Land that Time Forgot". Jack Hides, Australian government patrol officer and explorer, would refer to it as the "Papuan Wonderland", the title of his book about official patrols he led into the heart of this dangerous and uncharted territory in the 1930s. The Southern Highlands is the last area of the highlands to welcome the dawn of recorded history. But now, in just half a century, it has progressed from a Stone Age existence to the Space and Computer Age. World War II put an end to exploration of the Southern Highlands as the Australian colonial government hunkered down to meet the threat of the Japanese invasion. The highlands local people were mostly unaffected by the war although they wondered about the large noisy birds that flew overhead on many days in perfect formation, from south to north and back again. One language group dubbed these strange creatures mu-engi, literally "mother" of the sound "muuuu". Years later patrol officers would show the people how to clear and level ground to build fields on which the iron and cloth birds would land. After the war Australian "kiaps" (government patrol officers) re-opened the government post at beautiful Lake Kutubu, which was at the time the doorway into the Southern Highlands. During the same year, 1949, Patrol Officers Sid Smith and Desmond Clancy entered the Mendi Valley. Smith moved on toward Ialibu while Clancy remained to open the Mendi station in September 1950. An airstrip was quickly constructed and the first p1ane landed in October. A year later Smith and Clancy, now Joined by Ron Neville, made a patrol back through Kutubu and on to the Tari Basin. Tari government post was established in July 1951. The Arrival of the Missionaries Christian missionaries soon arrived in the Southern Highlands, the first being Rev. Gordon Young of the Methodist Overseas Missions, later known as the United Church of Papua New Guinea. Rev.Young established a camp at Mendi in 1950. Other Christian missionaries built stations at Orakana and on the shore of Lake Kutubu in 1951. For the Catholic Church the Southern Highlands was designated as part of the Fly River mission, which included just about all the territory from the Papuan coast to the western border of the Territory of Papua and New Guinea right up into the mountains of the Southern Highlands. Fr. Alexis MichellodMSC and Br. Jean Delabarre MSC At first it