1st Battalion, AIF. Captain Guy Owen Manning was from a well-known family in the legal profession in NSW and the son of a judge. He was born at Hunters Hill on November 4, 1881, and educated at Kings School in Sydney, one of the top private schools in Australia. Another of this extended family, Major Charles E. Manning, was the Assistant Judge Advocate-General for seven months in New Guinea after the military occupation before going to France where he was killed on August 7, 1916. Capt Manning arrived in Port Moresby on February 9, 1901, to work as assistant private secretary to Administrator Le Hunte, of British New Guinea. He occupied a position of assistant resident magistrate from 1902. In 1904, he was private secretary to acting Administrator Barton. It was said that in Papua, he insisted on other Europeans calling him Mister Manning to maintain the respect of the natives. In December 1905, a scientist Dr Pöch investigating pottery, mentions Capt Manning as the resident magistrate at Cape Nelson near Collingwood Bay in north-east Papua. In August 1907, he resigned from the administration to work as a land clearance contractor at Paili near Marshall Lagoon for the Laka River Rubber Estates. In 1910, he was manager of the estate until early 1912 when it appears he left Papua and married in Sydney. He applied for a commission on the outbreak of war and was appointed second-lieutenant in the E Company of the AN and MEF on August 18, 1914. It called at Port Moresby aboard the Berrima from September 4-7, 1914 on its way to occupy Rabaul on September 11. On January 1, 1915, he was promoted to captain, having been appointed the OIC Native Affairs of German New Guinea on December 9, 1914. Almost nobody in the AN & MEF had any experience in colonial administration or management of indigenous people. Capt Manning’s experience in Papua soon proved valuable and brought him to the notice of the second administrator, Colonel S. A. Pethebridge, himself a senior Australian public servant, who was quickly brought up to run the administration of the occupied colony from January 8, 1915. Capt Manning was made District Officer for all New Ireland on February 15, 1915, replacing Capt Grant Thorold. On February 27, he reported that the public execution of Nerter in Kavieng for murdering a “Malay” at Malum had had a good effect on the unruly natives. He immediately journeyed the 265km from Namatanai to Kaewieng by foot, horse, trap and boat (the Boluminski road only went as far as Katendan 170km from Kaewieng). He visited all plantations and principal villages, crossing the island twice, on the way assessing the situation and reporting to Colonel Pethebridge. He found time to study the German reports about the declining population in New Ireland, attributed mainly to the recruitment and removal of men and young women from villages. He successfully recommended to Col. Pethebridge that the German ban on recruiting women be continued and by October, after his death, all recruiting for work outside the district, (now the province), was banned without the special written approval of the Administrator. Of his death, little is known other than it was a motorcycle accident at Maiom just outside Kaewieng. He had been out along the East Coast road (Boluminski Highway) on June 18, 1915, with Private Good, a mechanic. Returning, Good was ahead. When Capt Manning failed to arrive, Good turned back to find the scene of the accident and Capt Manning being attended by natives from the nearby mission. Good returned to Kaewieng and informed Policemaster 359 David Howarth, promoted to sergeant on June 29, 11 days after the accident. Unusually in 1915, Capt Manning’s wife and daughter were living with him in Kaewieng and Mrs Manning herself hitched up the station buggy and collected the AN and MEF medical orderly and drove to the accident. Howarth went ahead on Good’s motorbike but Capt Manning died shortly after he arrived, probably from skull fractures in two places. That night, the orderly prepared the body and the burial took place at Pakail at 9am the next day. News of his death went by schooner to Rabaul and at 7pm on June 22, Rabaul telegraphed Melbourne, via Port Moresby, the telegram arriving at 10.30am the next day at a cost to the Rabaul administration of 15 shillings for 46 words. Mrs Manning and her daughter left Rabaul for Sydney aboard the MV Morinda on August 11, 1915. A memorial plaque was sent to Mrs Manning in 1923 and it can be assumed this is the plaque in the Pakail cemetery. A newspaper cutting of his death in New Britain (sic), held in an Australia War Memorial file, in handwriting has on it: “Killed 1915 — shot by sniper when riding motorbike to his office after fighting had stopped but all Germans had been ‘rounded up’.“ There is no known evidence to support that. His diary of the war is held at AWM in Canberra. (Source: http://www.postcourier.com.pg/20050429/weekend05)