By Max Uechtritz
Our Mum, Nana and great grandmother, Mary Lou Uechtritz, inspired and touched the lives of countless people – especially girls and women in Papua New Guinea.
She did it through teaching. But she did it also through the Girl Guides movement where she held the highest position available for an expatriate: Deputy Chief Commissioner. She was also International Commissioner, attending and presenting at a world conference for the guides in Kenya and another major event in New Zealand.
But it was the grassroots not the global stage where her real passion lay. In the beaming faces of the guides and brownies in a cache of photos tucked away anonymously in envelopes in her effects in storage. Of kids bursting with pride, endeavour and achievement. And hope. The words of girl guides mantra ringing in their ears: “Every girl deserves a voice, a place to belong, a chance to lead”.
Yes, Mum was recognised by her movement and the nation she helped forge in her own quiet way. In 1988 at Government House in Konedobu, Port Moresby, she was bestowed with the PNG Girl Guides top honour, the Bird of Paradise Award. This followed her Independence Medal in 1985 on the 10th anniversary of her adopted country becoming a nation. Aptly, it was for Community Service (apart from guiding, she ran an Aid Post at Erap Station and Zifasing school and looked after the medical needs of workers and families at Zifasing Ranch). All as a volunteer.
But she made no fuss of it. She preferred to do things not talk about them. Quiet, humble and selfless to a fault, she’d rather fuss and write about her husband Alf’s life and achievements. Give fanfare in oh-so-regular lengthy family missives to any ‘exploits’ of their ten children and thirty plus grandchildren and later the next generation.
We her children were far-flung, in Australia and around the world, when Mum was turning her boundless, relentless energy to the guides. Mentoring, literally guiding, girls in the Morobe province – in Lae, Butibum and the Markham Valley – and spending a week a month at Konedobu Guides Headquarters in the capital doing the same with Papuans and others.
But her letters – phone calls from PNG were rare in those days – were never about her and always about us, and others. Her guides life – or least the extent of it – tended to slip under our radar. So, when brother Paul and I were picking through her things in storage and found envelopes of guides and brownies photos and even Mum’s treasured guides badges, there were pangs of guilt we didn’t know more. Didn’t tell her enough how proud of her we were for all she did for every one of her communities. Her wider ‘families’ if you like.
Mum wasn’t a taker. She gave all her life. Her girl guides mentoring went way back to the 1950s when she ran the Rabaul girl guides, mostly Chinese, while teaching there before marrying Dad. They even formed a guard of honour at her wedding. She taught in remote schools in the Markham Valley. After moving to Innisfail in Australia, she volunteered for St Vincent de Paul (even touring PNG from there) and taught English to the immigrant Hmong community from Laos. If anyone deserved an Order of Australia, it was the little British-born dynamo who loved both PNG and Australia in equal parts and gave to both.
It is appropriate that siblings Richard, Lorena and Krissy through the L&R Uechtritz Foundation named their student education program in PNG after both Mum and Dad: The TVI CleanGen Alf and Mary Lou Uechtritz Scholarship.
It’s also appropriate that I mention several other women, especially the two who travelled with Mum to Kenya representing PNG at 26th World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS) conference at Njora, Kenya in 1987.
They were Lady Kala Olewale, the Chief Commissioner of the PNG association, and Barbara Minimo, who would also become a Guides Commissioner, was awarded an MBE and finished a distinguished foreign affairs career as Chief of State Protocol. What a trio!
It was perhaps an indictment of the times that I could find no online references, even from PNG media and other sources, about the attendance at this global event of two such prominent PNG women.
Though her husband Sir Ebia Olewale was a Founding Father of PNG, multiple minister and deputy prime minister, Lady Kala was an achiever in her own right. As for Barbara Minimo, when she died last year, The National newspaper described her as “Mama Queen, the pride of Oro and the icon of the Ministry and Department of Foreign Affairs”.
The photos of the three women – of vastly different backgrounds but obviously like-minded and friends – proudly representing PNG at the Kenya conference were ‘forgotten’ historical images. Hopefully the stories they invoke will become better known and appreciated.
There’s another remarkable woman featured in Mum’s photo collection of the guides: the legendary Ela Birrell MBE was the Morobe Girl Guides Commissioner for more than three decades. She was instrumental in building a training centre in Lae, won an international Rotary award and the top national girl guides award is now in her name.
Among others who contributed significantly were friends and Guides trainers Lynette Lawry and Annette Emery (pictured above)
Finally, another Papua New Guinean woman Mum admired immensely was Enny Moaitz, the first Indigenous Girl Guides Commissioner of PNG (1973-1982) and the nation’s first female premier when elected to run Morobe province. It was in that role that she presented Mary Lou Uechtritz with the Independence Medal.
Between them, Enny Moaitz, Lady Kala Olewale, Barbara Minimo, Mary Lou Uechtritz and Ela Birrell inspired generations of PNG girls and women to ‘have a voice, belong and lead’.
PS: Mary Lou herself was a Girl Scout (Brownie) in England during WW2 which inspired her to serve for the guides and scouts later in life.
