Oliver Fellows Tomkins

Tomkins spent little over a year as a missionary in Papua New Guinea before he died a violent death alongside James Chalmers ("Tamate") in 1901.

[3] He sailed on 8 December 1899, with the Rev Albert Pearse,[3] to join Chalmers in his work in the Torres Strait.

"[1] Accompanied by Tomkins, Chalmers arrived at the Aird River of Goaribari Island on board the Niue on 7 April 1901.

The last entry in Tomkins' diary supplied some account of the first communications with the cannibals of Gulf Province: In the afternoon we were having a short service with the crew, when about twenty canoes were seen approaching....

They tried hard to persuade us to come ashore in their canoes, but we preferred to spend the night afloat, and promised we would visit their village in the morning.

What really happened was only ascertained a month later, when George Le Hunte, Lieutenant-Governor of the Colony, visited the Aird River with a punitive expedition and heard the story from a captured prisoner.

This was quoted from an account supplied by the Rev Archibald Ernest Hunt, who accompanied the Lieutenant-Governor: The Niue anchored off Kisk Point on April 7, and a crowd of natives came off.