Dame Rachel Cleland, DBE (née Evans; 19 January 1906 – 18 April 2002) was an Australian expatriate community and social welfare worker in Papua New Guinea.
Born in Perth, Western Australia in 1906, the eldest of six children, Rachel Evans Cleland lived an active life which was centred on politics and community organisations.
Cleland's background and her later training and work as a kindergarten teacher stood her in good stead for the expatriate life she eventually embarked on in Papua New Guinea.
Rachel stayed for many years, her book Papua New Guinea: Pathways to Independence being published in 1983,[1] before eventually returning to Australia near the end of her life.
[3] In 1980, Cleland became the first western woman to be appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) by the government of Papua New Guinea for services to the country she had lived in for so much of her adult life.