which claimed her first husband, and the second, where she lost her only son Moresby, missing over Germany. Had her home razed to the ground in the scorched earth policy as Wau was evacuated, and flew to Australia on the floor of an old Junker, with her sole possessions 30 1b of clothing, only to return (the first woman to do so) to begin to rebuild her life from the rubble that was Lae.
At the age of 75 she rode in the Grand Parade at the Morobe Show against everyone's advice. In fact, no one would supply her with a horse, so she had two horses flown up from Queensland, and rode anyway. This was her last official appearance in the Show, a society which she supported from its inauguration, and in which she took a very active part.
Flora Stewart pioneered airfreighting during an era that was as colorful and rough as the American Wild West, and was as much a part of developing Wau, Bulolo and Lae as the kiaps and District Commissioners who then ran the country.
The hotels, the Bulolo and The Cecil, were synonomous with the name Stewart, as were the Morobe Turf Club, Morobe Show Society, Lae Women's Club, Lae Horticultural Society, Red Cross, gold, horses, hospitality and sheer hard work. Ma didn't win her nomination for the Independence Medal with a frilly umbrella, she earned it with deeds, energy and willingness, to face any task, however formidable.
No person was ever turned from her doorway. She fed, financed, nursed, comforted, celebrated, and gave her hand in friendship to the community in a way that is only seen in a pioneering era. She supported projects and associations which were the nucleus of the City of Lae.
Ma watched Papua New Guinea emerge, a fledgling nation, from sailing ships to modern shipping, from ancient DH9's to jets, and saw its currency change from shells to gold, from pounds, shillings and pence, to dollars, and then kina.
One of the best known and most universally liked "B4's" (before the war), the first white business woman to live in Wau, and the last of the women pioneers, she died as she lived, in the country she adopted as her own and among the people she loved, on Mother's Day, May 13, 1979. “
Stewart died in Lae and was buried in the local cemetery.
The Gofton family had run a bakery business in Port Moresby before WWI. Ma Stewart was Mrs Flo Gofton before she remarried. She was the confidante, nurse, hairdresser, and banker to numerous prospectors and characters, and many of the loans she granted were never repaid. Ma assisted the Tasmanian born Errol Flynn during his difficult times in PNG well before he achieved fame and success in Hollywood.
Bev Rybarz remembers Ma as being a rough and tough woman who ran her business with an iron fist but who also had a heart of gold, and who had a keen sense of humour. She would be very strict with her staff to maintain high business standards, but would also confidentially help them financially if there was an illness in the family. She was both feared and admired by all.
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The photo below is of "Ma Stewart" outside the rebuilding of her Hotel Cecil at Lae on 9 February 1951 is an ACP Magazine PIX photo archive from the State Library of NSW.
The Hotel had 40 rooms and she operated it until 1957. Ma had previously owned and operated the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Samarai, and the Hotel Bulolo.
The Hotel Cecil below at Voco Point Lae was completed in 1952. It replaced Ma Stewart’s previous Hotel Cecil which she had opened in 1936 and which had been destroyed by bombing in World War II. Among the many important visitors to pass through the hotel was the American pilot Amelia Earhart, who stayed at the Cecil on the night before her departure on 2 July 1937, on her final flight from when was never seen again.
Ma sold the Hotel pictured below on her retirement to Hamac Holdings, and it was eventually demolished to make was for the Asiawe residential estate. A shame the Hotel was not preserved for historical purposes.
The 1951 photo here is sourced from the ACP Magazine PIX photo archive of the State Library of NSW.
It shows Ma Stewart inspecting her staff.
Buildings on the Samarai waterfront including the Cosmopolitan Hotel c. 1905, British New Guinea.
The sign on the building on the left probably reads "John Clunn & Sons Merchants".
The photo was posted onto the PNG, Photo History, Taim Bipo online group by Peter Russell Kranz on 2 May 2023.
It was sourced from the State Library of Queensland. (Photo damaged).
The photo of the Hotel Bulolo, Wau in the early 1930’s was sourced from page 178 of the Michael Waterhouse book “Not a Poor Man’s Field”
Amelia Earhart – posting by Peter Kranz 19/12/24 onto the online PNG Taim Bipo group. Amelia Earhart on her arrival at Lae in 1937. Photo by A. A. Koch, a military and civil pilot employed by Guinea Airways at Lae with an interest in photography. Among his many photographs are the last known pictures of Amelia Earheart at Lae Aerodrome. Earhart stayed at the old Cecil Hotel, Lae, in her final days. This is confirmed by a comment by James Moresby Birrell to a story about Earhart on the PNG Attitude web site in 2019 - "Earhart and Noonan were both met at the airport on arrival at Lae by the Shell manager, Fred Cooke refueller, Ma Stewart, my Nana, and Ela Birrell, my mother. Later after photos of the group were taken and baggage and equipment sorted, they both stayed at the Cecil Hotel which was owned by Ma Stewart." Earhart departed from Lae on 2 July 1937, on the final stage of her attempted world flight and was never seen again.
The following 11 April, 2020 article “Errol Flynn - the Rabaul years” is sourced from the PNG Attitude website at .pngattitude.com/2020/04/errol-flynn-the-rabaul-years.html
“RABAUL - The 18-year-old Errol Flynn – with an already shady background - arrived in New Guinea in October 1927 to make his fortune on the newly discovered goldfields at Edie Creek.
His later and unexpected career as a celebrated Hollywood film star lay a few years ahead.
From his arrival he tried unsuccessfully to bluff himself into money as a cadet patrol officer, gold prospector, slave recruiter, dynamiter of fish, trapper of birds, manager of coconut and tobacco plantations, air cargo clerk, copra trader, charter boat captain, pearl diver and diamond smuggler.
He was also a prolific writer and contributed regularly to Australian newspapers and magazines with absorbing tales about the untamed jungles of New Guinea.
Flynn soon discovered that the Australian government had a severe shortage of patrol officers and he hoped to bluff his way through in Rabaul. But his colonial career was short-lived when his background was discovered.
He moved restlessly from one job to another, acquiring many different skills but no great competence. Hoping to get rich fast, he lived by his wits and ran up many debts.
In Rabaul, although considered a likeable and capable young man, his reputation for roguery quickly spread and he ceased to be with the Administration.
His best memory of Rabaul was of “a wonderful saloon” where you encountered “everything the world could yield up – miners, recruiters, con men, thieves, beachcombers, prospectors – cubicles both downstairs and upstairs, several phonographs playing, cards.…”
Long after Flynn had departed he was remembered around Rabaul, mostly for the unpaid bills he left behind.
Even after he became famous as a film star, he never paid those bills. If people wrote asking him to pay, he would send them autographed photographs of himself, saying these were worth much more than what he owed them.
The story is told of the famous occasion when a film of Flynn’s was showing in Rabaul, and at the end of the credits, a dentist to whom Flynn owned a large account jumped up and shouted: ‘And teeth by Eric Wein.’
Flynn has been called many names: adventurer, thief, lover, liar, murderer and Hollywood legend.
He probably didn’t do much good while he was here in Rabaul, but nevertheless, he placed New Guinea on the world map as a place where a young man could find himself.”
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The 1938 photo below of Errol Flynn was sourced online from reddit.com. The swashbuckler actor appeared in 59 films, 7 short films, and 4 television programs during 1933 to 1959.
