Goodenough Island - History

History

The D'Entrecasteaux Islands have probably been inhabited for several thousand years, the people being related to mainland Papuans. The archipelago was first sighted by the French mariner Joseph Antoine Bruni d' Entrecasteaux in 1792 but remained unexplored until 1874 when Captain John Moresby, commanding HMS Basilisk, landed on the westernmost island and named it after a British naval colleague, Commodore James Graham Goodenough.

The impact of western culture after Moresby's visit and before World War II was limited to missionaries, ethnographers and traders seeking whales, pearls or gold. In 1888 William MacGregor visited the island in his role as administrator of the newly proclaimed British New Guinea. In 1891 the Methodist Church of Australia established a mission station on Dobu Island (between Ferguson and Normanby Islands) under the direction of William Bromilow. From there mission stations were established in strategic centres in the D'Entrecasteaux and Trobriand islands and the Louisiade Archipelago. In particular, in 1898 a mission station was established in Bwaidoga, Mud Bay, Goodenough Island. By that time traders had already created a regular demand for steel tools, cloth, and twist tobacco and the Dobu mission was recruiting natives to work in gold mines and copra plantations. These activities, and indeed the farming and hunting activities of the traditional people, were confined to localised areas on the fringing plains of the island. The mountainous interior remained entirely unknown and unpopulated above 1,100 m.