Mark Stevens died on Christmas Even 2024, and his funeral service was at All Saints Anglican Church in East St Kilda on Thursday 9 January 2025. Between 2000 and 2010 Mark was the West Papua Consul in Melbourne and his two-story Georgian home in the grounds of All Saints Anglican Church in East St Kilda was the West Papua Consulate. Mark first learned about West Papua—the cultures, the music, the politics, the war zone—via a young pig called Yabon owned by Jacob Rumbiak who lived around the corner in Wellington Street. From the six Papuan students who arrived in 2003, he learned more and became a very good friend and sensitive listener. The forty-three West Papuans who landed in 2006 also loved meeting up and relaxing at the Consulate, watching soccer on Mark’s huge televsion, learning to construct new computers out of old ones, and generally revelling in what Mark let them believe was their own space.
FROM MARK’S DIGITAL LIBRARY
Mambefor Dance
https://youtu.be/Q_QxgdPKpIs
3-minute video showing two West Papuan children learning the courtship ritual of a superb bird-of-paradise that was filmed by David Attenborough in West Papua in 1963. The script was developed and filmed in the West Papua Consulate in 2011.
Kindling the Sacred, Engaging the Political: A ceremony for Melanesian West Papua
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9FUfDJD3wU
9-minute video-summary by documentary-maker Jen Hughes of Sanap Wantaim, a two-day ceremony in Melbourne in November 2002 to raise awareness of and galvanise solidarity with West Papua’s self-determination movement. The ceremony begins in Wurrundjeri Park on the banks of the Maribyrnong River where a pig is ritually killed, and continues in All Saints Anglican Church in East St Kilda, culminating with a Catholic bishop and an Anglican priest raising West Papua’s Morning Star flag on the corner of Chapel Street and Dandenong Road.
Risking the Sacred (Margaret Coffey, Encounter Series, ABC Radio National, 5 Oct 2003)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dpqnf1OEuBQ&t=8s
A fascinating 50-minute discussion produced by ABC broadcaster Margaret Coffey about the Sanap Wantaim Ceremony, where two traditions of the sacred came into connection with each other in the same place. Interviews with Mark Stevens (All Saints Anglican Church), Catholic Bishop Hilton Deakin, West Papuan independence leader Jacob Rumbiak, Dr Paul James (Director of the Globalism Institute at RMIT University) and activist Louise Byrne.
Sanap Wantaim: Melanesian West Papua (Arena Magazine 62, December 2002)
https://arena.org.au/sanap-wantaim-melanesian-west-papua/
1500 word essay by Louise Byrne describing the Sanap Wantaim Ceremony for West Papua.
ABC-JJJ interview, 9 October 2002
https://youtu.be/YvBoXtnlxz8
Popular ABC JJJ journalist Rachel Kerr interviews West Papuan independence leader Jacob Rumbiak and his pig Yabon along with war correspondent John Martinkus, a veteran of the independence struggles in East Timor and West Papua
Three little Pigs in New Guinea Tok Pisin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H61y75G0A24
An ABC production recorded in Port Moresby in the 1960s when Papua New Guinea was a Non-Self-Governing Territory under Australian administration. Comments after Mark uploaded the recording included “I still own this 45 size record from my early childhood living in Port Moresby PNG from 1969 to 1973. We used to howl laughing listening to this in later life …….. “Tok Pisin is such a beautiful language. I love its syntax. And how great is a language where pronouns have singular, dual, trial, and plural forms, as well as both inclusive and exclusive forms of ‘we’?” …….. “pijin, bislama, tok pisin…..its all so cool” …
Australia Television News Reports, 3 April 2006
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gaspain2t0o
Mark Steven’s compilation of Australian television news reports on 3 April 2006, when the Australian Government flew forty-three West Papuan asylum seekers from Christmas Island to Melbourne after granting them three-year Temporary Protection Visas.
Australia Television News Reports,17 January 2006
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sY99ysKy3I
Mark Steven’s compilation of Australian television reports about the arrival at Mapoon in Far North Queensland of 43 West Papuans in a double-outrigger canoe.
Cassowary Dancers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFNIttv2W5Q
Sam & Joshua Roem, and Jeffry and Elia Jikwa, performing at the Peace Child Concert, BMW Edge Theatre, Federation Square, Melbourne, December 2006.
West Papua Anthem played by jazz musician Tony Gould
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYky2bYOc3U
This extraordinary version of the West Papua anthem was recorded live at Melba Hall, Melbourne University, by Move Records in 2000.
What happens now we’ve got 43 West Papuans?
What happens now we’ve got 43 West Papuans?
A behind-the-scene 1500 word essay by Louise Byrne about the arrival of 43 West Papuan asylum-seekers in 2006.
3CR Radio-ad for Yumi Wantaim Seminar in Melbourne in August 2021
https://youtu.be/wjLETceZJlo
This radio advertisement features an a cappella version of Tripela Lik Lik Pig (Three Little Pigs) by the All Saints All Male Choir, in an arrangement by Hugh Fullarton, of the West Papuans national anthem first sung on 1 December 1961.
