Join us in person or online for a seminar with Dr Brad Underhill.
Tins of Beef and the Birth of a Nation: The Legacy of Papua New Guinea’s Bully Beef Club
For most Australians, the history of Papua New Guinea’s transition to sovereignty remains an unfamiliar narrative. This presentation introduces a new digital archive developed for the Somare Institute of Leadership and Governance through a partnership between Deakin University and the Australian Government. The project utilises critical oral history interviews conducted for the National Library of Australia and rare archival video from the ABC to preserve the legacy of the Bully Beef Club. While remembered today in PNG as a visionary group of founding fathers, a closer examination reveals the club began as a pragmatic response to immediate racial and financial injustices. Born in the cramped dormitories of 1960s Port Moresby, the group was primarily motivated by everyday frustrations: poor student housing, meagre rations, and the 1964 Pay Decision which relegated Indigenous public servants to a fraction of Australian salaries. This seminar explains how these students transformed local labor activism into the Pangu Pati, the first ruling political party of PNG. By applying a balanced lens, the presentation explores how the legend of the Bully Beef Club now functions as a vital national myth. Much like the Anzac tradition, it serves as a necessary symbol of unity and solidarity for a diverse nation. Attendees will gain an understanding of how grassroots protests over corned beef helped forge the foundations of a new state.
Find out more about the project here!
8 July 2026, 11am AEST
Burwood: C2.05.01
Waurn Ponds: IC1.108
Zoom: Click here.
Brad Underhill is a historian of Papua New Guinea and the Pacific. His award-winning PhD on Australia’s postwar ‘New Deal’ in PNG was later published as Preparing a Nation: The New Deal in the Villages of Papua New Guinea. He has published widely on PNG’s colonial development, decolonisation, and Australia–PNG relations, and co-edited Debating the Nation: Speeches from the House of Assembly, 1972–1975. Most recently, he was lead researcher for the Bully Beef Club Digital Legacy Project.
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