Nuku
Sandaun Province
Papua New Guinea
1978 - 95 

Nuku was one of the first inland mission stations to be set up from Aitape in the 1940s.

From Aitape's WWII Tadji airstip, it is about a twenty-minute Cesna flight south-east through the Tadji gap, over the St Francis campus,  to a 800 metre long airstrip which appears to be in the middle of the jungle. As you come in for the landing, you begin to notice the main structures which make up the station - several government offices, a few general stores, the haus pater and haus sista, the church, a communication tower, the local kalabus (gaol) and a reasonably sized health centre - and you begin to realise that the airstip, apart from being very short is also very steep - it has to be steep as it is 
short.
 

A recent photo of the Nuku airstrip. You can just make out some buildings on the left.

If you walk to the non-station side of the airstrip you can look south across a couple of valleys and hill tops to the general location  of Walamu where you will find a river valley and in it the co-educational, Year 7 to 10, boarding school of St Francis.
 

Br Cronan O'Meara

Special mention must be made of Cro. When his ministry began in PNG in 1992 he had been retired from the Australian classroom for several years. In 1994, while at Nuku, he celebrated fifty years being a Patrician Brother. A more detailed history of Nuku would reveal the important part Cro played in the final years of Patrician ministry at St Francis. He returned to Australia at the end of 1995, but returned in 2000 to help out at Aitape. It was only very poor health at the end of 2001 which forced him to return to Sydney . This year (2004) he celebrates sixty years as a Patrician and is ministering in Thursday Island, a remote island off the northern-most tip of our northern-most state: Queensland. 

Brother Charles Barry	St Francis High School, Walamu, as it was in mid 1980s << St Francis 1978 - 1989 & 1994 St Francis 1978 - 1992 >>	Brother Michael Vella

The young Papua New Guinean Brothers used to speak of  the shool at Walamu, Nuku, as "our school". This was natural enough for three reasons:  Patrician Brothers played the leadership role in literally carving a high school out of the high jungles of the Walamu valley;  Walamu was where these Brothers had begun their years in the Patrician Congregation; and Walamu had been under Patrician leadership for as long as they had been around. There is no doubting the prominent place St Francis High School, Walamu, has and will always have in Patrician history in PNG.

It's recorded history began in 1974 when the Nuku local government formally requested the Catholic Diocese of Aitape to start a high school in their area. In 1976 a committee was formed to investigate possible sites for the school. Eventually thirty-five hectares at Walamu was selected. During 1977 some preliminary work was done by the local people to clear some of the land in preparation for the arrival of the first contingent of staff and students.

The Patrician Brothers had been asked to establish this school. Two Brothers from the Aitape community offered their services: Brothers Charles Barry and Michael Vella. It is hard to imagine that two better Brothers could have been found anywhere in the Congregation for the task which lay ahead.
 

Brothers Michael (first left) and Charles (second right) with 1980 school staff	Carving the school out of the trees and hills. Brothers' house off to the left.

"Walamu" is a local word which means "the place of trees and dogs", and a place of trees it certainly was. Despite the clearing work of the locals, when the Brothers and some students arrived at the end of 1977, Brother Michael wrote when he arrived at the site: "A straight pathway in any direction looked like an impossible dream....The task looked hopeless and the thought crossed our minds to turn back to more comfortable surroundings. To walk ten paces in any line would require a fit person because of the many obstacles."

Despite this, Brother Charles and Michael, with eighty-eight students and a few helping hands were able to officially open the school on the 2nd February, 1978, with Bishop William Rowell presiding. Nuku Day High School was it's intended name, but it became known as St Francis High School, no doubt in honour of the Franciscan diocese it was a part of.
 

Bishop Rowell blessing the school at the official opening  in 1978	The pioneer group with Brs Michael and Charles and Sr Cecily Graves

For the next few years there was a very healthy mixture of school work and outside work. Amazing perhaps that the teachers and students were able to cover the requirements of the curriculum considering the number of hours that were spent in the classroom.  By the time the first Year 10 students came to graduate in December of 1981, and graduate they did, as they left the school walking up the long, steep road out of the school's river valley, they could look back and see what they had helped to build with their own hands and hearts: a beautiful, fully functional, and academically successful school in the place of  trees and dogs.
 

St Francis was probably more  like a technical college in its  first few years	Visitors Frank Evans and Br Paul O'Keeffe (right) from St Ignatius inspecting the work

This materialised in many ways, from allowing the school to be the location of the local market to the repairing of the roads of the area. But perhaps the most obvious pastoral contribution of the school was the establishment of a pastoral centre at the school. Built with the school's own resources and hands, this centre was for many years used by thousands of people for courses ranging from carpentry to catechetics.
 

The sawmill which enabled St Francis to build the pastoral centre and many other facilities	One of the early groups (c.1989) of young men training to be Pats at Walamu

A third phase in the Patrician history at Walamu was in the area of Patrician formation: in 1987 Walamu became the location of the first group of young men to begin their training as Patrician Brothers. This was under the direction of Brother Michael Vella. Despite special facilities having been built to accommodate these young men, it wasn't long - two years only - that a  second location had to be found for the formation programme. The Brothers went to Laingim, a small station a couple of hours away by road, and then on to Bishop's Hill back in Aitape.

Walamu remained the location for initial formation until 1992 when Bishop's Hill was able to accommodate the whole programme.

By 1995 the Brothers thought they had done what had been asked of them: to establish an efficient and effective high school in the Nuku area. One of Brother Charles's objectives was to eventually to be able to leave the school in the hands of Papua New Guineans. In 1994 it was felt that this could be done with great confidence. It is most fitting then that Brother Charles Barry, the founding principal of the school, was, in 1994, able to return to Walamu and to be the Patrician to hand the school over to a local principal.

In the eighteen year history of the Brothers at Walamu, eleven Brothers had ministered there, three as the school's principal: Charles Barry (eleven years), Chris Finucane (3 years), and Alan Dawes from India (2 years). At St Francis, Walamu, from 1978 to 1995, thousands of young Papua New Guineans had received a firm educational basis; just as many people from the local area had been personally enriched by the pastoral activities held at the school;  and thirty-one young men had begun their Patrician formation there. 

St Francis, Walamu, will always hold a special place in the history and stories of the Patrician Brothers.
 

Brothers Chris Finucane and Chris Dawes surrounded by St Francis students in uniform	Brother David Sullivan who put his hands to everything from tropical ulcers to cameras