ABSTRACT
Father Gerald took one look at Joyce and me and decided we needed a holiday. He was passing through Taute on a pastoral patrol and had stopped to say hello. A seasoned Franciscan missionary who had lived alone at remote mission stations, he was sensitive to the emotional strains of bush living. While living among the Au people, a group bordering the Wape to the east, he endured with stoic fortitude the people’s gradual abandonment of him as an anti white cargo cult swept through the area until the bishop, fearful for his life, ordered him to leave.
