Personal letters and diaries of Joan and Graham Gibson, 1946-50

Component identifier:

Series 2

Content Summary:

This series includes a personal diary Graham Gibson kept from January to December 1946. It covers his army service with ANGAU and his time at Sogeri near Port Moresby. After Graham Gibson married Joan Hargreaves in December 1948, Melbourne, in January 1949 they travelled from Melbourne to Rabaul, and then to Kavieng, New Ireland, where Gibson was District Education Officer. Joan Gibson kept a travel diary describing the journey from Melbourne to Rabaul. The original diary and a retyped and photocopied version of the diary are included in this series. There are also carbon copies of letters Joan Gibson typed to her friends in Australia together with a set of retyped and photocopied letters. There is a large bundle of original typed letters she sent to her family (the Hargreaves) while she was in Kavieng. These letters were also retyped and photocopied. Gibson kept congratulatory notes and cards sent to him on the conferral of his doctoral thesis in 1985.

Immediate source of acquisition:

The papers were donated by Joan Gibson to the National Library in 1994.

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