TRIBUTE TO OLD BUGGER LATE BIGA

 

A HISTORY LESSON FROM BIGA THE REPORTER

 

A tribute to Biga Lebasi, 1923 to 2020

 

The Post-Courier and it’s new generation of reporters took an important history lesson from a gentleman who has been there and done it all.

A larger than life Biga Lebasi, adventurer, Mahatma look-a-like, one time stage actor, hermit, historian, writer, poet and humorist, who was older than the Post-Courier. In-fact, at age 76, he beat our masthead by 26 years.

And leggy loveable Lebasi willing, admitted, ‘I will be around for the Post-Courier’s golden jubilee celebration next year 2020’.

To his credit, he did make it, although, he knew in his aging heart, his time on his beloved Kwato was nearing its end. Sadly, the final curtains fell on the journey of Biga, our dear friend who passed on May 27, 2020 in Alotau.

On a dusty Moresby Friday in early 2019, bubbly ‘bubu’ Biga was our special guest at our weekly editorial in-house training program, where the stage play aficionado regaled our young reporters of golden times past and the challenges he faced in his making as an intrepid reporter.

Of course, everywhere Biga trespasses, anything the ageless treasured historian touches, always does somehow fall apart at the seams, and sure enough the training program ascended into a roomful of uproarious laughter at some of his more boldly spicy adventures way out 17 Mile way.

Up the Sogeri road, 17 Mile is famous for many things good including the mighty Laloki river and P&NG’s first copper and tin mine.

The area counts Hollywood screen heart throb Errol Flyn among its first Papuan home grown heroes and Biga was by any stretch of imagination, the Laloki River legend.

For the record, Lebasi at Large, of Suau in Milne Bay Province, was the first Papua New Guinean to have become Chief of Staff of the Post-Courier back in 1973, two years before independence, quite an achievement after signing up in the mid sixties.

But the honour of being first PC reporter belongs to two other Papuans. As for Biga, who initially wanted to be a dentist, his tooth pulling ascension at the PC was by a stroke of stage fright luck.

Born with an adventurous streak on Kwato Island during World War II, Biga had somehow navigated his way into the South Pacific Post – forerunner to the PC – in 1965 shortly after surviving the obstacle course at Sogeri Secondary High School.

Our young journos, whose fate was still in the Milky Way, were glued to their seats in stony silence of disbelief: history was narrating itself in the black and white celluloid reel film of a bygone era of Errol Flynn, James Dean and Biga Lebasi.

Good fortune does smile on the brave, and also on those foolish enough to follow their instincts as a unassuming young Biga chanced on a once in a lifetime opportunity at our Konedobu headquarters.

It so happened that the small-time actor on Kwato Island had one day been to a play where he had the good fortune to follow the misfortunes of Macbeth on a Port Moresby stage.

By a stroke of luck and rare Lebasi twist of fate, the enormity of it suddenly dawned on him that the expatriate Australian editor who had invited him to his office to share a sandwich was actually Macbeth.

‘Eureka, I found you. You are the one who played Macbeth,’ Biga excitedly exclaimed to the South Pacific Post editor John Blair on that fateful day in 1965.

Blair was amused by Biga's passion and convinced by his youthful enthusiasm, and for his best supporting role from the back row of the stage where natives sat, Blair ‘Macbeth’ hired him and threw him in at the deep end as a librarian.

Biga was captivated by the idea that bigger and better things were yet to come – never mind the challenges of racial discrimination very evident in colonial era Papua & New Guinea at that time or the low wages – Lebasi was hooked.

And on that special Friday, history rolled off his Suau tongue - he never got to be the dentist he desired to be but he did cut his teeth across the Lawes Road as a journalist.

As he told the enthralled new journos: “fifty years later, I am still waiting for the Papua & New Guinea Department of Native Affairs to respond to my letter of interest in becoming a dentist!”

Vale Biga - a good friend and a gentleman. – BIG PAT