Deep inside the Nebilyer Valley in the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea sits a famed coffee plantation, Kilima. It lies on the traditional land of the Ganiga people, steeped in colonial history, wealth and bloodshed.
The plantation was purchased from the Ganiga in the early 1970s by a then young Johannes “Joe” Leahy, an enterprise he spent years building up and then decades mourning its drawn-out destruction. Leahy was part of one of Papua New Guinea’s leading family dynasties who made their fortune in the Highlands. Earlier this month Leahy died, aged 85, inside the house he lived in most of his life, surrounded by his beloved coffee trees, the “green gold” that his life – its highs and lows – was built on.
This week hundreds of people – from villagers to friends and a former prime minister – gathered in the isolated green hills of his homeland to remember Leahy. The week-long celebration began upon a tribal ceremonial ground beside a Pentecostal church nestled among thousands of coffee trees, grass huts and plantation sheds, cradled by jagged mountains. A man clutched a totem-like structure – known as a paga – a single wooden pole that displayed a dark suit jacket, white shirt, tie and a framed photograph of the late Leahy. His sons, Jim and Michael, along with Ganiga elders watched as the paga was stuck into the ground. About 100 Ganiga tribesmen and women, smeared in white clay in honour of the dead, performed the traditional paga romp ceremony to welcome mourners. They marched across the field holding spears and axes, a rhythmic sound coming from the rustling of the women’s leaf skirts and the bellowing of songs for the dead. It formed the final day of the customary haus krai, a traditional ceremony held in Papua New Guinea to honour a life.
Born on the outskirts of Mount Hagen in 1938 to a white Australian father and a Jiga tribe mother, Leahy was rejected by his father, Michael. He was brought up by his uncle and the young Leahy spent life battling to understand his place in the world. He would become a Ganiga tribe leader, a businessman and visionary who was caught between two different worlds. Leahy struggled his entire life to bridge his multiracial roots and traditional customs with western learnings.
Leahy’s father was an Australian gold prospector and in the 1930s, along with his brother Dan – while searching for gold in the Highlands – stumbled upon a large valley called the Whagi with over a million inhabitants. This moment of first contact made global news headlines, and briefly made Michael and Dan celebrities. These expeditions into the unexplored parts of Papua New Guinea, early colonial exploits and interactions with local people would lead to the Leahys becoming powerful figures in the Highlands. Joe Leahy’s turbulent life and times were documented in The Highlands Trilogy of films made in the 1990s by Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson – First Contact, Joe Leahy’s Neighbours and Black Harvest.
Raised in his mother’s village, Leahy learned European ways working on a colonial coffee plantation run by his uncle, before moving to his own coffee business with the Ganiga. Leahy and the Ganiga were locked in a stormy relationship, though he held a vision of a peaceful, prosperous society that enriched both sides. The coffee empire, hugely successful through the 1970s, was in near ruin in the late 1980s and early 1990s due to years of tribal war. When war broke out between two neighbouring enemy tribes, ancient obligations required that the Ganiga take sides and join in, despite the warnings from Leahy and tribal elders who realised this spelt doom for their coffee venture. In over 10 years of fighting, most of the infrastructure was destroyed throughout the entire Nebilyer Valley, one of the worst prolonged tribal wars in the post-independence history of the Highlands. After the devastating conflict, Leahy never stopped trying to bring his coffee plantation back to life, but without success.
Last week, a bright yellow coffin arrived on the back of a Toyota pickup at Leahy’s house in Mount Hagen. His children, Jim, Michael, Rosita and Didi, were there along with grandchildren, extended family and close friends including filmmaker Connolly. People encircled the coffin as prayers were said, and young girls sang hymns. Four clan leaders drove Leahy’s coffin along the Highlands Highway, the route that led the way for Leahy’s father and uncle during their early expeditions searching for gold in the 1930s. People lined the road from Mount Hagen to the Kilima plantation, waving, praying, crying and throwing flowers. Today Jim Leahy is still producing coffee at Kilima, but the operation is a shadow of its former self.
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TOP: Mourners watch as Joe Leahy’s coffin, followed by his family, is carried toward the grave site next to Kilima
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BOTTOM: Jim Leahy is comforted by family who arrived from Canada and Australia
Leahy found religion late in life. He dedicated himself to his faith and had a hand in building many churches. Directly facing the coffin, Ganiga leaders and elders, old and new, sat on brightly coloured plastic chairs. A lone latecomer walked toward the coffin, the former Papua New Guinea prime minister Paias Wingti, who shares the same tribal roots as Leahy’s mother.
Leahy’s influence and friendships stretched far and wide, from everyday people all the way through to the country’s leaders. Wingti spoke about the wealth at Kilima, how the Ganiga should reap the riches from their “green gold”.
Hundreds of people surrounded the freshly dug grave as the coffin was lowered and the pastor said a prayer.
“He was your leader and brought great wealth and opportunities to the Ganiga people and, even when you failed him and yourselves, Joe never gave up on you, he never left you,” the Ganiga councillor David Mawa said.
Leahy’s final resting place is the same rich, dark red soil that he worked with his entire life, the same fertile grounds that made him and his Ganiga united by coffee.
